School photos / Luther mass done / 27km success / Toussaint Holidays / renos

I forgot to post Duncan's school photos.  He apparently didn't get the memo that it was a white background, so his shirt kind of disappears; I think he should have worn a darker one.  I don't have a school photo for Malcolm yet; I'm not so sure that his school has a photo day scheduled for the lutherie students, but I don't see why they wouldn't.  He'll inquire about it when he goes back after the holiday.

 

Saturn V rocket at NASA

Grandpa Zadow has been sharing some photos with us from Orlando; it would seem that both Duncan and his cousin are enjoying the time with their grandparents very much.  We're looking forward to more photos and lots of stories when he returns next weekend.

I have had a busy time the last few days.  Two days of preparation on Thursday and Friday culminated in our second performance of the Luther Mass in Brussels.  Fortunately for the organisation's finances, there was a substantial crowd, and again the audience gave the ensemble a very enthusiastic reception.

I also managed to get some more work done on the Zadowcaster.  I finished sanding down the heel of the neck, and have retouched it with cherry lacquer.  The headstock decals have been applied, and the electronics have been screwed onto the body and soldered into place.

my headstock

body completed

Malcolm's bass headstock decal applied

Next all that is needed is to do a couple of light spray coats of clear lacquer on both headstocks and in my case the heel of the neck, and then I can bolt everything together, string it up and see what happens.

Prior to my guitar work and the concert on Saturday I took Maggie to the airport.  It was a long flight to Toronto and then to Ottawa, but she made it to her parents' home without trouble.  No pictures to post yet, as the weather has been too rainy and windy for her to get out in the canoe, but I see that the winds are back down to 10-15km, and the sky should be clear today.  Unfortunately the temperature there is currently three degrees celsius, so I don't know how much canoeing she's going to do!

The race was on Sunday and it went pretty well for me: I finished 61st out of 104 in my age category.  I made a good time (for me) of 2h40m for the 27-28km, and managed to avoid any knee tendonitis pain.  Unfortunately it was Lawrence's turn to drop out this time, as he had a nagging calf muscle problem that forced him to stop around km 12.

goofing off early in the race

hill climbing in the last 6km

I think that's pretty much it for my running season; I haven't registered for anything else.  Of course I plan to keep up with training runs, but I think the longer races won't happen until next spring.

what's on deck for the next couple of months

I received some happy news this week, that I will sing two Bach Cantatas on December 17th at the Minimes.  These will be my fourth Cantata with Philippe Gérard conducting, and my twenty-first and twenty-second cantatas with the Minimes.  Julius has already said that there are more coming this season, so I'm feeling very lucky.  That means that my schedule has tons of Bach in it, as well as Mendelssohn and Brahms (both of whom idolised Bach):

• December 1st and 2nd: Mendelssohn Paulus
• December 9th: Bach Weihnachtsoratorium
• December 17th: Bach Cantatas BWV 36 and 61
• March 23rd: Bach Johannespassion
• March 25th: Bach Johannespassion
• March 26th: Bach Johannespassion
• March 30th: Bach Matthäuspassion
• March 31st: Bach Johannespassion
• May 6th: Brahms Requiem (Toronto)

As you can see there are some empty spaces in the schedule at the moment; in particlar there is a pretty quiet January and February; These are good times to audition for more opera, I should think. 

As for projects that are in development but not yet confirmed, I think that Lisa and Daniel and I will try to perform the Love and Marriage programme again this coming Valentine's Day; we will pitch it as an event to the American Women's Club of Brussels, as most of the music is from Broadway.  Bruce and I are trying to arrange another performance of our No Tenors Allowed programme in Ontario while I'm back to do the Brahms in May.

As well my friend Korneel Bernolet - an amazing Belgian harpsichordist and conductor who regularly assists quite famous french conductors, and has a respectable recording career - has asked me about doing some Schubert lieder on a historical square piano from 1810-1825 that he is having restored.  That would be very interesting: we usually hear Schubert played on a modern piano, but these instruments didn't really exist as we know them today until quite a bit after Schubert.  The cast-iron-frame grand piano harp wasn't patented until 1825, and so it seems likely that for those Schubertiade evenings, Schubert and his fellow lieder enthusaists heard something quite different as they played his songs for the first time on those older instruments.

I had a chance to sing a little bit of Winterreise last month at Ayman Jarjour's benefit concert, and I am eager to have a crack at the rest of the cycle.  If I can keep it together emotionally, that is... The opening song is one of the most moving things that I have ever heard.  The text in English translation (by Celia Sgroi):

1. Good Night

I came here a stranger / As a stranger I depart / May favoured me / With many a bunch of flowers.

The girl spoke of love / Her mother even of marriage / Now the world is so gloomy / The road shrouded in snow.

I cannot choose the time / To begin my journey / Must find my own way / In this darkness.

A shadow of the moon travels / With me as my companion / And upon the white fields / I seek the deer's track.

Why should I stay here any longer / So that people can drive me away? / Let stray dogs howl / In front of their master's house.

Love loves to wander  / God made it that way / From one to the other / My dearest, good night!

I don't want to disturb your dreaming / It would be a shame to wake you / You won't hear my step / Softly, softly the door closes!

I write in passing / On your gate: Good night / So that you may see / That I thought of you.

Here is a gorgeous performance by the German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, and the Argentinian/Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.  What kills me every time is the impossibly gentle and poignant transition at around 4:18.  Trust me, wait for it... you won't be disappointed.

Tonight Malcolm and I have been invited to dinner with Benoit and Sophie and Matteo in Brussels; they want to catch up with him and show some of their vacation photos.  Today Malcolm and I are going to continue our dismantling of furniture and the building of an "airlock" structure over the top of the staircase on the top floor.  I want to do my best to limit how much dust falls into the rest of the house during the attic demolition and roof replacement.  Photos to follow...

Rehearsing for a remount of the Luther Mass / Duncan to Canada / Guitar building

Just a quick update.

Yesterday morning early Maggie drove Duncan to the airport.  He flew out to Montreal and met his Grandmother and cousin, and now they are on their way to Florida for the week.  Lucky guy!  They are going to visit LEGOland, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and NASA.  I'm sure he'll have lots of great stories to tell when he returns.

Yesterday I also resumed rehearsals for our second performance of the Luther Mass, which happens on Saturday in the Dominican Church in Brussels.  It's a lovely place and one can hear the instruments very clearly, which is a change from the last performance space in Leuven.  I will sing the Christmas Oratorio in this church on the 8th of December, so it's good to get acquainted with it now.

Today I will go into Brussels on the bus and resume work on my Zadowcaster, and also take in the SG to see what Ben has to say about it.  I hope to have some new photos soon!  For now I will post the headstock decals that I had made.

Malcolm's has a serial number of MORZ-002, which indicates his initials and that this is the second "Rosado" guitar made; his first was the cigar box banjo.  For me, I chose MGR-443 as my serial number.  For those who own the 2000 Moses Gillespie Redemption album "Roots Blues and Cowboy Songs" MGR442 is its catalogue number.  It's only natural that this guitar be numbered next...

Maggie leaves early tomorrow morning to go to the airport for her week at Skootamatta, and I have my performance.  Then on Sunday morning I will run the 28 km trail run in the Foret des Soignes, with Lawrence as my partner.  I really hope that there is no return of the right knee tendonitis that has been dogging me for the last couple of weeks.  On Sunday I ran an 8km with Maggie here in Wavre, and then did a 6:05 min/km run of 17.2km run with Lawrence in the forest, without any pain, so I have my fingers (and toes) crossed that I will be ok.  I hope that my regime of lots of stretching before and after, application of ice, some anti-inflammatory gel on the knee, and an easy pace will help.  Also I am using some straps that limit the movement of the patella and the outside tendon, much like those forearm straps that people wear when they have tennis elbow, and that seems to help.

Some decorating ideas / contracting while-u-wait / curry / running / remembrance

On Monday I was scrolling through some Brussels For Sale items on Facebook and just about jumped out of my skin when I saw a large buffet from around 1920 that had a marble top made from pretty clearly the exact same marble as our fireplace... marble which I was assured at the supplier was no longer being quarried, and so was no longer available.  The two other pieces that we already purchased on speculation could be renovated or used as is, but when I saw this one, whose marble top was 5cm wider than the one we had settled on, and 5cm deeper - which means a more protected floor when the woodstove was open - I pounced.

Maggie is really very much pleased, and so am I.  Unfortunately the scheduled installation of the woodstove will be delayed a bit.  I've often said, "Soon is a long time in Belgium" and in my experience nothing ever gets done here on schedule.  If I was a project manager here I am sure that I would have a stroke from the frustration level I would experience, as it is almost impossible to plan anything with any degree of accuracy.  For example, in the home renovation or repair field it is almost impossible to get workers to call you back.  It's like they don't want your money or something!

It turns out that the woodstove installer wants to wait for the chimney liner guy, and the chimney liner guy felt that the roof tiles were really fragile, and - kudos to him - didn't want to damage them while doing his work, especially in wet weather, so when he heard that the roof was getting replaced, he wanted to coördinate his chimney repair with the roofer, so I had to have a big conversation (of course they all only speak french) on the telephone to arrange that.  It would seem therefore that the stove installation, and the roofing replacement and insulation and chimney repair has been pushed back by at least a week, to the second week of November.

This is actually not a bad thing as it means that I can spend the week of Toussaint with Malcolm here, while Duncan and Maggie are away, demolishing everything that is presently in the attic.  We have the time to break it all out and really take stock of how it should all be rebuilt.  Perhaps I have the time as well to do some carpentry work up there to build the false ceiling that I am planning, at around the 3m height.  In the event that we can track down a furnace/boiler/plumbing installer (we've been trying for a while) there is the chance that we will install a high efficiency condensation boiler to handle the water for the radiators as well as the water for washing, and those are most effectively installed in the attic.  More on that later...

Some more deco updates: we realised that the sconce lights that are in the house now were most likely part of a Brico come-on, dating from around the year 1995 or so.  They house those long thin halogen tubes, and while they are very bright, they don't to our mind match the age of the house.  So I've been doing a little ebay shopping, and for much less than new light fixtures have managed to find a few fixtures that I'll be installing over the next little while.  Here are some photos:

I have one other item arriving as well, but I am thinking that these will do very nicely.  We have three sconce sockets in the living room, plus two or three in the front hall, two in the stairwell, and two on the archway into the dining room.  It's going to be fun searching for the right fixtures for each spot.

Malcolm was home on the weekend and so we were lucky to have his help loading and unloading firewood.  We had a lot to stack: I found someone about 90 km away from us who was interested in selling 30 cubic metres of dry split firewood, for the ridiculous price of 40 EUR per cubic metre.  That compares to between 68 EUR per cubic metre (our best-ever price) and 120 EUR at the Brico, so we contacted them immediately.  They even threw in three cubic metres of wood for free if we agreed to take the lot; apparently the family switched to a pellet stove and want it gone, which is good news for us.  We have only the one woodstove (coming soon!) and our outdoor fire pit, but the Hammers are planning on doing most of their heating with wood, so it's clear that a cheap supply is an asset.

However we had the problem of transport to consider.  I reserved a dumping trailer but when we went to get it, they told us that we needed a special licence, something which they had neither made clear on their website nor on the telephone.  So instead we made do with Bryan's trailer, improvising some side rails with pallets.  In the end we managed to move around 3.5 cubic metres of dry firewood.  We've found someone local who can drop off a container for the rest, at a cost that still leaves us with a considerably lower price than any other we've found; the vendors will load it up with the neighbour's tractor and then it can be dumped out at Bryan and Kiana's for us to stack up at leisure.  We can probably accommodate about five cubic metres here, and Bryan and Kiana are ok with us taking more as we need it.

Sunday we pretty much kept to ourselves.  Maggie wanted to show me the running route she discovered very close to our house, so we walked up the hill to the cimetière de Wavre on our way, and stopped in to see the Commonwealth graves.

Anywhere you go in our part of Belgium you will see these little green signs indicating that one or more commonwealth soldiers died here, a century ago.  In our case, the cemetary holds seven gravestones, three of them Canadians; two from the UK, and two graves for people who could not be identified.  They are at the back wall of the cemetary, perhaps 500 metres from our house.  I am sure that it would have been well out of the limits of the town, back in 1917 when they were buried.

 

The First World War is all around us at all times here in Belgium, as is the second to a slightly lesser degree.  That's one reason that I'm really excited about some news I just received from the Canadian Embassy...

As I have written before, I've been honoured to sing the Belgian, Canadian, and recently the Luxembourgish national anthems at Canadian functions here in Belgium.  During the Luxembourg celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation I mentioned to a consular staff member that I would be honoured to contribute something to the commemorations of the battle of Passchendaele.  The Canadian contribution to that protracted and horrific engagement ended on November 10th, 1917, with a victory, and a horrible cost.

The Embassy has asked if I will sing "Danny Boy" and "I'm Dreaming of Home", two songs which were well known to Canadian Corps soldiers, and allegedly sung by them often in the trenches.  As well there is a concert in the church of Passchendaele that is still being planned but I have signalled my willingness to participate as well.  More on this later...

But back to the Belgium of today, and the concerns of the household: we realised last weekend that as Duncan leaves for Montreal and then Orlando on Thursday, and Maggie leaves for Skootamatta on Saturday, and Malcolm will be at school all week, there would be little chance to have dinner together after Sunday.  So we made a heroic indian meal, with my grandmother's chicken curry, mustard garlic chili beans, spinach and chickpeas, basmati rice and pappadums to set everyone up for the week.  Malcolm even contributed a mixed berry pie, with his own short crust lattice top.  A real craftsman... 

Bach - Luther Mass, Maggie's birthday, new shoes, nice weather, furniture

Tuesday to Thursday last week was taken up with the rehearsals and presentation of the Grosse Messe für Bach und Luthher in Leuven.  We were fortunate in that the weather warmed over the week, because the rehearsals were very long and took place in the normally very chilly Church of Saint Gertrude... 

bows

the audience on their feet

with fellow baritone Matthew Baker, an Australian singer, who we

 realised was born on the same day of the same month of the same year as me!

The concert was a big success in that the initial presentation was sold out, and we greeted with a very enthusiastic standing ovation.  We present it again in Brussels at the end of next week.

This past Saturday it was Maggie's birthday, and we had a nice time preparing for that.  She wanted a new down-filled jacket, and so we came into Brussels to drop Duncan at Karate while she and I shopped for that.  She also bought an embroidered jean jacket that looks cute.  We also went by Les Petits Riens to look at older commodes and armoires with marble tops, and found two for a very inexpensive price that we think will work for the lintel of our fireplace.  As I wrote last time, the marble would cost over 500 EUR were we to purchase it new; instead we bought one piece for 38 EUR, and another for 76 EUR, and we took home some well-made pieces of furniture that will need a little restoration but are far better built than some of the cheap IKEA pieces we have now.

a nice finished edge and a bow front make this my choice for fireplace lintel

our second choice; it will serve as a chest of drawers in one of the bedrooms

While looking for old marble we also came across a very old bench / coffer, with nail-in wrought-iron hinges and no other metal fasteners.  It is pegged together with wooden "nails" and shows signs of having been carefully repaired several times.  I have a little bit of restoration work to do on it, but it is very sturdy and if it doesn't stay in the front hall as a place to sit on when you put on your shoes, it could work as a blanket or linen chest at the end of the bed.

This piece reminds me very much of the work of an ancestor of mine, Albert Zadow, who was born in Germany, but is known in Canadian antique-collector circles for his furniture-making in Renfrew County in the late 19th century.

Afterwards we met up with Duncan and Malcolm at the newly opened Green Mango burger bar in Saint Gilles, and tried out their hamburgers.  Very good, but for my taste not as good as Manhatt'ns on Avenue Louise.  Still, the ambiance was nice and we were there for a couple of hours.

At the Green Mango

Duncan enjoying his iced tea "maison" (which cost 35% more than my beer)

  

visiting Malcolm's place

After lunch we picked up a counter top oven for Malcolm, who has been missing the chance to bake things like cookies and cakes, and went to have a look at his shared apartment.  The kitchen has a nice view of that iconic Brussels monument, the Atomium!

can you spot the Atomium?

Then we left Malcolm in Brussels as he had a music rehearsal early the next day, and came back to Wavre.  That evening we were still quite satisfied from lunch, and so skipped dinner, going straight to dessert.  I had made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, Maggie's favourite, and we sang her a Happy Birthday around the firepit outside.

lighting up

cake by the fireside

For sunday dinner I made a roast of marcassin, which is wild boar, marinated in red wine, and then seared, and flambéed, and then simmered in the marinade.  With forest mushrooms and shredded brussels sprouts sautéed in bacon and seasoned with Worchestershire sauce, it made for a really outdoorsy autumn harvest meal.

trying not to burn the house down

There was quite a bit left over so yesterday Malcolm (home for the day) made a short crust and I turned the leftovers into meat pies...

Baking them in small glass bowls was something Maggie tried last time she made quiche, and it turned out just as well this time.  I can imagine that we'll use the same technique at Christmas for mincemeat pies or maybe mini tourtière.

I had another run on Friday with Lawrence, and managed around 12km with no problems.  We ran again yesterday, with me trying out my new shoes, and after 15km my right knee tendonitis was back.  I am frustrated about it but will go back to some techniques that have worked in the past: stretching, foam rolling, ice, and analgesic gel, and see if I can't get it one long run before the 28km Foret des Soignes trail run on October 28th.

new shoes (bright colour makes it easy to spot you in the forest)

Also this week I spotted a bargain guitar at a local hock shop: a US-made Gibson SG Special.  This is the type of guitar used by Duane Allman, Angus Young, Eric Clapton in his Cream days, Robbie Krieger of the Doors, Pete Townshend during the Tommy and Live at Leeds days, etc., so it has been something I've been looking out for for a long time.

Malcolm did a cleanup and a setup of the bridge and nut yesterday, and then we tried it out, using other guitars as a comparison.  I purchased it with the understanding that I would sell a couple of my other guitars to make room for it, but upon playing it and comparing it with others, Malcolm is not convinced that is it the SG for us.  I have to agree, but am going to wait until Benoit has a look at it, and we examine the pickups.  The sound just isn't making me excited; my Canadian-made Godin guitar from 1997 is infinitely more versatile and sounds better, and it has a much nicer neck, despite costing half what this Gibson did.  So I am anticipating that we will be reselling this SG shortly, with hope of eventually finding one that sounds and feels better.

Thanksgiving / Villers la Ville Race / getting ready for renovations / Grosse Messe

Last week, Malcolm told us that he was going to come home for the weekend, so late Friday afternoon I popped over to the Delhaize next door and picked up some food for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Here in Belgium they do raise turkeys for food, but whole turkeys are rarely available except around the USA Thanksgiving Day or at Christmastime.  Instead one can usually find whole turkey breasts or turkey legs year-round, and that is what I bought.  Two turkey legs are usually easy to cook in a circular or oval roasting pan, and as they are all dark meat there is no issue with some portions overcooking or drying out.

Pumpkin pies are not usually part of the Belgian diet, but fortunately there was a special on a variety of squash and pumpkin varieties, including some fantastic pie pumpins for around 2 EUR each.  I bought one on speculation, and peeled and cubed it.  Boiling in slightly salted water for twenty minutes softened it completely so that it could be pureed, and then when spiced and mixed with a can of sweetened condensed milk and a couple of eggs, one pumpkin served to make one pie.  Maggie used the shortening pie crust from Edna Staebler's Food that really schmecks cookbook, a present from Bruce many years ago, and really it turned out marvellously.  We rounded out the table with mustard green beans, and oven roasted parsnips and carrots.

Saturday we had an early start, with Lawrence, Jan and a number of other running friends starting the 30k at the Abbey of Villers-la-Ville at 9h30.  It was a cool day to run, which is nice; I generate a lot of heat when exercising and prefer cool days to hot ones.

at the start of the race in the Abbey
(Matthew with blue hat, Lawrence in green sleeves, and Eric in orange hat)

Our pace was a comfortable six minutes/kilometer, and all went well until the 15km mark when suddenly my right knee started to hurt.  It was that scary problem, tendonitis or "runner's knee", something that I've never felt in my right knee at all.  I had it a bit in the left knee last summer but this incidence came on very suddenly.  I decided to stop at the halfway mark, and wait for my friends at the finish.  It's not too terribly disappointing, as I ran 29km two weeks ago, but I was looking forward to bettering my time.  I'll have another chance at the end of the month when I run the 28km Foret de Soignes race, which is on my "home" terrain; with Lawrence I've run pretty much every bit of the trail at various times, in both directions, so it should hold no surprises.

worn out shoes

Why knee pain now?  I realise that my current shoes have clocked almost 1000 Km; usually it is recommended that one changes them every 300-500 miles, which translates to roughly every 500-800km.  Not only does the tread wear change the angle of the foot hitting the ground, but the shock absorption of the shoe progressively deteriorates with use, and the shape of the shoe also changes, so it's not surprising that I ran into trouble.  I have duck paddles for feet, and so I need quite wide shoes; the only ones that I've found that don't pinch are Nikes, and these aren't so easy to come by.  Jogging Plus in Ottignies didn't have them in stock, but I called the Brussels store near the Troon metro stop, and they will order them in for the end of this week, so I hope to get out for a break-in run on Saturday or Sunday.

Maggie's 5km run started at 11:00, and she made quite good time.  Clare ran a fast 17km, and our other friends also had successful races; Jan came in 5th in the 30km! Afterwards we regrouped at the Hammers for a nice rabbit stew and social time, and then on Sunday morning Maggie and Bryan and Kiana and I went to Tongres for some antiques shopping.  I have been looking for old marble that we can use underneath the incoming woodstove, and was hoping to find a large armoir with a marble counter top there that I might convert.  As well we were looking for wall sconces in a style that are more in keeping with the age of the house.  We did find a couple of inexpensive sconces but no luck on the marble.  I found some at a local marbrerie but it is quite expersive, and there is a delay of a couple weeks on the order.  I am going to the woodstove place on Friday to look at some "schistes", which I understand to be naturally striated plates of rock that may be suitable from a colour tone point of view to protect the floor, and retain some of the heat the stove generates.  We hope to have that installed before Maggie leaves for the October holiday.  Certainly it's needed; we finally fired up the gas furnace this weekend, and tested out all of the radiators to try to take the chill off the house.  Water radiators are fine but we can't wait for the direct heat from wood.

Maggie leaves on the last Saturday of October; she is going to visit with her parents at Skootamatta for that week, and we just received news that Duncan will also be going to Canada, but not to Skootamatta... he's meeting my parents and my nephew Henry in Montreal, and the four of them will fly down to Orlando, and spend the week visiting Walt Disney World, NASA, Legoland, and Universal Studios.  Lucky travellers!  I guess that Malcolm and I will be here together for the week; it coincides with a lot of work to get the roof replaced and insulated so I'm sure that we'll find something to do.

in rehearsal in the Sint-Geertruikerk in Leuven

This week I have been spending time reviewing the Grosse Messe für Bach und Luther in preparation for the concert tomorrow evening in Leuven.  We had our first rehearsal yesterday afternoon and evening in the church at the abbey in Leuven, and I was happy to see many familiar players in the orchestra, and familiar singers as well...  it will be an interesting project, and we will perform it again next week in Brussels.

Today I have to get to the commune house to pick up a permit for the refuse container that will be required to dispose of the old roof tiles, and then head off on the train to Leuven for our next rehearsal this evening...

Ayman Jarjour and friends; housewarming; Luxembourg celebrations

"Komm, süsses Kreuz" from Bach's Matthäuspassion

with Ayman Jarjour, guitar, and Geraldine Coop-Denilauler, 'cello

Saturday was a busy day but we managed everything pretty well.  I had a brief rehearsal with Marie-Claude Roy in town, then drove to get my hair cut at my favourite barber.  Then I stopped by some specialty food shops to get things for the party on Sunday, and drove to Ben's shop to borrow a guitar; our guitar arrangement of the Schubert song Die Post from his cycle Winterreisse was a tone too high, so we used another guitar and simply tuned it a tone down.

Die Post

I was quite eager to sing with Ayman for the first time, but the other musicians also played tremendously well.  Our whole family attended this concert, and I was particularly happy that Malcolm was there to see and hear the classical guitars, and the 'cello, and also a great performance by flautist Wendy Quinlan.  He has started a quartet with some violin and piano players at his school, and has started playing flute again, so I am hoping this concert will inspire him to explore new musical projects.

the lamp is lit and the flag is flying for our party

Sunday we spent the morning and early afternoon tidying up and getting things ready.  Maggie and I made a ton of hummous, and Duncan his signature guacamole, and there were lots of vegetables cut up, and many cheeses and smoked salmon to put out on the table.  The guests started arriving around 16:00 and soon we had 90 people in the house and garden!  Amazingly that is more guests than we had at our wedding reception 20 years ago.  I realise now that I would have done well to have hired a couple of high school students to walk around with trays and bottles of cava, or to staff a bar area.

photos in the garden

We were really astonished with people's generosity; they brought so many plants that I will have a big day of gardening ahead of me today, to plant azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, tea roses, as well as many tulip and crocus bulbs.  People also brought lots of food to eat and many bottles to open, as well as things like placemats, or candelabras, or tea towels.  Really we are very blessed with generous friends.  We were able to visit with most of them, albeit briefly, but we are happy that now they have seen our new house and know where we live!  We also had a nice visit making new friends with the four families of neighbours that we invited.  One of our neighbours, Johan, is an architect, and he was happy to show us some old postcards of the Chaussée de Louvain that he had found during his researches at the City Hall.  One postcard from 1936 confirms the something that another neighbour Jacqueline had told us, that our house was the first built on this side of the street... 

There were no untoward incidents apart from the breaking of one wine glass, and the knocking over of a flower pot, which survived; no one slipped or fell.  We were very lucky that the weather held off, and there was only a drop or two of rain around 18:00 that swiftly passed.  Bryan and Kiana and Lawrence and Tiffany brought us firewood and a fire pit, and as the evening went on Bryan and Lawrence fired it up.

By then the party was thinning out a little bit and Maggie and I had the chance to actually eat something ourselves, and talk a greater length with the remaining guests.  The last few people sat outside around the embers of the fire until around 21:30.  Some of our guests had helped with some of the cleaning up, and we continued with it a little bit, but were pretty tired, and so left most of it for Monday morning.

monday morning glassware sorting

Fortunately we didn't have to buy or rent any glassware or plates, but instead had borrowed some from the church, and from friends, and from Maggie's supplies at school.  It took quite a few dishwasher loads to wash the glasses alone, and I had to hand wash all the beer glasses and the large platters, but it wasn't too much trouble, and I was able to get that done in the morning.

Then I warmed up my voice, and got ready for the driver from Brussels to arrive.  A van with four of the embassy staff and my pianist friend Marie-Claude drove up to the front door promptly at 14:30, and we left for Luxembourg.  The reception was held in a beautiful room in the Cercle Cité, right in the middle of Luxembourg City.  We had a brief sound check, and then Marie-Claude and I took a little stroll around the square to pass some time, and had a coffee and chatted until it was time for the reception to begin.

It was really nice to see Ambassador Nicoloff again, and to present the national anthems.  I also had some nice conversations with the Canadian embassy staff member who is planning some of the first world war centenary commemorations; we'll see if I get a chance to participate in some of those.  Then it was back into the embassy car for a long and sleepy drive through quite heavy rains to get home to Wavre.

Canada 150 reception in the beautiful Cercle Cité

Yesterday I went for a 15km run with Lawrence, my first in about ten days.  I was feeling pretty creaky but have to get ready for Saturday's Villers la Ville 30km race.  As well this week will involve learning the Bach Luther Mass; we have rehearsals next week, and then a performance next Thursday...