Titbits.

 

Jake Angeli
QAnon shaman [organic]

Proud Boy Leader: Enrique Tarrio

Still trying to wean myself off the obsession with American politics and I have just read something which helps a lot. Apparently Enrique Tarrio, swaggering leader of the Proud Boys all seeking to protect their traditional notions of Real Masculinity by behaving like thugs, has been an active collaborator with the FBI and local law investigators, since his arrest in 2012. Poor Enrique. His lawyer spilled the beans in court and he, Enrique, is left to deny it all in a desperate search to keep his street cred. Life’s not easy for a leader of Proud Boys. Trump would understand; he gets easily hurt. Almost as sweet as the recent item that the one in the Capitol riot dressed in horns and tattoos, Jake Angeli, lives with his Mum and it was she who had to take up the cudgels on his behalf recently, to ensure he was served organic food in prison. It’s the little details which so delight!

Jan van Eyckplein in December

And so to Beloved Brugge. Pretty well every day I walk through Jan Van Eyckplein and admire it all; the canal, the statue, the architecture, the cobblestones, the golden feather on the ridge of the House of the American Calligrapher. As half of Bruges seems to be dug up or has been dug up, during lockdown, acts of clever Municipal maintenance with least upheaval given the emptiness of the town, it should not have been surprising to witness the swift removal of the splendid miniature forest of Christmas trees in Jan Van Eyckplein, with them and their myriad lights all gone by December 27 followed by the subsequent
uprooting of cobblestones. Actually, they aren’t real cobblestones; they are tiles which both continue the look of cobblestones and make walking easier. No matter; they have lain, piled high and forlorn

Artist at work

, behind wire fencing, at one end of Jan Van Eyckplein for weeks. Until around a week ago when a small, lone workman started to use a sort of dumper, a Bellcat, to flatten the earth properly before beginning to re-lay the tiles, working, on his knees, solo for day after day!! It must be a fine feeling to work hard and look back at such perfection. I hope so; it is certainly superb to witness the activity and artistry of this one person! Days after writing the above, after several days of rain preventing any activity, I note that the surface of Jan Van Eyckplein is still unfinished but beautiful. Our artist will soon be back!

Late and costly but beloved already

I have experienced, first-hand, one downside of Brexit this week. My youngest daughter and her daughter chose, online, a bracelet from Sarah Pacini in Brugge, for my Christmas present. On discovering online, that it was only possible to send it to whoever ordered, she rang up the Bruges’ shop and they agreed to post it to me. [I live about ten minutes’ walk from the shop.] This was about two weeks before Christmas. The parcel was delivered to my daughter in Suffolk in January and she re-addressed it and posted it to me, having first filled in a Customs form and paid £15. I collected the aforementioned, on Tuesday of this week from the main Post Office here and had to pay 41 euros. One hears every morning on Radio 4 people lamenting the present chaos in import/ezport, especially with fish.

Signpost to the Future.

Firms are clinging on despite, as one owner lamented yesterday, "We haven’t sent a single oyster to Europe since January 1^st. We’ve tried but an eighteen hour wait in France for a lorry of perishable food is just not feasible. We used to send daily lorry loads.” I cannot actually quote the myriad reassurances pre-December 31^st 2020, of how quick and easy Brexit would be; how none of us would notice the difference unless things were better, etc. There was a plenitude of platitudes from Boris and Gove, many untrue at best; mischievous at worst, indeed almost criminal, which ring hollow in the face of the current chaos and extra taxes. I did make a note several years ago, no doubt written by a clever Remainer, of a definition of Brexit. It is “the undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.” Definitely clever though it neglects to mention the lies and incompetence.

Fishy complaint.