The end of February approacheth

I have not been keeping up with my blog posts at all, but a lot of that has been because there have been people around.  I usually write posts to clarify my thoughts and do some advance planning, but when family and friends are here I just don't have the mental focus to really do much writing.

A few days after I wrote my last post the Carnaval holiday week started, and Maggie had visitors from Canada: a childhood friend Karen Wilson, and her daughter Paige.  They live in Leamington Ontario, where Karen's husband Andrew is an Anglican clergyman, and this year Karen and Paige had a holiday together to Belgium and to the UK.  The Hammers were off skiing in Les Contamines for the week so I spent quite a lot of the week out there with Duncan, or on my own here in the house while Maggie was away with our visitors.  The chickens, cats, and dog were all happy to have us around.  In particular Duncan spent a lot of time with the two little kittens, Aia and Pemba... they are super cute.

I ran three times in the week I was in Bousval, and managed to work on my speed on the 8km route, finally working it down to 5:30 per km by the end of the week, and fitting in 8km in under 45 minutes.  It feels good to get back at running again after slacking off a bit since the Brussels Trail 29km at the end of October.

We saw Malcolm a little bit, but he spent most of his week off in Brussels, working on clearing up a workspace at Ben's, and making molds for his side project, an F-style mandolin.  Then on Friday of the holiday week he flew off to Geneva and then took the train to Lausanne, where he and another younger member of the St. Andrew's congregation were attending the annual Youth Presbytery for the weekend, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the church.  Pretty nice!

Meanwhile I had my hands full keeping the Hammer house warm, as we were experiencing a bit of a cold snap.  Their wood stove / cooker is great for warming the main living areas of the house, but on Tuesday I woke up to find that it was 13 degrees in the bedroom.  Unfortunately the heating oil tank had run dry!  Bad timing.  I went and scrounged up some 10L gas cans and went to fill them with fuel; I didn't realise it but heating oil in this country (they call it mazout) is the same as diesel.  So I tried adding 30L of diesel to see if that would top up the tank enough for the furnace to start, but no luck.  We had to wait until the fuel delivery truck could make it out there on Thursday morning to put 2000L of mazout in the tank.  Once the bubbles had settled out I tried again to light the furnace, and on the fourth or fifth try it worked!

Karen and Paige flew out to the UK on Friday, so we had the rest of the weekend to ourselves.  On Monday the electrician came and had a look at things, and gave me some advice.  He recommended some good products and also told me that there was no problem running cables myself and installing outlets and light fixtures for the attic circuits.  He suggested that I do that first and get things finished upstairs, and then he will then come and do the connections at the main breaker panel.  As well, he made some suggestions to help bring the existing wiring up to specifications; those improvements will likely be done piece by piece, one room at a time.  The main floor and basement are all fine, but it's really the first floor (bedroom level) that needs the most work.  Also on Monday the stove repair guy came and replaced the broken knobs on our gas stove, so we were ready to celebrate by trying out the rotisserie to make some chicken!

My plumbing / heating guys were back as well that week on Wednesday and Thursday; I had to do some careful demolition of the bulkhead in the front entranceway in preparation for their removal of all of the lead drain pipe and installation of all new PVC drainpipe.  Now the drains aren't running so slowly, and the plumbing is much neater.  I will have to build some bulkheads around the new pipes in the hall, and in both the existing and the new bathroom, but that's no problem.

I had to ask Bryan to let the workers in though, as I wasn't home...  Maggie drove me into Brussels Midi for 6h52 to catch a Thalys high-speed train to Amsterdam, and I spent the morning in a café, waiting for the right time to go to the opera house and warm up my voice ahead of my audition.  It was funny being in that building again, after having spent so much time rehearsing and performing in Prokofiev's The Gambler there in December of 2013, but I was happy to finally have the chance to sing two quite long arias on the stage.  My role in 2013 was so tiny I never got to hear what my voice sounded like in the hall, so it was a new experience.  It went pretty well, and afterwards I went to the Hermitage museum close by and took in a temporary exhibition of Dutch Masters paintings, on loan from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Most of these were collected by Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century, but there were quite a few Rembrandts that I had never seen, plus many works by his contemporaries and disciples.  I particularly liked the work of the "Caravaggistes", Dutch and Flemish painters who had visited Rome and emulated the style of Caravaggio.  I took a late train back home, and got into Brussels a little after 22h where Maggie met me with the car.

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (1617)
by Caravaggist Gerard von Honthorst

Thursday I ran again with Bryan and Lawrence, this time taking them on the Wavre route that Maggie and I go on.  We struck off the normal track and in the end were able to make up 17km, which was really great.  It was a beautiful day for running, and afterwards we had a good lunch here together.  I was happy to be able to host for a change, as there have been many great run-and-lunch days in the Foret des Soignes near Lawrence's old house, and others at the Hammer household.

Friday it was a repeat of the early morning trip to Gare Midi (thanks again Maggie) but this time I decided to do my museum trip right away, and made it into the Rijksmuseum by around 9:20.  Amazingly the place was nearly empty, and the famous Gallery of Honour, with Rembrandt's Night's Watch at the end, was clear.

So I ambled around and worked my way through all of the second floor without having to stumble over a million tourists.  As always, I find Rembrandt's monumental paintings of large groups of soldiers or wealthy traders relatively uninteresting, but prefer to see smaller paintings, and connect often with those by much less famous artists.  I really like this painting, done by the sibling painters Gerard and Gesina ter Borch, as a memorial to their brother Moses, who served in the Dutch navy against the English, and died in battle in 1667.

Memorial portrait of Moses ter Borch (1667-1669)

I even had time to look upstairs at the modern stuff on the third floor, and also made a pretty good tour of the first floor, with its Van Goghs and Goyas.  I stuck my head in the ground floor too and looked at some of the medieval art, but really had to watch the time, so was out of there by around 12h30. 

This audition was for a conductor of a Bach and Handel society, who also is a teacher at the Amsterdam Conservatory.  He had reserved a room for me that had an organ tuned to 415 Hz, and made sure that I could get in there and warm up in advance.  After getting settled in and warmed up, I had some salad in the cafeteria for lunch, and then spent quite some time wandering around the conservatory waiting for the time to arrive when I would sing, and looking out the windows.  There was a big construction crew driving huge concrete piles into the earth, presumable for the foundation of the future building.  I was reminded of the pile driver as a comedic device in Bugs Bunny cartoons, and thought that my grandfather would have been very interested to see how they construct tall buildings in the Netherlands.

I had contacted a student organist to play for the audition and she did a pretty good job.  I feel that I sang quite well, and did a recit and aria from the Matthew Passion (Am abend da es kühle war / Mache dich, mein Herze, rein), a recit and aria from Messiah (Behold, I tell you a mystery / The Trumpet Shall Sound) and then an aria from the Christmas Oratorio (Grosser Herr).  We also worked a little bit on one of the arias, and talked a lot.  I felt like the conductor and I had a good personal connection, and an artistic compatibility, and he spent quite some time with me, so I am hoping that will lead to something. 

Hanneke's Boom

Afterwards I decided to celebrate with a glass of beer, and picked a very circuitous route to a very cool bar called Hanneke's Boom.  Normally it would be very easy to reach, but the bridge that normally connects the peninsula on which the conservatory is located to the bar has been demolished, and the new one hasn't yet been built, so one has to follow the signs and take footpaths that criss-cross under and over the railway bridges to get there.  But it's worth it for the very cool ambiance.  I loved the big copper boiler that had been converted into a woodstove, and the outdoor toilets, just like ours on the back verandah!

After that busy week we really took it easy on Saturday, and had a celebratory pizza dinner to try out the gas stove's high heating capabilities.  I bought an oven thermometer to help us calibrate the temperature, and with a pizza stone we had it up to around 235 degrees celsius.  I am wondering if there is a way to coax a little more heat out of the oven but for now it was really fine, the pizzas were great.  I made three smallish ones on Saturday night and left three more balls of dough to rest overnight on the cold verandah, and made them on Sunday for this week's lunches.

As well Maggie and Duncan did a pastry crust together and did a peach custard pie for dessert.

Sunday morning we did get up early and went into Brussels to attend services at St. Andrew's for the first time in a month, so it was good to see our church friends again.

Yesterday Bryan, Lawrence and I braved -5 celsius and blowing snow conditions to run in Bousval, this time making 21km, my longest run since October.  My hips were aching pretty badly, but I wore my knee straps and fortunately didn't feel even a twinge of tendonitis, which is a great sign.  Kiana did her 14km training run with Osa the dog, and then got the lunch going.  Duncan had a journée pedagogique, so he had no classes, and came along to see the kittens and the dog and to play some pool with us after the run.  We caught a lift with Kiana back into Wavre in the later afternoon when she came to pick up the children from school.

Today the plumbers came and did more work on the heating systems, and finished installing the sink in the attic bathroom.  They will be back tomorrow to finish up...  here are some photos...

new radiator in the south attic room 

another even larger one in the north room

new towel-rack radiator in the bathroom

new toilet and sink in the attic

Pesto presto!

This morning I'm waiting for the SMEG appliance repairman to arrive, to replace two of the control knobs on our "new" stove.  The stovetop works fine but we also want to be able to use the oven.  After the repair guy is done, I'm going out with Bryan to pick up another trailer load of wood for them; it's their turn, and since they bought their new wood cookstove they have been burning it pretty much continuously, so their supply of fuel is getting low.

Kiana regularly places a bulk order for parmigiano-reggiano cheese, and a number of her friends join in on the order.  It's really delicious stuff, aged for three years, and the price is much lower than if you bought it at the regular grocery.

As well, this week she put in an order for five kilogrammes of fresh basil, imported from Israel, and she offered me one kilogram to make a batch of fresh pesto.

It took quite some time just to process one batch, which we each did yesterday afternoon.  I would imagine she will be busy all day today making three more batches to go in their freezer... Here are some photographs from the process, including a recipe at the end.

toasting the pine nuts

smashed and peeled garlic

washing the basil leaves in a weak solution of baking soda to remove any residues

grinding the parmigiano

belgian measuring cup (the glass has a line indicating 33 cl)

toasted pine nuts processed to a butter consistency

chopping the basil leaves

final mixing by hand

penne al pesto

bon appetit!

the leftover jars of pesto for the deep freeze

Kiana's recipe (I tripled it)

Happy February; the return of the light*

* please note: I am reposting something that I wrote on Facebook on the 2nd of February, for those of my blog readers who are not facebook users.

Today would have been the 93rd birthday of my grandmother Rita. (We miss you, grandma.)
She was comforted her whole life by her strong faith. What is interesting is that her birthday coincides with one of the oldest festivals in Christianity, and indeed is most likely far older than the religion she practiced. Here in Belgium, and in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg, La Chandeleur (fête des chandelles) celebrates the return of the light, as symbolised by the presentation of the infant Christ to the temple, forty days after Christmas. This festival is recorded to have been celebrated as early as 312 C.E...

But there were two ancient Roman festivals from around the same time of year that inspired the early Christians: Lupercalia, which celebrated the ancient Roman god Faunus (a god of fertility, and a defender of the sheep from attack by wolves), and Feralia, which celebrated the spirits of the dead. These festivals were suppressed by the Pope in the fifth century, and replaced with the Christian celebrations of Candlemas, and on the 14th of February with the feast of St. Valentine.
There is some idea that the ancient pagan churches were oriented so that the light of the rising sun would enter the temple sometime around this time of year. What happened if the priest saw his shadow is anyone's guess...

The first week of February has a lot of important birthdays in it for me: it starts with the birthday of my late grandmother Rita on February 2nd, continues with my youngest sister Emily on February 4th, and then has my middle sister Heather on February 5th, which is coincides with the birthday of my late Grandfather Delbert (50 years apart).

We have had some nice clear days recently, that are in keeping with the return of the light, but it has also been colder the last couple of weeks than it has been all winter. We have really been glad for the woodstove as I haven't insulated the attic yet. There is a plastic membrane which helps a bit, and I have enclosed the top of the staircase with a wooden airlock structure which also helps, but still it's nice to have the radiant heat. Our living room has instantly become a much more social place.

Last week Bryan and I went and did a run out to pick up a load of wood with his trailer; this time it was my turn to receive the load of wood, as I had completely run out. This wood is in larger pieces and seems more dense; for the first time it has been possible to load up the stove in the evening before going to bed, shut it down, and awaken to enough embers still smouldering in the morning to be able to add more kindling without completely relaying a fire. As well we decided to try stacking it just inside the garage door so that it will dry out and burn more efficiently; we found stacking it at the back of the garden meant that it got pretty damp with the rain.

Building a lean-to at the back of the garden may well be one of my spring projects, as there is lots more wood to come; each load of the trailer is around 1.8 cubic metres, so that means that there are about 25 more cubic metres for Bryan and I to divide. I don't think that I want to devote that much space in my basement just for wood storage!



We have also had a couple of runs in the Bousval forest over the last few days, once with just Bryan and I, and then this Saturday with Kiana, Maggie, and Lawrence. I am very happy to have done nearly 15km in under 6 minutes per kilometre again. It's time to start looking at the different races that are coming up this year, and decide which ones I'm going to register for. I had some knee tendonitis last season that sidelined me for a bit, but I've bought some straps that limit the movement of the patella, and they seem to have worked. I'm wondering if 30km is my personal limit; there are races that are slightly longer but I am not sure if I need to run further than 30km. Still, that extra 12.19 km required to get a marathon distance is pretty enticing!

We've been doing a lot of bricolage (tinkering) around the house. During one of my infrequent trips into Brussels I stopped at Les Tissus du Chien Vert, one of the biggest fabric stores in Brussels, and picked up some nice fabric to make another set of curtains for the bay window. This warm golden yellow fabric is nice, as it contrasts well with the blue of the walls and the red of the outer curtain, and echoes the warm colours of the dining room opposite.



As well I'm always on the lookout for more light fixtures that are more in keeping with the age of the house, and I found a few this past week that can be rewired and used to replace the very modern and frankly cheap-looking ones that are currently there. I think that these ones will look good with a fabric shade, in the front hallway. Or I might not use a shade at all and just use some of those "Edison" style designer LED bulbs that look old-fashioned. We'll have to see.






On the subject of light, I also found this antique Belgian miner's lamp. I'm not sure if it is supposed to burn kerosene or maybe gasoline, but it seems to work well with ordinary kerosene. It has various numbers stamped on it and is very old. The glass hurricane on it has Val St. Lambert etched onto it, so it seems that this very famous cristallerie made much more than just wine glasses back in the day. It will provide a nice ambiance while dining al fresco when the weather improves.

As you can see in the above photo, the lawn has been very green. I noticed last week that there were snowdrops already visible in the garden, and the lawn is showing a very nice surprise of wild primroses, growing in many places in the grass.





I mentioned before that Malcolm has been getting very good results in his studies. This past week he started doing some tool-making, and built a binding cutter to use in the assembly of his guitar. I find this very exciting, and the birds-eye maple he used for the tool is beautiful. I hope that he'll make some nice wooden marking gauges for me!

I have been continuing with the cleaning of the attic walls, and it is slow and dirty work, that produces an ungodly amount of dust. But the good news is that I am finished the longest wall, as well as one of the two slightly shorter end walls. This leaves the other end wall, and the wall on the street side which is interrupted by the window, and is quite short in height.



Today I have the plumbing/heating guys in to do some installation of a gas line in the kitchen, a re-plumbing of the dishwasher, and replace the tap in the kitchen. I bought a gently used gas oven/range made by the rather posh Italian company SMEG (Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla) and the fellows are going to put it in to replace the crappy electric one that was here when we moved in. I absolutely hate the cast iron stove top, and the electric oven was also not well regulated. As Malcolm, Maggie and I all are quite avid bakers it needed doing.


the "new" oven/stove


the old cooktop


new kitchen tap

Ordinarily I could do all of these things apart from the gas line, but we have an electric hot water heater underneath the kitchen sink, with some rather confusing connections, so I'm happy to let the experts handle it.

Yesterday afternoon all four of us had appointments with our opthalmologist: Duncan has good vision in one eye but the other is requiring correction, so it's glasses for him. Malcolm's eyes haven't changed from his last checkup, but Maggie's prescription has changed a bit so she needs a new set of glasses. My eyes are still within normal limits, seven or eight years after the laser surgery, but I've noticed that it's a bit tricky to see fine work; when I was doing detail work while guitar building I found in necessary to sometimes use magnifiers. The doctor wrote me out a prescription in case I want to get specs, but said that they were purely for convenience... I think I might get some glasses made anyway, so that I can use them also for protection when working in dusty conditions or when running in the forest. That's something you don't think about when you've worn glasses since being a young teenager: you automatically have something to protect your eyes.

On the way home we stopped off to pick up a small bathroom sink, mirror, light and soapdish set made in Rouen. I had a look online, and this type of hand-painted blue porcelain seems to date from the 1940s, which makes it a good fit for our new attic bathroom.



I wrote last time that I've agreed to come sing in an operetta in Toronto in April... Bruce was at a performance of the same company last weekend, and it would seem that the producers wasted no time in getting the publicity printed...