Hot days / at the beach / road trip UK / wedding bells / a new gig

On Thursday morning we left fairly early to try and beat the heatwave by going to the nature reserve De Nekker near Mechelen, as we did around the same time last year.  We were there just after it opened and I felt that it was less crowded than last time.  Still, well worth the EUR 4,50 per person entrance price.

We took along a frisbee, the cribbage game, and books to read, along with a picnic lunch.  A good time was had by all but it was pretty warm when we got back to the car: the thermometer read 40 degrees C!  Some of our friends reported even higher temperatures, and the official record was set at 40,7 degrees in Uccle, Brussels.  It would seem that last year's heatwave was not an anomaly: we have had two already this spring and summer and it looks like extreme weather is the "new normal".

We were home in enough time to cook a bunch of food for a nice dinner together, and to pack for the early departure of 7h the next morning, to drive to Calais and catch the ferry to Dover.  We were on our way to celebrate the wedding of Andrew and Julia Gardner's eldest daughter, Bethany, to Timothy, a soon-to-be Anglican priest.

We have always either flown to the UK, or taken the channel tunnel train, so we've never had the chance to take the ferry, as our elders did in the days before the tunnel was built.  But I must say that I found the kilometres of tall fences topped with razor wire quite depressing, and a bit menacing.  You don't really get exposed to that when you are on the train, but it's obvious here that the ferry terminal complex, at least on the Calais side, is built like a huge prison, to keep undocumented immigrants out.  It was a sobering start to our trip.

finally getting onto the ferry at Calais

Once we were underway, it was a much more relaxed atmosphere, and Maggie and I went outside to enjoy the cool sea breeze and sunny day.  It was a calm and pleasant trip across la Manche as it is called in French.

I didn't see any bluebirds (unless Maggie's blouse makes her one) but the white cliffs were striking even from a long way away.

Once out of the ferry and onto the highway that would lead us to Bath, we noticed that it was lunchtime, and started to think about where we should stop to eat the sandwiches that Maggie had packed.  We saw a sign for something called "Samphire Hoe", and took a quick turn through a narrow tunnel that had been bored through the chalk of the cliffs...

The Samphire Hoe Country Park looks as if it has been there for a long time, but in fact, it's a relatively new piece of land that was created from the roughly five million cubic metres of chalk marl that was excavated during the digging of the Channel Tunnel.

It's a gorgeous nature preserve with lots of wild grasses and flowers, and there are tons of insects and birds that were either placed their after the land was reclaimed from the sea, or have arrived in the years since it was created.  It's beautiful and quiet and peaceful, and I highly recommend that if you happen to be in the area of Dover you should give it a look.

The traffic for the rest of the journey was diabolical: the 290km is roughly the distance from Toronto to Gananoque, Ontario, and it took us over six hours to drive that distance due to the huge lineups on the motorways.  I have come to learn that traffic jams on the southern roads are a normal thing, and we had budgeted some wiggle room, but as it was we only just checked into the bed and breakfast and made it to the rehearsal dinner party in time.

a happy reunion of former St. Andrew's Brussels friends

Andrew has moved to Dundee, and our friend Oliver (just to my right) is now in Dublin with his family, so it was great to get together again.  The party was informal and relaxed with a few speeches from friends and family...

Tim and Bethany (centre, smiling at each other)

We had a lovely time catching up with everyone and meeting new friends from the groom's family, and walked back to our bed and breakfast.

Our host Polly was really nice; she gave us a good breakfast and an interesting conversation, and pointed me in the direction of the Bath Skyline trail, a 10 kilometre circuit of the hills that make a kind of bowl around the city of Bath.  Maggie wanted to check out the fabric stores and also received my suggestion of looking for the British Trappist beer Tynt Meadow, and we walked a little bit together before parting ways for an hour or two.

panorama near the top of the skyline trail

a manor house up in the hills

It was an awesome run, with lots of steep hills giving an total elevation climb over the 11 or so kilometres of around 340m.  All of that up and down meant that my heart rate was pretty high, much more so than it usually is on my Wavre and Bousval runs.

I was home in time to quickly iron my shirt, shower and get into my kilt for the wedding.  Maggie wore her poppy dress...

happily married

We didn't take any photographs during the wedding, which was quite a long and old-fashioned one.  It lasted almost two hours; had several responsory readings, two anthems, a sermon, and communion.  But the service had lots to keep our attention and so didn't seem that long.  Saint Stephen's Church was built in the middle 19th century and is a nice medium-sized church that is beautifully decorated.  The place was half full of people but full of smoke from the censer, as they were pretty enthusiastic with high anglican ritual.  Tim is nearly finished his studies to become an Anglican Priest, and the choir was supplemented with a number of his friends from Theological College, so it was an energetic and enthusiastic service.

We had about 45 minutes before the reception, so everyone walked down the hill and stopped at the Saracen's Head pub for a pint and a few packets of crisps to share out, before carrying on the reception.

at the pub

Gill, Julie, and Maggie

welcoming the happy couple

lots of young kids playing together at the reception

speeches

We had a great time at the delicious dinner, having conversation and meeting members of Tim's family and Bethany's.  But we made it a relatively early night, as we knew we had an early morning the next day.

We were on the road by around 8h45 and made a short detour to drive past Stonehenge...

And the ancient hill fort of Old Sarum, which is close to what we now know as Salisbury.  It's been occupied from as long ago as 3000 BC, and then had a succession of edifices built there: Picts, Angles, Saxons, and then the Normans: in all likelihood William the Conquerer had the Domesday Book presented to him there in 1086.  We didn't have much time to explore it, but the deep moat and defensive walls were impressive, as was the view of Salisbury nearby. But we didn't have time to go there, but hit the road for Dover.

I don't have any more pictures to show, but it was an uneventful drive back, less time-consuming than the outward leg of the journey.  We stopped about ten kilometres from the docks to buy some hard-to-find British items at the Tesco's, and then made it to the ferry on time, and then were home a bit before 21h.  In retrospect we wished that we had budgeted a few more days on either side of the trip, but that will have to wait for the next time we do a UK tour...

In other news, I received confirmation of something during our journey: I am happy to announce that St. John's International School has engaged my services as the Musical Director of their autumn musical theatre production, Hello Dolly.  It's going to be big, with a cast of maybe ten principals and a chorus of something like 100, drawn from the 3rd to 12th graders at Maggie's school, the staff, and some parent volunteers.  The Artistic director is a dancer so he will do the staging and the choreography, but I will be there for the auditions of the soloist singers, and will give input into the casting choices, will be responsible for working with the soloists and the choral singers on basic singing technique, and also will lead their rehearsals to help them learn the music.  As well I will help with optimising the microphone distribution and will be there to call cues and things during the performance.

It involves around 12 hours per week for the months of September and October and the first two weeks of November, and then my time commitment will be double that (26 hours) for the third week and triple that (38 hours) for the last week.  It's a great opportunity for me, and seems to be the next step in my teaching / coaching / directing evolution.  Certainly Bruce is positive about it: he's always encouraged me to teach or direct, as part of my own artistic development as a soloist, so I'm really looking forward to it... Fortunately I don't have too many performances during that time period, so it should be fine for me to work around them, and I will be done my concerts well before I have to fly to Newfoundland to sing Messiah.

Everybody is busy

Maggie with a test dress

Maggie has been doing lots of sewing this week, and made a test dress to try out a new pattern.  She's happy with how it went and so is doing the finished dress in a lovely poppy fabric.  She should have it ready to wear this weekend, when we will go to Bath to attend the wedding of Andrew and Julia's eldest daughter. 

I have been doing more gardening during the days that it has been cool enough to work... after finishing the back wall I have now gone on to remove nearly all of the ivy from the apple tree and the lilac and elderflower bushes, and found this cute bird's nest up high in the branches.

Yoshi has been suffering a bit from the heat, but he's still wanting to play frisbee.  I ran with him yesterday, early in the day, and he was not very fast at all.  I am going to stop running with him when the temperature is higher than 20 degrees, because it's just too frustrating to have to stop every 500 metres for him to catch up.

Earlier in the week before it got super hot, we did a wood run to take our half of the firewood that we had delivered to Bousval last summer.  We spent some of our time while house-sitting chainsawing it up and stacking it, and now that it has been sitting for over a year it's good and dry.  Some of the larger pieces needed splitting before we put them inside the garage for storage, so I did some therapeutic work with the splitting maul.  Happily my right shoulder handled it just fine.  I can't say how relieved I am that I can throw a ball or swing an axe again!

Fortunately we were able to get all of the wood into the garage before a huge hail, wind, and rainstorm hit...

Fortunately nothing was damaged by the hail; the old part of the pavilion fabric had a couple of small tears but the whole thing held together, and the "toque" section on the cupola that Maggie sewed to replace the old one didn't budge a bit.  Also I was happy that our roof didn't leak, even with such extreme rain and wind.

Duncan and I were encouraged by the initial bubbling of the Abbey-style dubbel (which is still in primary fermentation but will need bottling in another week) so we decided to brew another batch of beer, this time 15 litres' worth.  Maggie prefers strong blonde beers to the brown ones, so we bought a Duvel style blonde from a brewing store near Leuven.  This kit was different as it came with a couple of different types of sugar to add during the initial fermentation, as well as some hop pellets!

We did the mixing up on the Belgian national holiday on the 21st July, but as the weather was a bit warm we had to wait until the next morning before the wort was cool enough to sprinkle the yeast.  If the temperature of the wort is higher than 25 degrees celsius there is a danger that it will kill the yeast.

We are keeping all of the fermenting beer in the basement where the temperature has been pretty steady at 23 degrees.  Ideally it should be a little cooler but we hope it will be ok.

the legal definition of brewing

Maggie and I used to go to a local wine-making place back in the 1990s, where the wine was fermented and bottled in a factory, so you didn't have to store it at your home.  But the legal obligation was that you had to show up to throw the yeast into the "must" (the wine equivalent of the wort) and then you had to do the bottling at the end of the process.  So I made sure that Duncan and I shared this responsibility...

Just down the road from us is a field that sells flowers that you can cut yourself, and you pay into a little piggy bank, based on the honours system.  This time of year it's full of gladiolus, and that is a special flower for us.  It was a variety that my mother grew for the decorations at our wedding back in 1997, and Maggie's late aunt Ina gave us a lovely big watercolour painting of gladiolus as a present, as she was not in good enough health to travel to Skootamatta for the wedding at that time.

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the day that we met, so I took the boys, a vase filled with water, and some secateurs up the street and we chose a few stems to decorate the house.

I did some baking yesterday, but did so in a minimal way so as to avoid heating the house even more than it is already.  English muffins are hard to come by in Belgium, and they make excellent hamburger buns.  I picked up a bunch of mini black angus burgers at the delaize that were on sale for a ridiculously low price, and squished them a little with a plate to make them the right size to fit the "buns".  The "mini" burgers weighed around 60g each, or two ounces, uncooked.  Interestingly, the original MacDonald's hamburger patties (the ones that are now on the kid's menu) were 45g before cooking, so that would mean that these little burgers were perfectly fine.  We ended up serving them up with some aged gouda, squares of cured bacon, a thin slice of beetroot, onions, pickles and mustard.  Very nice on a summer's evening...

Here are a few shots of Malcolm at work on his mandolin today...

here he is cutting a small rabbet at the edge of the top to accept ebony binding

part of the binding rabbet, with the back and point binding already installed

the scroll; the top has not yet been rabetted

In the time that it has taken me to write this blog, Maggie has completed her dress!

Trip to the Somme; Beaumont-Hamel; Westvleteren; brewing with Duncan

On Monday Lawrence and his son came by, and we set out for a road trip.  He successfully managed to navigate the new Westvleteren online beer reservation system, and had an appointment to pick up his two cases of beer at Sint Sixtus between 14:30-15:00.

But first Lawrence planned to travel to the Somme, in search of his great-grand-uncle's gravesite in Ovillers-la-Boisselle, France.  He had never visited the Pozières Memorial Cemetery before, but had done some research online and had some items that the family had received a century ago, and wanted to pay his respects to his fallen relative.

Pozières has a very similar layout to so many other cemeteries in that part of the world... it is nearly identical to the Dud Hill Cemetery where Bruce's great uncle is commemorated, and which we visited a few years ago.  It is a terrible tragedy that so many of these cemeteries and memorials needed to be built.  At this time of year the graves have many beautiful flowers planted around them, and the bees were busy at work.  The peaceful atmosphere contrasted strongly with how I imagine the place would have been a hundred years ago.

The surrounding area was the site of the battle of the Somme, which began on July 1st, 1916, and is regarded as one of the bloodiest battles in human history: more than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or killed in the 140 days of fighting.

Thiepval

Within sight of Pozières is the Thiepval memorial, the largest Commonwealth memorial to the missing in the world.  It commemorates over 72,000 South African and British soldiers who died in battle between July 1916 and March 1918, and who have no known grave.  Other Commonwealth missing-of-the-Somme memorial include Vimy Ridge, Neuve-Chapelle (India), Villers-Bretonneux (Australia), Longueval (New Zealand), and Beaumont-Hamel.

This last monument mentioned above is for members of the Newfoundland Regiment who died on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, and for other First World War Newfoundland forces members whose graves are unknown.  Not all Canadians know the events of the morning of July 1st, 1916, but to put it briefly, it was a horrific disaster for the Newfoundland Regiment.

It is estimated that 22 officers and 758 other ranks were directly involved in the advance, which began at 8:45 that morning.  Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day.  Most of the regiment was dead or dying within 15 minutes of leaving the forward trench: all the officers and slightly under 658 other ranks became casualties.  For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 80%.

It's an event that has had a lasting impact on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador: Memorial University in St. John's is named for the fallen soldiers of the First World War, and the 1st of July may be Canada Day in other provinces, but people in Newfoundland and Labrador celebrate Canada Day only in the afternoon and evening.   During the morning of July first, Memorial Day is observed at the National War Memorial in St. John's and cenotaphs around the province, flying the Union Flag at half staff.  Besides Remembrance Day, this day is the only other day in which the red poppy is officially worn in Canada.

Newfoundland Regiment Memorial at Beaumont-Hamel

The memorial is capped with a bronze caribou statue, and is surrounded by many preserved trenches; the site covers around 25 hectares.  The visitor's centre is quite lovely, and includes a reproduction of a traditional wood-frame Newfoundland style house, joined by a skylight courtyard to a war museum, so symbolise the journey of the soldiers from their homes in Newfoundland and Labrador to the battlefield...

After Beaumont-Hamel we didn't have any more time to explore the battlefield sites, but needed to drive straight up to Sint-Sixtus for the beer pickup.  After such a heavy, serious morning, we needed a snack and a glass of beer in the café there to recover our energy.  After a brief stop at the Sint-Bernardus brewery in Watou, we drove home.

*   *   *

Duncan is continuing with his hour or so of math practice each day, and it seems to be going well.  Unfortunately we don't have the answer key for his textbook exercises but he's redoing the ones that he used during his course work over the last year, and the ones from his exam.  He is going to do some of the additional exercises also.  I have written the parents' association to see if they have any advice on how to get in touch with one of the teachers to see if they can send us the answer key, as the publisher won't let us buy the answers to the exercices unless we are accredited math teachers in the Belgian system.

As Duncan is interested in laboratory science I decided to go ahead and brew some beer with him yesterday.

We opted for a super easy method for this small batch.  We didn't have to grind up any malted barley, or add any hops, but instead just bought the malt extract in a litre can, with a sachet of yeast included.  We didn't even need to boil the wort, just warm up the malt extract for a while in a pot of warm water, then mix it in with roughly eight litres of water and 500 grammes of sugar.  However I was traditional enough to do a little warming in the big copper maslin pan.

I had hoped to go to my local brewing store to buy a 10L primary fermenter, but unfortunately they were closed for holidays.  Fortunately Lawrence had a couple of smaller brewing kits, and lent me two six litre brewing vessels, so we split the wort into two halves.

Primary fermentation takes around two weeks for an abbey-style dubbel, and then the bottle fermentation should take another six to eight weeks, ideally a bit longer.  I think it might be ready to drink in the first week of October.

Duncan and I also collaborated on dinner, which was a salade Niçoise.  Maggie prefers salmon to tuna in the recipe, and this time we tried something a little different with the salmon fillets: we dredged them in a mixture of some grated parmigiano that was left over from Maggie's pasta carbonara a couple of days ago, a little flour, pepper, and oregano, and then quickly pan-fried the fillets in a little olive oil.

Garden work

the back wall before

and after yard work

This past week our neighbour to the right side went to town on our common hedge with a pair of secateurs, and rather aggressively cut the lilacs down to around 150 cm height.  She is frankly not a very communicative person, and we would have been happy had she talked to us first... plus I am pretty sure that the rules for the height of a common hedge is a maximum of 200cm or two metres.

I did remark to her that we would appreciate it if there was some issue, that she could just talk to us... she mentioned that the ivy vines that were growing from behind the old composter were a problem, and the owner of the building with the brick wall had complained.  So I borrowed Christophe's ladder and yanked them all down.  The trunks were huge, some of them as big around as my ankle, so it was a challenge to clear them all out.

I also removed a hugely overgrown ivy infestation from the apple tree, which you can see close to the pavilion in the second photo above.  We received a lot of nice apples from it last year, and this year it's producing even more fruit. I suggested to our neighbour that we could wait until we harvested the fruit before trimming the tree too aggressively, and in the meantime borrowed Bryan's hedge trimmer and did some more cutting of our common bushes, just so that I could ensure that they were at two metres.  I don't want it to become a huge issue, as it's important to try and get along when you are living in a city with neighbours close by.

Our other neighbour in the row of houses lent us his wood mulcher, and so for the last couple of days we've been grinding up the pruned bits of wood and vine, and making a big pile of green mulch that we'll layer in with organic kitchen waste.  There will be more mulch after we take on the left side hedge, but that's something that will have to wait a bit, as we can't use the hedge trimmer or the mulcher on a Sunday.

We have to reorganise the entire composting area anyway, because we decided to take apart the composter and see how the organics inside it had come along.  The chickens had a field day with all of the grubs and insects and worms that were turned over in the process.  To our great pleasure there is a ton of finished compost, far more than we can use this year.  I built a riddling frame and so we've been taking out the larger bits of uncomposted wood and then sieving the resulting soil even further, and storing the final product in large garbage barrels.  It's a bit late to start a vegetable garden this year but the compost has been spread onto the front garden, and we've used it to transplant our houseplants into larger pots.

Yesterday Lawrence and Eden came for a visit.  Duncan took care of babysitting Eden while Lawrence and I ran a fairly brisk 14km, and then Lawrence carried on and ran that loop a second time while I came home.  The worst of my cold is over but there is still a bit of lingering sinus congestion, so I wasn't up for the longer distance.  We had a nice charcoal bbq dinner together to finish the day.

Malcolm has been working for Christophe a couple of days a week, helping out with the more labour-intensive cabinetry installations.  In between he's been working on his mandolin...  That has required some work rehabilitating the wooden bench vise on the old workbench, and he's also had to make a bunch of spool clamps using threaded steel rod, discs that he cut out of plywood, wingnuts, washers, adhesive cork, and epoxy glue.  These clamps are used to hold the back and top of the mandolin together with the sides (or ribs) during the gluing process, as you can see here...

 You can see photos of his progress at the following Instagram link:

https://www.instagram.com/malcolmrosezadow/

Meanwhile Duncan has been doing around an hour of math exercises nearly every day to prepare for his examen de passage at the end of the summer, and working away at his model-making hobby.  Maggie has made good progress on a summer dress, but today is also working out a cover for the cupola top of the pavilion...

As you can see from the second gardening photo at the top of this post, the grass in the back yard is pretty dry; we fortunately have had a couple of flash rainstorms over the last couple of days, the first in weeks, and the temperatures are more moderate than they were at the end of June.  But we really need a long slow rain to soak the ground and help the grass recover.

I got back at working in the attic this past week, and did some demolition of the old marble lintel, removal of old mortar, and finished framing up the wall on the side of the future study room that faces the street.  As well I've finalised some drawings of the space with the placement of the electrical receptacles, and made some decisions on the various wall finishes.  I was hemming and hawing quite a bit around the reinforcement of the wood framing where the radiators need to go; these wooden structures must be very robust as the radiators are very heavy, especially when filled with water, but I think I've figured out a suitable solution.

I have some interesting things coming up over the next little while artistically.  I have a voice lesson next week with two students that were referred to me by another colleague; they are both high baritones and it would seem that I have a bit of a reputation as a good technician when it comes to singing the top of my voice.  It's great to have support and a positive reference from colleagues, and I hope that I can help these two singers.

Secondly, I have a meeting in a week for a project job doing a little bit of singing teaching in the area... I don't want to jinx it yet by saying too much about it, but stay tuned, and hopefully I'll have some news soon.