One
of those weeks that slipped past without my noticing its speed! A bit like Life really. A
whole week since, I went to a super luncheon and auction, a
money-raising venture every two years, to support a Nepalese school.
There is obviously a committee of Belgians who work hard to mount
this event each year, with the auction, one of paintings chiefly, all
donated by the artists concerned. This year, there was added urgency
as the school, together with most of the village, has been destroyed in a
recent earthquake.
So
I assembled with artistically-inclined members of the Bruggean Great
and Good to enjoy what was the most leisurely meal I have ever encountered!
The house and grounds, ['garden' wouldn't quite fit the bill] was
near Sijsele and both were stunning, the pictures being displayed in
a large salon and the lunch itself taking place on the large area of
grass between house and enormous man-made lake. It was idyllic,
including the weather, and I managed to find lovely people to talk to
who, despite protestations, could speak English. [I secretly felt the usual language-envy!]The meal itself was
super and the auction, several sunny hours later, such fun. In view
of Brexit and my current poverty, I wasn't buying but I had seen a
couple of paintings that I liked and when the first of these came up and there was
no bid, resistance wasn't possible. Annoyingly, my bid inspired a
couple nearby to join in but they soon dropped out, to my delight. I
later met the artist, a psychotherapist who uses art therapy with his
patients and has been painting himself for only four years. He was
passionate about his art too. Interestingly, the second painting that
I liked but couldn't afford to bid for, was bought by the unsuccessful couple
in the bid for my picture, which was very pleasing. We obviously had
similar tastes.
Two
other events made my week; a lunch with the lovely patient lady who
now comes once a week to make me try to speak Dutch. It was
delightful; I have noticed that the Belgians, rather like the Dutch,
do not easily invite a new acquaintance into their homes. They prefer
to wait a little longer!So I was thrilled, even though it meant some
hours of my stumbling on in hesitant, elementary Dutch. I won't say
Flemish; that is a patois quite beyond my intellectual capacity I
think!! But it was another, quite different, sunny lunch filled with
good food and interesting conversation. It is the light-filled halo
that these occasions leave in the memory that are so nourishing.
Thursday
morning to a friend's house to join a little group trying to learn
Mah Jong, the inspired suggestion of a Mah Jong-mad Chinese girl, a member of
the English-speaking group that meets each Wednesday morning for
coffee and chat in Hotel Martin's. We were two beginners with two
others playing for the third time; all controlled by the
indefatigable enthusiast who is beautiful, charming and a tyrant. I
had never seen Mah Jong properly though when I stayed with a family
in Beijing for two months in 2009, I loved seeing little groups of
men on tiny stools, playing on the pavements or in the gutters;
always absorbed and enthralled, with many onlookers often, crowding
round with advice and encouragement. I shall simply, here, enumerate
the Mah Jong tiles and details, copied from a photocopy of a book I
must buy. There are 108 suit tiles, 16 wind tiles, 12 dragon tiles, 4
flower tiles and 4 season tiles, a total of 144. The set is divided
into three categories\:
1.
Suit tiles – bamboo, circles and characters.
2.
Honour tiles – wind, dragons and the 1 and 9 of each suit.
3.
Flower and Season tiles – these play no active part in the game but
do affect the final score.
Enough;
already I have learned something I hadn't picked up at the actual
session! It is incredibly difficult to encounter Mah Jong at first and one
hopes things will become clearer. All I can say, is that the two
hours passed so quickly and we had such fun, which was in spite of
the constant feeling of seeing through a glass, darkly, as Our Dear
Leader barked instructions and encouragement!
To finish, a complaint about an errant seagull; seagulls seem to be everywhere at the moment in Brugge and I saw one online picture of a seagull somewhere stealing frozen yoghurt from a cone held in a child's hand! I regularly witness the devastation caused by seagulls on the many plastic rubbish bags, many no doubt liberally filled with empty mussel shells, put out by restaurants, as I walk to my early swim. My bete noire, or perhaps bete blanche, lands at some time unseen, on a wide, gravel-topped plant pot on my terrace and has a refreshing thrash around, displacing gravel and earth over a wide area of the decking. Sweeping up is laborious and fruitless. It is the sort of thing a cat might do but at third floor level, a wandering feline is less likely. BAN all seagulls say I. I dream of a pellet gun and steady aim.
A photograph of a little girl with flowers, to conclude on a more harmonious note.
I  |
| I noticed this girl, at the ready to present a bouquet to the hostess of the Nepal lunch. She is SO similar to a younger version of my fifteen year old grand-daughter.
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