Le Saint-Jacques or
Arcanum boni tenoris animae:
Arcanum boni tenoris animae:
We stand, feeding pieces of hard bread
To two amiable, waggy-tailed goats,
Our dogs snuffling around beside us,
Seeking p-mails and, the ultimate joy,
Exquisitely perfumed fox crap to roll in.
Voices drift to us from an open window,
French, English and Flemish weaving their way,
Like crotchets and quavers searching for
A unifying stave and their elusive clef.
A blood-red sun hangs above a wide horizon,
Like the ultimate, improbable, slightly apocalyptic
Child’s errant balloon, caught in a tug-of-war
Betwixt the earth and sky.
Darkness and light,
Mystery and farewell beckon,
As Moon and Sun play
Their eternal game of hide and seek,
Now offering the perpetual promise
Of darkness, and forays into the
Enchanted realm of dreams and nightmares,
Then to a great, wide smile of sunshine
Shouting out the miracle,
And infinite potential,
Of a brand new, never before experienced, day.
Trees stand, silent, silhouetted sentinels,
Drawing the eyes upward to Venus,
Bewitcher of lovers, the Evening Star,
Above a sky painted by a mad deity of
Colour; blues, oranges, yellows and crimson,
Splashed with a glorious, wild abandon by
The God of Munch, Van Gogh and his Flemish
Friend Eugène
Boch, inevitable outside this
Charmed piece of Flanders nestled contentedly
In the warm and
welcoming folds of Brittany
We make our
farewells, goats contented,
And with the dogs
wend our way to the door,
And the warmth of
welcome;
Biscuits for the dogs,
And water which they
drink
As though they have
none at home,
And expect there to
be none
In the foreseeable
future;
Grinning Kurt’s
bone-crusher handshake,
Bisous with the fair
Ellen
And handshakes,
bonjours
Hellos and bisous
All around the bar,
With friends known
and loved,
And potential friends
to be,
Each with a smile of
welcome.
A pint of Jupiler
appears,
The glass placed
carefully upon a mat,
The name pointing
towards me,
To reassure me,
perhaps,
Or more likely a
paranoid visiting Belgian,
That I am not being
slipped an interloping beer
Of vastly inferior
quality,
A beer not brewed
with love in Belgium
Brewed there (with
now
One thousand six
hundred others)
Since before the
invention of the wheel …
Or certainly imbued
with more importance.
As an aside, one has
to admire Belgian’s priorities.
It is true, perhaps,
that it is hard
To name many famous
Belgians,[1]
But not so its
glorious beers which,
Possibly as a new pub
game,
You could undertake
the joyous task of naming,
(A game at which Ellen
and Kurt would excel
If the latter could
get past Duvel.)
Throughout a long and
enjoyable night,
And well into the
morrow,
Though I would not
suggest
You drink one of each
in that session.
Caveat: Your host might.
A personalised glass plus
A carafe of chilled
Sauvignon also appear,
Its silver sleeve
holding back the
Welcome warmth of the
radiators,
As the Autumn’s
gentle touch -
She, the sensitive
but inexorable killer,
Sliding a shiv most
tenderly
Between the ribs of
summer -
Chills the air
outside, loading it with
A mist of soft and
tender melancholy.
The talk is varied,
Some profound,
‘Deep as a draw well’
As they say in the
country of my birth,
Some delightfully
absurd,
Leading to laughter
interweaving itself
Into the bass music
of ponderous words,
Piccolos lightening
the darkest philosophy.
The smells of moules
mariniere
Shout loud in our
noses as Ellen brings
To fortunate folk
ensconced,
In most happy
anticipation,
Within the restaurant,
and
Who are dining well
this night,
Their epicurean
desires to be
Sated to the
full. They will
Later leave, smiling
and replete,
Blissfully unaware,
as they sashay out
Through the bar, that
they are the ones
Responsible for the
slight trace of envy
Which momentarily
taints the atmosphere.
And so the evening
goes;
The talk a little
louder,
A touch more laughter
In the air as old
jokes are
Hauled from the dark
recesses
Of mildly befuddled
minds,
And mangled
mercilessly
In their telling,
with false starts
And forgotten punch
lines
Receiving hoots of
derisive protest,
And shrieks of
support in equal measure.
Smokers drift in and
out,
Now, to my mind
unreasonably,
Accepting their
pariah status,
And I think aloud
with a nostalgia
Not shared by many of
my companions,
Of the days when bars
were full of smoke,
And clothes stank in
the mornings,
An unavoidable
olfactory reminder
Of an evening well
spent.
Life generally was
freer then.
As time treads its
inexorable path,
Slowly, in ones, twos
and at the last,
Small groups, people
bid their farewells
And go out into the
chill night
To carefully wend
their way homeward,
All doubtless sharing
in common
My oft felt strong
desire
That they will have
an opportunity,
Before their journey’s
end,
To congratulate the
local gendarmes
On their
extraordinary vigilance
And duty-inculcated,
heartfelt drive
To helpfulness in
noticing that
They have a sidelight
out,
And kindly pulling
them over
To inform them thus,
and engage
In a bit of gentle, friendly
banter.
With that cheerful
thought in mind,
We, too, must take
our leave.
More handshakes and
bisous,
And then with the
dogs sending
Their final p-mails in
the car park,
To sign off their
day’s use of social media,
Merlin barking like a
loon,
And me remonstrating,
To no avail, as
always,
As he, too, feels the
need to say aurevoir,
We all clamber into
the Rangy,
And with both
pleasure at an evening well spent
And a little sorrow
that all good things must end,
That’s to be had down
at the St Jacques.
[1] The current Top 10 famous Belgians are:
1.
Eddy Merckx,
five times winner of the Tour de France
2.
Adolphe Sax,
inventor of the saxophone
3.
Herge (Georges
Remi) , the creator of TinTin
4.
Audrey
Hepburn, actress
5.
Plastic
Bertrand, punk/rock singer of 'Ca Plane Pour Moi' fame
6.
Peter Paul
Rubens, baroque painter
7.
Rene
Magritte, surrealist painter
8.
George
Lemaitre, astronomer who invented the Big Bang theory
9.
Albert
Claude, the first biochemist to isolate a cancer cell
10.
Leo Hendrik
Baekeland, the inventor of bakelite
For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Belgians
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