Where can you get indoor plant fertiliser in this country? Brico sells garden fertilisers. I've tried a few florists. In Britain you can get tiny bottles of Baby Bio to give a few drops at watering time, which is all I want because I only have a couple of plants and they aren't huge.

You have my sympathy. Belgium has a highly regressive tax system full of grotesque absurdities. For instance overtime is automatically taxed at nearly 70% even if you are on minimum wage, while the taxes on wealth are so low that French CEOs actually use Belgium as a tax haven. And the kind of people who benefit most out of the system are the kind of people who protected Marc Dutroux. I've just been working overtime, and my salary is about half yours, so I am feeling particularly angry right now.

If I have read your post right, only one of you is working, in which case the following might not be very useful to you, but hopefully it might help somebody. I have heard that many couples with two salaries find a very cheap room somewhere, or even set up a caravan at the end of the garden, and register that as one of their addresses, thus avoiding finding themselves paying up to 70% marginally on their combined income. And the Belgian state being the dull-witted bloated monster that it is, they seem to get away with it.

I'm surprised to find myself talking like this. I would never have done so in the UK or Canada, but I'm just so sick of it all. Not just the taxes, but the grinding bureaucracy and the reckless and intimidating behaviour of so many public employees.