Sofa covers and pint glasses

Belgium is on the same latitude as Siberia, I learnt after reading an article in the Brussels Bulletin today. The same article noted that, on the Summer Solstice, the sun in Belgium set at 21.59, but by the time of the Winter Solstice, the sun will fall below the horizon as early as 16.38. So it’s good timing then that Boyfriend and I have been preparing our flat for winter, adding as much cosiness as we can.

Last weekend, as the sun was burning hot outside, but a chilly air hung around in the shadows, we wandered through the ‘Braderie’ market in Saint Gilles. In typical Belgian spirit, roads had been closed so that Saint Gilles locals could set up their own market stalls and empty out their unwanted rusty knives, scarves with holes in and broken watches. But among the junk is the occasional gem that really will make life better. Pint glasses, for example, are difficult to find in your average home-shop like Casa, but we found some that will now allow Boyfriend to fit all of the contents of a beer bottle into one glass. Even less reason to pause an episode of the Peep Show.

Exactly a week later we were on the same flat-improvement mission, this time to find a throw to cover our black leather yuppie I-live-in-a-bachelor-pad-in-East-London style sofa. After receiving a good tip-off from a friend, we headed to the Matonge area of Chaussee de Wavre, where African clothes, food and wig (yes, whole shops devoted to wigs, and there’s not just one of them) shops line the street. In a fabric shop, there were piles of brightly coloured African print covered fabric and we chose, after surprisingly little deliberation, a purple, yellow and blue pattern – perfect for draping over the sofa and adding a new light to the main room.

Lighting was another new addition. On the same Chaussee, next-door to the crazy piano shop where I learnt “jazz piano” that seemed to include a disproportionate number of Celine Dion songs, (“oh, madmoiselle, I know a song you’re going to love learning”, my teacher said opening the song book on to the page of “my heart will go on”; mine stopped), was a shop full of the most normal and the most crazy lamps you could imagine. One looked like it had been removed from a dentists’ chair, and another was a very beautiful, but expensive, floral arrangement that stretched across the shop’s ceiling. We chose a nice long light, which reminds me of a tortoise poking its head out of its shell, or of ET’s neck that grew when he wanted to “phone home”. It took the shop keeper a long time to dissemble the pieces, and I feared it would take Boyfriend three times as long to reassemble it later, having already lost a vital connecting part, but I need not have worried.

Our flat looked great by the time friends came round for a crumble and pumpkin soup (that, we all discovered, makes you fart a lot) party at the end of the weekend.

Summer mania

Ah! The summer is here and Brussels’s Eurocrat grey suits and kamikaze drivers have gone on a long summer holiday. The strings that pull me to my desk have relaxed a little, and finally I can be lazy. Later rising in the morning, slow ‘European’ coffee before work, earlier finishing hours and more time for idle chat.

Boyfriend, however, has decided the summer calm is the perfect time to educate his musical knowledge-lacking girlfriend. When I say musical I don’t mean a broad theme like ‘you must know more classical music’, or more specific like ‘your knowledge on pentatonic scales in the blues is seriously lacking’, i mean one band only – the Beatles. Boyfriend’s true love.

This morning I was woken to ‘please, please me’. An album with some lovely soppy songs like ‘love love me do’ or whatever its title is, but I’m sure you know the song I mean. There I was off in a dreamy world with images of Boyfriend singing me this song as we sit on a cliff top overlooking the gentle sea waves break on the shore below, a field of golden corn swaying softly in the warm breeze behind us, and a huge picnic brought by Boyfriend with luscious food like tasty slices of quiche, cherry tomatoes, cote d’or ice cream and freshly picked cherries.

“And this, in five beats time, is when Ringo starts drumming,” Boyfriend interrupts.

“Really? Cool, yeah, I can really hear the difference,” I say trying to look alert and interested.

“The album cover picture is fascinating too,” he says, and begins to recount the story of the cover picture in detail. I go back to my dream world but, strangely, I like to hear his excited voice in the background telling me lots of Beatles fact and intrigue.

“Did you hear that? You’re not listening are you?”…”I am, it’s just that I’m also concentrating on those chord changes”, I say cleverly. And so he continues.

By the time summer is over, I’m sure my blog entries on return from our summer holiday will be subtly infused with Beatles lyrics. Boyfriend may well become Bad Boy. From Me To You I’ll be telling secrets about Me and My Monkey. I’ll Follow The Sun escaping from Three Cool Cats, that sort of thing.

Thank God he’s not into Metallica.

Insects and thunder

Thunder, lightning, torrential rain! Right now in usually calm Brussels, the weather is dramatic. Boyfriend and I are holed up in our flat staring at the sheets of rain and lightning in amazement. And there’s that delicious earthy smell in the air that comes from rain falling on dry, hot earth. In fact this post could come to a sudden end if we are struck by a lightning flash….

Boyfriend loves this type of weather. The sound of thunder is one of his favourite – BANG! FLASH! flash! – that first flash was lightning and the second, you’ve guessed it, a camera flash. It all harks back to his love of nature in his Welsh motherland – mountains, towering clouds, sweeping waves. So, you might be thinking Boyfriend is the type to go out with a bow and arrow into the forest and come home with a wild boar for dinner. He’d skin the animal and cook it on a fire of wood he chopped from the forest that same night. An ideal day of leisure would be spent fly fishing or foraging for mushrooms in big, open fields. He’d dream of holidays in Australia fighting crocodiles or swimming with blue whales in freezing cold oceans.

It might come as a shock to you that Boyfriend is in fact scared of the smallest insects.

‘AHHHG!’ Comes the cry from the bedroom where Boyfriend was calmly reading a book. ‘What’s that?’ I expect to see Batman coming through the window, or something equally big and exciting, but no it’s a ‘HUGE’ butterfly-sized moth innocently flapping its way over to the lamp by the bed.

‘It’s coming closer!! NOO!’ This insect with a slim brown body and gentle wings has apparently got it in for him.

‘What’s it going to do to me? Is it a daddy long-legs? ‘because I hate those’ Boyfriend wimpers.

I’ve always loved daddy long-legs. Ever since I was convinced at a young age that good father-like spirits must live in them. ‘ No it’s definitely not a daddy long-legs’. ‘Is it a mosquito?’ With that I calmly trap the moth inside a glass and tease Boyfriend taking the moth-inside-glass up to his face. ‘Why do people always do that?’ he says.

Sunburn in Oostende

Being by the seaside is like being back home. For me, because of the summers I spent sailing little boats in Chichester Harbour, and for Boyfriend (I’m assuming) as he comes from the coast of northern Wales. But the seaside doesn’t always have that life giving force you can imagine rolling in with the waves. It can, under the rays of a blazing sun, turn people like Boyfriend into wimpering wrecks for at least a week.

Right now I’m still living with the groaning after-effects of a day a the seaside.

From his neck, all the way down his chest, including his shoulders, and stopping in a dramatic red-white line at the bottom of his stomach, Boyfriend is a radioactive red. He has one splodge which is slightly less sunburnt than the rest since it’s the only area I was allowed to put suncream, in the shape of a slightly deformed heart. Maybe I was a neglectful girlfriend (surely one advantage of having a girlfriend is that you have someone to rub suncream into your back, later avoiding those tan marks on your back that show exactly where you could reach with that arm-over-the-shoulder cream rubbing in action) but I promise that Boyfriend assured me he had the type of skin which could handle a northern Belgian sun. I thought it would be the hairs on his chest that would act as a natural sunscreen.

Luckily, our beach day in Oostende was fun. A friend on a “booze cruise” from London had driven over to stock his car with bottles of wines and spirits, for a home ‘Dell Boy’ style cocktail bar, at the huge supermarket in Calais and headed to Oostende just up the same coast. We played bat-and-ball, flew a kite, ate ice cream and swam in the freezing North Sea.

Boyfriend was even happier since he’d brought along his camera. We now have reels of pictures of seagulls side-on facing to the right, seagulls side-on slightly to the left facing right, seagull lifting a webbed foot, seagull airing a wing, seagull foraging for chips and a whole other collection of seagulls facing to the left.

It didn’t take long for the beach happiness effect to wear off. Boyfriend started the week saying “I don’t mind being sunburnt because I had such a good weekend.” During the middle of the day he was showing his glowing chest to my female journalist friends and earning much sympathy which he adored. At the end of the day Boyfriend returned home armed with strong aftersun following a trip to the chemist – another opportunity to get his chest out. “Ooohhh” the chemist said recoiling from the heat blast as Boyfriend lifted his top, “c’est vraiment rouge ca.”

Then the painful bit started. Painful for him, and a pain in the arse for me. In an attempt to help suffering Boyfriend, I offered to put aftersun on his back – after the torrent of AGHHGHs and ow, STOP-its I decided against doing it for a second time. But worse, were his flinches every time I came near him. Would I bump into his sensitive skin? Never! Boyfriend thinks that, although I don’t mean to harm, I can go too far. Secretly, I know this is true but always deny it. This week, for a change, I’ve been good and kept my distance from his skin – but that hasn’t stopped the wimpering.

OWWW – that’s Boyfriend putting on a shirt.

EEEEEEK – Boyfriend getting into bed.

FOR FUCKS SAKE – Boyfriend in the shower.

Do I have to take the bins out? – Boyfriend claiming that sunburn exempts him from his bin duties.

But yesterday he made up for it all by cooking something good. It was a potato, vegetable, smoked-salmon dinner. I refrained from making any comparisons between his chest and the reddy-pink fish.

Viva Espana

Spain’s triumph in the Euro 2008 football last week got me, and Brussels’ huge Spanish community, buzzing. Cars parading Spanish flags sped up and down the streets, and groups of excited Spaniards, and aficionados of the sunny country, drunkedly cheered loudly. Boyfriend and I missed out on this celebration, however, because we had taken a trip over the Belgian-German border to watch the match at a pub in Aachen with a bunch of German friends.

Living in such a well connected city is one of the biggest advantages of Brussels. We hopped on a train and one and a half hours later we were surrounded by German trying to order drinks from a cafe.
‘Ein…urm…damn, beer please,’ Boyfriend said. While I asked for a slice of ‘kaiserkuchen’.

‘Was?’

‘Ein kaisekuchen bitte?’

‘Ah! you want cheesecake not kingcake, right?’

‘Yes please, damn it’.

After ambling around the historical centre of Aachen for a while, we joined our friends in the pub garden. Germans were gearing up for a win and the atmosphere was great. Faces were painted black, red and yellow; girls wore the German flag as a dress; while boys hollored something like ‘auf gang Deutschland; shoot a goal oogh oogh’.

We tucked into our Kolsch beer, left our Spanish leanings behind (ish) and joined the vibe. And then Spain scored! The dismay! (i was secretly delighted – viva espana!). The whole crowd looked like Germany had just lost Euro 2008, and then it did.

For us, though, it was probably a good thing as it made our getaway back to Brussels much smoother.

Balcony wars

Neighbour, who lives one floor below us, had friends this weekend. This isn’t news in itself, but for Neighbour, it’s the first time we’ve seen her be sociable. She’s the type who has ordered red and white geraniums on her balcony, grow bags with equally dull-looking flowers poking out, a small garden trowl, and – to top off her staid, middle-aged image – a pair of Crocs. So, it was lovely for Boyfriend and I to spy on her throwing a mini tea party. Three of them sat around the balcony plastic table on padded chairs supping tea and tucking into a delicious looking strawberry tart probably from the bakery up the road. Yum. We were hanging out the washing at the time, mulling the idea of ‘dropping’ a sock, catching their attention and winning an invite to their tea party – to no avail.

Neighbour probably doesn’t think so much of Boyfriend and I anyway. She probably holds a few grudges against us for what could have become a full scale balcony war.

Henri, our bayleaf tree who is just beginning to sprout new growth incidentally, started it. Being a demanding plant, he needed water. So water him we did. Only to find that about half a litre of water started falling through the wooden balcony slats in a steady drip, drip, drip, right in front of her patio entrance doors. At least it wasn’t onto a strawberry tart.

Next, we had a party. It wasn’t the noise so much as the various bits of food, paper plates and cocktail sticks that managed to find their way from our balcony to hers that was the problem.

Then came the final straw – the lettuce leaf. I had decided that a good way to dry lettuce to make a salad was to shake the leaves dry, sort of over the balcony. I started shaking a little more rigorous than required, and suddenly, one leaf broke and flopped down onto the clothes drying rack below, hanging there like a pair of green knickers. The next morning we found a suspiciously similar lettuce leaf on our balcony, along with one white rubber glove. What did that mean? How did we deserve that one?

Boyfriend and I doubt the balcony wars are over yet. The time will come when a pair of Boyfriend’s boxer shorts get blown by the wind downstairs, or the mini rugby ball we sometimes chuck around gets lobbed down there…I wonder what she would retaliate with?

seasickness by radiohead

Yesterday Radiohead made me feel sick. Walking to work I was listening to In Rainbows. ‘Bodysnatchers’ accompanied me through the park, I hummed to ‘Nude’ as I walked past the European Commission, and ‘All I need’ as I took the lift up to the top floor of the building in which I work. I was the first one in the office, so, at that time Radiohead were my only companions. I started up my computer and settled down to write the daily press review of EU-related news from Ireland to Lithuania. ‘Jigsaw falling into place’ was followed by ‘Weird fishes’, and then it happened. I felt a wave of sickness rising from somewhere inside me and up into my brain. My vision went blackie-blue and it felt like my temples were closing in on my head. Radiohead had made me feel sick. Like the seasickness you feel when you lose all sense of horizon on a boat. I quickly removed my earphones and slammed them down on the desk, venting my anger against the song, the band. But it was too late. Dashing to the toilet all I could hear were those Weird fishes swimming in my head and see them swimming in my eyes.

Back at home and safely in my bed, I slept until those Weird fishes had disappeared and my temples eased off their assault on my brain. All was well until the neighbours above began a heavy-metal jam session at roughly 1am in the morning. I hid my head under the pillow in frustration, but the beat went on. I got dressed and nearly summed up the courage to knock on their door, but I didn’t, and the beat went on. I then resorted to banging the ceiling with the extra-long shoe horn our furnished apartment came equipped with (knew it would be useful for something).

Through this, Boyfriend was away. He still is tonight. But I’ve tackled the neighbours (not physically) and tonight I’m only listening to classical music.

Train journeys

Boyfriend is a few years younger than me which, to his great delight, means he can still get discounted train fares for being a youth. This weekend we went back to the UK, me to my old university town, and him to see his brother and sister. We planned to meet up again in London before catching the Eurostar home. After stocking-up on books written in English, cheddar cheese, chocolate digestives and ginger snaps – all of which Brussels lacks – we checked in to the Eurostar at St. Pancras station. On our tickets I noted that we had been allocated seats in separate carriages so I asked the woman behind the desk if she could change this. “I could”, she said, “but, do you realise you’ve got a first class ticket?” Oh the dilemma. The prospect of free cooked food and the sparkling glasses of readily topped-up champagne gleamed on my horizons, while Boyfriend would be squashed in to a hot, beer-smelling second class carriage with just the soggy, squashed cheese and tomato sandwich to eat that he bought at the station cafe.
“You could, of course, give up your seat and I’ll re-issue you a second class ticket,” the train woman said. No chance.

I settled in to my comfy seat, and curled up to read my book. A handsome Italian waiter handed me today’s menu and a glass of champagne accompanied with a small dish of peanuts. I sent Boyfriend a text: “What shall I have? The roasted leg of lamb in fine wine sauce with baby potatoes, or the spinach ricotta canneloni?”
Later, and slightly tipsy, I trekked all the way to the steerage classes to hand Boyfriend the piece of Brie de Meaux and discarded chocolate tart i’d saved him from my dinner. I imagined him hemmed in next to a fat beer-swilling man with a BO problem, and on the other side a woman with a screaming child. Or, even better, he’d be in a special carriage for youth with a sign hanging on the entrance door saying: “Youf yobs this way. Drink all the alcho-pops and play as much loud music through your ipods as you like. Peanuts can be scrapped off the floor and eaten.” It wasn’t that bad, but still, my first class journey was a satisfying experience that I’ll remind him of whenever he voices the advantages of being a youth.

No photography: part 2

It was my birthday and Boyfriend had lovingly decided to book a romantic weekend away in Lille – just over the border into France, but still, apparently, the capital of Flanders. It was very nice – cute little streets to wander, plenty of good cafes, markets and a gorgeous Grand’ Place. Our hotel was a gem – once a hospice (yep, plenty of ghosts), and now a sumptuous hotel with rose-filled courtyards and silk blankets on the soft, deep-filled bed. Everything was so perfect, and then we came across the local spring show. Lille’s top designers had decided to dress local female beauties in virtually nothing and parade them up and down a catwalk right in the middle of town. We stopped to watch, and, as I was readying to leave (there’s only so much French female leg and breast a girl can take), Boyfriend got his camera out. Snap, snap, snap. Picture upon picture of scantily-clad French girls.

Later, sipping coffee in a corner-cafe, Boyfriend gets out his camera to show me his pics. “And,” he said, “I’ve taken one of that handsome French guy over there for you.” Great, that’s fair then.

No photography

Cameras and Boyfriend are like puppies with a new wellington boot to chew. Give Boyfriend a camera and you won’t see him for the next hour at least. He’ll go gallivanting off to take an array of ‘arty’ photos anywhere from in our flat, to parc cinquantenaire, sunrise at Dublin airport, and young women from Lille – there’s a reason why I say all of the above. When Boyfriend returns he has a puppy-like grin and big ‘I’m sorry’ puppy-like eyes.

Last weekend we went on a whirlwind trip to Dublin departing late Friday night. It was an Irish bankholiday and we’d left booking accommodation until the last minute so we ended up at an ‘Edwardian’ B&B. Our only choice. Clearly we’d been allocated the ‘children’s room’ – given away by the huge crochet alphabet hanging on the wall. Boyfriend suggested we should behave like children by stealing all we could and having a pillow flight until the Edwardian feathers fluttered all over the room.

In the evening we were in a minibus breezing past the gorgeously green Irish countryside until we were just over the border into Northern Ireland at a castle on a river surrounded by rugged green hills. Perfect. The party was to celebrate the marriage of one of my best uni mates. Her other half is Irish and has family friends who owned this huge grey-stoned imposing castle. Boyfriend and I went to explore the grounds, make friends with the local cows (awww, they’re so sweet”, he says, “here cow, what’s your name then?” just as cow turns its back, lifts its tail and drops a huge, steaming, cow-pat).

Champagne was drunk, the pig roasted on the spit, and the Irish fiddlers kept us dancing until we had to get the minibus back to Dublin at around 2am. This was the tough bit. We arrived back at Dublin airport with four hours to kill before our 6.30am flight. Thank God for the sofas at Starbucks. We woke up with the sunrise and about 40 mins to spare before we’d have to check-in. Boyfriend decides he needs the toilet. But, what I didn’t know, was that he’d skipped off with his camera. 30mins later, with just 10 mins to spare, desperate for the toilet and needing something to eat since I was feeling sick, Boyfriend arrives back. He sees me from a while away pointing furiously at my wrist, and turns on the puppy eyes. “What took you so long?” I exclaim. “Sorry, I just needed time on the loo.” What can I say? Shit faster then?? We just about have enough time to grab a muffin and run downstairs to find our flight was closing. CLOSING?? I’d never been at an airport before with SOO much time to waste, but we still manage to be late. Man in charge of ushering queues of passengers grumpily points his finger at us and growls something I’m probably glad not to have heard, and we pelt it to the plane.

Several days later, successfully back in Brussels, Boyfriend and I our looking through our weekend in Ireland snaps. “Aw there’s the ducks on the pond at St. Stephen’s Green,” and “there’s the cow, and one of us dancing.” Then there’s one of an abandoned wheelchair we saw at about 3am at the airport (which was apparently ‘arty’, but anyone else would just see it as depressing), and then comes a whole series of airport photos. Sunrise through the big windows, people drinking early coffees with hair all stuck up and red eyes, the stairs up to arrivals, the departure hall at sunrise, airplanes taking off in the distance – all in all about 30 photos – proof that he’d been casually wondering around the airport and not having the difficult time in the toilet I thought he had. I turn to Boyfriend, and there are those puppy eyes again.