This town has dragged me down

Having lived in Antwerp for nearly 15 years and been commuting to it for another 23, has somewhat dulled my senses to the city's charms.

On sunny days, my daily commute can be a small delight, the sunlight spotlighting even the ugliest of buildings, so that I'm itching to take out my camera and start snapping away.

Even the sometimes grating juxtaposition of old and new, the result of years of madness and bad planning, can look charming when the timid morning sunshine is casting its soft glow.

On dark winter days, which are numbing the mind, it's much harder to find charm in my day-to-day surroundings.

The dirty concrete, the endless stream of traffic, the clanging trams and honking cars and the plaintive wailing of emergeny sirens aren't exactly soothing for the soul.

Then, it's a hostile world out there, on which I would like to close the curtains for a day.












But negativity doesn't get one anywhere so, even when the rain is falling down in buckets, I often use my camera as therapy during lunch break.

If you care to look, and look hard enough, there's beauty to be discovered everywhere, even in the most boring of shopping centres.

If I'm having a rubbish day, the next best thing to some vintage shopping is taking my camera and walking around the city streets, playing at being a tourist, trying to see it all as if for the first time.

Never venturing too far away, though, as I only have a 45 minute lunch break!

Just a five minute walk takes me to Antwerp's Gothic cathedral.

Here, I am joining the hordes of tourists admiring the magnificent carvings above the main entrance, depicting the Last Judgment.

Amazingly, they were only added between 1903 and 1906.

A less than ten minute walk in another direction takes me to one of Antwerp's exclusive shopping areas, which is dominated by the Bourla theatre. This neoclassical building was designed in 1827 by city architect Pierre Bourla, its construction finished in 1834.

As I was having a bit of an off-week, I was glad that Friday finally came around. In spite of the weatherman's promise that it would be sunny, the day was as grey as its predecessors, and we were even treated to a light dusting of snow.

But I had the afternoon off, and met my friends Inez and Kris for coffee at our usual haunt, De Lantaren, a cozy coffee shop tucked away in a side street not far from Antwerp's Grote Markt.

After a quick catch-up on each other's lives and a good old-fashioned gossiping session, Inez and I said goodbye to Kris, and continued the afternoon with some vintage shopping.

It was the first day of the sales at Think Twice, our favourite chain of vintage shops, and everything was 30% off.

Nevertheless, I only bought two items: an almost pristine pair of shiny black open heeled shoes, and a short-sleeved green Tricel jumper closing with a zip at the back. Look at those cute little bows on the front!

Here's to hoping for a more sunny outlook next week, and some blue skies outside my office window.

Until then, I seem to be providing the only bit of colour in a sea of grey ...

Second nature

Entering a flea market always makes my heart go a-flutter with butterflies of excitement. There's a heady mixture of anticipation and hope that somehow that little serendipitous surprise will cross my path.

The difference with entering a regular shop is that you never, ever know what, if anything, you will come across. It's the thrill of the unexpected which is so appealing. So, in spite of anything you might have in your head, it's good keep your mind wide open and your eyes peeled.

First time visitors can be quite daunted by the jumble of goods on offer, on neatly arranged trestle tables if one is lucky, but more often than not in ill-assorted boxes, spilling the unedited contents of garages, attics and basements.

But practice makes perfect and and soon it becomes second nature to find treasure winking at you from a table full of mundane stuff, peeking out from under a pile of tat or lurking at the bottom of a carton full of broken bits and pieces.

As you know, I'm always on the look out for brooches and unusual handbags, but we often make surprise purchases as well.

I was happy to see the brooch lady at last Saturday's flea market. Eagerly, I started browsing through her folders of brooches. She always brings different folders from her lifetime collection of over 3000 brooches, yielding must-haves every time.

It didn't take long for me to find this Lourdes brooch, top right, which needs a bit of cleaning, then the wreath of orange metal flowers (top left). The posy of red hearted flowers (bottom right) instantly appealed to me. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the miniature tapestry handbag, which obviously had to be mine!

It really looks like a mini version of the handbag I found at another flea market last spring. Truly a match made in heaven!

After lunch, we continued our treasure hunt, which is when we found the navy handbags (right and above) languishing in a carton. They were  € 3 each.












The carved ivory coloured plastic beads were a steal at just € 3 too.

At the stall of a lady selling hats and haberdashery, this green depression glass carafe set was hidden among her display of hats.

It's now living on my 1930s marble topped bedside table, where it's feeling quite at home!

Our final purchase was this marble art deco set of bookends, which was only € 4. We were in need of some decent bookends to tame the never-ending stream of books we are bringing back from my dad's. The Shakespeare used to belong to him too!

Speaking of which, we spent Sunday afternoon clearing some more of my dad's stuff. And still we haven't finished sorting through his books! I guess I'm really my father's daughter when it comes to books and I'm sure I inherited my collecting (and hoarding!) gene from him as well ...

These are some of my dad's jazz records, all 10-inch 33 rpm's dating from the 1950s, which have found a loving new home at Dove Cottage.

I can't wait to sort through this box full of assorted family photographs and documents, which will provide hours of entertainment on rainy Sunday afternoons.

I am actually in four of the photographs you can see. Can you spot me?

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Is that the time? Goodness me, it’s time to get out of my warm winter bed. No time for laziness, even though it’s Saturday!

Now, what shall I wear? I admit that this is one of the first things that pop into my mind. During the week, I have a rail of possible outfits put together in order to save time (there it is again!).

Not so on weekend days, when I love to throw open my wardrobe doors, and wait for inspiration to strike.













Breakfast time: back to the late 1960s, with this handpainted breakfast set by Belgian pottery Boch. We have several of their designs, but today we have opted for Bernadette. We even have a coffee pot to match. Ah, first cup of coffee of the day, to give it a kick start.

Shopping time! This is Dove Cottage’s version of a shopping list.

Dating from the 1930s, I fell in love with it after seeing it in BBC Homes and Antiques magazine back in 2005.

Imagine my delight when just a couple of months later, while on holiday, I unearthed this one in an antique shop in Lewes.

Although over the years we have collected quite a lot of kitchenalia, for which we both have a special fondness, this certainly remains one of our best finds ever.

On Saturday, there is no grocery shopping, though: this is all being done by Mr. S. while I'm at work, leaving our weekends free for another kind of shopping! Quite a luxury, no? What more could a working girl want?

Shopping means either visiting charity shops or, when there's a flea market on, that's where we head off to.

This is what came out of the wardrobe: a long-sleeved Crimplene dress, with a pussy bow and a zip at the front.


The pretty label says Shamrock, which I haven't been able to find out anything about.











Predominantly black, it has a kind of trellis pattern in white, against which red-hearted white flowers are growing.

I added a red cardigan with a ruffly collar, as well as red opaques.

The flower in my brooch almost matches the dress's flowers.

I continued the red theme with a belt with unusual square plastic buckle, a chunky red plastic ring and a watch with a red strap!

I wore the checked winter coat you've seen here before, adding a rich purple flower embroidered velvet scarf and a blue velvet beret.

The beret is a treasured vintage find, made in England, by Pauline for Bermona.










We were headed to an indoor flea market, which yielded a couple of nice surprises, but I will be showing you these in another post.

It took, however, until after we'd had lunch and another cup of coffee that we made our first purchase.

By the time we were ready to go home, it had started raining and we had to dash for our car which luckily wasn't parked too far away.

As we drove home, we passed the beautiful park, Den Brandt, where we snapped some foggy photos last month, looking quite differently in the pouring rain.

No stopping for a walk this time. Instead, it was straight back to Dove Cottage, where the ticking of clocks is a constant reminder of the passing of time.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes. (*)

It is hard to believe that on Saturday, it was twenty two years ago to the day that Mr. S. and I got married. Another reminder of the relentless passing of time!

(*) Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

Look at the world through your polaroid glasses

"Why, what's the matter,

That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?"

~William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

In spite of January being considered the longest of months, it seems to have passed in the blink of an eye.

For me, it's the short month of February which brings a certain mid-winter slump.

It's like living in an in-between time, feet still firmly planted in winter, with the faintest glimmer of spring on the horizon.

I can abide the cold as long as it's sunny, but miserably grey and murky days really tend to throw me out of kilter and make me feel as if my head is stuffed with cotton wool.

One day last week, the fog was so dense that the tower of Antwerp's cathedral, which I can see from my office window, almost completely disappeared for the day.













The week kept dragging on a bit so, by Friday, I was gagging for the weekend.
Not that we had much planned. That's to say: nothing at all on Saturday and a get together with friends on Sunday afternoon.

So I will treat you to some random, mix and match snapshots taken over the weekend.

These Instamatic cameras, all of a slightly different design, are just part of our vintage camera collection. I'm toying with the idea of making a wall feature of them. Now, if only I had any wall space to spare ...

Dove Cottage's sitting room really comes into its own this time of year. In fact, it seems to be made for spending winter afternoons in, its coziness clearly appreciated by all.

There are books everywhere! Even under the coffee table ...

As we've been bringing back books from my dad's and we cannot resist picking up the odd one in charity shops, we had no choice but to start double layers in our book cases.

I've been trying to create some order, though!

These are some of my dad's worse-for-wear vintage paperbacks.

But we had to flee the house at some point on Saturday and made a half-hearted attempt at trying our luck at the charity shop.

By then, the temperature had climbed back into the positives, so that we were able to use our garage's white brick wall again as a backdrop for the outfit photos.

And look, isn't that a ray of sunshine I can see up there?

I'm wearing a cheerful red, grey and blue dress with a pussy-bow, to which I added a blue Camay scarf clip.














There was a sale on at the charity shop, which usually means there's not much to be found, but I was in luck, and came away with these two cute little cardigans.

Then, there was this dress, with a print and colour combination I wouldn't immediately have gone for, if the buttons hadn't won me over.

The sale was buy two, get one free, so at least I got a free cardie out of it.











On Sunday morning, I finished my blog post at my cluttered little work station. Organized clutter, I should add. Look, there's Lynn's photo lurking in the background. My twin in quite a lot of things, I'm sure she'd appreciate the clutter!

After lunch, we set out for a leisurely drive to visit our friends Ingrid and Luc. As we hadn't seen each other for quite a while, we had a lot of catching up to do!

The green patterned dress I bought at the charity shop two weeks ago had its first outing, and it was mild enough for a lighter jacket.














Ingrid and I were best friends in secondary school. Being the only punks in school, we were like sisters-in-arms.

Throughout the years, we've remained friends and kept in touch, even if at times it was only with the occasional email or phonecall. Sometimes, life's events do keep getting in the way, which is a shame really ...

Well-organized blogger that I am, I completely forgot to take photographs, but fortunately Ingrid's husband Luc snapped away with his camera!

Anyway, a lovely afternoon was had, after which I was ready to face another week!

Bring on February, I'd say!

Beam me up, Scotty!

If you thought that after last Saturday's winter walk, we were going to keep it quiet on Sunday, I'm afraid you were wrong: we had a flea market to go to!

There was actually no way we were going to miss this one, as it's our favourite indoor market by far.

The dress I pulled from my wardrobe was another one in a polyester/wool blend, in a white patterned muted brown. It is fully lined, has a front pleat and still has its self fabric belt with fabric covered buckle. Still, I thought it looked a tiny bit boring, so I used an orange-brown vinyl belt instead to break it up.

I layered it with a burnt orange cardigan, to which I pinned one of my Camay brooches.

As luck would have it, there were some tights in my stash in almost exactly the same colour as the cardigan!












It was still as cold as on Saturday, but since we were going to spend most of the day indoors, there was no need for my fake fur coat. Instead, I chose the jacket of a mustard brown tweed suit, with soft brown fake fur collar and cuffs.

If anyone's interested, here I am in the tweed suit, which I last wore in late February 2016, just before I started blogging. Which is why it hasn't featured here yet ...

On to the flea market, which did not disappoint, even if there were less stalls than usual. It seems January really isn't a good month for flea markets ...

These are some of the things we got:

Now, let's have a more detailed look.

First up is this heavy brass family tree picture frame, its base decorated with a cluster of tiny flowers.

Currently empty, it will soon be filled with some old family photographs.









These Heatmaster sugar bowl and milk jug will go well with the insulated coffee pot we bought a couple of weeks ago.

We already have a gorgeous blue Heatmaster teaset we bought in Wales in 2015, the story of its aquisition you can find here. Not wanting to take any risks this time, we didn't think twice!

We also picked up this old-fashioned ink pot, which has a ridge designed for holding a pen.










It wouldn't be a succesful flea market if I hadn't found any brooches!

I'd been lusting after this Scottie dog brooch for months. There was no price tag, and it was in a glass topped display case, which usually isn't a good sign. Sure enough, after plucking up the courage to ask for the price, I walked away as I found it too expensive.

Seeing it was still there after all this time, I innocently offered a lower price, which was accepted, so he finally came home with me!

We ended up talking to the seller, who turned out to be a nice lady, especially as she thought I was in my late 30s! Needs new glasses, more like ...

Then there was this pair of navy gloves, which I got cheaper than the asking price after I pointed out a stain on one of them. I knew it would be easily removed, and it did!

As an aside: when out vintage clothes shopping, I usually carry a travel pack of make-up remover tissues. Whenever I stumble upon anything I like, but which has a stain, I unobtrusively try rubbing the stain with one of these. If it fades, I'm sure it can be washed out. If it doesn't budge, I know to leave the item behind.

I loved this faded Lourdes souvenir album, which was signed by its former owner, the priest of a Belgian village called Vollezele. I googled him, and it seems he was a priest there in the 1920s, and a famous one at that, as he was also a poet and biographer.

Judging from the clothing worn in the bottom right picture, I'd guess the album was even older, but so far I haven't been able to trace it.

Our final purchases were some 78 rpm records. Although they are not exactly rare, jazz 78s aren't that easy to find. At least not for next to nothing at flea markets, so we were quite pleased with this Count Basie one, which was in perfect condition too!

All in all, quite a decent haul, don't you think?