Foolishly assuming that the EU summit would be over by dinnertime, I arranged to meet eight friends at the 1898 Brasserie after work.

Three of us got there at about 6 pm, to discover that it was closed due to being too close to the EU summit - the entire Schuman Roundabout was closed.

So we found another venue, the branch of Fatboys at the the corner of Avenue de Cortenbergh and Rue Stevin, but despite alerting people via email, Facebook and SMS, only three of the other six were able to join us.

One has to admit that it is pretty good that with today's communication technology I was able to redirect half of the people who weren't physically with me at the start of the evening to an alternate venue which none of us would otherwise have even thought of going to. (They briefly had a live band who were so awful they were told to stop after a very few minutes.)

Still, I'm annoyed about not seeing the other three! And if there had not been an EU summit today we could probably have all got together.