Boum!

It's nice to be back to some semblance of routine this week, although it has taken a few days for that to happen. Last week was a holiday for the boys, and Duncan went away for a week to Nettinne to practice being a 1st century Roman. "Duncanus" had a great time, especially at the boum they always have on the last evening of the week. What is a boum? There is a famous french song by Charles Trenet (aka "Le fou chantant") from 1938 about being in love, called Boum!...


...but that's not what a boum is here; it's a dance for young people at the end of the school year, and they always have one at Nettinne too, and the kids bring their cool outfits and get ready for it all week.


It's good that Duncan was away, because the main floor of our house was being replastered and painted, so that meant that the living, dining and kitchen areas were out of comission for the week. We had to take absolutely everything off the walls, put as many small things as we could upstairs, and pile all the large furniture in the middle of the rooms. I had no piano, and no desire to sing in a house full of plaster dust, so since Malcolm was off school as well, it meant that he and I could play tourist most of the week. We walked all around the downtown over several days. There were lunches or breakfasts out, including one at Le Pain Quotidien, and frites from the Fritland stand at the Bourse, and we visited the free museum exhibit at the Bilbiotheque Royal de la Belgique and saw old illuminated manuscripts from the 14th century. We bought a new music score for him, found a great used bookstore, and he sat in on one of my coaching sessions with Peter.


Saturday morning we finally had a chance to remove the drop cloths and start vacuuming up the dust. Things are now more or less in order, although two of the cabinets need to be reattached to the wall, and no paintings are up yet, but that will soon be remedied.


We had an interesting discovery this past weekend while extending the cleaning job out to the back terrace. At some point over the last year, Maggie received some daffoldils in pots, and after they were exhausted we threw them in a green yard waste bag, and left it in a corner of the terrace. Since we don't have a garden, often it takes us a long time to fill one bag, since the only thing that goes in are dead leaves from the potted plants and stems from old cut flowers. Anyway, when we moved the bag, we were astonished to see bright yellow flowers peeking out from inside the bag! The decaying organics in the bottom of the bag had combined with some old soil to hold in moisture and heat, and the bag had acted like a greenhouse, so the bulbs had sprouted again and were blooming. Marvelous! Anything that clings to life so stubbornly deserves a little more respect, so they have been replanted in a window box. My iris bulbs have had tall leaves showing pretty much all winter, so I'm expecting them to emerge shortly. The mint, thyme, rosemary and strawberries have all wintered well; the clematis, wisteria and rosebush have buds, and the chives are already a foot tall!

So far the week has been gorgeous here, clear and blue with temperatures in the high teens. Monday I had a nice lunch with Andrew Gardner. This activity included some classic Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes (Andrew is religious in several senses: not only as a Presbyterian minister, but as a Doctor Who-phile) a nice pasta followed by a little single malt, tobacco and good conversation.


Tuesday was my first day to myself in almost ten days, so it was a big singing day; I worked through the Bach B-minor arias, my Malatesta aria, both of the Orestes arias from Iphigenie en Tauride, Belcore's aria, and lastly looked through the Schumann "Mondnacht". That's a ton of singing, really, for my first day back, but I welcomed the chance to work the voice to help prepare for upcoming auditions and performances. I don't begrudge Malcolm the time I gave him last week but it is nice to have the place to myself again. I've contacted a few more places recently, including the Collegium Vocale Ghent/Philippe Herreweghe and the Flanders opera, and have a Irish friend singing with the Reisopera in Holland, so I want to be ready when auditions come up over here. I just heard this week from a Leipzig-Munich agent who's holding auditions in April, and so I'll try to get into the Thomaskirke while I'm there, and maybe visit with my friend Keith who has been singing in Leipzig and other German opera house for the past several years. I also have to get ready for auditions that have already been arranged in Canada during the month of May.

This Saturday morning Malcolm leaves for Switzerland for six days skiing in the alps with his class. There will be four grade six classes going together, and it promises to be gorgeous weather. Since Duncan is leaving for an overnight retreat in the Ardennes with the choir the same day, it looks as though we will have the place to ourselves, so I suppose Maggie and I will go out somewhere to celebrate. What luck!