Eighteen months later

Unbelievable that it is already 18 months since I arrived in Brugge, to change the narrative of my life. The speed with which elderly time passes is yet another illustration of the deeply unfair odds stacked against the more mature! However, if one is lucky enough to jump over the Channel and fashion a new life, then one can afford to be insouciant about these minor travails.

Last week was A Birthday which I still enjoy celebrating. Having no kith or kin to hand as I am a few hours' effort away, I entertained several girl friends from the Wednesday morning coffee group I meet at Hotel Martin's [It has the grand title of the International Women's Club I now learn!] for coffee and a look around the estate it being too wet to actually sit on the terrace.

Then my English Group which meets to drink beer and coffee on Thursday evenings, [secondary purpose] and to chat in English, [primary intention] came for the same purpose to my flat nearby, bringing bouquet, champagne and wine. Just delightful and a great way to mark the passing of another year. A week later I have just had a few more girl friends round for coffee for belated birthday wishes; this was a flagrant act of spreading a party further than its weight could carry it, but it worked a treat.

 Justin Taylor, young French harpsichordist
playing Forqueray & Fils 11 Aug. 

And now the MA Festival is almost here; the annual reason why Eric and I came on the annual pilgrimage to Brugge from 1989 though he had then been following it for at least twenty years. MA = Musica Antiqua and it is Early Music in many forms and guises. It was rather like a religion to us as we returned, year after year, as it still is to the group of young Germans, and the Dutch couple who also come every year and with whom I have become firm friends. It is slightly harder to go to all the concerts as Eric and I did, [and later I continued, solo] though I manage most. It is a little different when one lives here; there are other imperatives but mostly the pattern-as-usual continues. Concert-going in abundance; long conversations in bars and cafes with due reverence paid by all to the wondrous Belgian beer; one luncheon party at a flat on Schaarstraat hosted by the boys and one hosted by me, in the past, wherever I had laid my head. Now held in my apartment but last year, the first in my own accommodation, I chose to serve Brunch and not Lunch in deference to the reducing energy and the increasing disinclination to drag large amounts of food along cobbled streets in my caddy. Brunch-with-bubbly worked beautifully and engendered more time and energy for other things. This annual prolonged get-together between Belgian, German, Dutch and English is much anticipated and enjoyed by us all; it has become an affirmation of friendship and continuity. It is one of the high spots of my year. Prima!

Yesterday I went to the City Archives in the Burg to follow the trail of William Caxton and had a marvellous time. I shall write about William next week but for now must record the hushed pleasure of visiting the Archives; the scholarly intent of people studying; the interested kindness of the woman on desk duty who helped me fill in forms, found me books, introduced me to the computer in the reading room and made me feel entitled to her help! The Archives are placed in the oldest part of the Palace of the Liberty of Bruges in the Burg from where the extensive rural hinterland around Brugge was governed from the eleventh century to 1795 when the Liberty itself was dissolved under the occupation by the French republic during the Revolutionary Wars. The Palace then served until 1984 as the Courts of Justice for Brugge and the archives were moved there in 1988. In the sixteenth century the Liberty of Bruges was governed by a burgomaster and 24 aldermen and the former Aldermen's Chamber is now a museum containing, among many artefacts, the monumental fireplace of the Liberty of Bruges.

The old archives contain most of the city's administrative records from the late 13th century and thus all the surviving documents produced by the City government between 1280 and 1795 are there. The modern archives, available for viewing by the public, date from 1795 to the present day. Nothing could better illustrate the astonishing continuity, despite wars and occupation over the centuries, of this city of Brugge. Wherever I turn, I seem destined to be dazzled!





Panorama of Brugge Grote Markt
to celebrate my 18 months here.