Sounds of the city

As we are counting down the days to our UK holiday - which will be less than two weeks away by the time this post is published - I am retracing my steps once more to earlier this month, halting the time machine on Thursday the 17th of May.

This wasn't the usual run of the mill office day as, courtesy of a public holiday in Belgium, I had the day off and thus we were allowed to sleep in just that little bit longer. 

With a sunny aspect and temperatures up to 16°C, it could have been a day full of endless opportunities if one of my migraines hadn't decided to throw a spanner in the works. Although my symptoms are rather mild compared to some, I wasn't up to doing much and I definitely wasn't in the mood to go out for a walk or some such thing.

Nevertheless, I still found reason to dress up, unearthing this long-sleeved vintage dress of many colours from my wardrobe. For some unfathomable reason, it hadn't seen the light of day since the early days of the pandemic in March 2020.

Apart from the pink belt with its green plastic stitching, which was a Mango sales bargain last Summer, my accessories were all of the green variety and either flea market or charity shop finds. The vintage  big-eyed Bambi brooch is ceramic and one of my all-time favourites. It's got leaping deer and teddy bear cousins, all with a tiny chained collar around their necks, the poor things ...

The day was spent with some lazy pottering, starting with photographing my latest specs as promised.

They are dark green on the outside and off-white on the inside, and have translucent pale pink arms. They're from the French Anne & Valentin brand, same as my previous varifocals (see here), now converted to computer glasses.

I also engaged in some holiday prep, jotting down a couple of ideas on what to do and see once we've made it over there. 

While most people were making what we call the bridge, taking Friday off as well, I needed to go into the office. It was a quiet day, so I didn't really mind doing so, as it enabled me to catch up with a couple of things. It was a totally different story when I tried to make my way home, though, as Antwerp's shopping streets were chock-a-block! At 19°C and with non-stop sunshine, I'm sure it was the perfect day for a shopping  trip, but I couldn't get away from the crowds and into the sanctuary of our garden fast enough.

Judging from the flowers in our hanging bucket of strawberries, we are in for a treat, although I've got a niggling feeling that our catsitters, Inneke and Maurice, who will also be looking after some of our plants, will get to enjoy the first harvest. Having made its entrance in Dove Cottage's garden in May 2020, it's going into its 4th season this year. All I've done with it so far, is cut back last year's wilted foliage in Spring, give it a feed and add a fresh layer of compost, which appears to be doing the trick.

Lavender-blue flower spikes almost seem to have sprung up overnight in our Catnip (Nepeta faassenii 'Walker's Low'), while our Cotoneaster bush is alive with bees mad for the nectar provided by its tiny and rather nondescript flowers, their humming providing a meditative soundtrack.

Saturday brought a mixture of sunshine and clouds, the 20°C shown on the thermometer once again toned down considerably by lots of wind. 

If Thursday's outfit had to wait three years for another outing, Saturday's two-piece had an even longer wait to make it out of my wardrobe again. Unless I'm mistaken, I last wore this on a trip to Bruges in April 2019. I know, too many clothes, too little time to wear them all on a regular basis! 

I bought the cobalt blue belt with its massive rectangular buckle at the same time as the pink one in Friday's outfit. Again, the rest of my accessories (beaded necklace, moulded flower ring and metal flower brooch) were second-hand buys, picked up from various charity shops and a flea market over the years.

My shoes are Damart by way of the popup shop but sadly they caused some rubbing to my right foot, which rules out wearing them as an alternative to my Clarks Cloudsteppers on our holiday.

Saturday's outing took us to a local garden centre, as we were on the hunt for a plant watering system to keep our patio pots from dying of thirst during our holiday. We didn't find what we were looking for that day but, on our way back, we stopped at the edge of town charity shop for a browse.  Our finds, which I'll share in a later post, included an Italian made red leather crossbody bag, which got its maiden outing on Sunday!

On Sunday morning, we picked up our friends Inneke and Maurice and drove into Antwerp for a spot of culture.

By pure coincidence, we all turned out to be wearing denim jackets! While Maurice and Jos recently bought theirs on the high street, and mine was a lucky find at Think Twice the other week, Inneke's jacket is home-grown vintage which has been gracing her wardrobe for many years. 

Also note that - again purely by chance - both Inneke and I were wearing red based dresses! Great minds, and all that!

After having left our car in the car park near my office, we walked past the cathedral and into the direction of the Grote Markt, with its row of striking Guild houses, before continuing to the 500-year old Gothic Vleeshuis (Butchers' Hall). If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember I passed this iconic building with its façade made of alternating layers of red brick and white sandstone known as bacon layers, during one of my lunch break walks back in April. 

It was a relief to see that the roadworks which had marred my view of the building at the time had finished, so that I was able to properly photograph it before stepping inside.

Although the Butchers' Hall already opened its doors as a museum in 1913, it was only as recent as 2006 that the museum was reborn as Sounds of the City, the exhibits now entirely devoted to 800 years of musical life in Antwerp and the Low Countries.

If you think music and a Butchers' Hall are a strange combination, then rest assured that it isn't as far fetched as originally thought. Music was already being played in the neighbourhood a thousand years ago. Opera, first staged in Antwerp around the corner on the Grote Markt in 1682, was subsequently performed in this very building in the 19th Century.

The streets and alleyways here were littered with cafés where both locals and sailors danced into the early hours to the music produced by dance organs, like the one two collages down on the top left. 

The exhibits include hundreds of historical instruments, ranging from a large selection of harpsichords - Antwerp became the capital of harpsichord building in the 17th century - square pianos, organs, brass instruments, church bells and carillons, as well as a glass harp, to name but a few. 

Along the way, you can find out about famous musicians, minstrels, opera singers and fanfares or brass bands, and there's a multitude of drawers containing a vast collection of historical scores. 

The list is truly endless and we'll have to come back at least once to take it all in, as well as to listen to some of the music available via the museum's app.

I'm sure Kezzie and her husband were itching to try out some of the instruments on display when they visited the museum last year! Perhaps they played the upright piano in the dancehall exhibit in the basement?

Here, one can also admire various examples of the calliope (below, bottom left), the precursor to the jukebox. The basement attendant kindly turned on the magnificent dance organ for us, which was a lot louder than we'd bargained for. 

Jos and I wouldn't have minded taking home the wooden gramophone on the bottom right. 

Other exhibits in the basement include reproductions of a bell foundry, containing original objects from the foundry of the Sergeys family which date back to the 16th Century, and a brass instrument workshop, which contains part of the old Van Engelen workshop which closed in 1970.

Apart from the four of us, there was only one other group of visitors, whom we encountered briefly on our way to the basement, so that we had the place - and the attention of the knowledgeable and talkative attendant - practically to ourselves.

We concluded our cultural outing with a drink in one of the cafés lining the Grote Markt before re-joining our car and returning home.

And here's a look at my outfit of the day! Incredible though it sounds, it was the first outing of this vintage Diolen dress I found at Think Twice last year. Judging from the crispness of the fabric and its overall pristine condition, it might just as well been the dress's first outing ever!

I replaced the dress's original self-fabric tie belt with one of the stretchy belts from my collection. 

Apart from the off-white beaded necklace, which was a charity shop find, my accessories were all bought on the high street, which in case of the ceramic heart brooch was Cardigan's, as it was purchased during our wet Welsh holiday back in 2017.

From a future holiday to a past one, we have neatly come full circle. Hope to see you again in my next post!