So, there we are in one of the Senate office buildings, on our way to our meeting, when I realise that the group of people who just got in the lift are talking French and Dutch to each other with Belgian accents – and what’s more, I know one of them, because he’s asked me to speak to the Belgian Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee three weeks from tomorrow. The usual greetings are exchanged, and they go off to see Dick Lugar.

So I have actually greeted a senator by name in the U.S. Senate offices. (OK, so he is a Belgian senator…)