By Arnold Jansen op de Haar

Recently, when I had forty minutes to spare and was smoking a cigar outside Brussels South railway station, I thought: these are not the most wonderful of surroundings. In other words, quite a few oddballs were hanging around, but a relaxing cigar is enjoyable.

Further along, four heavily armed soldiers stood near a van that was dispensing free chocolate. The bars were so big that they didn’t fit into their pockets. Well, they could simply have broken them in half and the pieces would have fitted, but after a short discussion the bars were wrapped in their camouflage scarves, ‘so as not to attract any attention’. (I’m not making this up.)

It was the first time that day that I thought: what would Donald Trump do? Lately, I’ve been thinking this more often. And not at the same time as thinking about Syria or Iraq but during minor events.

After smoking my cigar I slowly walked to the platform. I had plenty of time. It was turning out to be a wonderful journey. Come on, I’ll have another smoke on the platform. This is allowed in Belgium, which is, as you know, a wonderful country!

I lifted the suitcase into the train. A big suitcase on wheels. It was a Dutch train. I don’t know if you often travel on a Dutch train, but Dutch trains have a distinct lack of luggage space.

Luckily this was the train’s starting point. There were hardly any passengers. Most times I look for an empty carriage. Halfway down the carriage there is a glass partition which creates a space between seats that fits my suitcase.

I laid the suitcase on its side, pushed it with my leg and after a bit of manoeuvring it fitted between the seats. I hung up my coat and settled contently into my seat.

Exactly at that moment I smelled something. There was dog poo on my right hand! This was the second time that I thought: what would Donald Trump do? Luckily, I had some paper tissues on me, so I wiped it off, but the smell persisted. There was some on my trousers! Another tissue.

Oh my god, it was stuck to one of the wheels of the suitcase! I began to curse profusely and, in the manner of Trump, damned the dirty Belgian railway stations, and subsequently all of Belgium, ‘where things are always disorganised’.

I fetched the last of the pocket tissues to wipe the wheel clean. Where was Donald Trump when you really needed him?

I sniffed at my hand: all the poo had gone, but still there was the unmistakable smell of poo.

It was five minutes before departure. I went to the toilet, in spite of the danger that someone might spot an abandoned tourist suitcase. Sniffer dogs are, of course, alerted by dog poo, but I took the risk.

The toilet was sealed. ‘Out of order’ it said on the door. What would Donald Trump do? Luckily I had a bottle of Coke in my bag. So, outside the train, I quickly rinsed my hands with Coke.

After departure I kept wiping my sticky hands on my trouser legs, which were looking worse by the minute.

We were approaching Mechelen. Should I retrieve another pair of trousers from my suitcase? By now, there were more passengers in the carriage and the toilet was sealed off. Maybe I could change in the vestibule. What would Donald Trump have done?

But this is something I really don’t want to happen: me, an older man, standing there with his trousers down, when the train stops at Mechelen and twelve wide-eyed Hillarys want to get on.

It also made me think of a colleague who nervously went for a job interview and, going up in the lift, released a wet fart from pure nerves. When he arrived at the designated floor, he had to run to the toilet first to ‘clean up the mess as much as possible’. ‘I went through the interview without my underpants,’ he told me later. ‘You’re fired,’ Donald Trump would have said.

Finally, I freshened up in Roosendaal (a town on the Dutch border) in one of the two available toilets. The grubbiest toilets in the world. They were those automatic ones, which are supposed to clean up everything but leave all the rubbish on the floor. And it made me think of Donald Trump again. He has a solution to every problem, except for himself.

© Arnold Jansen op de Haar
© Translation Holland Park Press

Visit Arnold’s home page to find out more about his other publications.

Previous columns:
A Selection Box
A Poet in Sandals
The Marseillaise
Brexit Bear
Letter to the British People
Dinner with Louis and José
An Anglophile European
Mary Magdalene of Notting Hill
No Hugging of Brits!
The God of Rochester
A ‘Bare Buttocks Face’
A Coach Full of Exes
On a Knife Edge
A Very British Secret
End-of-Year Chat
A Cigar in Brussels
Burning a Catholic
Ted or Sylvia?
Unsuitable for Class War
England-bound
The Weather in Arnhem
Accident & Emergency
The Plumber and the Little Prince
A Trojan Horse
Pilloried!
Portobello Hipster
A Celebration Every Day
Diana is Back
Loved by All
Cooking in Peacetime
A Bit of a Genetic Mess
Email a Fairy
A Peeing Neanderthal
Fictional Brits
Bare Burka
Is Van Gaal a Turkey?
An Estate Agent in High Heels
A Boy from Westminster
Adventure in Amsterdam
Amalia & George
Cheering Quietly
Human Waste
D-Day for Poetry
A Dog in London
Van Gaal and Wurst
Baby King George
The Virgin Train from Birmingham
Nuclear Hospitality
Vladimir the Viking
Ski Girl with Moustache
Phoenix
Message From the Bathtub