Life in March

March at last, and soon we'll be bidding farewell to Winter and welcome Spring. 

As if that isn't enough to put a spring in my step this will also be my last month of full-time employment, ever. The end of an era, so to speak, and about time too. No more squandering part of my holiday quota on those much needed Fridays off. No more measly two-day weekends in which there's never enough time to call my own. The First of April cannot come soon enough!

But we're not there just yet, and as the thought of another month of five-day working weeks made me break on in a sweat, I decided to take Friday the First of March off. 

It had been a grey and rainy week, so the sunshine which greeted us that morning was welcomed with open arms. Sadly, however, it didn’t last: by the time we'd finished breakfast it had turned into another  miserable and windblown day. One of those washed-out days which needed a hefty dose of colour!

The temperature might have reached double digits - if only just - a nasty wind made it feel quite a bit chillier, so that I needed some warmth as well. 

My bottle green faux-suede skirt was a pre-Covid retail buy from Mango and has proved to be worth its weight in gold. I couldn't imagine my Winter wardrobe without it!

This time around I paired it with a red patterned Diolen blouse - one of that week's Think Twice sales bargains  - which I topped with a charity shopped shaggy yellow cardigan. The multi-coloured wooden beads and the pale green suede belt with its groovy beaded buckle were charity shop finds as well. 

In honour of St. David's Day, I pinned a felted daffodil brooch to my blouse. It came all the way from Wales, purchased at the end of a most wonderful day spent at the National Trust owned Chirk Castle last June.

Obviously, the Diolen blouse wasn't the only thing that followed me home from the Think Twice sales that week. Over several lunch breaks, I found a round blue crochet bag (€ 4), a pair of wooden clog sandals from the Swedish Moheda brand (€ 2) and a floral button-through cotton skirt (€ 4, below bottom left and right).

The skirt on the top left and right is by Esprit and was my one and only charity shop find on Friday. I guess that in the run-up to the much maligned Retro Day - which would be on the 9th of March this year - there was little chance of any exciting finds ...

The rest of the day was spent doing some gentle pottering, which included rearranging my brooches and filling those additional wooden drawers Jos's friend was kind enough to supply me with. My attempts to count the number of brooches in my collection failed miserably, but at a rough guess I'd say there might be between 700 and 750 of them ... Oops!

As I was reclining on the sofa with my current read that evening, Bess jumped onto its back and actually allowed me to grab my phone and take several photos of her. Aren't our striped sitting room curtains an amazing backdrop for madam's state portraits? 

We woke up to the sun streaming through our windows again on Saturday morning, and this time she was here to stay until late afternoon. 

While enjoying our fruit & yoghurt that morning, we noticed that we weren't the only ones having breakfast. There's a family of mice living in our shed at the back of the garden and we loved watching the acrobatics of the most forward of the bunch who was climbing up and down the bird feeder.

I hadn't worn this wool-blend dress with its vibrant watercolour print for far too long, and with my Winter wardrobe soon to be on its way out, it was a question of now or never.

Charity shopped many years ago, it came with a self-fabric belt with a pink plastic buckle. However, I replaced the latter with a wide, bright pink suede belt picked up in last Summer's sales, as I wanted it to be in keeping with my necklace and my famous (or should that be infamous) pink suede boots.

Although they're both doing their best to hide from view, I was wearing a ring with a sage green stone and a pair of opaques in the same colour, matching the Miracle brooch I pinned to my dress's bodice.

Determined to make the most of the dry and relatively sunny weather, we opted for a visit to Middelheim Sculpture Park. It goes without saying that the pink boots didn't come along, but were replaced by the scruffy old pair I usually wear for our Winter walks.

Having found a convenient parking space which allowed us to get out of the car without stepping straight into a giant puddle, we entered through the so-called Artist's Entrance. 

Nothing is what it seems here, so I'm sure you won't be surprised that this is yet another work of art. 

The mushroom shaped canopy on its three slender pillars, which seems to be inspired by those iconic 1950s petrol stations, was created by Dutch artist John Körmeling (° 1951) in 2012. On top of the canopy the names of some of the resident artists are twinkling in lights, which looks particularly effective against a dark sky.

One of the first sights that greet you after the entrance itself is what looks like a building under construction, but is of course a work of art, called The Passage of the Hours, by Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis (°1956).  Measuring 8 x 8 x 24 metres, it is constructed of steel, brick, glass and fluorescent lamps.

The work refers simultaneously to a historic ruin and a recent remnant of a conflict. The artist himself is calling it a ‘serene disturbance’ and a "church without religion", the walls resembling the buttresses of a medieval cathedral. 

Before proceeding into the park proper, we passed the container installation on the top right which - you've guessed it - is a work of art as well. Created by the Belgian architect, urbanist and artist Luc Deleu (°1944), it dates from 2004 and is called Orbino.

The outlandish structure on the bottom left is called Sunwagon (1974) and is by another Belgian artist, Camiel van Breedam (°1936).  Apparently, it is meant to be - again in the words of the artist - a chariot made to transport the sun to an ideal place. It doesn't seem to be working though!

As the art in the park is still on the move, things tend to be a bit chaotic, with lots of empty plinths awaiting their new inhabitants. Some of the sculptures which have already been moved to their new spots are still looking a bit out of context but I'm sure it will all work out when this gargantuan task has finally been completed.

Instead of doing our usual tour of the park, keeping mainly to the part called Middelheim Hoog (High), we decided to cross the street and explore Middelheim Laag (Low).

As we were waiting at the zebra crossing, I took the opportunity to photograph the mural at the back of the castle. The mural is a work by the American artist Lawrence Weiner (°1940) and is called Wind and the Willows. The mural reads "Iron and gold in the air, pollen and smoke on the ground”, with the Dutch translation on top.

Having safely made it across the road, we walked on one of the main paths in Middelheim Laag, soon coming across the Column Pavilion (above, top left). Created by Belgian architect Charles Vandenhove (1927-2019) between 1984 and 1992, it is both a work of art and a pavillion for exhibiting smaller open-air art.

I'm sure some of the sculptures must be quite envious of Sphairos (1998) by the Austrian artist Franz West (1947- 2012), having a little shelter from the rain all of its own!

Once again, I neglected to investigate who the menacing creatures on opposite side of the pond are, but the four marble stones which are bathing in the water are aptly called The Bathers (1994). Their Italian creator, Luciano Fabro (1937-2007), drew on a long tradition of portraying bathers, but preferred to render his in non-figurative stone. The cold marble takes on an almost human quality as the sunlight reflects in the rippling water and onto the marble’s gleaming veins. The marble, at times, seems to move, particularly when a breeze makes the reflected leaves flutter.

On our way back we came across this creepy sculpture high up in a tree. A plaque identified it as one of Two figures for Middelheim (1993) by the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (1953-2001).

There was no sign of the second one, though ...

Muñoz robs his bronze figures of any illusion of movement, sight and speech. While sculptors like Rodin endeavoured to make their figures as animated as possible, Muñoz drew attention to the immobility of a bronze sculpture. His figures have no legs and are imprisoned in a straitjacket that resembles a sack, while their arms hang down lifeless like the limbs of a ragdoll. And if this were not tragic enough, he installs them at unreachable height in a tree, separating them from one another with a pathway. 

 It's clear we'll have to go back when the second one has been installed as well.

I'm leaving you now with a quick look at Sunday's outfit. Both the grey wool skirt criss-crossed with yellow, red, green, black and white diagonals, and the green short-sleeved Dralon cardigan were vintage finds from Think Twice, my yellow flower patterned jumper came from Oxfam and both the red necklace and my green ankle boots were charity shopped. 

My green beaded brooch was a flea market find and, finally, my half-elasticated belt with its massive square buckle was a sales bargain from a high street shop.

That's all for now, I hope to see you again soon!