Statues

Just returned from lovely sunny windy walk to buy a newspaper, a weekly treat, wander down to the Markt to admire the visiting throng and have a coffee in a favourite bar on Sint Jacobstraat [closed!] Stopped to watch a large group, encouraged by a Chinese tour guide, deciding whether to splurge 44 euros on a half hour horse-drawn carriage ride. Many did! Let me try to show you.

Wow! Bernard's instructions Work; can now place photographs more or less where I want them. Great new skill! Let's try again; have intended to photograph Jan Van Eyckplein, very close to where I live but, having lost the camera, have to remember to take out the Ipad and this is a challenge. Today, all set fair.

Jan Van Eyck was one of the most significant Northern Renaissance artists who achieved new levels of virtuosity in oil painting and was followed and copied by many other artists. My shot doesn't show the canal, a few metres to the left of the statue; must try again.

Just to demonstrate my new, low-level flair in image-placement, here is 'my' statue on which I look down every day; 'tis of Hans Memling, a mediaeval world-beater part of whose small but exquisite collection is housed in the museum, Sint Janshospitaal. There are others; at least one Memling is in the Groeninghe Museum here and others are in Gdansk and Italy. [Memo to self: stop lecturing.]

When the agent brought my sister and me to view various apartments in Bruges in December, he identified the statue and I remember saying that I hoped the apartment lived up to expectations because I HAD to live near my favourite mediaeval artist, whose work I make an annual pilgrimage to view. That is one reason I live in a family-sized apartment when I was supposed to be downsizing.

The building, housing a number of apartments, is fifteenth century I think, and perhaps a trifle severe in external appearance BUT it is brilliant living on the third floor [paradoxically my windows are the line across the top; to my inexpert eyes, they look to be on the fourth floor! But I dial 3 in the little lift and also walk up once a day. But I boast; it is an effort. The views are superb; I can tell the time from the clock on the Belfry, the Beffroi, housed in the Markt in the centre of Brugge and can see numerous church steeples and turrets. A roof-scape to savour. [I did include a shot of the building but decided to remove it in an over-cautious moment.]

What else has happened this week? A re-directed envelope brought me a £10 third prize from a 100 Club; only the second time for I am not a winner normally in these ventures. A bill from Telenet, an overdue bill from Eneco with a five euro fine attached, [successfully challenged], a card from a friend in Chianti aged 91 and still firing on a number of cylinders with the help of a Polish carer. A letter from a friend in Wye who doesn't do e-mail plus several hundredweight, oops, kilos, of rubbishy magazines, offers and sundry dubious invitations. And of course, the continuing saga of the lights in this flat, a problem nearing solution I reckon. Still cannot believe that there are only occasional bare bulbs inches from the high ceilings plus clusters of bare wires poking through the plaster, when a new tenant moves in. Definitely the rental turn-over in Brugge and presumably in Belgium, keeps the lighting shops and electricians with a generous supply of sales and work. Oh yes, a delightful and convivial evening with the Crundale Gardeners over a meal at 't Putje in 't Zand. They were passing through en route to the bulb fields of Holland. It was super to see them and just as super to remain behind here when we parted. 'Surely you miss the countryside?' I was asked but I don't. Think I must have been an urbanite at heart, all those years of near-rural living; a metropolitan, built-up kind of person who loves cafes, little shops, restaurants and museums just outside the door.