"Autumn grows, Autumn in everything." ***

 

A week or two ago these runnels of leaves, like arboreal snakes,
crept everywhere. ....

...but a week later, such discipline was
impossible

Autumn has been encroaching surreptitiously for several weeks now but suddenly, vividly, it is here in technicolour fashion!! Summer’s wave goodbye has arrived with Winter’s hello to cold mornings outside and warmth in snug evenings indoors. I have just happened upon a slim volume, Thoreau on Man and Nature,
in a bookcase as I continue to look for clothes, books, furniture to give away before I leave. Thoreau is irresistible, a common feature among great writers! I quote a short extract:

“October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes around the world. As fruit and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year nears its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight. “

Some early mornings I cannot see the Belfort or even
the Poorters Loge, 
normally, almost within reach of my windows!

A perfect description of the heaps of vivid leaves, before dampness overtakes them, scattered across the parks and walkways of Bruges and catching my eye and feet each time I wander along canal-side pathways beneath trees half-stripped of their finery, displaying their skeletal branches. BUT, as well as technicolour finery, there is a certain melancholy about autumn too; the smoky, misty, moisty vistas which give an added mystery to those same early morning walks alongside the canals of Brugge. Seen through a veil of haze, these slightly claustrophobic mornings call up for some, memories of Bruges la Morte, Rodenbach’s mournful novel which somehow delineates the special quiet, nebulous, concealed nature of this particular season [and of this particular town!]. November early walks have a suggestion of the unrevealed, despite the landscape’s familiarity and accessibility. Bruges is beautiful in all the seasons but the tentative incursion of light on a grey, foggy morning brings a half-visible reality gradually to form in a silent, shrouded almost unfamiliar revelation and this is Special! And the silence! Oh the silence of the narrow streets is almost complete, thick, enveloping, buffeted only by a far-off muffled tremor of sound which serves to accentuate the soundless misty state of the moment.

Minnewater in the mists of Autumn

And appropriately, other seasonal features have disappeared together with the green leaves. All the Trauma exhibits in the 2021 Triennale have now been dismantled and have sadly vanished from Brugge, their season of performance, over! Terraces often lack clientele as the cooler weather settles in and the ice cream shops have fewer customers!! Cafe menus displayed on pavements, feature rabbit stew and fish soup with salads rarely mentioned. Padded jackets are back with scarves and woolly hats replacing summer sandals and T shirts. But the inevitability of the expected changes are somehow reassuring in spite of climate change and Cop26; we are heartened by the implicit promise of the world still turning, somehow deciphering unexpected signals from Nature but continuing in its undeviating individual orbit. However, publicity on global climate change has made people abruptly aware of our existential need for the familiar landscapes and weather and sharpened the communal fear of significant, irreversible planetary change and loss. Delight in the shades and mists of Autumn this year is tinged with a certain uneasy apprehension. 

The Bruges Diptych in the slow act
of deconstruction. The Goudenhandrei
seems empty now though nearby
houses are released from captivity!

Ethereal, other-worldly, in its black and white beauty.

Russet hues catch the Autumn spirit

**** Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning.

The Art of Paula Rego

 

I recently bought a book for two small children entitled The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy; it is a book I first met about eighteen months ago and it is a delight. I bought my copy in January 2020 without the excuse of having a child around to read it to, though in the introduction, the author does declare, “This book is for everyone whether you are eighty or eight.” It is idiosyncratic in its ‘handwritten’ scrawl with enchanting drawings and Charlie, the author, manages to create a wonderful, universal world where love, friendship, honesty and kindness are held dear. The sort of world one would want any small child to inhabit or indeed, would prefer for oneself instead of the real world which seems to grow ever more nasty.

Cut from this dreamy, ideal, charming universe to the world of Paula Rego. A friend recently spent a day with his family in Antwerp and while there bought a book from the Museum De Reede at a Paula Rego exhibition entitled Power Games. The text describes, with many illustrations, her 1989 exhibition on Nursery Rhymes; her Peter Pan in 1992; her Abortion Series in 1999; her After Hogarth in 2000; her Work on Mylar in 2000; her Jane Eyre in 2002; her Prince Pig in 2006; her Wine in 2007; her Beyond Abortion in 2009 and other Out of Series drawings.

I have borrowed the copy and the copious illustrations show a very different world to that of Charlie Mackesy but it was the first section [of Paula] on nursery rhymes that jogged my mind to remember the story of the boy and his three animal friends in their search for understanding and friendship. Paula’s nursery world for instance, begun as a pictorial narrative for her grand-daughter, with drawings and watercolours and eventually worked up into etchings, uses distortions, comedy and dream-like effects to create a claustrophobic, often sinister, effect, inspired by both 18^th and 19^th cartoonists and artists like Daumier and Goya while her childhood in the Portugal under the strict regime of the Roman Catholic Church and the conservative autocracy of Salazar, plays a seminal role in her creations. She seized on

In The Comfort of The Bonnet.  Jane Eyre.

the figure of Jane Eyre, using that character in many etchings and lithographs, as a way of exploring her own transition from girl to woman to represent her growing up in a dark and threatening Portugal.

Three Blind Mice 1.

From a totally different literary background, she encountered [and loved] the traditional, often absurd, English nursery rhymes at the English School she attended in Lisbon and eventually learned more from the iconic Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by the famous Iona and Peter Opie. She followed the English oral tradition of adapting the rhymes for contemporary social comment, reinterpreting apparently innocent stories [often founded in historical fact unknown to the children who sang] to give erotic or ominous existential undertones.

Frankly the result is often terrifying. For instance, her first version of Three Blind Mice has three leaping enormous ferocious mice, their severed tails held in the triumphant hands of a peasant woman, with blood on the walls and fire in the background. I learned that the farmer’s wife represented Queen Mary, known as Bloody Mary [1516-1558] and the blind mice are Protestant clergy and noblemen who rebelled against her and were subsequently executed by her for their trouble [and their faith!]. This one detail of one rhyme has to stand for mention of all the other etchings and drawings executed by Paula Rego over a long life. [Get the book!] Her depictions of abortions which are stunning in their detailed social comment; the Victorian world of Jane Eyre and the psychological drama of the Wide Sargasso Sea [based on Jane Eyre]; plus the inner turmoil and anguish of other characters in other stories, all merge into a strong image of a woman artist who observes, but who also lives, these micro-dramas from literature and from life.

Witches' Sabbath by Francisco de Goya

She abhorred conservative morality which she attacked, exposing and exploiting its ambiguity and was drawn to artists like William Hogarth, the satirical/realist English painter; Honore Daumier and his grotesque exaggerations satirising society and politics; and James Ensor in his subversive and eccentric world. In particular, her kindred spirit was Francisco de Goya, master etcher who confronted social hypocrisy and human cruelty.

A typical James Ensor.

The role of literature is hugely important in Rego’s work, not as illustrations to the stories or rhymes but as translations; explanations; often as an embodiment, used by her to chart and illustrate her own life course. In all of her complex work, there is often a strong chiaroscuro which underlines the strange and eerie happenings she has re-created, in direct contrast to the centuries-old chanting of innocent entertainment. Her mastery of drawing, pastel and graphic techniques is undisputed and she is now considered to be on the same artistic level as Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani and Soutine.

Honore Daumier's Drunken Man.

Paula Rego. Born 1935.

Little Miss Muppet.

Multum in Parvo.

Well-rounded pigeon who visits occasionally
to survey Woensdagmarkt.

Beautiful but details not noted.

There seem to be many recent photos in my Iphone picture store to suggest in brief, a multitude of little things busily happening in my life. From the photo of a well-fed pigeon perched for ages on my terrace, to images of vintage cars at an event The Zoute Rally which I stumbled over in the Markt last week; to a stage set on the Burg today for an unknown [to me] half marathon with an inviting but closed tent advertising Gratis Brugse Zot. Additionally there are photos of documents for the solicitor in the preparations for my purchase of a small flat in Bury St Edmunds plus a video of that apartment. Further investigations in the photo department reveal a chaise longue [one of the many possessions which Must Go] which I am endeavouring to sell! With no real wish to bore the reader, I will spare more details, but my photos indicate, unintentionally, very clearly the enduring attractions of living in Brugge and the quite convoluted manoeuvres necessary for me to divest myself of many things before I move away from Bruges and its charms.

One oleander-free space!

Wardrobe, companion of over fifty years, but now
destined for a younger owner in the family. Perfect.

Long weekend visit by son and younger daughter has resulted in my deciding, with much help, mainly what must go and what might stay with me when I move back to Britain. Although I have downsized before, I now realise how minimal that must have been each time! To discard half of my furniture is difficult, surpassed in complexity only by considering HOW I do it. Who might be interested? To give or to try to sell? I don’t have too much of the sentimental attachment often described by commentators on the difficulties the elderly have in relinquishing ancient possessions. However, certain items are a little more painful to say Farewell to, after forty or fifty years. For one thing, there is the familiarity of habit developed through half a century of everyday, unremarked use. The many books and pieces of furniture, voluntarily discarded; not earth-shattering but a diminution of the old and loved backdrop to my life. Of course, I can manage without that beautiful, capaciously stylish wardrobe, a dear companion since 1968! No sweat to move on without that Georgian linen cupboard presently full of china and glass! And as for those tribal rugs, some very worn, others just a beautiful background for the tread of my life, and of others’; I shall just choose the favourites and move resolutely on.

Along the Kruisvest, early one morning.

I have made a small start; a bronze Japanese maple tree and one of the two oleanders, were carefully uprooted and taken away yesterday from my terrace by a friend offering a garden space for them. An offer of my tiny black freezer has been happily accepted this morning. The beloved huge wardrobe has found a future home eventually. The white desk has GONE as has the twelve set dinner service. Definitely, I have started to reduce my possessions though there is a way to go before I flee the nest next year. I am currently playing my C.Ds [obsolete technology, so my offspring inform me!] and whittling them down to fit into a small box so that I can give away my smart transparent C.D. tower which holds many discs. Occasionally I am overtaken by feelings of smugness as so slowly I give away, or prepare to give away, things!! Alternatively, slight feelings of panic are subdued, as I contemplate the extent of sifting still to go through! But then, I remind myself that we are still in October “and miles to go before I sleep!” as Robert Frost might say. And now that I remember the poet, Robert Frost, another of his apparently simple poems comes to mind. 

In ‘The Road Not Taken’ he writes:

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

 I doubted if I should ever come back.

I have thought, several times in the past two months, as I savour an early morning walk along the Vest, admiring the sunlight dazzling on the water, that I am in effect, experiencing a long Good bye to Brugge. And Frost’s famous but superficially simple poem hits the spot. I won’t be coming back to Brugge in any substantial sense and I remind myself that ageing is often also a long good-bye. But with compensations!                                                   

                                                         I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

 And that has made all the difference.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, ......"

ence.

Revisiting The Past While Anticipating The Future

In Brugge for my 80th in 2014.

I returned from Britain several days ago but fatigue [and 

Some of the guests even more colourful than
the rest!

backache from soft beds!] have reduced the enthusiasm normally reserved for my blog! So this is extra late! My week in Bury St Edmunds and Long Crendon was super in that I saw lots of my family. It included the splendid Celebration of Life for my sweet sister, Heather, who died a few weeks ago. She hadn’t wanted a funeral service so her two ‘children’ interpreted her final wish by organising a Celebration Day in which everyone was asked to wear bright colours and attend, bringing a flower each. Flowers, plants and gardens had been central to Heather’s life and was an inspired idea while the resulting bowls of flowers were a delightful hommage to her. There were three ‘speeches’; a heartfelt tribute from Russell, her son; a spirited rendition of Heather’s favourite poem, Jenny Joseph’s ‘When I Am Old, I Shall Wear Purple’ by daughter Joanna, and an encomium from me, full of some of the many memories from our 80 plus companionable years. I was surprised, as I finished my tribute, to see how many people were in tears and I guess the culprit was the final quote from Leonard Cohen’s note to Marianne, a former lover, as she lay dying of leukaemia and written about a year before he died in 2016. I had very slightly adapted it and quote my version here which I announced that I was reading to her:

“Well Heather, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I have always loved you for your beauty and your elegance …… but now, I just want to wish you a good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love; see you down the road. “

A second viewing of this photo by Cait!
 Heather and I 
playing Mah Jong on my terrace in 2017.

Tears were soon dried, and a long and lively afternoon of conversation ensued, filled with Heather-memories, and the cheerful, jolly melange of voices reverberated as the large group of friends and relatives reminisced and chatted, many often catching up with people they hadn’t seen in ages because of Lockdown and geography. It was a warm and happy day, one which enfolded rather than distressed, one which would have pleased my sister enormously [and which delighted the garden congregation too] and one which has changed my mind around my eventual departure for the Great Classroom in The Sky! Definitely not a formal service for me; surely, a celebration based in a garden if I can get the timing right for the weather and temperature! I am considering booking the same garden, in fact! It is quite perfect

Heather, en fleur, at 15 in 1955.

After I had written the title of this blog, I was reminded of Janus, the God of motion who looked after passages, caused actions to begin and presided over all beginnings. Since movement and change are interconnected, he had a double nature, symbolised by his two-headed image.

SO, I was in the U.K. for a very sad reason which caused me to revisit the past, but Janus-like, my children and I were also looking ahead to start to implement  my recent decision to return to Britain and go to live near my youngest, in Bury St Edmunds. The result is that I found, and am starting to buy, a small, two bedroom flat there, a choice which ticks many of my desired boxes; a terrace; a lift; a spare bedroom; in the mediaeval heart of the little town; near the beautiful Abbey Gardens! Perhaps Janus was presiding over this beginning to the next phase of my life to which I am looking forward while simultaneously feeling sad, contemplating leaving my present beautiful apartment and terrace in Brugge. A typical mixture of many human decisions; change and movement; anticipation and regret.

Remains of the Abbot's Palace in the Abbey Gardens,
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Abbey Gardens with Cathedral in the background

Heather in Brugge, 2017.or 2018.

Voicing The Dawn

 

Voicing the Dawn

Garden of Guido Gezellehuis, Sept 19th 2021.

To a wonderful concert early on Sunday September 19^th in the large green space of the garden of Guido Gezelle’s house in Rolweg. I didn’t make the 7.00 a.m. first concert which I was sad to have missed as it began in darkness and was magically re-imagined as the sun rose.

The astonishingly creative and imaginative music for the concert was the work of Stevie Wishart, an English composer who lives part-time in the Ardennes. As a performer on the violin and hurdy gurdy [see below] her roots are in early music and improvisation, though her early experience was playing with leading free jazz improvisers in London, Berlin, New York and Australia. During this period she launched her own mediaeval music ensemble, Sinfonye, which won the MA Festival competition in Brugge in which annual major early music competition she was eventually included on a panel of judges and was also a judge at York Early Music Festival.

Stevie Wishart

“Voicing The Dawn” was composed in the Belgian Ardennes in 2019 and began with her recording the actual birdsong in the dawn chorus. She revised it this year and also composed Murmurations 11. Her process of composition is described in the recent publication, “Songs of Time and Place: Birdsong and the Dawn Chorus in Natural History and the Arts.”

Members of Pluto's Ensemble were often 
scattered around the garden, in ones and twos,
always amazingly on cue with their 
individual sounds/singing.

The concert, set in a magnificent garden as the first light blooms, suggested sounds of awakening birds softly mingling and growing with the light. Stevie used Guido Gezelle’s words; Clement Janequin’s evocative 16^th century Chant des Oiseaux was incorporated to analyse and re-interpret the dawn chorus and with Murmurations, suggest the awe-inspiring synchronised flight of a flock of birds. Thus we were presented with dual 16^th and 21^st century visions of this early morning avian harmony.

Pluto’s Ensemble under the direction of counter tenor, Marnix de Cat, provided the varied and inspiring song and bird sounds, sometimes accompanied by real bird song. It provided an inspirational start to the day and the Concertgebouw is to be congratulated on its initiative in commissioning Stevie Wishart to compose this singular work.

Pluto's Ensemble, ensemble as it were.
Directed by Marnix de Cat.

Clement Janequin 1485-1558
Particularly famous for his polyphonic chansons.

The mediaeval hurdy gurdy, not played at the concert but one
of the instruments played by Stevie Wishart.
The hurdy gurdy has multiple strings normally which give a 
constant pitch accompaniment, resulting in a sound 
similar to that of bagpipes. 

Song of the blackbird begins.

S

Picking Up The Pieces.

 

The Bruges Diptych on Goudenhandrei.
The new pavilion echoes the mediaeval house to form
an architectural diptych.

Inside the Triennale exhibit one can see
the proximity of the old and new.

I keep intending to include a photo of the Triennale exhibit on Goudenhandrei, The Bruges Diptych, which instantly showed me what I hadn’t understood before. The photo, taken from the far side of the approach to the pavilion, clearly demonstrates the idea of an architectural diptych which Jon Lott had. His construction, almost joining the rear of the building which now stands where the house of Jan Van Eyck probably once stood, echoes it in several ways. Two attic windows in the old house are twinned by similarly-shaped window ‘spaces’ in the new, pavilion. The new house is similarly shaped and sized as the older building and I was amazed when I entered the new ‘shell’ at how very close it is to the old brick of the earlier place; sufficiently close to be in contact, a virtual shadow. Jon Lott speculated on the interplay with what can be seen, outside, with the naked eye, and what takes place behind the facade, suggesting that this enquiry underpins the whole of this year’s Triennale.

Other pieces to pick up this week include my regaining, chiefly, my normal cheerful Brugse routine after a certain lethargy and disinterest set in, following news of my sister’s death. Unexpected death of a loved one does somehow throw the compass out. I just wanted to be alone, slumped in my own thoughts and memories but several little things have happened to intervene. An unexpected invitation to lunch from a friend who will be in Brugge briefly, tomorrow. Long and kind messages of support over Heather’s death and lots of family Face-time. Discussions over the ceremony for my sister who did not want a funeral and which have concluded in the decision to have a Celebration of her Life in a beautiful garden, probably her daughter’s where her 80^th party was held a little over a year ago. And the ongoing kindness of friends and acquaintances. All these have conspired to assuage the grief a little and energise me so that normality has more or less resumed.

Oude Zomerstraat.

Exquisite figures on a fireplace

Another unexpected opportunity occurred yesterday when I was invited to join a tiny group, with English commentary, for a brief tour of the only house in Oude Zomerstraat, off Oude Burg [as part of Open Monumentdag.] It is a magical place though we didn’t really see the 15^th century areas; mainly the huge 1900 addition which is currently being renovated and upgraded with a new mediaeval fireplace inserted and a magnificent 15^th century ceramic stove installed, large enough to heat an assembly room, from Romania. The son of the previous owner who died two years ago and who had lived in the house for many years, is currently renovating the 1900 addition with a view to providing a future life as a B&B. And a rather special one at that!!

The view from the Minnewater Petanque court
incorporates the Triennale too.

Change of venue for Petanque, now moved from Minnewater [my favourite in spite of, or perhaps because of, its slightly unkempt, bumpy surface which favours my erratic play] to the court adjacent to Astridpark. This is in a public way, parallel to the Park, so that our expertise, or lack thereof, is frequently commented upon, or watched in amusement by, passers-by. It is certainly a sociable place to play! On Wednesday next, we shall move for coffee to Le Pain Quotidien in Simon Stevinplein for a trial period perhaps. The manager is more than happy to have our low-spending custom [only coffees usually] but cannot guarantee a place for us in this popular tourist spot every week. We have to take our chance. We have been meeting in Kaffee Kamiel in Zilverpand since the Lockdown was relaxed enough to permit groups to gather outside. KK has a splendid terrace but now the Wednesday market has moved back to the Markt, we want somewhere nearer to it, to meet. Our former home in Hotel Martin in Oude Burg is not currently available.

Le Pain Quotidien, Bruges.

Mah Jong continues on its weekly satisfying way; on my terrace last week and this. The flower-filled terrace, with plants beginning the long slow fade into Autumn, is still enough of a floral bower to give a garden
atmosphere to our third floor terrace games. And this week, we hope to welcome back a member of the group who has been ill. Another excuse for a bottle of celebratory bubbly I suspect.

Requiem for a Sister

 

July 28th 1940, with Mum.
Our birthdays: 1,5,7.

My lovely sister, Heather, died on Monday morning [Sept.5th] and while we have known for ages that she wasn’t very well with heart and cancer problems, and was slowly deteriorating in her physical health, it was nonetheless, unexpected and heart-rending. She and I had Face-timed on Sunday as she sat in her daughter's lovely garden, when she felt really, really unwell but still had a conversation about a number of things, as usual, and indeed, when I heard today’s news, I had been about to ring her again. In spite of all, news of her death was a shock.

Communal hair curled; probably for our birthdays
Heather was probably 5.

It is unsurprising that a death cuts short a relationship; ours had lasted for over 80 years, and as the oldest sister, I had always felt protective about both my younger sisters but Heather and I had developed a strong and lasting friendship since she had been about one or two!! Over the years, with separate lives unfolding, we remained close confidantes and friends. When I was poor, as a young mother, she used to give me her cast-offs, always gratefully received. My first husband and I had bought a somewhat derelict old hall in Derbyshire, much in need of restoration, and Heather often helped me with the enormous amount of curtain-making etc which was necessary in a huge old place with fairly poverty-stricken owners! She and her family spent frequent weekends with us so that our families, too, grew up together closely.

Unbelievably, Heather at 15.

Before I married, I used to send her to meet the current beau in my place when I wasn’t quite ready to go myself. After I married, she used to spend most of her free time at our house until, in fact, she married and moved away and we carried on our friendship at a greater geographical distance. Wherever we lived, we always remained psychologically close and open with each other, almost dependent, in our frequent chats, on each other’s good will and approval.

Heather was a brilliant needlewoman and dress-maker, in particular, she excelled in making collages and patchwork. She had a particular feel for the aesthetics of a garment, house, a person, a garden. Her sensitivity to aesthetics always resulted in elegance and discrimination in her taste and choices for her home, her children and her appearance. Throughout her life, she was centrally involved with plants and flowers and as a young woman, could always have been described in the French manner as “une jeune fille en fleur”. She had inherited our mother’s ‘green fingers’ and created a number of stunning gardens and as her botanical knowledge and experience grew, so her gardens became more creative and aesthetically appealing. Perhaps her last garden, created out of a virtual wilderness, was her most impressive achievement and one which she could not bear to leave eventually. She was the ‘go to’ person in our family and friends for gardening/plant advice and her wonderful flower arrangements graced so many occasions; family weddings, christenings, parties, birthdays, house warmings. In fact, looking back, we can see that she was always ‘en fleur’.

Heather at the Beguinage, 2017.
She often visited Bruges which she loved.

I seem to have omitted mention of her qualities apart from the creative. She was warm, kind, funny and generous. There was always a regret there, not spoken, that she could have achieved more with a better education. Had she come from a different family, she might well have gone on to study a design course, perhaps, which would have led to other outcomes. In fact, she became educated through her life’s experiences in her marriage to Michael who climbed the heights in his professional career in which she was greatly involved, but also through her own strong artistic inclinations.

Heather and I playing Mah Jong on the terrace.

It seems a little melodramatic to say so, but life for me, without Heather will be existentially lonely and much less rich. Quite simply, she has always been there from the baby who had always to sit near me at meals, to the young woman who went in my place to meet my latest beau, to the confidante I Face-timed several times a week from Bruges over the last six years. We could, and did, say anything to each other. Losing her is a grief that cannot be easily spoken.

Heather's 80th birthday party, she clad in white, with her children 
and me with two of mine.

Not at all sure when or where this photo was taken.
Perhaps 2004? Heather on the left.