On Friday, I went to a kind of festival in Brussels. Autumn Falls lasts for three days, takes place in several venues all over Brussels and hosts a variety of indie bands, singer/songwriters and instrumental bands. I had won tickets for the entire weekend, but only went on Friday to see Lambchop perform their much praised album Is a Woman in its entirety. Admittedly, the album is rather slow and the friend I dragged along with me even fell asleep (and snored) but I enjoyed every second of it. In the end, they played some up tempo songs from OH, Ohio and even blew the dust off their Sisters of Mercy’s This Corrosion cover. Hey now, hey now now!

Something completely different reached my ears last week when I went to see my uncle sing. He is a soprano in a choir that sings mostly world music, which isn’t really my thing, but I did enjoy the evening. I’m always amazed when I watch a choir – how the unity of the group still allows for singularity and personal expression in every single member, and how that is such an interesting sight when watched from a distance. While the singing is always in sync, the swaying is not – some sway this way, some sway that way, some use their entire bodies to accompany the music, some dance and some (like my uncle) stay their stoic selves throughout, hardly moving an inch from their allotted space but just doing their thing without any bells and whistles.

Speaking of bells and whistles, the festive season is nearing again so it is almost time to bring back good ol’ Sufjan’s Christmas Sing-a-long and Mercury Rev (who I for some reason always associate with winter and Christmas) and to prepare for end-of-year festivities and, sadly, cold weather and stuff. Luckily, this year I have taken a week off from work so I can do some serious hibernating in the middle of all that. I had my first taste of Christmas on Friday as well, as the Brussels’ Son & Lumière was already in its Christmas theme: imagine a giant Father Christmas somersaulting through the air in front of the cathedral and you get the idea.

And that concludes this Sunday rambling, which turned out to be all about music…

Being the loyal introvert that I am, I can’t live with job-hopping so I can also celebrate my one year with the firm. Even before my temp contract had expired, I got offered a permanent position within my department, which I accepted. I still haven’t figured out what I would really like to do (and I doubt I ever will) so for the time being, this is more than OK. Plus, I get quickly attached to people and habits so I couldn’t bare walking away from my colleagues and bosses before getting to know them just a little bit better. Silly, I know. So I stayed, and have since given it all I got and have tried very hard to please, always to please: anticipating needs, smiling pleasantly in hallways and baking cakes to bring in on Mondays. As work is where I am most of the time and I don’t have a family to go home to in the evenings, it really is my main (if not only) dedication – even if that dedication probably goes unnoticed.

All of this is enough to make me at least content, until of course my inner demons start acting up, wrecking every aspect about my life, distorting my good judgment, leaving me sad, doubtful, paranoid and unworthy to live as every comment or look is turned into something negative and everything I have felt good about is suddenly worth less than nothing. But oh well, these are only phases and having them just comes with the territory of being me I suppose.

Before I go on I must tell you that I am by no means athletic. I didn’t much like sports at school, and I was never really good at it. I tried running two or three times before, I tried bicycling, but every time I gave up rather quickly. This time, my purpose differs from my previous efforts, so I think (hope) that I can keep it up, even make it into daily routine. This time around, I don’t necessarily want to loose weight or “do some sports”, I merely want a feeling of accomplishment, I want to stimulate myself not only intellectually, but also physically, I want to take those weak legs of mine and, step by step, day by day, mould them into a much finer specimen. I must admit I have been inspired by Haruki Murakami’s book on running, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which I started reading simultaneously with my decision to start running. I didn’t much like the book, but I was motivated by his insistence on focusing on “the big picture” and his ability to talk himself into keeping it up every day and shape and control his body the way he wanted to. I must also tell you that I haven’t read up on the subject or consulted training manuals or anything, so my method may not be very efficient or effective. “In order to run you just have to run”, I thought. “No excuses, just put on a pair of running shoes and hit the road, that’s all you need to do.” So that was what I did.

How horrible it has been! Before I set out on Monday, I had pictured the course I would follow and see how far I could get. As expected, that wasn’t very far and I was back again in fifteen minutes. During those slowest fifteen minutes of my life, I had to repeat again and again to myself to look at the big picture, to endure the pain in order to gain. “What’s fifteen minutes of pain in a whole day?” I kept asking myself. But the truth is, it’s not just “fifteen minutes of pain”, it’s much more than that. Sure, the running itself adds up to a measly fifteen minutes a day, but it takes me at least half an hour each time to recuperate afterwards. I get home heaving and panting, breathing like a madman, and, after some half-hearted stretch exercises, have to throw myself in the nearest couch in order not to faint. But the worse is the pain in my lower abdomen, which goes on long after my breathing has normalised and after my face has stopped looking like an overripe tomato. It’s the weirdest thing, as if all my intestines are so badly shaken that they continue to cramp up for minutes on end. It’s excruciating, really, and every time I feel as if I’m going to die so I always think “never again”. Still, for now, I’ve managed to keep up my rigorous (sarcasm) training schedule as a result of which the muscles in my legs are as stiff as a post and I now have the gait of a woman of eighty. On top of that, I had an outburst of migraine this morning. I get migraines at least once every month (hormone thing) but also when I’m stressed, when I’ve had something to drink and when I’m tired. Now, it’s not that time of the month for me, I’m not stressed and I didn’t drink so the only possible reason for this morning’s outburst can be fatigue. Apparently, three fifteen-minute jogging sessions were enough to set off alarm bells and trigger protest actions from all over my body.

Embarrassing indeed. At least it’s already after sunset when I hit the road in my fluorescent jacket, so I usually don’t run into anyone I know (or don’t get recognised). And, who knows, by the time it’s still light at 8:30pm, my body has adapted in such a way that I have no reason to be embarrassed anymore…

Typical for Clarissa and Jennifer, the soup is made with way too much butter to be good for a person. When the butter is melted, you have to add the chopped onions and after they get the desired colour and texture (that’s up to the cook in charge – either you make the onions caramelised and brown, or when you don’t have much time or patience, you can just leave them soft and yellow), you add stock mixed with some beer or wine to give your soup more “umphf!” (that’s just brilliant), some thyme, and salt & pepper. Let it simmer for fifteen minutes, add the ladies’ Secret Ingredient, Stilton Cheese, let it simmer for another fifteen minutes and enjoy the best soup you’ve ever eaten. I still haven’t had the opportunity to use real Stilton and have therefore experimented with various kinds of (blue) cheeses, but even then every try has been delicious.

On the show, Clarissa also made some home-made croutons to go with the soup. When it comes to making croutons, two things are important, she said:

1. One can never make too much croutons; however much you make, your guests will eat every single one.
2. Heat your oil through and through, or you’ll end up with soft cubes of bread soaked with oily fat instead of delicious crusty croutons.

Today, I added a small variation to my croutons: after I baked them in the oil, I smeared them with the blue Roquefort cheese I also used for my soup and popped them in the oven for five minutes or so, so that the cheese melted into the croutons. When these were done, I added some to my bowl of damping soup, grabbed a spoon, put one of these cheesy croutons floating in the Roquefort/onion soup into my mouth and thanked God I was alive – it was simply Divine. I can’t wait for my friend to return from the UK with some proper Stilton so I can finally try The Real Deal.

In every episode, the two ladies drive across the UK with their old sidecar and cook lavish and mostly traditional English meals on location. They cook two dishes each, visit locals to get their ingredients fresh from the garden/sea/farm/whatever, and use LOTS of butter. Their small talk in between is hilarious and they often burst out singing while cooking. Especially Jennifer makes me laugh every time, with her rolling r. Oh, and the theme song is brilliant. I’m a fan!

RRRRRavishing!

Now I can finally join in with the whining about traffic, the long daily commute, train strikes, working late, impossible deadlines and other such working-life nonsense. Oh, and instead of decorating a tree this year I can decorate my very own cubicle, how neat is that!

Other than that, I had a sudden surge of Christmas spirit this week, and wound up listening to dear old Sufjan singing carols with that angelic voice of his. Which, if memory serves me right, was one of the first posts I made when I started this blog. Which means that another year has passed, and it’s almost time again for Christmas parties, presents, end-of-year-thoughts, best-of-lists and New Year’s resolutions. Oh, and it may also be time to reassess the proportion grey hair/regular hair on my head – I’m afraid I’ll see a dramatic increase of the former. Last week, my sister went through it for five minutes or so and ended up with a handful of silver locks!

I may sound ungrateful, but all around me, people are busy-beeing around, and I can’t even fathom what that must be like. I have all the time in the world to read the books I want to read, watch the television series I want to watch, play the games I want to play, visit the places I want to visit and yet I’m far from feeling satisfied. It just isn’t the right time for anything like that – I am NOT a retired person, I’m in the spring of my life and yet NOTHING IS HAPPENING, I have no control over anything. A year ago, nothing was happening either, but then at least I was in control over my thesis. I had the power and the responsibility to shape it as I saw fit, add a piece here, rewrite a piece there, I could even tear it all up and start over if I wanted to. Back then, however, I saw my thesis as an obstacle that paralyzed me and was standing in the way of the rest of my life. I was convinced that once I had overcome that obstacle, I would be able to move on. But now that that’s been dealt with, now that there are no more deadlines to meet, no more words to write, and no more library visits to make… what’s left? There is no huge gaping black hole like I feared there would be, there’s just nothing left to shape, nothing that can bring me any satisfaction. I’m standing still and the world has ran out of colour. As a result, I haven’t been feeling very creative or inspired, hence the utter silence on Books, etc. I couldn’t even bring myself to write the monthly wrap-ups of books I’ve been reading.

I know – jobs can be stressful, jobs can be boring, colleagues can be irritating, the pay can be lousy, bosses can be incompetent, your own free time can be compromised, but all that sounds like music to my ears right now. At least there would be something going on, I would be moving again, and maybe I would even be writing again.

Strenghtened by all these blessings we drove on to Biarritz – surfer’s paradise and home of the hip, the trendy and the fashionable… we felt slightly out of place at first.

However, our discomfort soon evaporated when we noticed the unusually high concentration of hot men. Seriously, I have never seen so many gorgeous men in one place before. Young or old, short or tall, bearded or non-bearded, surfers, bar tenders and delivery boys alike, they were all tanned, muscled, had a body to die for and had nice faces. It was a real feast on the eye and we spent most of our time in Biarritz just sitting on the beach watching the surfers getting in and out of the water… I’m ashamed to admit it but that’s what you get when two single women visit a place like that.

On our second day in Biarritz we decided drive over to Spain. Big disappointment. The moment we crossed the border there was total chaos on the roads. Lots of traffic, road works and bad signalisation. I wanted to turn back there and then but my companion wanted to drive on to the city we had planned to see: San Sebastian. It was even worse there – we kept driving around in circles, didn’t find a place to park the car and kept getting closer to the city when we actually wanted to get out of it. We had to eat our picnic in the car while standing in a traffic jam… I did buy a cheap little tent of my own there, so that was one good thing that day. That, and the fact that we went back to the beach in Biarritz in the evening after we had dinner. We wanted to catch a last glimpse of our surfers who kept at it until sunset.

Our hormones were going crazy by now so it was probably a good thing that it started to rain that night. It stormed all night and continued to rain all morning so we decided it would be better to pack up and leave, and look for more sun…

We drove on to the North and decided to visit “that little island over there,” which turned out to be Ile de Ré. As we drove over the bridge we had to trade our hip surfers for nature-loving fishermen and farmers – quite a culture shock. Oh well, at least they could provide us with delicious food from the sea. Apparently all the people on the camping took off in the morning with their buckets to search for oysters and clams on the shores. That looked like fun, so we did the same thing. After we spent an entire morning looking for clams (and became totally zen in the process), we still didn’t have enough to make a decent dinner so we also bought some other sea things at the local market. Then we started a fire for the BBQ, prepared Jamie Oliver’s seafood vinaigrette, roasted some bread, cooked our clams and ate our meal. Delicious! We were so stuffed we needed a siesta afterwards, so I finally started in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was ideal for this kind of lazing around. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which I was reading before we left, proved to be too much of a strain to read when on holiday.

The next morning we did some souvenir shopping and off we went again. Destination: Saint Malo. The next stop was Cherbourg. On our way there we passed the famous Mont Saint Michel and noticed they were doing some kind of WWII re-enactment and were dropping paratroopers from a plane… amazing thing to see!

The only thing we did in Cherbourg was have dinner (I had the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever eaten…) We arrived rather late and had to leave rather early because it was our last day and there were still so many things we wanted to see… Cap de la Hague, Honfleur, Etretat, the landing beaches, … And we also wanted to make a quick stop near Veurne to visit the village of Willem Vermandere (a Belgian singer) who had accompanied us musically on the entire trip. Nothing came of that though, Cap de la Hague was so beautiful and the weather was so nice in Honfleur that we didn’t get there in time… Maybe next time.

For starters, it started to rain when I left home, which was a problem seeing that the concert took place in open air in the middle of a park. On top of that, it takes some fifteen minutes on foot to get from the entrance of the park to the venue. My car was parked another five minutes or so from the entrance, so I had a bit of walking ahead of me to get to my destination. When I was almost there, I realised I had forgotten to turn off the headlights of my car. I considered a moment, but decided to head back there to turn them off, so as not to run the risk to have a dead battery after the concert. So, I went all the way back, turned off the lights, and headed for the concert once again. At the ticket control, another unfortunate event occurred: I couldn’t find my ticket. I had put it in the inside pocket of my jacket – which I normally never use, but I stupidly thought it would be safer in there. Unfortunately, the pocket appeared to have a hole in it, so the ticket had probably fallen straight through the damn thing… Can you believe it?! I didn’t see any other option but to retrace my steps back to the car, hoping to find my ticket. So there I went again… my hopes were high, I tried to stay positive and kept saying to myself I will find it, all the while visualising the ticket on the ground somewhere – maybe with a footprint on it, but even so, visibly there, right where my eye would catch it. But no luck: I arrived at my car as empty-handed as I was when I began my search. By now, all my hope was gone and I started to inwardly curse everything and everyone. After some rest (I had been walking for almost an hour by now), I decided to go back to the ticket control and tell them what had happened and ask if I could enter anyway, pretty please? It was a long shot, and I didn’t feel like going back there for nothing, but I went anyway. I wanted to try every possible solution and not give up too easily for once. On the way back (fifth time), the inward cursing continued and I also figured that my inconveniences might have had something to do with bad karma. So just in case, I started to work on a karma list. But when I came to the ticket control and started to explain my problem, the guy interrupted me and asked for my name. After I told him what it was, he just said Here’s your ticket. Some nice people found it on the ground and brought it here. Wow, so nice people aren’t extinct just yet, thank you so much anonymous, honest finder! And with that, out went my karma list. No need for lists, karma had merely given me a little scare to teach me a valuable lesson: it pays off to think positive, it pays off not to give up easily, it pays off to explore every option, every possibility. Best of all, despite the delay (I arrived at seven thirty and was finally seated at a quarter past nine), I was right on time to see the Texas quartet enter the stage.

When they started off with the wonderful First Breath After Coma, I smiled: OK, my feet were tired, but here I was at a great venue, for what promised to be a great gig, the rain had stopped and was replaced by a soft, end-of-summer breeze and somewhere out there was a Very Nice Person. The band played non-stop for over an hour and ended with the awesome The Only Moment We Were Alone. They had no breaks, no talking in between songs, no encores, and despite the meandering and at times maybe slightly boring middle part, it was a nice enough concert. All’s well that ends well!