Needed to get Hmmm… that’s
Needed to get
Hmmm… that’s as far as I got with my last entry while sitting in Guy’s flat. Wonder what I was going to say?
Ah yes, it’s coming back to me now.
Needed to get a ticket to Belgium sharpish. Spent Friday morning combing the net for fares - not easy, as most sites only gave details 24 hours in advance. I rang up a few people - e-Bookers, British Midland, Sabena (or rather SN Brussels airlines). I even popped into a real (offline) travel agents. Was originally misled by Sabena - they got my hopes up, telling me that there was a 6.30pm flight which I could get on for €250, but when I called them again I discovered that they’d given me details of a Brussels to Manchester flight, not the other way. In the end I had to settle for British Airways (expensive at £255, but still… my favourite airline. And it would have been £150 cheaper if I’d left it another day - and the man I booked my ticket through was exceptionally helpful) Manchester to Brussels, leaving at 6.55pm and taking 1 hour to get there. I left home around 3pm, taxi to Sheffield station (after the bus drove straight past me without stopping) and train across the Pennines to Manchester airport.
e-check in: a good thing. Inserted my credit card into a machine, got a boarding pass, dropped my bag off at a nearby gate without queueing, and was on course for the flight. Resisted the temptation of duty-free (or rather duty paid) and just grabbed a sarnie from Starbucks before boarding. Climbed the steps onto the small (54-seater?) aircraft, whoosh take-off into the night sky, lights of Manchester recede and into the clouds. No hassle flight and I’m in a different country - how easy was that? Excited to be alone somewhere new, pissed off because my phone doesn’t seem to be working (turned out Vodafone had screwed things up… but that’s another fairly long story).
Felt proud of myself finding the station, booking tickets, finding my connection, correctly calculating delayed trains and correct platforms. Finally on a train to Antwerp (the guy I talked to on the station - strange - from Antwerp, and very pleased to hear that I love the city - but his accent was far too English, with a hint of West-Midlands). Pulled out of the Brussels North alongside the whores in their candy-neon windows.
Pulled into Antwerp Central 30 minutes later. Not having a phone becomes a problem - How do I contact Guy, find where he lives, arrange a taxi. Found a phone box, hoped that my €4 would connect to his mobile long enough to get what I needed to know down on paper. It did (and left time to chat). Found the taxi exit, walked and walked round 3 sides of a gaping hole in the ground, 100m each side, until I was almost back at the main exit before I tracked down a taxi. Guy was right - the driver didn’t know Coqhuil Straat. He didn’t even know Marnix Plaats. Or, it seems, the museum. (And, according to Guy, neither did he speak Flemish). Still, we got there, after a brief detour to criss-cross backwards and forwards across Marnix Plaats, during which he said he’d stop his meter, but didn’t.
So good to see Guy - looking much thinner than the Guy I knew, a little greyer, sleepless worried eyes. Confusing, a little intimidating, being here for support but not knowing how or what to give, but relaxed in knowing that even a presence is better than nothing. S’funny, there were quite a few silences this weekend (or at least it seemed that way), but for perhaps the first time in my life I wasn’t nervous about this, I just let the silence form part of the conversation. It felt like the right thing. But despite the silences, we did get a lot of talking in. Not enough perhaps - I left feeling that there were doubtless things unsaid, but also that we had covered about as much ground as was healthy and helpful in one weekend. Again that feeling of things unsaid - takes me back 13 years, when my whole life was as a walking head full of unsaid sentences, practised and honed to perfection (god I was so witty when I was in my own company) but in truth never destined for another’s ears.
So after a welcoming Caipirinha, we cycled to Las Margaritas in the Mechelsesteenweg, for some professionally served booze (which ended up being cheap Spanish brandy) and human contact. Wasn’t sure about the quality of the human contact though. We sat down with a guy (Sam?) and two girls. I talked a bit. Guy talked a bit and went off to the bar to talk to Lucas a bit too. Felt strange being plonked on my own with a conversation going on alongside me in a foreign language. Sam(?) involved me a couple of times, though I felt a bit of an aura about him that I didn’t like. I was, of course, far too shy to talk to girls. Anyway, sitting with other people not joining in the conversation was something else I got to feel quite comfortable about over the weekend - I was happy just existing.
Wasn’t sure whether Guy would be happy putting me up in his flat, or indeed whether there was room to do so, but things turned out pretty good on that front, even if I did evict Guy from his bed and condemn him to nights harassed by cats. I tried to force myself to lie in, knowing how rare it is for me to find much time to sleep in, and had some success on that front. We woke up leisurely the next morning, and strolled also leisurely across town to the Witzli Poetzli for a morning coffee and a coke.
The whole weekend took the form mainly of strolls from one side of town to the other, peering into shops and stopping off at cafes and bars, talking, staying silent, being at ease. From the Witzli we headed for lunch (a gorgeous walnut and gorgonzola salad, albeit somewhat swimming in oil, in a cafe surrounded by mirrors where I sat next to a baby around Lola’s age and tried to talk Flemish baby-sounds), stopped off at an off license (to buy some Lemon Genever - preferred poison of the artist Anselm Verdigris in one of my favourite books, In Viriconium by M John Harrison), went back home for a rest, then out to find our Saturday night dinner.
We tried a new groovily decorated Tapas restaurant, Soeki’s Tapas, but they were fully booked. I offered to buy dinner anywhere in Antwerp - well, almost anywhere - Guy to name the venue. Had to fight off some protestation - so hard to get Guy to accept any kind of gift, so much work to make him accept that I would enjoy paying. Luckily I managed, and he nominated Café de la Gare, in the old centre, where Annick & he liked to go on special occasions. Of course there was a but… this place is probably the best restaurant in Antwerp, is very small, and is 99.99% likely to be fully booked. Luckily, or fatefully, we got there on a 0.01% Saturday night. We met the chef Bart (ex-experimental musician friend of Guy’s), he showed us to a table for two which just happened to be free, and we sat down to make our choices.
Guy started the customary menu-translation ceremony (lots of meat dishes and a few fish - not exactly a place for vegetarians, but fish sounded good to me) as we ate slices of bread (the most incredibly nutty and tender granary slices I have ever eaten) dunked in olive oil and sea salt (incredible. Simple but inspired). Meanwhile we sipped on some of the smoothest velvety champagne I have tasted. I plumped for a tuna carpaccio to start and brill for main course. Bart chose our wine for us - something Italian, I recall trying to commit the name to memory, but all I can remember now is that it had a blue label. The name may have began with a C. It was, of course, superlative. We luxuriated in it, savouring every odour and drop. Unfortunatly I wasted half a glass when I swept my arm across the table, trying to draw attention from some half-embarrasing line that I was uttering at the time (I think it had something to do with a past girlfriend). For the rest of the meal we periodically piled on more napkins to soak up the excess from the tablecloth.
My tuna arrived, topped with slices of raw peeled asparagus (how come asparagus never tasted this good before?) and flecks of parsley. Guy had a beef carpaccio. The tuna melted in my mouth all too easily. The main course came after a long wait (we got here about 7 or 8 - by now it was after 10) but we had no agenda and plenty of talking to get through, so time wasn’t an issue (although my elbows were wearing themselves thin on the tablecloth). My brill was floated in a patina of champagne sauce, a bale of spinach stacked against it and 3 oysters peering from the top of the plate. The whole arrangement looked something like a 3-eyed smiley face. It goes without saying that the fish was cooked to perfection, everything was incredibly simple but superlative. Even the scattered grinding of white pepper that I added tasted like no pepper that I’d previously encountered.
Finally we’d finished up and were ready to go. But Bart’s offer of “something sweet” to go with our meal sounded just too tempting. I was expecting a sweet dish, but he’d actually meant a digestif. And… wow! It was perfect. A glass each of Mirto de Sardegna, made from (I believe) blueberries, but the look and smell of it gave no hint of this - it is a thick translucent brown liquid with a eucalyptus aroma, in fact it looks and smells somewhat like cough medicine. It was incredible. I could feel it invigorating my veins, spreading downwards and outwards from my mouth, until any weight from the recent meal dropped away from me and I was ready to spring up and go outside. I was eager to try it again, to introduce others to it, so I asked Bart where I could buy some. His answer was simple: “Sardinia”. I resolved myself to the fact that I wouldn’t get any, but then was amazed when Bart asked his waiter to fetch something from the kitchen, then proceeded to wrap a fresh bottle of the stuff inside a carrier bag and hand it to me as a gift. The kind of service that you simply cannot forget, and a perfect ending to a perfect meal. I walked out of the restaurant with an inch of air under my feet, and I think that Guy felt the same - certainly it had cheered him up a lot, reminded us both that life throws up some amazing surprises when it chooses to.
After a quick stop at the Soeki’s again (1 cocktail each - mojitos), we met up with Lucas for late drinks - a noisy bar packed with young people. I foolishly started with Jack Daniels and Coke - made me far too drunk, and the tequilas I had afterwards were far nicer. Lucas and Guy chatted while I just surveyed the crowd and let the Mirto infuse me with a warm glow from inside. Latin music played, pumping basslines dancing around the timing of the piece, wonderful life-affirming stuff, followed by a bit of Marc Ribot y Los Cubos Postizos… “I’ve got this CD!!! I’ve got this!!”. Home. Drunk. Sleep (hard work just to guide myself into bed). Hangover @ 7am. 2 Neurofen capsules. More sleep. And more. And more.
Sunday proceeded at a much slower pace. Two nights of late drinking had taken it out of me. I spent the entire morning in bed, not that that helped much. The police came to check out the front and inner doors which had been broken down by mystery intruders the night before. Annick arrived mid-afternoon, amid banging from the door-fixers downstairs. The atmosphere was strange - although I felt my way back inside to 13 years and 1 month ago - “amicable” break up - nothing to be done, nothing can be done - deep pain, deep pity, want to help, she wants to help but… nothing can be done. Deep pity. Deep looks. Longing looks. Pained looks. Ineffectual looks. And on with the business of living our lives in whatever way is possible.
I offered what little help I could - carrying a few of Annick’s belongings out to her brother’s car. Tried to stay out of everyone’s way. And then Annick left and Guy sat at the table and I came and sat opposite him and we sat and we sat and we sat and I felt the pain and heavy heart of every short struggled breath but had no words to help and then 10 minutes later Guy spoke and life returned to normal but not normal.
The evening was more subdued - it had to be, I had used up all my energy, and I think Guy had lost a little of what he regained on Saturday night. Our slow walk to the Witzli came late, we passed a coffee there and then walked back. It was already 6.30pm - time to go to Las Margaritas for a meal and to see Lucas again. We took the last remaining table, drank caipirinhas, and ate - cactus salad then bean enchiladas with mole (chocolate) sauce for me, soup and chicken fajitas or somesuch for Guy. Lucas was not in the mood - caught up with the pressures of running a restaurant. I didn’t get to speak to him, and Guy only briefly. One final drink across town at De Muze bar, jazz in the background, fruity-sickly Gueuze beer on the table, music the topic of conversation - classical and jazz covered off quickly (one is easy, the other difficult, just depends which) and on to trading names of experimentalists and prog-rockers.
Frank Zappa is a classical genius. So was Stravinsky. And a funny guy - that business with the American national anthem - man, was he ever pissed. Who else? Yes. King Crimson. Hawkwind got a look in somewhere. Tangerine Dream. Eno (with Basil Kirchin, and others). Some band who carried on where the Beatles left off. Blur, who carried on who the Beatles left off as well, as opposed to Oasis who carry on regardless. Radiohead - yes, they are good too. you sure? Yes. Erm… Marvin Pontiac and his alter ego John must’ve been in there too. A few jazz greats? (Anyone for Mingus? Tijuana Moods?) - the Cardiacs merging backwards into Gentle Giant. Bill Laswell. John Zorn at the Barbican three years running. Bill Laswell not being good when playing with John Zorn at the Barbican. Fred Frith being extremely good when playing with John Zorn at the Barbican. Tom Cora, whose obituary I read recently on the LMC site - never knew he was dead… (or Gareth Williams… sounds like an amazing bloke. Both of them). … The Ex … … Harry Partch instruments, as played by the man himself and in the Hal Wilner-co-ordinated Wierd Nightmare meditation on Mingus. Zappa played by a Finnish chamber ensemble with centuries-old instruments, Zappa/Boulez…Varese!!!Ligeti***Debussy***Debussy***Debussy…. … .. . … … . …. . . ….. .. and that was just my contributions. Probably some Morton Subotnick in there too somewhere.
We’d intended an early night, but already time had slipped past 1am, so we trekked home through light drizzle to a quick bed.
7.30am alarm - bags packed, tea drunk, cab arrived early and it’s all over far too soon, though also just on time. Emotional saying goodbye, but I feel I’ve been useful for a change. Drag my heavy bag, with Mirto and Citronjenever for extra ballast, from cab to station to platform to Brussels to airport. Mum and dad are both there to meet me from Heathrow, I reward them with Belgian beer and chocolate, and gradually I slip back into London life and England life and work and forgetfulness and hustle and bustle and music and pleasure and sleep.