Writing is something that I’ve fallen out of the habit of, in part because other activites have been competing not only for the time, but also for the place of writing as a meditative activity. Running in the forest has been a big activity for me over the last six months or so, but as I’ll explain later, I’ve had to take a break from that for a while. As well when Maggie and the boys are around I tend to focus on them, and as we’ve been travelling around individually or have had other activities to occupy us each in Brussels, I’ve had a bit more solitary time recently, which has been good for reflecting. I've actually written in my journal more, and have taken the time to respond to some correspondence that I'd let lapse.
After our Orval visit, there was a big brocante or street sale in our neighbourhood the next day… We chose not to participate this year as neither Maggie nor I were particularly interested in sitting outside the entire day. In the past years Duncan has packaged up his unwanted toys and made a pretty penny by selling them, and we have cleared out a lot of older housewares, but our kitchen and dining room accoutrements have been pretty much settled for some time now and we have gotten rid of unwanted things in previous sales, so there was little for us to dispose of this time.
three Cousances cocottes, with a black enameled interior
french oven or dutch oven: you decide
This time Maggie and Duncan joined Malcolm and I in viewing The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a pioneering film by German animator Lotte Reiniger. Released in 1926, it is the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, anticipating Disney’s Snow White by more than a decade. Taken from One Thousand and One Nights, the story is long and complicated… It begins when an African sorcerer conjures up a flying horse, and then displays it to the Caliph. Of course the Caliph wishes to buy it, offering any treasure he has. The sorcerer chooses Princess Dinarsade, the Caliph's daughter, to her great distress. Prince Achmed, Dinarsade's brother, objects, but the crafty sorcerer persuades him to try out the horse. It carries the prince away, higher and higher into the sky, as he does not know how to control it… he eventually touches down in an enchanted forest, where he meets a queen who comes each night to the pool in bird form, only to remove her magical cloak to go swimming...
He falls in love with the Queen, and the rest of the film describes Achmed’s adventures as they try to escape and make their way back to his home. The film is filled with witches, demons, monsters, giant snakes, battles, kidnapping, chases, escapes, magical duels, true love, revenge… Even Aladdin makes an appearance with his magical lamp. All of the characters are displayed in silhouette, and are composed of this sheets or cardboard or lead, animated by stop-motion photography.
Lotte Meiniger’s silhouette technique is obviously inspired by the Javanese Wayang shadow puppet theatre... it is usually accompanied in Java and Bali by a Gamelan orchestra, which is a small traditional instrumental ensemble made up mostly of percussion instruments of various types, but also can include a bamboo flute and a bowed stringed instrument. (Here's a clip of a performance by a gamelan orchestra from Houston Texas, called Space City Gamelan if you're interested.)
Perhaps for that reason this presentation of Achmed was accompanied not by a full orchestra but instead by Trioglyzerin, a German ensemble of three multi-instrumentalists, who created many evocative effects with ‘cello, theorbo, synthesisers and various percussion and wind instruments; you can listen to some of their music here. It was really quite an amazing performance. I encourage you to check out Achmed on Youtube; there are a number of versions available online with a variety of musical scores.
After the movie we took a slight detour on our way home, stopping in the commune of Saint Gilles; it was celebrating its 800th anniversary, and there was a big public party going on that evening in the main square. The main draw for me was the news that the Brasserie de la Senne and the Cantillon Brewery had collaborated in making a special beer for the occasion, called l’Obbrussel, made with old wild yeasts found in storage cellars located nearby. According to the news reports, 12,000 bottles had been distributed to the cafés in Saint Gilles, but by the time we got to the party, everyone had already sold out of it! Belgians like their beer. But there were lots of other brands available in the cafés...
We had a good time… there was a free rock concert given by the Planes, a Brussels cover band that was really great. They played a lot of seamless classic rock medleys, sung almost entirely in English, and the crowd of mostly Francophones sang along with nearly all of the songs. It was less than an hour of loud rock music, which was just the right amount.
The next day was the journée sans voiture, an annual event where no cars are allowed to be driven in the entire city, and we rode our bikes around the corner to place Dries, very close to where we lived during our first year in Brussels. As always there was a brocante of used bicycles, and I managed to sell Duncan’s nearly new bike for 80 EUR. Malcolm is just a tiny bit too tall for the bike he has been using, but it's perfect for Duncan, so we gave Malcolm’s silver bike to him, and bought another larger Peugot one for Malcolm for 100 EUR. So now all four of us are well set up with four appropriately-sized bicycles. The police offer a free service that will engrave a registration number of your bike, and enter it into the database in case of a theft and recovery, so we each had that done, then rode back home.
I have since bought new U-locks for both of their bikes, and very bright USB charging front and back LED lamps, and Duncan also purchased a new bicycle helmet. It's not mandatory to wear a helmet in this country but for us it's non-negotiable that the kids protect their brains from the risk of concussion. At the time of this blog writing (November 4th) they have been riding their bicycles to school every day: it’s only 3.5 km and takes about 10-15 minutes, compared with maybe 25 minutes on the bus and tram. All that extra exercise has made Malcolm more fit athletically; he recently got his best-ever score in gym class, running a personal best and completing half again as many laps as his previous total.
At least one of us is able to run… that brings me to the Brussels Eco Trail race of September 24th. I had entered into the 43 km run, my first marathon distance, and as I have written in the Morbihan sailing blog, I had been steadily increasing my regular training distances up to around the half-marathon mark, and then started reducing them down in the two weeks before the big run. This technique is called “tapering” before a race, and it helps give your body a chance to store more glycogen, which you will need to keep up a good head of steam during the long run. A complementary activity is to carbohydrate load as well for a couple of days before the long run… We took the opportunity to enjoy a lot of pasta. Here are two dishes that we made that week before the race: spinach gnocchi with fresh figs and bacon, and chinese-five spice, ginger and duck breast, bok choi and chilies on egg noodles.
I had settled on and tested out a good hydration system, had the right amount of tested portable food supplies (medjool dates and peanut M&Ms are my preferred road snacks), and had run some of the nearer parts of the route in preparation, so I was feeling quite well rested and energised.
Maggie and I with our friend Claire before the start of the race
What I hadn’t counted on however was the way the course was structured. Even though it billed itself as a “100% green eco-trail” run, that was definitely NOT the case. I run on dirt, in the forest, which is soft… sometimes I have to do shorter sections on cobblestones, which seems ok, or on asphalt/tarmacadam, but if I have stretches of road on my normal routes I can usually run next to the road or up on the bank.
at the start
For this race, I set out very well, keeping myself held back to a steady 6:00 minutes/km pace for the first 20km… but I was dismayed to discover that starting at around km 16 or so the route changed to asphalt, and even worse, on concrete for some sections! Something bad happened around the 20km mark, and my right ankle (something which has never given me a lick of trouble ever) started to ache. I thought perhaps it was just a cramp or soreness that would work itself out, as I hadn’t landed wrong, or twisted anything, or felt any particular shock, just a sudden onset of pain.
I managed to keep running until the rest station at the foot of the Butte de Lion in Waterloo at km21, refilled my water bottles, gobbled some orange slices and chips, stretched experimentally, then set out to run back. But after a kilometer I realised that it wasn’t getting better, and so very frustratingly, had to stop. I called Maggie and limped my way back to the rest station at Waterloo to meet her.
I thought it would get better; I bought a tensor bandage for it and limped around the house for a week, but finally when it wasn’t showing any improvement I saw my orthopedic specialist, and he ordered a bone scan for the following week. It revealed a stress fracture of the tibia, close to where it meets the small bones of the ankle. It’s one of the most common injuries to runners, soldiers in basic training and also basketball players. Terrible news; unlike some injuries where one can still do some moderate training, for stress fractures you have to just stay off the injured limb as much as possible, and definitely no running for at least four to six weeks, maybe more.
Tomorrow (November 5th) it will have been six weeks since the injury, and by keeping it wrapped and minimising how much I walk on it for the last month, I’ve actually been more or less free of pain for a couple of weeks now. I have an MRI scheduled for the end of November, so I think I will wait until we see the results of that before I try any running. I have done a couple of 3km swims that have satisfying my exercise urges, so I guess I’ll have to keep going with that in the meantime.
… next blog… music…
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