Surfers' Bay and Mah Jong

Floral display in one of the neighbouring gardens,

observed on my morning stagger up and down Emerald slopes.

At last! Beginning the first blog of the new year and after an absence of a month! Back in Beloved Brugge after a three week absence in California and a further week struggling to keep awake at the right time and to sleep during the night. Oh jagged jet-lag, harsher in the later years!!

Christmas morning at Half Moon Bay

December with two thirds of my family was super; lovely Christmas Day with Californian friends, Ron, Nancy and Bob, bringing up the festive number to ten. A lovely Christmas morning walk first, above the beach at Half Moon Bay with a lively surfers’ sea below and dancing kites in the blue sky above. All greatly appreciated by the group but particularly so by Charlie the black Labrador, now a stately 12 years of age and very ‘bien dans sa peau’, plus the youngest family member channelling her pre-present-opening excitement and energy into dashing along the cliff top with a later splash-and-run in the shallows.

A fruitful corner of Filoli gardens

There were other highlights: a last day visit to San Francisco; a wine tasting at Liversdene ; a solo trip to Filoli, an American stately home nearby; a shopping excursion to an upmarket mall at Palo Alto, interesting for me and Genevieve for a short time but a hasty Uber ride after an hour allowed our escape from further bore-and-trudge. I mused on the fact that the seven year old would eventually, undoubtedly, graduate to greater shopping enjoyment while my great days lay behind me. Now I can only tolerate shopping when I need/want to buy something specific and then, an hour or so is the limit before the soul sighs with the weight of it all! However, the self-same mall did me proud at Christmas when the girls presented me with a truly gorgeous expensive scarf bought from one of the sumptuous mall shops.

That scarf has caused further shopping in the January sales here as I found a fab. reversible coat with a toffee-coloured side which is a perfect mate for the camel/black/orange neck confection!! AND at half price. Honestly, my cup runneth over as I face the new year afresh, newly coated and scarved! Can it be true that I haven’t purchased a full-length ‘proper’ coat since the beauty from Max Mara in Florence in 2005? No, I bought a luxurious one in Turkey in 2015, now I remember. Still, hardly extravagant when, as a Leo, it is my birthright to be extravagant; surely?

Prestige Patisserie, now closed alas.

And so, back to finding my Brugge routine again, and welcome it is. [And with it, the divine Belgian beer, much missed.] The little mundanities, rhythms, markers of everyday life are comforting and reassuring. A sign of the times is the number of empty or emptying, businesses in the centre; the quite recently opened Oak and Coffee house nearby has gone; Prestige, a super patisserie for coffee/breakfast/lunch, also selling excellent bread, suddenly closed in late November and remains forlorn. Several shops on Steenstraat, one of two major central shopping streets, are empty or have closing down sales advertised. It is happening everywhere in Western Europe I think but it presents an enormous challenge for city authorities and their revenues. And it is a sad sight for residents and tourists alike, never mind the personal/financial heartbreak for the owners.

Post Script.

Totally forgot to mention that a Mah Jong set was purchased in an attempt to bring old world culture to the Californian new world. To my delight I now have one daughter and two grand-daughters who love the game! There is a certain colonisation taking place here!!

A photo from August 2018 to illustrate.

My coolie sister and I playing Mah Jong on the terrace.

Pre-California Report

One of the perennial favourites

Such a busy week in retrospect! The usual activities and a concert, with A Big Plus; three grandsons with joined-at-the-hip girl friends, and my son in his birthday week; from Thursday to Monday, various combinations of family here with the main battalion from Friday to Sunday. What seems to be establishing itself as a tradition, they were all here ostensibly to celebrate Dad’s birthday but in reality, the visit is also because they love Brugge and the Christmas market and most especially, the beer! I pondered what great fun the weekend had been as I wearily washed, dried and ironed what seemed almost countless sheets, pillowcases and towels, though of course, the latter were most definitely NOT ironed. 

Tom's Diner

We had the chance to eat at Tom’s Diner, a tapas plus bar nearby, which was great; terrific atmosphere in a large and incredibly busy space in a back street. Food, excellent. Then on Saturday, we ate at Cezar on the corner of Carmeersstraat and Jerusalemstraat where I had eaten before on a much quieter day than the Saturday evening of the first weekend of the Christmas Market when everywhere seemed to be booked up. I hadn’t known how delightful the upstairs space is chez Cezar, and almost private, given the busy, busy nature of the evening with the totally full restaurant downstairs. Needless to say, the traditional Flemish beef stew in beer, chosen by six of us, was wonderful comfort food!

Sunday morning proved difficult to kick-start as the young people had been carousing half the night and were almost truculent at

Misty Brugge

Blackbird en fete

being disturbed around 9.15 a.m! But I was treating them to Blackbird for breakfast and that was the only booking for eight that could be managed. So, amid gentle persuasion and iron determination, eight of us managed to make the deadline but the torpor and disgruntlement vanished as the wonderful breakfast proceeded and the experience, relished!! Before the group, minus son et moi, went shopping, we all walked back to my apartment for the youngsters’ disturbed sleep to be resumed for an hour or two, while he and I treated ourselves to a gentle, misty canal-side wander. Different ages, different pleasures.

Cezar

And now, off to California to spend Christmas with the other two thirds of the family.

We had the chance to eat at Tom’s Diner, a tapas plus bar nearby, which was great; terrific

atmosphere in a large and incredibly busy space in a back street. Food, excellent. Then on Saturday, we ate at Cezar on the corner of Carmeersstraat and Jerusalemstraat where I had eaten before on a much quieter day than the Saturday evening of the first weekend of the Christmas Market when everywhere seemed to be booked up. I hadn’t known how delightful the upstairs space is chez Cezar, and almost private, given the busy, busy nature of the evening with the totally full restaurant downstairs. Needless to say, the traditional Flemish beef stew in beer, chosen by six of us, was wonderful comfort food!

Sunday morning proved difficult to kick-start as the young people had been carousing half the night and were almost truculent at being disturbed around 9.15 a.m! But I was treating them to Blackbird for breakfast and that was the only booking for eight that could be managed. So, amid gentle persuasion and iron determination, eight of us managed to make the deadline but the torpor and disgruntlement vanished as the wonderful breakfast proceeded and the experience, relished!! Before the group, minus son et moi, went shopping, we all walked back to my apartment for the youngsters’ disturbed sleep to be resumed for an hour or two, while he and I treated ourselves to a gentle canal-side wander. Different ages, different pleasures.

Beaujolais Nouveau

1. A few years ago it was a common event in the UK; the sound of klaxons announcing that the ‘Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive.’ Grown men in fast cars hastened to be the first to pick up the ambrosial wine. Eventually, the universal scramble to avail oneself of the immature, thin red wine was enjoined while sceptics ruminated on the efficacy of the admen’s guile. It wasn’t great wine in any way but it WAS a triumph of marketing! All that had faded from fact and memory until a friend and I, out in the Markt last Saturday, came across a noisy man with a huge moustache on the steps of the Provinciaal Hof, banging the metaphorical drum to entice passers-by to go inside to sample the Beaujolais Nouveau which had indeed arrived! So we did, passing several other men of a certain age, all sporting outsize moustaches; overtaking an impressive wild boar {stuffed!] on the top step wearing what might have been a welcoming snarl. It turned out that the old boys were members of De West-Vlaamse Snorren Club presenting an event entitled: ‘Le Beaujolais meets West-Vlaanderen’.

Inside the hall, was an attractive bar area and beyond, stalls with the wine, and sausages, cheeses and breads. We tasted several different Beaujolais in a small wine glass provided for each to take home, but didn’t buy. It was a charming occasion but the wine is still thin and too light for me. But it was another ‘takes me back….’ moment as I looked at the map provided of Le Vignoble Beaujolais. There was a period of two or three years in the early eighties, when I went with a bibulous friend to buy wines of the area direct from the viticultures and the names brought images of idyllic vineyards, pretty villages and rolling landscapes to mind: Macon, Julienas, Chenas, Morgon, Moulin a Vent, Saint-Amour, Brouilly, Chiroubles and, of course, Beaujolais. Twelve appellations in total and a host of memories corked in those names! I must add that the wines from the named appellations bear no quality relationship to the Nouveau beyond association by location! 

Hoat Nguyen playing Dvorak.

An example of the work of Ingrid Godon. [See below]

The following afternoon to Die Swaene for another concert by Duo Arion playing Dvorak and Beethoven. Again, a blissful experience with the viol player, Hoat Nguyen, giving immense feeling to the Four Romantic Suites, Op 75. Dismayed at the end to discover all seats for the last concert next week are already booked!

A most intriguing exhibit; looked from a distance like a photograph

but was in fact an amazing Gobelin tapestry featuring a misty

landscape with girl. Incredibly tactile and eerily photographic.

 Then, after another week of thoroughly satisfying rituals: Mah Jong: conversation and coffee with friends: more chats over beer and wine with other friends; early swims and late Ipad dramas watched in bed; a lovely Saturday afternoon out with a friend, in Damme. I don’t go to Damme sufficiently often. It is only about 4 kilometres up the canal but without a car, it takes an effort and a bus or two, and my moral backbone has tended to crumple a little. But to delightful Damme I was taken to see Er Was Eens …, [Once upon a time ...]at the Stadsfestival Damme which had proved such a success that it had been extended by a month. Thus I discovered d’Oede Schole, a former school turned impressively into a marvellous arts / exhibition centre. The display of art books covered a wide field but the main exhibition of the work of Ingrid Godon was stunning. She is a book illustrator and a Damme resident and so we talked to her for quite a time. I loved her work which is I think, mainly for children’s books and I also appreciated her personal openness and accessibility. I bought a lovely folio of her work [not the originals] for a Christmas present though I wanted it for myself!!

Quite forgot to mention this wonderful addition to the exhibition

An illuminated ladder:

Stairway to Heaven on the church tower. Inspired!

All Change.

  

On the edge of Astridpark

Change is in the air!! The weather is unseasonally sunny and relatively clement. Sunshine smiles everywhere; underfoot, crunching carpets with a further tsunami of technicolour leaves racing to reach the pavement first or the tables on busy cafe terraces set, alas, to disappear tomorrow on November 15 by the usual decree. The first Christmas tree, tall and proud in the Burg, has been in place for a week now while Jan Van Eyckplein awaits the departure of the fast food emporium-on-wheels to make space for its own lordly Christmas tree to sprout. Chalets are already built on Simon Stevinplein and nearing completion on the Markt where the ice-rink-to-be is under construction. The Christmas Market is thus on schedule for the opening in two weeks’ time and for the festive crowds to arrive with eager faces and appetites.

De Witte Pelikaan on Vlamingstraat has a wondrous major window display of snowy animals and glittering branches while inside innumerable Christmas trees plus countless Father Christmases and stockings filled to overflowing with gifts and berries and tinsel, jostle for space.. So, parts of the

townscape speak of Christmas while others sing of Autumn. It can seem frenetic at times in Brugge but to walk along the canals at 7.00 in the morning with the first sun promising or with the golden leaves reduced to rainy ochre slush or with a faint mist greying out lamp posts and gables into a Bruges-la-Morte kind of start to the day: then any variation in the weather is welcome in the solitude of the city.

Last Sunday was the Brugge Urban Trail; hundreds of runners were organised to run, in carefully-controlled sections, through the city, beginning and ending in the Markt. Somehow the whole show enjoyed a carnival air with much shouting and singing among the waiting runners, carefully choreographed by a strong, rhythmic disembodied voice. There seemed to be fluorescent-jacketed marshals every few metres and crowds of enthusiastic supporters and observers cheering on anything that moved. It was all great fun to see and hear as a slowly-moving watcher who need not exert herself at all.

Urban trailers queueing in the Startbox in readiness for 

the Start Box!

Irrationally it reminded me of the amateur Olympics I had tried to stage in the wood and field next to our childhood home. Excitement had been high in the run-up to the first Games since the void of World War Two and we children were caught up in the anticipation of the unknown. I can’t remember the details save the pain of the marathon [down the lane to Waterson’s Farm and back] and the publicity material which I painstakingly produced in red, mock-italic writing and which I was secretly thrilled to learn had been praised by the local chemist’s wife who lived nearby and whose two sons were in Our Gang. Would that have been 1946 or 7? Oh dear, how clear some of these old memories are bearing no comparison to very recent memories here which have been almost greyed out!

Die Swaene Hotel interior

One half of Duo Aron

A week ago, a visiting friend here for English conversation suggested I go with her an hour later to Die Swaene on the Predikerenrei, a lovely-looking hotel which I have never visited. Apparently there are four Wednesday afternoon free concerts of classical music during November so I was eager to see and hear. First, the hotel inside did not disappoint; lots of gilding, mirrors, candles and statues, chiefly of the Virgin Mary. But the concert itself was a delight; Duo Arion comprising Alexander Declercq on piano and Hoat Nguyen, viol, played Dvorak and Mendelssohn in a splendid gilded, candelabra-d high room filled with shoulder-to-shoulder comfortable chairs. Heaven!

And below, two more shots of Autumnal Brugge which seems more fulsome and prodigal this year than normal.

fu

November 11th

Interior, Sue Ryder second-hand

clothes shop, Katelijnestraat.

A busy week doing the usual plus! So a whole Sunday morning a week ago, notionally exchanging summer clothes for the winter clothes stored away. Actually, this year unusually, I had to try on everything to discover the suspected truth. Either through Belgian beer or advanced age, there is a Widening Girth to be dealt with. I won’t bore with details but I filled two large bags of clothes for the Sue Ryder charity shop AND repaired to see Mustafa from an Afghan tailoring family [living for years in Brugge via Sweden!] He has a little shop for alterations to clothes, on the Gentpoortstraat and he is brilliant! I hope to collect the three pairs of trousers in another week or so and I am trying to feel, not outraged at the widening, but instead, Virtuously Green in my extending the lives of some clothes while providing work for a skilled craftsman. 

• I write as the bells ring out all over Britain in memoriam; it is November 11 and I have listened to Radio Four commentary on the huge, deeply-felt and stirring ceremonial parade at the Cenotaph in London. Each time I have tuned in, there have been memories expressed by an interesting range of people. Survivors of WW2; sixteen year olds, solemn in their idealistic hopes for world peace in the future; proud family members with their stories of grand-parents’ experiences in both World Wars; survivors of the London Blitz; memories from VE Day around the UK. And then there are the painful facts, remembered, of men killed just before
  

  

  "In Flanders fields, the poppies grow …"

  the Armistice, like Wilfred Owen, the famous war poet, who fell leading an attack on the Sambre-Oise canal on November 4, 1918. I have worn a poppy as usual for the last two weeks, purchased from a nearby hotel with an English owner; poppy-wearing doesn’t seem to be a custom here and I was surprised to read somewhere that the flower for French remembrance is le bleuet, the cornflower; never before suspected. I have always, till now, assumed the poppy was a universal [in Europe] symbol of remembrance. The splendid museum in Ypres Cloth Hall is called Flanders Fields.

But there is much emotion here on the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the first world war and surely, hardly a family in Flanders without a painful WW1 narrative of relatives and events long gone. I peeked into the family What’s App this morning, surprised to discover a sepia photograph of my grandsons’ maternal great grandfather in his WW1 army uniform and a few details of his life including the information that he had a dog called Poppy. And I remember, perhaps twenty years ago, setting off with my husband [himself a pilot survivor of WW2] to find Canada Green Cemetery near Poperinge, where he had obtained details of the grave of an uncle, killed in 1917 two years before
Eric had been born. And I had left him in peace at the grave, to weep

In the meantime, while Europe is awash with emotion over this centenary, nationalism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing demagoguery are springing up like poisonous mushrooms all over Europe and the U.S.

Cloth Hall, Ieper: re-built and restored 1933-1967

Originally completed 1304

The Last Post

But to end on a positive note! Tonight to the Sportsman Bar in Langemark with friends to the poignant ceremony at the Welsh Memorial [written about in a recent blog.] A lovely, friendly evening with Belgians of course, but also English and Welsh. Outside in the dark were braziers with logs burning and

torches to illuminate the site with perhaps fifty people participating. Feelings were near the surface. A bagpipe was played; trumpets sounded; a few readings and a tribute to one fallen soldier was read. Later came the Last Post, haunting as ever and especially poignant in this little corner of Flanders which saw seemingly endless years of mud, trenches, guns and tears. Inside the warm bar with the beer, wine and coffees, friendships blossomed or were renewed, bonhomie reigned and the ghosts of the fallen from those distant battles were still.

Cloth Hall, Ypres 1918

Yellow Chrysanthemums

Brugge cemetery

Yesterday, November 1st was La Toussaint, Allerheiligen, All Saints, the day of hommage to all saints and martyrs, celebrated in Rome since the fifth century and originally on the Sunday after Pentecost. All Saints, specifically a Roman Catholic celebration marked in R.C. countries like Belgium, France, Spain and Poland [and more] has dated to November 1 since the eighth century. In Belgium that means another feestdag and a strong tradition of spending some, or all, of the day with the family and in visiting family graves, bearing chrysanthemums in memoriam. November 2nd is All Souls, I think, a day to remember all the dead.

Brugge cemetery: headstone

I had not taken too much notice of it till this year but, on this week’s Wednesday morning market on the Markt here. I went to buy my usual flowers on my usual stall, a Bruggean indulgence since I have lived here. My attention was drawn to a large vase of white chrysanths with each bloom shielded in a protective cocoon of green plastic net. They were adorned with a notice saying: Promo. 1 euro each bloom. Amazing; chrysanths are never cheap in the UK and I immediately bought six and added bunches of white and green foliage. After removing the protective plastic I could appreciate the large shaggy heads.Two vases of white chrysanthemums adorn my sitting room as I write. They look wonderful and I love them but it was only as I left the market that I remembered the chrysanthemum connection to Toussaint when I noticed a number of people carrying bunches too. It seems a charming custom to me, atheist that I am; it illustrates the influence of the Catholic Church still but rather more testifies to the strong family connections customary in Belgian society. It was not until the evening with my usual conversation group at the Oud Huis Amsterdam [minus at least half of the members on account of La Toussaint!] that I was dumbfounded to discover that Belgians would never, could never, buy chrysanthemums for the house. Never, ever! It is the associations of course but still so interesting to stumble over another difference between two countries, two societies, so similar in many ways and so close geographically but with historically different national religions and the associated cultural divergences. There is absolutely no equivalent celebration in the UK to La Toussaint in spite of the fact that, no doubt, All Saints is in the Church of England calendar.

Chrysanthemums do have a special meaning for me however, associated in fact with a much-loved family member who died over twenty years ago. My darling maiden aunt Lily used to stay quite often with us and always at Christmas. She was poor and proud, and had tremendous interpersonal skills and warmth; she maintained connections between far-flung cousins and parts of the larger family who might otherwise have lost touch with each other. Her contribution at Christmas was always a superb bunch of enormous yellow chrysanthemums for our hall where there stood a low polished cupboard with a large oval mirror above, a perfect spot for an arrangement with the mirror providing the illusion of ever-greater floral power! The blooms were grown by a local retired miner, chrysanthemum-growing being a traditional and highly-regarded  hobby among miners in the area. She was friends with one such who always allowed her the privilege of buying from him at Christmas and she was very conscious of the honour he bestowed on her, and of the special beauty of her prize blooms. Her offering was always presented as if rare jewels and received as such. The ache I sometimes feel for those far-off Christmas days, when the children were small and excitement ran high, includes fondest memories of my aunt and her prize yellow chrysanthemums and the delight she and they brought to me.

Toussaint sky from my terrace.

Appropriately dramatic.

.

Brugge cemetery again.

Adriaan Brouwer

In tune with the continuing late golden weather, [Indian summer indeed though, alas, attributable to global warming.] on Tuesday October 16^th I had a lovely sunlit day out in Oudenarde with a friend. The energy ran out unfortunately before we had time to explore the town but the Grote Markt was a delight which welcomes the visitor. The journey took longer than I had expected and we needed an immediate coffee, located at one of the cafes on the sunny Markt, before embarking on the purpose of our visit: to see the exhibition on Adriaan Brouwer: Master of Emotions. Publicised as in the Mou Museum, we discovered that meant it was in the truly handsome 17^th century Stadhuis which houses the town museum. The exterior of the Stadhuis is beautiful, surely one of the most intricate and ornamental in the whole of Belgium. What impressed inside was the stylish and effective way the huge old building has been skilfully adapted to house the Museum and exhibition spaces. It is exemplary.

I am rather embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Adriaan [also spelled as Adriaen] Brouwer but now, I am becoming an A.B. bore! He was born between 1603 and 1605 in Oudenarde, the son of a draughtsman for tapestry cartoons, a thriving industry in the town from 1368. In 1622 he moved to Antwerp and was influenced by both Pieter 11 Breughel and Frans Hals,

The Smokers.

The main figure is generally reckoned to be

Adriaan Bouwer

in one of his favourite settings.

the latter of whom he is often reputed to have been a pupil though no definite proof has emerged. By 1631 Adriaan, after living in Harlem, was back in Antwerp where he was imprisoned at one point; perhaps by the Spanish for espionage; perhaps for high levels of debt. He died in poverty in 1638 and his body was originally thrown into a communal plague pit but was soon rescued by one of his fellow artists and an admirer, Rubens, and given full burial honours in the Carmelite Church in Antwerp.

The exhibition of almost half of his known works of 60, on loan from the U.S, Europe and the U.K., traces his short but brilliant career. In fact, he became famous for his genre paintings with his work depicting, almost exclusively, low life in bars or among peasants and farmers, card players, smokers and drinkers [when tobacco was a fairly new phenomenon and very popular]. He seems to have been comfortable in such company and never painted aristocratic groups or scenes which will, inevitably, have limited his market. However his work was collected by fashionable and gifted contemporaries like Rubens, Rembrandt and Teniers. He can be seen, in retrospect, as an important transitional figure bridging the sixteenth century Brueghel tradition and the landscape and genre scenes of the seventeenth. He did, in fact, move to painting landscapes towards the end of his life.

My personal reaction to his work in the exhibition was strong; I love his faces particularly and the humour of the situations he portrays. His groups are full of assorted rough-hewn mediaeval faces and the scenes are vibrant and wholly alive as the assorted actors leer, talk, flirt, drink too much, fight and quarrel, jeer and sing. The painter shows himself as a genial lover of the company of ordinary people with their foibles and their rough and ready lives. There is always an air of everyday low life about his scenes, skilfully portrayed in the minimum, targeted strokes of genius! Brouwer was, above all, an expert at conveying emotions and moods, sometimes including grotesque features in the pursuit of truth.