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 This is not a blog; more a signpost to say that my Bruges Blogs are now complete. Finished, as is my lovely period of living in Brugge.

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Partire e un po' morire [To leave is to die a little]

 

 

Some of the Amsterdam group in January.

 The last weeks in Brugge seemed to be a continuing carousel of coffee, drinks, lunches, meetings and goodbyes! I enjoyed it all in spite of the bustle and concentration and despite saying Au revoir to friends who had been so important to me during my seven years’ sojourn in that lovely little town-which-thinks-it-is-a-city!! It was lovely but sad though, even so, I was looking forward to life in Bury St Edmunds which I hardly know. During 2021 I had a developing urge to live nearer to my family, a common reaction to life on the upper slopes of ageing, and, as the title of this first Bury Blog suggests, in spite of my choice, freely taken, to leave after a fairly significant period of being embedded in a life in Bruges, leaving was a jolt; a rupture; a slicing through comfortable and much-loved routines and the leaving of loved friends and groups.

Moving out.

Much as I felt stressed with all the pressures of leaving, [especially with the stream of Brexit-inspired bureaucracy via the Removal firm, the conduit, not the origin of the offending minefield of requirements] it turned out that the arriving was much worse. Wonderful to be surrounded by willing family helpers to Move In but the serious downsizing was something of a shock. Five ‘girls’ worked solidly on my behalf during the first week; 2 daughters, one who was over specially to join the fun from California!; two grand-daughters and one fiancee; huge help much-needed! In fact, they did it practically all! However, the flat which I already love, is around a third the size of my Bruges apartment, and required instant and further pruning of furniture, plates, jugs and in particular, books! I had sent ten boxes of books to Sue Ryder Books in Bruges plus given away a few more to friends. I had donated three bookshelves on the urgent advice of my daughter but suddenly here, there were impressive towers of books lining walls with nowhere to go!! I ignored the books for the first few weeks while I organised trips of furniture and other impedimenta to the local auction house and a variety of expendables to the nearby Cancer Research. I had quite forgotten the British penchant for charity shops; there seem to be dozens in Bury and a wonderful invention they are!! But this week, I have concentrated on winnowing the books which I am donating to Oxfam Books and Music, a very civilised feature of Bury cultural life. Each trip, I fill my old-lady-bag-on-wheels with books then drag it valiantly to Oxfam up what can only be called A Hill! I feel valiant in the execution but weighed down in the actual heavy heave!!

Moving in.

I am quite proud to have found in this first month, an odd job man; a plumber; a painter; an electrician; a cleaner; a hairdresser; a nail place; a curtain/blinds emporium; a beer shop [Dutch owner!] which delivers; a very kind neighbourly couple who are so helpful; and two possible friends! Many of the craftsmen have been located through my local daughter’s considerable list of skilled workers!! During the last few days, the apartment [without notable storage facilities it must be said] is beginning to resemble home, especially after two visits from my son and his wife, to hang pictures. The new normality is tiptoeing in! Meanwhile, there is no need to wonder why I am so tired. Tired but stressed no longer!

Ten days after I moved in

The woman who came a couple of weeks ago to measure up for blinds and a door curtain, offered to give my name and number to a very near neighbour in the same street as she thought we would ‘get on’. Such a generous thought and resulted in my meeting Catherine who invited me one evening to meet several of her friends. Great for a newcomer to the area and indeed I went with one of them to a lunchtime screening of The Duke with the perennially excellent Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent. My First Outing and much enjoyed. Such a break from the seemingly relentless Reducing Strategy.

Some of the many beautiful ruins of the 10th century abbey
in the huge Abbey Gardens,

I have done two or three walks in the superb Abbey Gardens though still too tired to do the usual hour plus. I am only now discovering how much time is needed for the existential energy to resume its past level. A month or two at least. But I have had to go shopping and gradually I am learning the layout of the town. Immediately almost I was surprised and delighted at the open friendliness of people in the street. I do remember the same feeling in Wye where I lived for over 30 years and the surprise to discover there wasn’t the same spontaneity of spirit and openness in Bruges. Individually, the people are lovely but there is a distinct avoidance of eye contact in the street and an absence of greeting strangers as one passes, in Bruges, perhaps partly due to its long history of being invaded, conquered, repressed, taken over, plundered etc! And it does belie the essential friendliness of its people! But in Bury, to go out to buy bread at Woosters, early in the morning, is to encounter the ordinary, everyday friendliness of the town, given without thought or effort. Heart-warming. As were the displays of creativity glimpsed two mornings ago in the town centre.

Crochet cap fit for a post box

 !

And another.

Love Letter to Brugge

 As I do the countless chores preparatory to moving my home from Bruges to Bury St Edmunds, I feel pressured, especially with the myriad tasks essential to keeping Customs happy enough to let me back in, without charging me punitive taxes. I cannot help but remember February 5^th 2015 when I made the reverse trip. I just booked a Removals firm from the next village; dates to suit were arranged; men came and packed then drove off to Bruges on February 4, moving my household possessions in through the

Part of the narrative of ...

windows on the following day. After which, tutto a posto! NOW, post Brexit, there exists much bureaucracy including TORs, to ensure I don’t pay Customs duties on my furniture etc. To obtain a Transfer of Residence Relief URN number I have submitted online, relevant passport page, documents to prove residence here and future residence in Bury plus three pages of A4 detailing every item of furniture etc which I intend to have transported to the U.K. 15 working days after receipt, Govt UK, has just issued my URN, Unique Reference Number, which my Dutch transport firm must have to enable entry into Fort Brexit a short distance away.

..

......the Wintergloed, Walk of Light.

In addition there are POAs for both Belgian and British Customs submitted by PDF; lengthy [approaching two months] enquiries and demands to ascertain my real identity and how I managed to obtain the money to buy a small, two bed flat in Bury. The latter would not be necessary were I to rent in Bury but I am buying which complicates matters a lot apparently! [En passant, it seems ageist that a person of 87 is not allowed to raise a small mortgage. Post relocation, I am going to discover who my new-to-me M.P. is and write to complain about this.]

In the meantime I walk, when I have time, along canals, admiring this jewel of a little mediaeval

Not only picturesque canals, but also dramatic skies
to take the eye.

city which has experienced epochal events over the centuries and reading its story through its ancient bricks, its stone bridges, some still with stone ledges to permit mediaeval merchants to display their goods for sale; through its gables, chimneys, steeples, cobbled narrow but tall streets. I love the rhythms of the town echoed in the regular clopping of the horses pulling carriages for sight-seeing and punctuated by the melange of chapel and church bells at different intervals and decibels and the delightful cascade of sound from the carillon. The Belfort, surviving past fire and partial collapse, in the historic Markt which has seen processions, hangings, celebratory crowds, civic murders, civil unrest, markets but which now is just a magnetic arena for the weekly market, crowds of tourists and a continuing cafe culture with its relaxing air and quiet discussion.

The Grote Markt

Brugge’s history is a story of a thousand years of early peasant economy, great lords and powerful families, interminable wars and armed uprisings, occupation by ‘others’ with Bruges freed only by counter occupations. The seventeenth century religious wars led to the partition of the Low Countries and eventually to a nineteenth century of prolonged poverty and stagnation. It was during this period that George Rodenbach’s Bruges La Morte, and his Le Carillonneur were published both to wide acclaim and prompt disparagement! For Bruggelingen Rodenbach’s stories were perhaps too near the truth! But they caught the then contemporary melancholy mood and the grey inertia. But the new port of Zeebrugge [1905-8] brought industrialisation and increasing prosperity and led to the twentieth century and a widening awareness of the exquisite charms of Brugge, an almost perfectly preserved [or renewed] little mediaeval city. Delighted tourists arrived in increasing numbers bringing fame and money which sparked its present affluence, displayed in the numerous golden flourishes on old buildings, the unbelievable cleanliness and tidiness, the variety of rich processions and events, the literary wealth of the Library and Archives and the art treasures in museums. This is truly a place for aesthetes and historians!

\The Belfort, Brugge Markt
Built in 1240; upper  part burned down 1280.
Extensions over the centuries but 1493 a lightning strike
started a blaze and upper Belfort with clocks, burned down.
1741 more fire and fury burned spire and upper section.
1822 spire replaced by neo-Gothic crown seen today.

Golden statues adorn the facade of the 
Basilica of the Holy Blood in the Burg.

Alpha Beta

 

Greek Alphabet slightly simplified for children

  My son-in-law works for Google and perhaps that is why I know that the parent company of Google is called Alphabet which is, in fact, described as a multinational conglomerate. The very word is Greek, or rather two Greek words conjoined, alpha, beta.

Greek vase showing alphabet

Ornamental letter D in old manuscript

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, 7 of which are vowels, though we are not about to study them! BUT it is interesting to note that the Greek alphabet has been used since the late ninth or early eighth century BC, derived from the early Phoenician alphabet. As in so many other areas, the importance of the ancient Greeks in the history of the alphabet is paramount. All of the alphabets in use in European languages today are directly or indirectly related to the Greek. The Greek's particular achievement was to provide representations for vowel sounds not present in the Phoenician. Consonants plus vowels made a writing system which was both economical and unambiguous. The true alphabetical system has remained for 3,000 years with only slight modifications, an amazing vehicle of communication and expression among the most diverse nationalities and languages. The Greek alphabet has spread to many others but the most important and widespread descendants are the Latin, through the Etruscan, and Cyrillic alphabets. The Encyclopaedia Britannica points to the varied examples of alphabets displayed in everyday objects or areas of life, which have survived to give evidential proof of use, since ancient times onwards, through documents, grave inscriptions, lettering on vases and monuments, manuscripts, private and civic records.

Omicron variant

My interest in this has been stirred by the current habit of the naming of the various strains of Covid 19 after the Greek alphabet letters by the World Health Organisation though quite why Omicron has followed ‘Delta’ is a mystery! Should have been Epsilon! Perhaps something to do with the shape of the virus. It is very pleasing to see how easily the Greek names for the Covid variants, have been quickly accommodated into everyday language so easily. After 3,000 years and an academic record par excellence, even small children can recognise Omicron and use it correctly in the modern context.

 

Illumination in part of Wintergloed

And now for something completely different. Bruges' Wintergloed has been a resounding success; it is the long walk, devised by the commune, to enable spectators to follow a trail of lights and lighting effects in celebration of Christmas and the Christmas Market. The latter has been, I suspect, a little less successful this year; certainly, the twenty plus stalls on ‘t Zand packed up and left after the first week while the Markt, situated in the centre, was much busier. However the Walk of Light has been widely applauded and on opening night, an estimated 10,000 walked the walk. The burgemeister, Dirk de fauw, in fact, cancelled the display on the following evening, and weekend because of Covid anxieties. Notwithstanding, this year, the organisers have introduced a novel cultural element. In an endeavour to strike up a dialogue with the city through light and words, there has been a light installation on the Rozenhoedkaai and people are invited to write a haiku and send it in online. The best 20 haikus selected each week are then projected in light on the Rozenhoedkaai in a 10 minute loop of the best 20 haikus that week, for the following seven days. Alain, who is visiting at the moment from Cologne, has had his contribution selected; great joy this end!! Not to be outdone, I have just composed my own haiku [after all, I used to include haiku in my English Literature lessons half a century ago!] We shall see if honour ….. or possibly unreal, vain expectation

is met!

 

I should define Haiku for the uninitiated! It is a three line poem, non-rhymed, with 5,7,5 syllables in three lines totalling seventeen syllables. It emerged in seventeenth century Japan almost as a protest against the over-elaborate poetry of the time. My entry, in response to requests for haiku about Wintergloed, is published below as I realised, after sending it in on Jan.8th, that the whole Christmas Market including the Wintergloed finished on January 9th!!

Eyes shine in light

Bruges captures tranquillity

Bathed in Winter glow.

Haiku try to convey emotion through
specified verbal limits

And here is Alain's winning entry displayed in 
all its glory 

Kusse im Winter
Schenken Sommer im Herzen
Und Fruhling im Herbst

Kisses in Winter
Give Summer in the heart
And Spring in Autumn.

And a little part of the glorious display.
The Bandstand in Astridpark.

The two photographs above of Wintergloed, courtesy of
Joachim Diessner, Cologne.

Christmas Present.

 

Sir John Betjeman in St Pancras.
My hero who saved this beautiful station from
developers in the Sixties.

Santa, masquerading as a Red Gnome,
and a laughing Snowman.

A lacuna in this blog due to festive activities and travel. I was reluctant to go back to Britain, not for the family Christmas but because of Covid risks and tests, but was persuaded and managed to stay positive, or more accurately, resigned, during the 4 hour 10 minutes Eurostar journey from Brussels on

The Meeting Point, St Pancras.

December 22 due to a broken-down train ahead which proved immoveable for about two hours. My son, waiting for me in St Pancras, responded magnificently by making up quiz questions on St Pancras about which he seemed to discover lots. I was proud to know several of the answers! When I arrived and eventually managed to locate him at the Meeting Point, he suggested a choice between going home immediately or a glass of champagne tout de suite. No prizes for guessing my grateful response for an early start to Christmas!

Colour-coordinated Californian branch.

Thus began an one of my best, perhaps The Best, Christmas Ever. Eventually we had all the family together except the Californian branch at home in very snowy Lake Tahoe. The Day passed in monumental amounts of present-opening; astonishing bonhomie and laughter; steady alcohol consumption by some; splendid walks; fabulous food; silly dressing up; more games than I could shake a stick at and altogether sufficient ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Men’ to astonish Scrooge. Our Christmas 2021 certainly put Covid in the shade completely as we totally forgot about it, an achievement in itself. Two of our number, from Norwich, did not arrive due to negative Covid tests reducing our total number to 11; a very sad development for them and very much for us though, on the cheerful side, probably less cider was consumed.

Numbers resident gradually thinned out until one grandson [perhaps the most 'bien dans sa peau' of all my family] and his equally-chilled partner, plus me, departed early on December 30; earlier than anticipated as my Eurostar had been cancelled!! The young people accompanied me to St Pancras, a great start to the day, and I sailed on without mishap. A friend met me in his car in Brugge, drove like the clappers to my home thus ensuring I was not only fatigued but also queasy on arrival. It took grisailles and a Duvel to set me up before unpacking and an early night. New Year’s Eve and Day have passed in a bubble of decreasing fatigue as I try to persuade myself to think about resuming the Downsizing details to be dealt with. I start tomorrow!! I feel somewhat disloyal and ungrateful to mention that the tranquillity here and the silence have indeed been golden.

Worker bees not seen as the rest wait
in lazy anticipation!

This pre-walk photo demonstrates a personal
puzzle. How come I am now the shortest
when I used to be so tall?

A short ponder on Things I Learned over the Christmas break.

1. The rapid expertise on the phone/GSM of those not in their eighties is amazing. Realising this demonstrated my own place in the electronic pecking order, mistakenly assumed to be O.K. hitherto, as actually low! I must DO MORE on my Iphone!

2. The kindness of the young is inspiring and reminds me of how callow I probably was in my twenties!

3. The complete abandonment of Self to enjoying the moment, evident in the young, was inspiring.  Carpe Diem writ large.

4. The silliness of one individual when multiplied by eleven, is life-enhancing and probably life-extending!!

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book

 

Local map of Shirburn Castle area, near Watlington, Oxford.

I am in the process of downsizing; that includes disposing of furniture, ornaments, books, files, crockery, linen, clothes. Theoretically, this is a most useful discipline; practically, it is Very Hard Work. Mostly I can dispose without pain but with books, it is really challenging! Before I came to Brugge, I had given away all my husband’s professional books and mine too; all too elderly for modern professional use. I also managed to shed quite a number of others no longer deemed necessary to my well-being and entertainment! I remember thinking around 35/40% of the volumes in my house must have gone. But now, my daughter who lives in Bury St Edmunds where I intend to live, has visited my apartment-to-be several times and measured up. Her judgement, obviously based on fact and measurement, unlike mine based on possessiveness, is that three of my bookcases Must GO. Hence my present wrestling over which book goes where?

Shirburn Castle, seat of the 
Earls of Macclesfield.

During this current effort I have come across so many books I had shamefully forgotten I had and have spent far too long flicking through forgotten pages; dipping into unremembered volumes. A splendid volume entitled The Macclesfield Alphabet Book has me currently enthralled. Until very recently, this wonderful book, that is the original, was unknown to the mediaeval manuscript world and only emerged to share its glory in the early 2000s from the vast library of the Earl of Macclesfield in Shirburn Castle near Watlington in the Chilterns in Oxfordshire. In fact, the Castle had three great libraries chiefly assembled by Thomas Parker [1667-1732] Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Macclesfield, supplemented by the second Earl [1697-1764] and his family, all voracious collectors and polymaths’ as described by Christopher de Hamel in his Introduction in my copy. Apparently there was little further family interest in these treasures and the libraries remained in situ for more than two hundred years.

Thomas Park, first Earl
of Macclesfield.

By the early twentieth century it had become obvious that life in Shirburn Castle still without many modern amenities, was untenable and the family began to sell off books from 2004 onwards, to partially finance a move to a nearby new house. This series of sales at Sothebys also revealed a hitherto unknown fourteenth century East Anglian Macclesfield Psalter sold in June 2004 to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Subsequently the British Library acquired the Liber de Hyda, cartulary of Hyde Abbey in Winchester and the Macclesfield Alphabet Book in 2009. One must read the book i.e. my book introduced by Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett, for all the lovingly detailed descriptions of the different folios contained therein, but basically, the Macclesfield Alphabet Book is a calligraphic alphabet book. Its possible purpose is discussed in the Introduction; for use by a scribe or illuminator; a showcase for a prospective client; used in a studio as an exemplar for apprentices; a record of pictorial information for wealthy patrons?

Sample page from the Alphabet Book

Principally, the work, comprises simplified images from natural history, mainly trees, animals and flowers, arranged in alphabetical order without text. The manuscript is composed of 46 leaves of parchment divided into sections which would originally have been separate, circulating perhaps as loosely folded separate booklets. The letters, both capital and lower case, are illuminated often by grotesque or whimsical images of members of all levels of society including kings. Many are of peasants or ugly people, spitting, grimacing, sticking out their tongues or showing their teeth [a particularly heinous social offence in the Middle Ages.] Animals in the illustrations are strange birds, dragons and monsters which might possibly have aided memory in the illiterate viewer. Patricia Lovett identifies the work of several hands in the book’s composition with some examples accomplished by a very able scribe but there are contributions by less able artists, possibly a left-handed scribe at one point; a working artist in a hurry; elsewhere, another level of skill is apparent, “a tour de force” in fact. Patricia Lovett’s introductory essay provides an amazingly detailed commentary on the levels of skill of the different artistic hands involved in this production.

Christopher de Hamel.

De Hamel concludes that the style of artistry is extremely competent but not of the highest order and the Alphabet Book is likely to have been made away from the professional workshops of London, almost certainly in Suffolk. At the end of the first alphabet, appears the phrase, ‘ Amen q’ [fryer] Baldry. The word ‘fryer’ has been scratched out undoubtedly at the Reformation when friars and monks were abolished in England. The initials R.B. drawn on a shield in an illustration may indicate the friar as Roger Baldry who was a Franciscan monk, subsequent prior [1503-1518] at the Cluniac Priory of Saint Mary at Thetford in Norfolk. The name Baldry comes from East Anglia and was especially common in the area around Ipswich. In the fifteenth century the greatest concentration of the name Baldry was at Creeting, eight miles north of Ipswich, Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.

Sample pages.

Mediaeval Franciscan friars.

 eight miles north of Ipswich. Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.

Foot-binding in China.

 

Emperor Song Huizong.
Not 'our' emperor merely a typical
portrait of a typical Emperor of
the Song Dynasty.

I recently met someone whose great grandmother had had bound feet and I was astonished at the relatively late occurrence of something I had imagined to be firmly in the long past! Knowing nothing about foot-binding but incredulous that something so presumably painful and grotesque had been universally and historically popular in China, set me off on what could be termed, ‘a lotus hunt’. I am now more knowledgeable but equally bemused at the enduring strength of social and sexual custom and pressure.

Bound foot in beautiful shoes.

Historical records from the Song Dynasty, 960-1279 A.D. date foot-binding as beginning during the reign of Li Yu who ruled over one region of China between 961-975 A.D. Legend has it that his heart was captured by a concubine, Yao Niang, a talented dancer who bound her feet to suggest the shape of a new moon and performed a ‘lotus dance’. During subsequent dynasties, foot-binding became increasingly popular, spreading from court circles to the wealthy and was seen as a powerful status symbol. Eventually it moved from cities to the countryside where ordinary young girls also realised that binding their feet could be their passport to social mobility and increased wealth.

Zhou Guizhen at 86 [2007]
Formerly very wealthy; grindingly
poor after 1949.
Resident of Liuyicun.

A village, Liuyicun, in southern China, formerly a thriving textile town where virtually every woman had bound feet, still harbours survivors with tiny feet. The practice survived there for longer than in other regions of China because of its long-term economic prosperity which encouraged people to want wealth signifiers. In 2000 there were still 300 women with bound feet living there and one of them, Wang Lifen, 80 when she was interviewed in 2007, was typical; her mother started binding her feet when she was 7, first breaking her toes then binding them underneath the sole of the foot with bandages. After her mother died, Wang carried on breaking the arch of her own foot to force her toes and heel ever closer. The pain, which must have been intense, she now claims not to remember, but says, “Because I bound my own feet I could manipulate them more gently until the bones were broken. Young bones are soft and break more easily.” In other words, she placed primary importance on how she managed to bind her own feet, not on why. She accepted the practice as a fact of life.

Foot Emancipation Society.
Publicity 1902.

When the Manchu Dynasty began, it tried to ban the practice but there was little support and the habit continued for centuries more until foot-binding was officially banned in 1912 after the revolution which toppled the Quing dynasty. Banned but not eradicated presumably as, after the Communists came to power in 1949, again foot-binding was outlawed. The American author, William Rossi who wrote, “The Sex Life of The Foot and Shoe” in 1976, estimated nonetheless that 40% to 50% of Chinese women still had bound feet in the 19^th century but for the upper classes, the figure was almost 100%. The belief endured that women with tiny feet were a status symbol who would bring honour upon their family and clan. The first anti-foot-binding committee was formed in Shanghai by a British priest in 1874 and 60 Christian women supported him. In 1883 the Women's Christian Temperance Movement petitioned for strict prohibition, so there were early moves to consider the health and mobility of the women involved and the morality of binding feet. From 1915 Government Inspectors could levy fines on those who continued to bind their feet, but it still continued in various defiant pockets of the national community.

After the Communists came to power in 1949, foot-binding continued to be illegal and women carried on, for a while, binding their feet in secret. As Wang pointed out, “If you didn’t have tiny feet, no one worthwhile would marry you”. Indeed, her future in-laws had demanded of the matchmaker, that their son marry a woman with small feet and that was in the early twentieth century. However, Communism quickly introduced strict prohibition and also brought an entirely different life with contrary values; the centuries-old social structures collapsed and all wealth and valuable possessions were confiscated. Production methods changed; the wealthy became suddenly socially reduced and economically crippled while tiny feet meant many women struggled to cope with the practicalities of farm work and the demands of other hard manual labour which Communism enforced on both sexes.

Preparing for womanhood.

Hobbled feet had been an erogenous zone, perhaps the most forbidden of all; indeed feet 3 inches long were called Golden Lotuses and those between three and four inches, were Silver Lotuses. Pornographic books in the Quing dynasty listed 48 different ways of playing with Lotus feet with a preferred site for intercourse being the cleft between heel and ball of the foot. However the reality for women, was that, though bound feet were seen as a welcome mark of class, foot-binding deepened their subjugation, restricting their movements away from home, making them dependent on their menfolk and ensuring their chastity.

So a national foot fetish which persisted for centuries vanished overnight beneath the weight of Communism and its totally different values and practices.

Han Qinoni aged 102
of Yuxian County;
one of the last survivors.