The mists of time

The weather continued to be a mixed bag in January's second week, with temperatures not exceeding 5°C, and culminating in a fog cloaked day on Thursday the 13th. 

This was my view just minutes after arriving at the office.  Antwerp's cathedral should have been taking pride of place in the photo on the right, but the fog had obliterated it completely. Although quite disconcerting, the denseness of the fog meant that I didn't have to look at the scaffolding which has been disfiguring the cathedral tower for the better part of three years.

Sadly, the view from my office window is further marred by a tower crane and a building site, as the Art Deco skyscraper which faces it is undergoing major renovations. Accompanied by an almighty racket from morning until evening, I should add. But even the tower crane was hardly visible that morning, the halo of its floodlights joining the general cacophony of city lights.

The school holidays finished on both sides of the border, Antwerp was no longer under siege from an army of shoppers, so that I tentatively left the safety of the office during one lunch break. 

I even did some shopping of my own, snapping up a dress - one I'd previously lusted after - from a high street shop - at half price.

The fog persisted overnight and was still with us on Friday morning, although the sun would be making several attempts to find a chink in the armour. With the world outside reduced to greyscale, it was once again up to yours truly to provide a smidgen of colour. 

It had been a while since I last wore this wool and polyester blend dress, snapped up for € 4 in the Think Twice sales in December 2019. It was a lucky find, deadstock with its Made in Austria label still attached.

It was its pattern, featuring green, red and orange squiggles on a beige background, which attracted me in the first place, offering a plethora of accessorizing possibilities. 

This time, I took my lead from the green squiggles, using that colour for my necklace, belt, ring and birds-in-flight brooch. I was wearing green opaques as well, but they're not visible in any of the photos, not even a cheeky peek! 

I thought the outfit needed an extra dose of sunshine, so I opted for bright orangey yellow for my cardigan. Charity shopped back in November, it has proved to be surprisingly versatile. 

We did our weekly round of the charity shops that morning and finds were plentiful. If you'll bear with me, I'll show you some of them later in this post.

However, I was determined to stop off at the park in Duffel in between shops in order to go for a stroll and capture some of the day's misty magic.

The blanket of fog swaddling the park was opaque and almost impenetrable, the sun a mere pinprick reflected in the pond. 

The grassy field beyond the bridge, which is set alight by a fiery carpet of bald cypress leaves, suddenly appeared like a Fata Morgana, a sole splash of colour in a monochrome world. 

We walked along the towpath of the River Nete which runs next to the park. The fog was even denser here, the opposite bank of the river completely obscured from view. Not even any silhouettes were visible in the distance, so that it felt as if I was walking towards the end of the world. It was a truly otherworldly experience eliciting both claustrophobia and elation.

We descended from the towpath as we neared the castle ruin at the end of the park. 

Here, visibility was greatly improved, and there might even have been some hesitant rays of sunshine penetrating the fog. In hindsight, the sudden sunny outlook might have been greatly improved by the pools of yellow supplied by my scarf and woolly hat, which were a gift from my lovely and colourful blogging friend Monica!

We are always glad to see the picturesque castle ruin still standing. There has been talk of renovating this evocative piece of history, whose origins date back to the 12th Century, and indeed fortifications were duly erected on the inside a couple of years ago, so that at least the tallest of the towers, which was leaning precariously, is prevented from toppling over completely.

We were as captivated by the crooked skeleton trees jutting out above the castle walls and preening themselves in the water of the moat as we were by the fairy-tale like ruins themselves.

The trees on our side of the moat are reminiscent of ancient giants stretching out gnarled arms which, while offering dappled shade when fully clothed in Summer, now frame the castle ruin and lend it a haunted air.

In spite of the greyness of the day, our walk definitely put a spring in our steps. As the rest of the weekend would be a complete washout, we were glad we'd made the effort.

There wasn't even enough daylight to properly photograph our finds, so these are the best of the bunch. On the bright side, I did have a little helper at some point ...

There were clothes and jewellery too, but I'm keeping these for another post.

I was charmed by the wicker apple-shaped trinket box on the top left and bottom right. It hasn't found its purpose yet, but at € 1 it would have been silly to leave it behind.

Joining our collection of enamelware is the slightly battered old basin on the top right, its bottom proudly proclaiming that it was made in Belgium.

The small blue bowl on the bottom left is a Fire King sugar bowl in a colour I believe to be Azurite. 

Fire King dinnerware and glassware products were produced by the Anchor Hocking Glass Corp. based in Lancaster, Ohio who, in 1942, began producing their now-famous line of ovenproof glassware products. 

Their most popular design must be their Mid-Century Jadeite range, made in a delightful jade green opaque milk glass. Although we do not collect these as such, we have picked up some Jadeite cups and saucers, as well as a sugar bowl and milk jug, over the years. I'd never seen any blue Fire King in real life before, and the Azurite sugar bowl will probably remain a one-off at Dove Cottage, but I'm sure you'll agree I needed to give it a loving home. Especially at the silly price of € 0,50!

Nor could I resist this pristine tapestry purse or the beaded clutch, which were both priced at € 1,50. It's been ages since I found anything decent in that direction in the charity shops.

That's all I've got time for now. I'll be back with more January tales and finds in a couple of days. 

In the meantime, I do hope that you are all staying safe! Who'd have thought we'd still be telling each other that after almost two years!

Not everything is black or white

In just a handful of hours, it will be time to say goodbye to this funny old year. I expect it to fizzle out rather than go out with a bang but, well, let's face it: there's not much cause for celebration, is there?

The hopes we might have had at the start of this year have fallen by the wayside, all but crushed into oblivion by the force of an invisible enemy. 

As the days go by, it's not just hard to remember what the Before Times* were like, sometimes it's almost impossible to get one's head around the fact that such times ever existed. 

And yet, I've picked myself up again, and again, and continued living through the wasteland of days, which have knitted themselves into weeks and then months, until they completed the tapestry of another year.

* Thank you Sheila for this very apt term!

Christmas was still in the future when we set out on a wintry walk on Friday the 17th of December, and so was negotiating the manic Christmas shoppers which would frazzle my nerve ends in the week to come.

The solid greyness of the day had been joined by a lingering fog, and a fine drizzle was coating my glasses as we ventured into the park after that morning's charity shopping.

Too miserable for a walk, our aim was to look for a suitable spot to take some outfit photos.

Crossing the park's overflowing brook, we squelched through the sodden mulch towards a gnarly multi-stemmed tree which seemed perfect for the job. It even had a handy hook to hang up my cork handbag. 

I'll show you the details of the rest of my outfit in a minute, but for now a look at my outerwear will have to do. I wore a plaid wool jacket in delicious shades of chocolate, cinnamon and cream. It's got the softest furry collar ever and I found it in a vintage shop opposite my hairdresser's in November 2019. Due to its rather boxy shape, I always wear it belted, this time opting for a burgundy leather one. Both the green beret and the pink boa were charity shopped and need no further introduction as they've both appeared here countless times.

Apart from the odd, tenacious hangers-on, most of the leaves had joined the thick layer carpeting the ground, leaving the trees gaunt and bare. 

Pink winged Spindle berries (Euonymus europaeus) decked the shrub like festive bunting. I wonder if it flowered early this year, as legend has it that this signified an outbreak of the plague was on its way.

As a final hurrah, Goldenrod (Solidago) regaled us with clouds of fluffy snow-white seed heads.

I was wearing last Summer's roses on my jumper, blowsy pink ones cavorting among a profusion of fresh green foliage. 

The jumper is King Louie and was yet another charity shop find, as were the pink tie-neck cardigan and the cerise belt I'd added to accent my waist. Both my necklace and my brooch, on which a flapper lady is echoing my choice of headgear, were flea market finds. Only my skirt, in a super soft forest green faux suede, was bought brand new from Mango a couple of years ago.

The drizzle had petered out by the time our photo session had finished, so we decided to walk towards the hump-backed bridge where the brook meets the pond. 

Here, we were accosted by the customary gaggle of ducks and geese clamouring for a handout. Alas, we'd come ill-prepared and empty handed. The geese in particular were not amused and loudly honked their discontent. At the back of the pond, a flock of gulls was pretending they belonged in this landlocked part of the world.

We'd come ill-prepared indeed. 

As we ventured deeper into the park, negotiating muddy and waterlogged paths, it dawned on us that there was no turning back and that our photo session had turned into a walk. But not only was I wearing the most unsuitable footwear in the form of my bottle green wedge heeled ankle boots, we hadn't had the forethought of bringing our walking sticks, which were in the boot of our car!

Beyond the pond, the world's edges were blurred by a bank of fog, cocooning the park and us, the sole explorers of the magical world it contained.

The bridge and the grassy field bordering the pond were glowing with the feathery, fiery foliage of Taxodium distichum, the bald cypress,  It was as if a flock of fairies had simultaneously cast a magic spell and conjured up this unexpected splash of colour in a world otherwise leached of it. 

Rags of fog were caught in the branches of the trees, which looked forlorn and ghostly grey, their bleakness a sharp contrast to the odd one out which had stubbornly kept hold of its Autumn finery and was vainly preening itself in the mirror-like pond.

And yet, there were signs of a future Spring, with clumps of gently nodding Snowdrops and the fresh green foliage of some Hellebores which, as a rehearsal for their fat juicy buds, had caught a perfectly formed, coppery Oak leaf in their midst.

Not everything is black or white

Some things are lonely grey

Like windows looking out on rain at dusk

Or the bitter pain in winter skies

when all the birds are gone…’

~H. Joanne Hardee, from “Some Things Are Grey”

This atmospheric poem captured the mood of the day and those which would follow perfectly.

From the park, we climbed to the towpath which runs paralell to it, the river a colourless ribbon running towards the horizon.

We spotted a white heron, but it had spotted us too and took flight, the blur caught by my camera a cross between ghost and angel.

Back in the park, we passed the bench we often use for picnics. Judging from the knee-deep carpet of fiery leaves and the haphazard heaps left on its seat, the last ones to have had their sandwiches here were those spell-casting fairies before they fled for the imaginary monsters in the undergrowth.

Perhaps they were still hiding in the wreckage of the water feature taken over by nature and neglect?

And so, we have come to the end of our walk, and the end of yet another year. 

Pandemic or not, there are still things to be thankful for. If the year got off on the wrong foot by having to say goodbye to Phoebe in February, welcoming Bess in March has more than made up for this.

Happy New Year!