Robin Verheyen en Marc Copland

Let me record some impressions before they fly away – which I know they will, as I am only my second glass of wine, a robust red to follow a flighty white.

This evening I attended a concert at the Handelsbeur in Ghent featuring the Augusto Pirodda Quartet in support of Robin Verheyen and the masterful Marc Copland. I will concentrate my energies on the latter as the quartet – good, solidly modernist as they were – did not speak to me, musically, at all. They were technically gifted; the pianist, I noted, played from his ‘hips’ (as a professional-level pianist friend of mine said the best pianists do), yet their music lacked something.

As I listened to the rather stripped-down duet performance of Marc Copland on the concert grand and Robin on the clarinet and bass saxophone- I realised what it was that I ‘missed’ in the first set. It was beauty. Beauty. I remember once Jo telling me, at an early stage in our friendship, that he wasn’t sure exactly what it was that distinguished great music from the mediocre; but he knew one thing: he thought that music should always be beautiful. That was what he aspired to when he played, and hoped his audience would recognise in his music. I was quite moved by the simplicity and honesty of this statement; and perhaps since the hackneyed formula of truth=beauty etc. etc., that we first come across in school, the consideration of beauty as a criteria in its own right, seemed too bombastic, pretentious & traditional, and thus had faded from my mind. But suddenly this loaded term appealed to me as cooly, objectively, evidently useful.

In trying to reach towards a definition of ‘beauty’ in music, I feel lost in a tangled thicket of subjectivities and relativities. Perhaps it is easier to approach this difficult term in another way: by thinking about what it is not. Beauty is not trivial, and the musical offerings conveyed to me tonight by Copland and his Flemish counterpart were not trivial in the least.

Their set began with a rendition of ‘All the Things You Are’ played in a different key from the original – as Copland informed the audience, in one of only a few short asides. It was followed by a number of mellifluous compositions written in the main by Copland – the one that springs most to mind is ‘Round She Goes’ – consisting of cyclical motifs  and a number of warped, windy sounds from the clarinet. Other than that the first jazz standard, their oeuvre was made up of contemporary and original pieces.

Marc Copland was instantly recognisable as a pianist of great talent. I have seen other pianists that are more virtuosic in their playing than he was tonight, but what singled his style out for me – and made it very unique – was the sense of weight that seemed to fall behind each note.  In other words – his technique. I would be lying if I said that he did not play any bluff notes, but in general his style was characterised by a sense of deeply cogitated intentionality. The kind of richness and variety of expression that he endowed each musical phrase, spoke to me of hours of hard work and drilling at scales. Unlike his predecessor, whose hips swung so vociferously at the piano and was so emphatically ‘laid-back’ in his ‘anti-traditional’ get-up of loose cinnamon-brown T-shirt, slacks and trainers; Copland was in all respects the classic performer. His set was not illuminated by the svelte ultra-marine blues and yellows of the Augusto Pirodda Quartet, but lit soberly with two conical spotlights. Beneath the searing glare of the spot-light Robin’s clarinet glittered. I noticed that Copland had deliberately turned the Yamaha so that it was position faced length-ways to the audience. These were highly polished musicians who cared about their instruments and liked to show them off. Copland set off his music with minimal movement from his body – there were no stray elbows or undulating shoulders. All his energy and attention was focused, with great economy, towards the bridge of his hands and the dexterous mini-marches of his fingertips. The polished front panel of the piano, allowed the audience to watch the marching movement of his hands with complete clarity. The perfect coordination of this image was enough to assure you, even if you could not hear a note that Copland played – that you were in the hands of a very rare master.

In contrast to his colleague, Robin displayed some of the most curious movements on stage that I have ever seen. I noticed in the second piece especially, that his body seemed to be possessed, almost, by the spirit of the music, that pulled and pinched at his joints in much the same way that a puppet master pulls at the strings of his marionette. Up flicked an elbow or a shoulder blade. He was being jerked, nudged, manipulated by the music. At some points the movements were so frequent and noticeable that I felt that it was Robin and not the clarinet, that was the instrument that was being played – they had swapped roles. The clarinet: reliable, rational, sparkling, the still central column –had stolen the place of the man. Nevertheless, despite eccentricities of movement, Robin was also a great wind player, and I think – perhaps more crucially, a great interpreter and co-partner. There was little egotism in his playing – or in fact in either of theirs – like all real great jazz musicians they worked as a excellent team.

So bravo to Marc Copland – an old aficionado of the New York jazz scene – together they presented an excellent trans-Atlantic coupling. If nothing else, the concert gave me more reason than anything I had yet seen, to attend the Ghent Jazz Festival next year.

Nieuwe Liedjes

II 

The Magpie: A Trio

Sudden & Indefinite

A flicker of black;

Pied flag.

A torn rag.

The beauty of blue

& the opening out of the end.

The white eye explodes

& the terrible blindness begins.

WORLD is thrown into confusion.

Forms take shape as starkly as characters of the alphabet.

The forest of signs and the

Sting of cardamom pods and cumin seeds.

Hoe long is de vlucht?

He said that in the opiated dream

Purple as a rose or a bruise,

he sat there as scornfully

as a king.

The Magpie

Lukas told me that his life in Ghent began at the Abbey of St Bavo – just across the bridge from our current home. He told me that when he first arrived in Ghent he could find nowhere suitable to stay, and after spending a few weeks at a youth hostel, discovered that the monastery had single rooms available to rent for those who had nowhere else to go.

In the end, Lukas told me that he spent six months in the Abbey of St Bavo. He complained a lot of the fathers there – of one father in particular. Apparently he took a strong dislike to Lukas, and was the one who in the end, kicked him out. I’m not sure for what reason. Another lost soul – the famous Virgil – also spent many months in the same sanctuary. He too disliked Father Michael. “You are not a Christian man,” he told the Father before he left. I remember one of the first things that I heard about Virgil, from Artay’s lips, he said: “what I like about Virgil is that he is a man of immense power, but he never uses it.” A very kind introduction from a very good friend. Artay and Virgil’s relationship first struck me as an anomaly and now just fascinates me.

It is during those months spent in an isolated fashion at St Bavo’s where, so Lukas told me, he devoted himself to getting rid of a few unfortunate habits he had picked up in Brussels, that he learnt to play guitar.

It happened like this, he told me, it suddenly occurred to him what he wanted to do in the next few years. He wanted to go travelling – around Europe – across the whole world. But how would he do this? Well he would become a street musician, leading the hand-to-mouth existence of someone who played music for their living. But first thing’s first: he needed to learn to play the guitar.

Lukas was already a very accomplished pianist and had attended a conservatorium in Brussels for several years. He had learnt the rudiments of the guitar when he was a teenager. So he was not your average learner, but even despite these things, his progress was remarkable. It was during hours of work in this very desolate and lonely time of his life, that as he put it in his words, he “learnt to play the guitar”. At the very least, it is during this time that he put together his ‘set’ – the sequence of eight songs – that could not have possibly be more heart-breakingly beautiful than they are. What music does he play? Well, the music of the manouche. Those strollers of the mountains and hills – the free spirits, that wed the spirit of their beauty and living to a very particularized article of high culture – jazz music. What happens when beautiful free people alight upon jazz?

Magic.

The story lacks no poetry, by naturally my imagination supplemented whatever else remained. I imagined Lukas curled upon his bed in a spirit of feverish renunciation. I imagined the iron bed frame, the austere, narrow room, the hollow metal clatter of cutlery upon mess tins in the monastery canteen, the murmurs and slow shuffles along  corridors. Archaic images of charitable institutions orphanages, poor houses and sanctuaries for the sick & dying throughout history loomed before me: I imagined petty arguments, friendships, the long silences, the aloofness of the fathers; the vast experiential gulf between those who sought refuge and those that offered it.

Afterwards he told me that he could not have pored the necessary degree of concentration that he needed towards the project, in any other environment. I believed him. When he finally left the monastery, with all his friends and enemies within, he was a guitar player. But he was still homeless. He laughed when he told me of his first meeting with Artay, and that he just crossed the bridge and saw the lop-sided “Te Huur” sign in the front window, and he knew he could live in no other house. He had fallen in love with Prinsenhof, no other area would do. He told me that he had to argue his way into the house. No one else would live here except for me! Lukas had exclaimed when he saw the paint pots and fallen plaster everywhere. Rent me a room Artay.

I have often imagined that conversation since then – of the first meeting between the two men. I imagined Artay looking deeply into Lukas’ eyes, taking it all in, his loneliness, his goodness, his honesty. In the end Artay gave in – he decided to trust him. That is how Lukas happened to be living in 10 Zilverhof when I arrived two months ago. That is why Virgil and his friends always describe Artay as a great man. That is how it all started.

The Revolution

Protesters Standing Before the Brussels ‘Bourse’ or Stock Exchange in their Syndicate Colours

Of course I did not get to Zilverhof by 8.30 in the morning. In fact it was after ten o’clock when I eventually rolled out of bed, and near eleven by the time I had finished breakfast and got onto my bike. You can’t riot on an empty stomach – but actually, now that I come to think of it, that’s exactly how most riots start.

When I cycled passed the window of Zilverhof, I saw Jo through the kitchen window, standing still, a little bow-backed, with a cup of coffee in hand. His stooped form was magnified by the window like a fish-lens. I knocked on the door.

“Ah, you made it!” he said excitedly. “Do you think we can still make it?”

“Yes!” I replied. “I have read that the march really starts from 2 in the afternoon. We have plenty of time.”

Without further ado we jumped on our bikes, our metallic horses – Jo’s held together by bits of gaffer tape – and galloped towards St Pieters Station.

On y va! Or as they say in Flanders, the roll-call of the socialist party: Vooruit!

As we accidentally took the long train to Brussels Centrale, the Mondial Clock on the station wall announced that it was 2.30 by the time that we arrived in the country capital. But in a way it didn’t matter anymore, manifesting against the powers that be suddenly and draconian austerity measures, seemed of secondary importance to the game of getting to know each other. I brought out a block of cheese and some tomatoes that I had brought with us to picnic on. I had forgotten my pocket knife, so we simply tore off hunks of cheese and handfulls of bread. I was enjoying this game of down-and-out – a game I could play only half seriously. After all, in Belgium I am not rich – I live on a waitress’s salary – but I am also not as poor as Jo. It reminded me of travelling in South America – the go-to cheap vegetarian sandwich. It’s amazing that almost wherever you go in the world (except for Asia) you can knock yourself up a cheese and tomato sandwich with almost no difficulty.

What did Jo speak about? His life before Ghent in his native city of Brussels. The bad friends he had had there. The life he left behind.

I burnt all the bridges I had, he said, I even sold my library.

 I came to Ghent with nothing. I burnt all my bridges too, I replied in turn.

From that moment onward, I knew there was no going back. What happens when fate places two lost souls on the same train to Brussels? Magic – but also, of course, trouble.

But I was not to know that then, although in a way, somewhere in my heart I also believed I did. Suffice to say, from that day on, a seed was planted that invisibly, embedded its secret life within me.

When we eventually got to Brussels, well-lunched and full of excitement about each other; I had almost forgot that our nominal goal of the day was to be political: to fight, to resist, to stand up to tyrants and bullies. So in a way, my inadvertent lack of mental preparation, the secret, hermetic place that I had disappeared off to with Jo beside the shifting panels of a train window, meant that the scene of epic national turmoil and resistance outside hit me with greater force than it otherwise might have done.

As we snaked along the rich, imperial streets surrounding Brussels Centrale, dipping ever so gently towards Brussels’ first boulevard, the Beursplein, the various streams of human bodies into which we ran, like estuaries of a great river, gradually increased in velocity and number. By the time that we at the Beursplein, the central conduit for the demonstration, the bustle and business in the streets was impossible to ignore. Human bodies stood everywhere: dockworkers, teachers, artists and steelworkers, all arrayed conscientiously uniformed in green, blue and red plastic tunics.

The vests show what syndicates the workers belong to, Jo explained to me. It was, after all, a worker’s strike, a labour strike.

As Jo continued to offer an explanation of Belgian’s complicated political system led by central-rightist Prime Minister Charles Michel– its various strands, member and constituent parties with their attending colours and mandates – so as to help me decipher the colour-coded crowd – my senses where somewhere else or perhaps, more accurately, everywhere. My ears were trained like a marksman’s on the frequent hissing of firecrackers and flares that were let off by invisible members of the churning crowd. The crackers added palpable tension to the march, seeming to shore up the dormant, but existent violence, underlining everything. These little white, skittering bolts were going off in all directions. Who knew if one would catch you, or zig-zag between your feet? Or sting your toes or singe your hair? It also endowed the march, for me, with a distinctly continental feeling. I wasn’t use to these tricks from the UK protest scene.

Let’s try and get to the back, shouted Jo, so that we can see it all!

I liked this idea – the desire to have a kind of totalizing, complete view of the march. As we dashed about, weaving between the tide of protesters, taking side roads as short-cuts, occasionally sitting on a pedestal on the road and sharing a roll-up, Jo became madly obsessed with statistics.

They say in the tabloid press that only 20,000 are going to come out on the streets today. But they’re lying, they are saying that to put others off and convince them that it’s not really a true protest. But they’re wrong. What the government are planning to do is really awful – it would change Belgium forever. Everyone needs to be on the streets today.

Jo was right, the further we went, counterflow against the march, swimming against the current of human bodies, the more I realised the enormity of the demonstration. It was certainly on a national scale. The level of organisation was also very impressive.

I think it’s at least 80,000! Cried Jo excitedly, like a child.

Yes, on and on the river ran. Hanging strangely above this banded mass of humanity, loomed the huge insignia of Macdonalds, and the logos of Belgium’s largest shopping meccas, clothes stores and supermarkets.

This protest is a demonstration against these things as well, I thought, it’s all connected. It’s not just a political game. We are fighting for a much more fundamental principal, one of humanitarianism against capitalism and profit; representing the belief that a country should do what is in the interests of the people who live in it, and not what is in the interests of the rich or of multinationals and franchises. Hence the Belgian slogan designed by the artist syndicate: Hart voor hard it read. Pithy. Nice. “Heart over austerity.”

In the end it must have been at least an hour before we managed to circumvent the entire march, and snake back to its tail, or rather, find the end of the snake’s tail. Oomboros. As we walked we experienced many different ‘waves’ of the crowd, densely packed areas full of stout-bellied factory workers and middle-aged women with iron-grey hair, areas were the dread-locked young marched and banged drums. In other areas, the lawn of people and revolutionary spirit were more sparse and spread thinly –  so that at points the crowd appeared to be more like apathetic pedestrians than a protesting band enlivened by common purpose and determination to succeed.

On the whole I believe that the march was slightly less ‘alternative’ than I expected. I imagined, that as with pro-Palestinian demonstrations or pacifist demonstrations, that there would be more tye-dye, more “sit-downs” or creative forms of demonstrative activism. I didn’t see this margin there – what I saw that day, was, perhaps more meaningfully, the average ebb of the population. It was a crowd amassed from ordinary people, not just the young or radicalised. This is what made it a powerful symbol of frustration with the new government – because everyone was there; even, as Jo, pointed out to me, as he gestured to a small group of people brandishing red tunics – members of their own party. This demonstration was a powerful symbol of rejection and anger. But also, for me as someone from the UK, a great example of how an industrial strike can occur that expresses visible, well organised discontent, aligning professional and labouring under a coherent political slogan. In Belgium the industrial working class still wield real political clout.

As soon as we had reached the end of the march we became bored of it.

Let’s return to the middle of the crowd, cried Jo impetuously.

Of course I agreed. And so our singular trajectory continued – not counteracting the crowd this time, and not running in tandem with it – but rather, scurrying between landmarks and side-streets, dodging between scenic market squares and bars, and so, running parallel to it, in order to return to its beating heart.

Of course, as this was my first time in Brussels – and what a magnificent first time it was – Jo, a local – unconsciously and then consciously, started playing the part of the tour guide. And so, as the time wore on and we had taken a wider deviation from the path of the demonstration as was strictly necessary, our sight-lines began to broaden out, and even the manifestation seemed less important than a detail on a baroque church or any one of Jo’s favourite old haunts. I was very happy to be experiencing the city in this way – with him, with my magpie, flighty and strange, embracing the intertwining narratives of the day: the change in Belgium, the European swing to the right, the will to be free, the unconscious fall-away into love; everything in a swirl of movement and optimism.

It was some time before we re-found the crowd. We were not the only ones to play truant: some fatigued trade union workers had decided to duck out of the march for a while and stood outside a bar with Belgian beer in hand. But, by time we had passed the ornate Doric colonnade of the gilded ‘bourse’ – and for a second I could not help but remember the goriest passages from The Heart of Darkness and the sickening truth behind Belgium 19^th century surge in economic power – the remainder of the protesters had almost reached the route’s end.  Then for a moment, in the dying remnants of the day, thick in a crowd, among a flotilla of  green vests, with the light shining through the cracks between protester’s shoulders and banners; I was filled with a sense of elation. We were literally marching towards a setting, golden sun, and while crackers hissed and popped around us I was filled with a conviction that things would really change and Europe would fight against the corporatized right-wing and the majority was united against them.

By the time that we reached Brussels Sud, the crowd began to disperse in a number of directions. However, I could sense a more particular and focused energy upon the streets in one direction. Somebody made a threatening comment to Jo – it was the first time that we had experienced any kind of aggression the entire day. Sure enough, when I looked up into the sky I could see them – two marauding, circling helicopters in the sky. At the end of a very wide and long boulevard in the centre I could see another type of crowd, and two large fire engines, shooting jets of water at those below. Water canons I thought to myself, that’s quite serious. The journalist in me couldn’t resist it.

Let’s see what’s happening! I cried to Jo.

So we bolted towards the eye of the storm, and as we ran down the road, we entered a new kind of landscape – one in which cars had been overturned by an angry mob, where youths suddenly, instinctively, removed their scarves and covered their faces. We almost reached the crowd when suddenly I saw a large pale cloud heading towards it. I was so mesmerized by its form, that it took me a while before I thought logically.

Tear gas! I shouted to Jo. Without thinking for a second, we turned around and started running back in the direction from which we had come. Tear gas is no fun.

I want to get to the front! I said, panting with excitement. The adrenaline had kicked in now.

I think I know a way! He cried, let me take you through the side streets.

Angry Protesters-turned-rioters

And so we continued to weave, but this time for a very different purpose. I wanted to get to the front of that angry crowd, I wanted to see why the police were using water canons.

So we ran, others, with covered faces ran near us, they shouted to each other in strange languages – there were no women among them. Mischief was most definitely abroad. We took a wide curve through a number of side streets beside the flea market; many of the streets here were deserted and drivers had abandoned their cars in the roads as the traffic build-up had been so bad. The only folk abroad had something to do with this rioting section of the protest – situated at its end, a little way off. Suddenly we curved back in. From a side-street I could see the crowd again. It was remarkable. We really were right at the front-line,  just between the riot police holding their small plastic shields aloft and the crowd. Just at that moment the riot police were preparing to advance on the crowd. I looked down at the floor, sparkling in the late-evening sunset with the vague shimmer of moisture from the water canons. I saw blobs on the floor. For a moment I thought that they were loose brickwork. Then ‘crack’ I heard a loud sound – splitting rocks. It suddenly occurred to me that these were chunks of cement and bricks – missiles that the crowd were throwing at the police. I took a photograph – a beautiful one, of this scene – the protesters with covered faces on one side, the riot police on the other, and the heavy fallen debris between them. (Alas how I wish that I could show it to you – sadly, my phone with all of the pictures from that historic day were stolen one week later.)

Then Jo called to me – Kat, let’s get out of here, it’s too dangerous.

I was inclined to agree with him. So we turned back, skipping between parked cars and antique warehouses. Within five minutes we had left the manifestation and the scene of political entropy, behind us for good. It was time for some black coffee and a cigarette.

Talking about a revolution

I first met the Magpie on a bleakly cold Autumn night in early November. It was in Zilverhof. I had come to talk house-business with Syrus, but when I arrived at eight or nine in the evening, Syrus wasn’t there. Instead I found the Magpie, perched upon a small green stool in the kitchen.

Like his namesake, the Magpie likes to talk a lot. His twitters and chitters come out in song-like trills from his lips. Like his namesake, the Magpie’s eyes sparkle and glint – but not like the bird’s deep mahogany or oak brown, but with the fierce blue of the sky. The Magpie does not have black hair, but a tangled knot of bright gold tresses bunched up at the nape of his neck. Like the Magpie he is a little wild and a little lonely. Like the Magpie he is excellent at finding things – finding treasures – and he can be impossible to track down.

So the first night that I met the Magpie we talked about the Revolution – the next day we went to it.

But let me begin with the tale of the preceding night. I had come for Syrus, but Syrus wasn’t there. Instead I found Jo – the Magpie – sitting upon a stool with his guitar and Virgil, a talkative drunk, well-known in Ghent. Before too long the unlocked door once more swung open and admitted another frosty pair of night-walkers: Michael and Rolls. A profusion of French and curse words: rich and profane. After warm greetings and hugs, Michael and Rolls sat down on the mélange of odd chairs that had collected in the kitchen. There was nothing in the house to eat or drink – not even coffee – but Jo generously offered us all to partake of his bottle of whisky – that he was drinking for medicinal purposes, naturally – which we then sipped in small tumblers, shot-glasses and wine glasses. We settled down together and spoke an admixture of French, Flemish and English.

Rolls was a fiery young man who affected a Jamaican accent in English; Michael, a portly, rubicund man of middle age with full cheeks and a bristly white beard. Michael had the kind of appearance that would not look one bit out of place in the Firth of Forth, so it did not surprise me when he came out with a brawny Northern English dialect and explained that his second wife, now dead, had been a Liverpudlian and that his daughter grew up there. As thimblefuls of whisky passed around the group – to some more than to others– we spoke of the demise of the fishing industry in Britain, as well as what Thatcher’s legacy to Britain had been since the eighties. The remainder of the group got involved and the discussion became inevitably political.

“Thatcher, the bitch,” asseverated Rolls angrily. “That’s what Bart De Wever wants to do here.”

“It is the same with the ring-wing across the world,” mused Michael dolefully, “tax the poor harder and give tax-breaks to the rich.”

Virgil grunted.

The hot topic of the evening, was of course, Belgium’s newly elected governing party – the right-wing New Flemish Alliance – who were wreaking havoc with Belgium’s well-established, frankly wonderful, welfare system.

“Cuts to all sectors, but especially to the arts,” said Jo. “That’s who will suffer the most from this: the artists, the students and the sick and weakest of society.”

I told them that the same pattern had emerged in the UK two years ago. “Austerity measures” and cuts, student protests, the closure of university departments, the diminishment of the arts. There was some resistance, but not enough.

“And it will happen here also,” said Michael blackly.

“The only way to prevent it is to fight,” proclaimed Rolls, roused once more. “Sometimes words are not enough.”

By this time he had produced a platter of sandwiches and canopés left over from a banking soiree, where he had been working as a caterer.

“I talked to the kitchen staff, who were about to throw it all away.”

I cast my eyes over the heap of smoked salmon and cucumber, parmaham and mozzarella and blue cheese sandwiches.

“The rich bastards didn’t eat a thing.”

From time to time, punctuating these expostulations, Jo would play a strain of painfully beautiful and melancholy music from his guitar. It sounded like music from the South of France, from the Romanies. He turned the collar up on his jacket. Even with the whisky the kitchen of number 10 Zilverhof was freezing.

I glanced over the assembled company – the ring of men gathered together in a circle, deep in earnest conversation, rubbing their hands together against the cold.  Here we were: liberals, anarchists, workers, artists, foreigners railing against the status quo and cursing the rich. There was a timeless, almost archetypal quality to the words that were spoken. We could have been the bums from Cannery Row squatting in an abandoned house on the edge of town or the idealistic students that Flaubert parodies in Sentimental Education. Here we were: proud of our poverty, merry with liquor, comrades in arms. It felt that, with their warm words and hearts, they were defending a dream that had faded from the UK a long time ago: a liberal political system under threat and Belgium’s strong and proud socialist history.

“That is why we all have to march tomorrow,” said Michael finally.

“March?”

“Yes, haven’t you heard about it? There is going to be a great manifestation tomorrow, in Brussels. They say that a hundred thousand are expected to march, from all over Belgium.”

That’s the first time I heard the delicious misnomer, manifestation, so much more mystical and appropriate than protest.

“Yes, I want to go,” said Jo suddenly.

“You should,” replied Michael.

“Yes, we all should,” said Rolls beadily. “I would if I could, but I’m working. That’s how the system gets you. Work so you can’t march.” He laughed bitterly.

“All the syndicates from Ghent are meeting at St Pieters at nine tomorrow morning,” said Michael, “I am going with them.” Michael was talking about the Belgian trade unions – he now worked in a factory.

“If you come with us, there is a reduced train fare subsidized by the unions.”

“Alright, I’ll come,” said Jo suddenly, “but I don’t want to go alone.”

“I’ll come too,” I suddenly piped up. Enough words. “I have a day off tomorrow.”

“Me too,” said Jo and winked at me. As a street performer he has no fixed schedule. My heart pulsed with excitement, at last I had found someone as free as me; someone I could on adventures with at the drop of a hat.

“Alright, Zilverhof at 8.30 in the morning?” I said, full of revolutionary optimism. I was already near midnight.

And that was how our first rendez-vous was fixed.

Zilverhof

Over two weeks ago I said goodbye to the Pink Bedroom for good. It was a sad moment – the leaving behind of my first home in Ghent, but also a necessary and important step. I wanted to move closer to the city centre and thereby, perhaps symbolically, swerve back towards my own centre of gravity. For days I cycled and roamed the streets of Ghent, trying to find an appropriate place; but in my heart of hearts I already knew where I wanted to live – it just required putting the question with enough delicacy to the right ear. To Artay’s ear. I wanted to move to Zilverhof.

Those of you who are following my blog will recognise the magical name of Zilverhof. It was a destination that I found in the dark once, some months ago now, before my temporary but winged flight to Hungary. At the time I was intensely aware of the special and transformative energy of the streets surrounding Prinsenhof – an area with a history dating back to 1366, and once the house of the old court of Flanders. I wasn’t sure whether this was due to the vicinity’s proximity to Patershol – also a very historic, red-brick quarter of the city; or the position of the house beside a bridge and the glorious Abbey of St Bavo, which also faces one of the most idyllic and sequestered cobble-stoned squares in Ghent. Perhaps it was this triangle of beauties that first enchanted me – but knowing and understanding this area more since that time, has begun a love affair with a part of a city which I have never known before – not in Oxford or even Edinburgh.

The etymology of ‘zilverhof’ in Dutch means ‘silver court’ – an indicator, no doubt, of this area’s illustrious past; a past whose deep incense perfumes the quiet cobbled streets and the mysterious green undulations of the Leie. The house is a built from light red-bricks, near pink in colour, and occupies a street corner. It has a large downstairs area with sizeable kitchen and living room, then Artay’s attic garret-room, and beneath it mine and Lukas’. My room has a triptych of three separate windows that look out onto the Leie river and the very old, brick-worked houses opposite.

View from Artay’s garret-room window

When I first moved here the trees outside my window were decked in fringes of frail gold leaves, but now they have almost all fallen off – an indication that the brief autumn is almost at an end, and winter is really approaching. St Bavo is beside us – a home to pilgrims and way-seekers, and continues to this day – as we shall see – to act as a sanctuary to those spirits who are lost in the city and can find nowhere else to stay. There is almost no traffic and commerce nearby – with the exception of a bakery across the bridge from our house – it is entirely given over to splendid, solemn houses in whose interiors live artists and the elderly – the people whose claim to this area runs deeper and more profoundly than mine could ever do.

I fell in love with the house as soon as I set eyes on it: but it was not perfect. Though its location and exterior were enviable, it was a house that had been rescued by Artay from a state of near total dereliction. When I first came here I was highly aware of the fact that it was a space in transit – a space that Artay was shaping, slowly and surely, like a sculptor, towards a truer version of itself. Now and then he lifts a paintbrush daubed in bright orange paint and sloshes it about on a plaster wall or bit of stray plumbing. Each week a different kitchen cabinet arrives and is elevated unsteadily onto a precarious facade. It is a house that is being cobbled together and created – seeming to exist neither totally in the past or future, but in an indefinitely protracted present. I embrace this sense of spatial becoming – it seeming to be a supreme metaphor for my own internal unfurling; but practically it means that life at Zilverhof still does not run very smoothly. To put it bluntly, as Yan confirmed when he helped me move here – did I detect a hint of disapproval in his voice?- “Yes Kat, it is a squat.”

So Zilverhof resembles a squat, though it isn’t one as both Lukas and I pay rent for our rooms; and I don’t think we are going to be thrown out by the bailiffs yet. But it is in a phase of internal reconstruction which means that ordinary people would not choose to live here, but a street-musician and former boat-owner would. For me the fact that we do have gas, hot water, a fridge and plenty of space is already luxury enough.

For the first few days of my move to Zilverhof my time was spent trying to curb back the tide of encroaching dust and glass, and brush the place back into shape. I felt a little like Katie when she visits Calamity’s forest hut for the first time and is overcome with a desire to impose order on the space that she finds there. There is something a little questionably ‘civilizing’ and bourgeois about this desire – it is an imposition of a number of actually rather important values and philosophies of living-space – but the adjustments were ones that I could not help making. Out popped a tea pot, a number of separate bags of loose leaf tea, a nice kitchen table, a kettle, a writing desk, a soap dish. From my corner room, by then still crammed with Artay and Jo’s possessions; bits of broken glass and bizarrely an urn and nativity scene, I managed to scoop myself out a decent living space – a room worthy of its position before the Leie, and also what Yan used to describe as one of the best hidden bars of Ghent.

I will never forget my first night at Zilverhof. As fate would have it, a Canadian girl from work called Alex, needed a place to stay that night. She asked very sweetly if she could stay at mine and I couldn’t refuse, though well I knew, that at that point even I did not really have anywhere to sleep in my room, let alone a guest. That night we finally ascended the slanting white staircase at past two in the morning. I gingerly shifted jagged plates of glass and plaster into one corner and thereby cleared sufficient space to lay down some sleeping bags, quilts and my duvet. And so we slept, in a half-finished room brimming with domestic discards, between table legs and grocery boxes like two little match-stick girls in a Victorian novel.

Zilverhof strikes me as a house that will never get very warm – though amazingly, I have double glazing on my windows. The semi-permeable membrane of the old brick walls allows the aura of the street indoors, and vice versa. Especially as we have no curtains on our downstairs windows and frequently have little parties and gatherings there, sitting down on the squeaky chairs in our kitchen becomes an act of participation in neighbourhood life. Famous for being one of the friendliest neighborhoods in Ghent as well as one of the most chic, the inhabitants of Prinsenhof show an unbridled curiosity in the unconventional goings-on at number 15. Often a funny little man wearing a flat cap, waves to us when we are eating our dinner, and locals will offer to help me with my bicycle when I return home from work. I smiled once when Jo told me that a very prim and proper old lady who happened to be one of our next-door neighbours spoke very kindly to him and praised his musical gifts, yet confided in him that she really thought we ought to get curtains for our bedrooms and downstairs. Sadly, we are all too poor to buy curtains and too lazy to make them. Besides I rather enjoy our uncensored existence here, free for all to observe like an open-air cinema or light spectacle.

Participating in the spirit of outside – The spectacle from our kitchen window

To be so connected, via draughts, curtain-less windows and freezing temperatures to the goings-on of the outside world, could not be more pleasant in any other district of the city. The spirit of the area in which the house is embedded is combed through with rare beauties. We are part of this genius loci, and the same chain of design that strings together the inky green waters of the Leie to the little Grey-bricked bridge, Davie (the bar-tended at the Feufka) to the soft cherry-centres of the pastries at the Bakerij and our house to the north American species of honey tree growing outside. This tree is also an object of fascination for me: it is surrounded by a low brick wall and its strange, knotted limbs shelter a family of black-petalled hollyhocks that grow beneath it.

The honey tree

The dark, medieval beauty of this arrangement, this vernal courtyard with its evergreen totem, again seems to evoke the mystique of Prinsenhof, which connects like a dot-to-dot diagram, a constellation of points: the austere walls of the monastery, the flags which flutter above the black walls of the Gravesteen – or city castle – encircled by water, the weeping willow trees in our nearest square, the square of flood-lights beside the Leie.

Gravesteen

I realised with a sudden jolt of satisfaction last week that I am at last doing something that I have always aspired, but never actually succeeded in doing – that is, living in a house of artists. Though we all do different things to make ends meet – Artay does his boxing and works in the kitchen of a vegan restaurant, Jo plays on the street and at a restaurant on the weekend, I work at the pub – we all dream about art. Jo is the finest gypsy guitarist and jazz pianist in Ghent; I am trying to write and Artay is an actor. We are a beautiful and energetic core, and though seen by different crowds, each quite distinct and recognisable. But I will write more specifically about Jo and his music soon – for that is an entire subject unto itself. Suffice to say, that in the fever of domestic rearranging and tidying, in the whirlwind of jazz music and song, with the heady and amorous perfume of this area saturating my veins; almost two weeks passed by and the Pink Bedroom faded as completely from my mind as the dream preceding yesterday’s dream.

Zilverhof, def.: tipsy, aslant, asleep and awake, impossible, a house of dreams.

Nieuwe Liedjes

I

a white deer flies through a black forest

like a glow-worm in the mud.

Each love suggests another.

A New Table: On Writing & Happiness

It is half past eleven on a Saturday night. The whole city of Ghent is partying and even from my first floor window I can spot a crowd of revellers spilling out from the alluring depths of the Fleura Feufka – our extremely proximate local late-night drinking hole. I have come home at this hour to celebrate the inception of my new writing table – small, discrete, black – in my new room at Syrus’s house. So as you can imagine, much has changed in these past weeks.

The business of carrying the table – small though it is – back to my new address in Prinsenhof from the Afrikalaan by the industrial banks of the Handelsdock, was not a task to be sniffed at. In fact, my readiness to take on the challenge only highlighted to me how familiar I had become with carting around articles of furniture on the back of my bike from my year as a boater, when I owed one of those most glorious objects – a bike trailer. It was already dark at five o’ clock when I arrived at the large furniture warehouses on the Afrikalaan – I had only an hour in which to find the correct sort of desk and trundle it back to my new house, before the beginning of my late night shift at MacDougalls. It was a tight schedule; but as the shops close here on Sundays and Mondays, I had little choice; especially as the symbolic value of the desk (and my lack of it), began to accrue a painful significance to me. But of course my lack of desk was only a material excuse for the disheartening lack of work that I have been able to complete since I moved to Syrus’s house – and not the real reason for it. The real reason is perhaps simpler – and because of that, more dangerous – I have been happy.

It occurred to me about three weeks ago, that despite the occasional ups and downs – a feature of our human condition (how does Proust put it? A change of wind here; there; every moment) – I have been very happy in Ghent. This realisation even surprised myself, for in many ways my ‘position’ in society has descended – I have retreated back into the services industry, I do not have the same support network that I had in London and I was at that time living in one of the most undesirable areas of Ghent. Yet despite all of these apparent disadvantages, I felt really,authentically happy.

The shock of this discovery prompted me to reflect how direly depressed I must have been in London even with a good job and a home and a boyfriend – all the appurtenances, so they tell us, of the good life. I was lead to consider what it was about Ghent that was making me so happy. Of course, on one level it is the environment of Ghent: the beautiful, nefarious, medieval, disorganised, artistically enlivened spirit of the place; on another, my independence and sense of gratefulness for the meaningful social connections that I had managed to build up. But such things, I felt, were just supplements to the essential source of my happiness, which, when I pondered a little, I realised was two-fold. The essential reason for my happiness in this city – after all not so far from London– is firstly that I am really doing what I love – writing creatively and working on my own projects – and secondly, that I am free.  I am free in Ghent and I am doing what I love. Who knew that the recipe for true human happiness was so simple?

It is fashionable these days to discuss happiness as a social theme. There was, I remember, an incredibly influential poll some years ago, in which statisticians drew up a kind of gross national product of happiness for each European country. It did not surprise me that the UK came very far down on this list, below, even some of the very poor Baltic countries. The reason for this is very simple and that is, that as far as I can tell, London is a place where not many people can boast that they are truly free and almost nobody is doing what they truly love. I had to move onto water to barter myself a kind of temporary freedom in the city – but now I realise that this freedom was only skin-deep. When you are truly free, the exhilaration of liberty is unmistakeable, just like the thrill of true love, which when it happens – turns your whole body and mind captive, and moves with great, heaving, seismic shifts, the mountains within.

I remember reading somewhere that unlike sadness or melancholia, happiness is a very difficult emotion to write about: it is more complex and capricious; less emotive. I feel that this is true, both because the experience of real happiness can be both banal and difficult to describe, but also because when we are really happy in life, just as when we are really busy, it is difficult to find the time to write.

All writing is an anachronism. It draws our glance from the future into the past – as Proust’s great work so beautifully illustrates and monumentalises. The action of this retreating wave, casts all sorts of debris onto the sand banks of the mind; but it is an action which is essentially a little sad and regressive, as all nostalgic acts or those of re-memberances are.

If writing is concave, the structure of happiness is the opposite: happiness looks towards the future or exists in the moment alone, like the projecting face of a jewel or a ray of light.  To write then, is to betray the fundamental precondition of happiness. One cannot help but conclude, then, that it is a dangerous thing to love to write as writing will inevitable drag you back towards the infinacy of the ocean, where real human happiness exists on the shore alone.

On Geology: Meeting Alexandro

When Arnaud returned from his field trip in the Alps, he brought back home a surprise: a young, caramel-skinned Chilean boy named Alexandro. He had also just moved to Ghent, Arnaud explained to me, and hadn’t arranged any accommodation beforehand. Did I mind if he crashed at ours for a week? Of course I didn’t mind.

One week turned into two, two into three. Overall I believe that Alexandro stayed on one of Arnaud’s numerous spare mattresses, moored to our living room floor for just under a month. By the end of that period I believe he had become my best-friend in all of Ghent. He too sensed this connection and once told me that our friendship had quickly developed to the same level as that he shared with his favourite girl-friends in Chile. We could laugh easily, he explained, at each other and about silly things. And he was right.

One of Alexandro’s most obvious attributes is his intelligence. Of Chile’s vast population, he had been awarded one of only three annual Erasmus placements to come and study in abroad in Europe for a year. He is just one year my junior and completing his Masters degree, but explained to me, with an hint of well-merited pride in his voice that he had already been a paid teacher and lecturer at the state university in his country and been published on several occasions, between of course, studying himself, and discovering the abundant opportunities for self-expression and bad behaviour in Chile’s capital, Santiago.

One explanation, I began to see, for the unnerving sharpness of his mind was the reasonably sheltered nature of the existence he lead before moving to Belgium. He did not like to drink, he had never taken drugs. His mother had lived solely for her children, and did everything for them: their laundry, their cooking. It was while he was encamped so innocently upon our living room floor that Alexandro discovered that just living for one’s self has a toll; and that self-provision takes time and money. I taught Alexandro how to cook pasta and use a record player. I helped him enhance his English, which was excellent and constantly refining itself (after two or three weeks in my company, even he recognised how fully he was able to pick up on all the nuances of almost everything I said). He taught me about electro music, social media sites and what individual beauty every single rock contains when seen closely enough, under a microscope. The jagged shapes and pools of fluorescent colour of these images, made me think of the kind of art that you find in psychedelic trance parties. But Alexandro was not just a kind of spiritual opposite; he challenged many of my values, eloquently and justly. In his company I felt that I was developing, and by gaining an insight into somebody who was resolutely of his era and no other, encountered an unflinching and powerful exponent of modernity.

Alexandro’s susceptibility to expensive and beautiful things, pandered to the Epicurean within me. So we ate out on multiple occasions and forged elaborate plans to travel around the Low Countries together – some of which we actually followed through on.

He provided key emotional support to me in the final days of the Dendermondse Steenweg; and filled an empty place that Arnaud had left beside me, for better or for worse. Yet his purity and his brazenness; his intelligence and his respect for the banal were an invigorating mixture which filled me with a refreshed sense of excitement about the city. Alexandro was a paradox of contending values: a young geologist who had been pushed into science when his heart lay with the arts. Yet his life’s ambition, he told me, was to excavate the beauty of geology for all to see; creating a kind of aesthetics of rocks. I loved this idea. Human beings already have a fascination for jewels  and precious stones. Why not ordinary rocks? What degree of chiselling-down could enable us to see that everything is really at some level, beautiful?

I feel like I should write about Antwerp and Amsterdam – the cities that we visited together – or about Alexandro’s penchant for piscolas or his credo Be natural – which convinced me once and for all to return to my girlhood condition as a brunette; but now, all I want to write about is rocks.

Geology. The things that happen beneath us, invisibly, over thousands of years, the black chimneys of dust that circulate in the ocean at eight thousand metres water depth, the condition of the life that exists there; the heave and tug of continents.

Let us turn to a new scene: it was a sunny day in early October.

I needed to print out my tickets for the Eurostar in preparation for an immanent visit to London. But apropos of my departure I realised that all the printing shops were closed. Arnaud kindly offered to drive me to his office on the university campus where he is a PhD researcher, in order to print them out. It was to be our last expedition together – though at the time, I had no way of knowing that. When we finally arrived via the ring-road to the university campus by St Pieters Station – a vast, monolithic cement block – the entire building was deserted. It was a Sunday, and even the most lonely and industrious of the researches were not to be seen.

After scaling a number of immaculately polished, sand-blasted staircases, we finally reached Arnaud’s department which consisted of a number of rooms leading off from a central corridor. Though the atmosphere was rather sterile, I enjoyed looking into the display cases mounted on the walls hung with photographs from departmental expeditions, where groups of men and women were pictured standing together in the snow, smiling with hiking poles in hand or tightly buttoned up in thermal suits. Dog-eared contour maps and atlases ribbed with colour, added life here and there. As I walked around, I was reminded, and not for the first time in the presence of Arnaud, that both of my Russian grand-parents – now both dead – were geologists.

After completing the necessary tasks and raiding the department coffee cupboard, Arnaud beckoned me towards the microscope in his office. These specimens were the basis of his most recent paper and material that he showed students in tutorials, he explained to me. I blinked and peered into the upturned binoculars of the microscope but it had been such a long time since I had used a microscope (perhaps over ten years), that at first I struggled to see anything at all except a sea of misty white. Turn the nodule to focus the lens, Arnaud instructed, and nudged some bits of dust around on the petri dish beneath me with a pair of tweezers.

A wave of pure delight coursed through me. What to my naked eye looked like no more than the finest grains of colourless dust, materialised under the lens of the microscope to be sea-creatures as concrete and recognisable as the arthropods and fossilized crustaceans that you sometimes find locked in basalt or limestone in science museum exhibits. Ammonites – I believe they are called. Someone once, a long time ago, gave one to me as a gift.

My mind could offer no explanation of this incredible metamorphosis, and the secrete existence of organisms within particles so small that they could be scattered by a sneeze. Yet there they were before me with my super-annuated eyes; forms that both were and were not, with discernible characteristics such as spiral shells and legs. The art historian within me felt very humbled. I had always accorded such a high place to the visual arts, to the things you can see with your eyes. Yet this organic quantum mechanics made me realise that there was beauty in everything. It was just a question of looking hard enough.

As Arnaud began to deliver an explanation of some of the features of these specimens, sketching the conditions of life at 8,000 metres water depth, and drawing yet more dust motes from a variety of glass phials, my mind drifted towards the great writer and marine biology enthusiast John Steinbeck. I thought of his life-long friendship with the scientist Ed Ricketts, whose big heart and love of the natural world was commemorated in his books in various forms. The Log from The Sea of Cortez is Steinbeck’s great tribute to Ricketts and contains many anecdotes about their rock-pooling expeditions and field-trips together. I recalled this wonderful quotation:

 “[…] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”

Sitting together in the deserted office, I could also not help but think back to a recent chance encounter that I had with a geneticist and researcher at The Volks Huis. Making the most of an, at first not promising Thursday night, this man entertained me for hours with hair-raising stories about his field-work in Turkey. He was a geneticist, but a genetic archaeologist, who extracted information from fossilised fish bones to try and ascertain facts about the shoals of tuna fish that used to populate the waters of Constantinople. Some phrases are seared indelibly into my mind. He said, that first-hand accounts from the people who lived at that time, recorded sightings of shoals of giant tuna fish that were so great in number that they were described as herds. The Bosphorous was not lagoon-blue, but on some occasions white, thick with the bodies of tuna-fish that jostled together in its waters. To over-fish was an impossibility. The surfeit and over-abundance of fish was like a god-granted miracle. Then his friend appeared, who took over the story-telling lead and regaled us all with tales of his exploits in Israel and Gaza while on a dangerous undercover documentary film shoot there. He spoke of in-fighting between the anarchists, police violence and intimidation; harrowing arrests at night. They were a very high-powered pair.

But back to geology. In the end we left and Arnaud had succeeding in instilling in me a burning curiosity and interest in his subject – the mark of all good teachers. By the time  we stood in the university campus car park and had slammed the doors of his Renaut shut, I knew that these coincidences had to amount to something and that it was time to write a story that had been lying dormant within me for some months. It was the story of the glass-maker Leopold Blaschka and the marine glass sculptures he made following a long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Two Months On: Impressions of Ghent

There is something very un-modish about travel writing. On the one hand we are told that travelling and life on the road is the quintessence of what human life is about: discovering yourself and discovering the world . Yet places are often very resistant to being written about. When you try and describe the culture of a new environment and society, there is always a fear that you begin to sound like one of the fusty old Victorian gentlemen diagnosing the manners and habits of alien shores; fulminating on the beauty of Venice or the savagery of a remote island settlement. Perhaps this can be summed up by the idea that generalisations about nationhood of any kind feel rather dubious; even if the ‘exotic’ other is just on the other side of the English Channel.

Yet I feel that I owe a great deal to this city and want to illustrate why.

Ghent is Flanders’ most politically left-wing city – though it is not the region’s capital. Antwerp – larger, shinier, with many more shops – reserves that title. Like most left-wing cities it has a huge student population, which is mainly concentrated in the west of the city – near St Pieters Station and the university campuses; and a very active and rich cultural life expressed both day and night. The population of Ghent is around 300,000 and that figure is actually one of the reasons that I moved here, believing my happiness and the general success of a city depends on two things: a relatively small and cohesive population and a clear relation expressed through art & civic architecture of that city’s relation to its own history.

Ghent embodies these two elements perfectly: it is a place which takes pride in collectivisation both politically & culturally and it is keenly aware of its own past. The region of the city in which I now live – Prinsenhof –  throbs almost, with a sense of its own history. But more on that theme later.

As well as being steeped in history, Ghent also exists in the past in other ways – ways which I find deeply comforting. For example, almost everyone seems to smoke in Ghent. There are bars in the Turkish district where I formally lived, in the darkly suggestive vicinity of Dampoort train station, where groups of men gather together and play cards in misty rooms, discussing and drinking together, for hours at end – perhaps the whole day.

Then Ghent also embodies another feature of other great European cities, and that is that is has a vibrant coffee culture. There are more coffee houses and cafes in Ghent, then probably on the left bank of the Seine, and locals are not mean with their patronage of these places. At almost any time of day a true Belgian would comfortably settle themselves before a short black coffee or blonde beer – naturally in the afternoon, when mellowness and not expediency is key. I have many favourite coffee houses and cafes in this city: there is of course the Kleine Kunst, then the marvellous terrace café at the Bibliotheek and now, the café of the NGT where the right barista can produce the most heavenly chai latte known to man. More recently I have discovered Huize Collete on Botermarkt. This delightful café has a mezzanine level perched high in its central foyer where one can sit on velour couches or armchairs, sipping bitter hot chocolate, for hours on end without being disturbed.

What do the people of Ghent like to do other than drinking chouffles and strong black coffee? Well, they like to shop. And this isn’t meant meanly. On the weekends huge crowds of amiable old gents with their wives and beautiful young couples will browse among the second hand book stalls aligning the Leie, or eye up old furniture at St Jakobs square. They may then proceed to the flower market at Couter (in the centre), promenade along Grasslei or take a tour of the main commercial shopping streets.

At first, I was a little bothered by the super abundance of high-end designer clothes shops and boutiques in Ghent’s city centre. It seemed like an unsavoury reminder that undergirding all of this city’s ‘alternative culture’ was a substantial investment of capital. This resonated with what a colleague told me later at work: that a high percentage of Ghent’s population has over a million euros in savings. Flemish people, like squirrels, are great savers.

Yet, after giving the question some thought, I decided that I didn’t mind the blatant wealth that so obviously courses through the city. Mainly, I think, because people do actually appear to spend and enjoy it. Of course there is some over-consumption, but in general the manner in which people shop does not remind me of the basest forms of shopping that you can discover in the vast Primark retailers on Oxford St, for example. In Ghent, people enjoy shopping as a social activity – as indeed as they once did in fin de siècle Paris. Sure, money is spent lavishly; but at least it is an enjoyment that is conscious of itself –  it does not pander to escapism, as the bleakest forms of shopping habits can sometimes do. People spend money and buy beautiful and desirable objects for their homes and clothes for their bodies – but the end result is concrete and ameliorating. In general the citizens of Ghent – of all ages – do indeed look very stylish and well turned-out and  peeks into strangers’ houses reveal numerous, highly enviable living spaces designed with thought, love and attention to detail.

The question of style is key to an appreciation of Ghent. In fact, I am beginning to think that Ghent is actually one of the most stylish places in the world. Never has people watching been so rewarding – and the sartorialist in me wishes that I could do some clandestine street photography, so that I might never forget the grandmother with tortoiseshell reading glasses, the man cycling passed with ambulance-red shoes or the many young beauties that pass by with elaborate flapping coats like exotic birds of paradise. This may have something to do with the fact that Ghent is a city with two huge art school campuses, and where many art school grads settle down after their studies. It is a city that is highly aware of its charms and takes pleasure in them. Somehow to be a poseur here – and there are many hipsters around – is just to echo the native and inherent beauty of the place itself. So it is a place in which a high quality of life is very closely aligned to aesthetic fulfilment – part of the conception of living well is also living beautifully.

Using MacDougalls as the base for some anthropological field-work of my own, I would suggest that the people of Ghent, as well as being very stylish, are also very temperate. Not once have I ever had cause for alarm in my pub due to bad behaviour; if a voice is raised or a threat is made it is invariable by a visitor. Ghentians will never raise their voices if they can avoid it, though they are deeply social people. It has also never failed to astonish me that despite the fact that they produce some of the strongest and finest beers in the world; the majority of our customers are very aware of their limits and many do not drink alcoholic beverages. For example I will frequently pick up orders for: 1 ice tea, 1 cola and 1 ginger ale at ten o’ clock on a Saturday night. This is a place in which excess is frowned upon, or at least where it is recognised for what it really is. Perhaps a natural result of the moderation that I speak of is that – except in regard to smoking – Ghentians are almost always attractive and look younger than their years. I was, for example, astonished to hear that my flat-mate, who I put at 27, was on the cusp of 36. It is a city of eternal youth.

Yet it cannot all be good. Though I can say honestly that Ghentians seem to have perfected the art of living in cities or urban spaces; this may be the logical result of the fact that ‘nature’ and certainly ‘wilderness’ appears to be more difficult to access in West Flanders than it is in the UK. After spending two months in Ghent, notwithstanding the river and beautiful stone architecture, I began to feel acute grass and tree deprivation. One Sunday I positively begged Yan to take me somewhere green where I could inhale the smell of grass and mud. Magically, the ever-gracious Yan managed to find a solution to my problem and promptly cycled me over to Bergoyen Nature Reserve. It is a place that has renewed my energy and love for this city on many occasions since.

One of the first critics of this city that I met (though I should say partial critic because he also loved it very much), was a native to the town – a scruffy and merry young man called Raff. I met him – or perhaps should rather say, Orphée found him, one night in St Jacobs when she sniffed his trouser leg. That night started up a kind of connection that has survived to this day – though we have never exchanged phone numbers. Like my lucky penny, if I am ever in need, Raff turns up, sure to perk up my mood. Raff has a long brown ponytail and a booming laugh that he uses very liberally. Like a young Falstaff, he is the chief of a merry band of robbers, and always has a witty and philosophical aside on hand to offer. I remember very vividly a night when Raff and his best-friend came to drink in the terrace of MacDougalls. Each time that I delivered a couple of Duvels to their table, settling them between scrunched up rizzlas and mounds of tobacco, the men had some new entertaining or wise epigram to teach me – whether this was about living alone in the Alps in a caravan or Candide.

It is not in Raff’s nature to be critical about anything, but he was serious on the nature point. He characterised West Flanders as one long road and described Belgium as a country of roads. He told me that Belgium was more densely populated with roads and thoroughfares than any other country in Europe. It is a transit country he said to me, a place for passing through. Another explanation he gave for the scarcity of green spaces is connected to Belgian urban planning. As he explained to me, many of Belgium’s towns are also arranged around the roads that criss-cross the country. The end result of this is that it is possible to drive for an hour across Belgium and feel that you have never left the city, just traversed one long and unending conurbation.

One day, when we were walking arm in arm in Bergoyen, I asked Yan if he could validate any of these assertions. He sadly nodded his head. Yes, he told me, the traffic jams in Brussels during rush hour are some of the most serious in Europe. For a country of this size it shouldn’t be this way. Many people pass through Belgium, it is on the way to many places. Later, on an even more desperate quest to find the wilderness or some open green space, we went to Katzand, a scenic coastal town just across the border, in Holland. Though the sand dunes, spits and bays were lovely indeed, Yan couldn’t help but show his disappointment when we came up against a huge oil pipe-line that had just been constructed on the beach. It wasn’t here when I came here last, he told me.  I looked at the oil pipe-line for a moment, squatting horizontally on the beach like a vast, unsightly lizard.

So yes, an accumulation of observations, experiences and questing missions across Northern Belgium has led me to the conclusion that we are luckier in the UK than we know. Even if our cities and medium-scale towns cannot compare to the offerings on the continent in terms of sustainability and their cultural and artistic diversity, our nature can. In Belgium, if you really want to go in search of nature you must go south, to Wallonia, the French-speaking half of the country, home to many of the most famous monastery-brewers and trappiste beers such as Orval.

Another common criticism aired among foreigners in Belgium is that Belgian people are a little introverted and that their social groups are difficult to penetrate. I cannot say that this has particularly been my experience, but of course I do have many foreign friends here. I think that falling into or forming comprehensive friendship groups anywhere in the world is not easy, but the steady work of many years. Raff had a characteristically gentle way of describing this feature of his own people. We are Hobbits! He exclaimed to me happily when we were sharing tumblers of hazelnut jenever in a delightful wooden-panelled standing bar in the old town centre. What on earth do you mean by Hobbits? I said. Well you know, happy with what we have got, happy to share but not too much. Yan – another key reference-point for my ideas about life here, since he is Belgian too – confirmed this to me in another way. One evening in a restaurant he explained that Belgians are not great travellers, or at least do not disperse as widely as the English, Germans and the Dutch (their next-door-neighbours). Even when Belgians travel, Yan explained, they always come back. They are not lovers of exile and they do not generally settle elsewhere. This is very different from the impulse of the British, I thought to myself, who as history has sadly taught us, are highly efficient colonisers.

I do not know how useful these generalisations about people and place really are, but it is true that forming these impressions is an unavoidable part of living and travelling abroad. I suppose as native populations become more dilute, soon it will become more difficult to form these judgements than it even is now. At most, or best, what you can hope for is a handful of contradictions. So it is with Belgium. On one hand temperance and passivity – on the other, one of the most thriving party scenes outside of Berlin. On one hand coke zeros and ice tea on the other a culture of rampant consumption and decadent appetites. After all, historically-speaking Belgians are related to the Bourgondiers – a race famous for their strong material appetites, love of good food, drink and society. What sense can be derived from these contending juxtapositions? Perhaps none, except personal reflexes. I care very much for Belgium – a country with a strong socialist history which survives to this day in the form of one of Europe’s most generous welfare provisions. I also feel a deep sense of kinship and satisfaction with those that I meet here: kind, intelligent and calm people –who understand and have evolved to a highly developed point – the art of living well.