Autumn Projects

This September is approaching its end, and so far we have had many projects to keep us busy.  I wrote earlier that when Bruce and I returned from Bayreuth Maggie greeted me with a number of her sewing projects, including a half-dozen bow ties... I've been taking opportunities to try each of them out at a variety of church services and parties over the last few weeks.  Here's a nice linen one for summer pictured above...

and a nice flowery one for any time of year

car-free Sunday

Last weekend I opted not to wear a tie to church however, as we four saddled up and rode our bicycles instead of driving to the service.  It takes a tiny bit longer to ride as it does to drive the 3.3 km to get there, but I particularly enjoyed the lack of street noise... I am reminded of the Eastern Seaboard blackout of 14 August 2003, and how beautiful the summer evening in Toronto was without the noise of air conditioners and other electrical appliances.  Cities become much more pleasant places without the mechanical and electrical noise pollution.

in front of the palace

I don't know if it is atmospheric pollution, or if there is some reason for a lot of dust in the atmosphere this autumn, but the sunsets here have been monumental recently.

Autumn is my favourite time of the year, when one can get out the slightly warmer clothes, and evenings are cool enough that you really enjoy a cup of tea, or the experience of an open fire.  I also was prompted to try out the canned pumpkin from a local Mexican importer, as a trial run before Thanksgiving.  Kiki certainly seemed interested in the result.

Rhubarb was also looking great at the DelHaize, so I also made a rhubarb pie.  I always bake the shells blind first, with clay beads to hold the pastry down, and bake the filled pie for a little longer than suggested, at a slightly lower temperature than suggested, and this time also thickened the rhubarb with a mixture of sugar, cornstarch and a little water, so it came out of the oven softened and gelled, but not burned on the top, which is always a risk.  The edges in particular are a problem: I am looking around for a steel or aluminum pie crust shield that protects the edges of the pastry, but I use an unusually large enameled steel pie plate with a diameter of 12", which exactly fits the pre-made Herta or DelHaize pastry, with nothing left over, and most of the aluminum pie shields that I have found online are for 9" or 10" pies.

I could make homemake crust, but the Delhaize butter crust is only around 1,30 EUR, so I usually don't bother to do my own.  It's also time-consuming: with two boys in the house pie doesn't seem to hang around very long.

Last weekend we were invited by Raoul and Louisa, our neighbours, to dine at the Moroccan restaurant maybe 20 metres from our door.  Miriam is the manager of this new restaurant and her brother, a former professional soccer player is the waiter, and they are both really nice... Maggie and I tried it out when it first opened perhaps two years ago, and we were very happy to see that it is doing well.  We are rather spoiled to have five restaurants within 100 metres of the house, but to be honest, we almost never go out.  There are too many good new recipes to try out!

Speaking of recipes, here's a fantastic one that I discovered recently in Julie Sahni's Indian Heritage Cookery that is wonderful with curries... Maggie makes a knockout spinach with chickpeas that I love, and we also do a dry-fried cauliflower with ginger, but it's nice to have some variety and this bean dish is amazing, even as a cold salad the next day.

We are fortunate to have so much good food to eat.  We have been following the news of the Syrian refugee crisis recently with great alarm... the stories are heartbreaking, and the fracturing of the Schengen border-free zone has some serious implications for the future of Europe.  Brussels has already a small refugee camp established in a park near the Gare du Nord, which at the time of my visit last Monday held about 1,000 refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.  Andrew Gardner and I decided to go find out in person exactly what the situation was in the Parc Maximilien, to see what things were needed, and report back to St. Andrews congregation.

lots of food for the moment

There are several Non-Government Organizations helping the refugees; for the moment they have received lots of food donations, and are in need of other items such as toiletries, and will soon require raincoats and warmer clothing.  There are a couple of facebook groups that are helping coordinate the drive for donations: Collectactif is handling the kitchen and food supplies, and the Plateforme citoyenne de soutien aux réfugiés Bruxelles also is publishing lists of the items required.

Part of the problem, and one reason for the very existence of such a makeshift camp in this European city is the slowness of the official response to the arrival of these refugees; there was no building initially available to house them, and so the tent village was established.  There has been a lot of finger-pointing between the commune, city, regional, federal, and European governments about who should take the lead.  The national minister responsible for those seeking asylum has finally opened up accommodation in the World Trade Centre III building close by, but the places they created were only available initially for sleeping, and there were no food preparation or dining facilites, and almost no privacy.  Either way, there are more people than places there (500 places versus 1000+ refugees) and while the minister is trying to improve the spaces with showers and lockers and more privacy, it is unclear how these people will fare as the weather gets colder and more wet.

The day we were there the weather was ok, and there was an impromptu soccer game going in the centre of the park, in the shadow of the Gare du Nord and the Belgacom (now "Proximus") building.

There aren't many children in the camp, but for the ones who are there, a makeshift school that has been established.

There seem to be lots and lots of volunteers, but the place is still kind of a mess.

We were doing some bricolage (or doe-het-zelf in Flemish) over the last week or so at home to try to impose a little more organisation in our apartment.  The boys have a growing collection of bandes dessinées, hardcover books, and trade paperbacks that were straining the limits of their limited shelving, and purging the unwanted volumes only went so far.  I decided to design and build something that would occupy one wall of their room, and optimised it so that the bunk bed could still be placed against it with a minimal loss of storage, but that it will still be useful if we get rid of the bunk bed and change that room to a different configuration in the future.  Here Malcolm and I are cutting the nosing for the bookshelves, and he's lightly sanding off the "feathers" from the ends.

After sketching out the design and tweaking the dimensions, I downloaded a layout and cut list demo application, entered in the size of the panels, and fiddled around with the dimensions some more until I managed to get the whole thing out of three panels.  I went to the Brico and handed them the cut list, and to my amazement, they cut everything up for me, free of charge!  It sure beats buying and maintaining a table or panel saw, and it's easier on the back than lugging big panels around.  I ended up using the thinner mdf panels of 12 mm, but reinforced the shelving at the back with some repurposed hardwood slats, and installed some clear pine nosing on the facade to help with durability and provide some additional stiffness.

 small bulkhead / base to compensate for existing baseboard, and to allow for backless bookcase to sit flush with the wall

pine nosing going on 

primer coat 

paint coat

Today I think I'll be gluing and tacking on the remaining nosing on the second and third cabinets, and then I may leave the pine unfinished, or I might just wipe on a little bit of clear oil finish.  Then I hope we can get those books sorted out and onto the shelves, and out of the way!

You may remember that last year Malcolm and I went to see the UFA film night at the BOZAR with the Brussels Philharmonic, with a showing of the new restauration of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.  This year the opening night was a showing of the 1929 silent film Pandora's Box, with the luminous Louise Brooks.

Brooks had just finished work on a silent film, The Canary Murder Case, and was lured away from Paramount by the German director G. W. Pabst, and brought to Germany expressly for this film.  Her desertion from Paramount would have been forgiven, but when the studio tried to get her to come back from Germany to overdub new voice tracks for a new "talkies" version of Canary she refused, effectively ending her film career.

Pandora's Box an adaptation of earlier versions of the Lulu story, notably the plays Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904) by Frank Wedekind.  The composer Alban Berg began writing his verion, the opera Lulu in 1929, but died in 1935 with it still uncompleted.

It's amazing to see these films with a live orchestra like the Brussels Philharmonic playing the score...  First of all the music alone is colourful, and executed with much verve and precision.  The shots and transitions in the films are lovely, and the way that they lit these films was magical.  Like Caligari there is something glowing about the eyes of the actors in Pandora that grabs you and doesn't let you go...

But lastly to my own musical projects.  I think that Dina has now received almost all of the music that she needs for our No Tenors Allowed concert on January 24th.  We also have been asked if we could do a preview of our project at the Perth Manor Hotel, on Sunday, January 16th in the afternoon.  We've pencilled in our January rehearsal schedule as well, but we have chosen material that is in our repertoire, so working those pieces is not so urgent yet.  For me the biggest thing is the Berlioz... I now have about six recordings from various decades to listen to as I prepare for December's two concerts... the Flemish library has been great about placing holds on discs for me, and I also have taken a couple out of the mediatheque at the university.

Other than that, I have been given an aria to sing at Minimes at the end of October, in Bach's BWV 96 Herr Christ, der einge Gottessohn, so that will give me a little something to work on this month as well...

Have a good weekend!

And they're off

(from last week's post: I forgot to include this shot from the cliffs at Bonifacio)

Today was the first full day that both kids were at school so it has been quite a change in atmosphere at Chez Rosado...

We had a bit of a crazy time with the registration for school this last week.  We had been unable to register Duncan in the same school as his brother this past spring, and had to put him on the waiting list, but were told that there was really no chance that he would get in.  We instead had to find another school for him, some distance away.  It necessitated some logistical work to get everything arranged but he seemed excited and ready to go on the first day of school.

ready to go

lining up for the bus pass

getting on the bus to Wavre

I had to go to Wavre ahead of time and buy a subscription to the TEC bus service which is the transit service in Wallonia, and on the first day of class I went with him to the school, met the teachers, bought his school books, and then said goodbye, and made my way to the station to take the bus home to Brussels.

I had just had lunch and sat down to get going on some planning and emailing when the phone rang: it was Malcolm's school saying that the Minister of Education had opened up several new classes at his school, and that they would take Duncan after all!

first day of school take two

I was pretty frustrated about the wasted effort but soon realized that we were very fortunate that this happened...  I spent the whole next day shuttling between the two schools.  We were able to get Duncan cancelled off the one school list, and then enrolled at the other... the secretary from the first school was also nice enough to take the books back, and immediately called another father who was interested in purchasing them from me.  Also I was able to get a refund on most of the cost of the bus subscription that Duncan would no longer need.  So all in all it was a lot of trouble, but it will mean much less travel for him, a simpler interface with the school for our family (both boys in the same place) and a substantial expense in school fees avoided.

This past weekend we had a lot of social activities to take part in.  Our friends the Bouchers and Gardners hosted a blind wine-tasting event that we had successfully bid on at a charity auction, and along with about a dozen other people we were challenged to identify the six different wines that Oliver and Andrew had selected, based on the clues we could glean from printed descriptions of the various wines presented.  It was an evening filled as well with lots of delicious food, and we had a wonderful time.

the six delicious wines chosen by our hosts

The next evening we were invited to the beautiful Chateau du Lac at Genval, for the 40th anniversary party of our friends Alec and Rhoda Grant.  They were celebrating not forty years of marriage but rather forty years since they arrived in Belgium, and they put on a wonderful party.  We knew many of the guests as friends in common from the St. Andrew's Church community, and also were happy to meet the adult children of Rhoda and Alex and their spouses, and the grandchildren.

The afternoon before the party, I had a nice surprise from our neighbour Raoul, a Canadian-Belgian friend who lives up the street, and like most Belgian men of a certain age and status he is always impeccably dressed.  He has been cleaning out his closet recently, and I had already received some nice suits from him a few months ago, that he no longer wished to keep, and as we are about the same size they fit me quite well.  But this time he rang our buzzer and handed me a bag with three lovely custom-made waistcoats by a Brussels tailor, all in warm ivory or buff colours that go well with my own wardrobe.  I really have an abundance of nice waistcoats, with the many beautiful ones that Maggie has made for me over the years, and so I am really spoiled by this lovely present.

I chose to wear one of these new waistcoats to Alec and Rhoda's party at the Chateau with a linen and silk jacket that I found at Les Petits Riens in Brussels, and a pair of wool gabardine trousers (by Lands End of all places), lined to the knee and very comfortable, that I found at Value Village in Toronto this spring.  The shoes are were half price I think, at the Scarborough Town Centre, purchased in maybe 2012, and the tie is one of the new ones that Maggie made this summer from a quilting square of Liberty Print fabric that we bought last year in London.  So I am quite happy with this Gatsbyesque ensemble...

preparations under way for Toronto December 5th and 6th

The Berlioz piece is beautiful, and my part seems to me to sit in a strong part of the voice.  As St. Joseph, I am the only baritone in the work, and have a lot to sing, perhaps more than the St. Mary, but most of our singing is in duet with each other, naturally.  The other low voice parts are basses, and are more restricted in their scenes: Herod sings at the beginning only, and the Père de la famille who shows compassion for the holy family and lets them sleep in the stable has a lot of extended singing, but only in the second section.  It will be quite a challenge as all of the other singers with one exception are francophones, and quite renowned singers, so I must be on my game.

Maggie is off with her students on a sailing trip this week to Brittany.  It is a bit strange to be the one at home alone with the kids; it's not something that I do so very often.  I am already looking forward to her return...

Happy Labour Day, and bonne rentrée to everyone who heads back to school today...