Beginnings of a new year

I reclaimed my office this weekend.  After my roomy left in November I decided to leave it empty for two months uncertain whether to find another roomy or reclaim ‘the spare bedroom’ as my office space.   The benefits of having a roomy were manifold: company in the evening without having to go out - someone to look after the flat and my mail on (those frequent occasions last year) when I was away and, not least,  someone paying half the rent.  But it did involve certain sacrifices – having to negotiate freezer space (he bought lots of frozen veg – I like to cook double and freeze these for a ‘rainy day’ (plenty of those in Brussels) and squeezing my office into a corner of (first my bedroom, then later our lounge).  It never really felt like I had enough space.  My desk was too small and the wrong height, I experienced ‘paper creep’ – letters and work projects taking over the sofa, the carpet and eventually the kitchen table.  And sometimes important papers got put away somewhere obscure and answered too late. But I decided to sit it out two months and see what came out in the settling process.  

 Eventually this weekend I took the plunge and spent much of Sunday de- and re-wiring my office –a process made more complicated by it being cramped into one corner with the wires and connections hidden behind and underneath furniture.  There were the inevitable problems with wires not being long enough to put the various bits of kit where they would be ergonomically and aesthetically most pleasing- I was sure I had a long cable to attach the printer to the pc but after a long search through my suitcase full of cables it couldn’t be found so I had to come up with an inventive office redesign that - to my surprise - actually works.   The most attractive feature though is that the office really catches the morning light and you can see the skyscrapers of the Brussels’ World Trade Centre glimmering in the light. On a sunny day the room is positively luminous – a real incentive to start the day on a positive note rather than procrastinate about starting to work.  It finally likes the start of the New Year is finally upon me.  Roll on sunny days and longer evenings!

Little darling, the smiles are returning to the faces

Easter finally arrives, along with summer time and April Fools’ Day. I can’t remember when all those dates coincided. I also can’t remember such a long, hard and cold winter. The first frost came the day the clocks went back (five long months ago). The first snow fell before St. Niklas day (My Flemish friends pointed this out. I wouldn’t have noted that as a significant date). It snowed every night in the week before Easter, including Good Friday. Different reports suggest that it has been the coldest /longest winter for more than fifty years (in 1962 the River Thames froze over) or since 1916 (when several million men were living in war-time trenches in Belgium and must have suffered horribly).

The crocuses (and snowdrops) in Wageningen were still in flower when I was back there a week ago. Gardeners' schedules are some five weeks behind and Welsh hill-farmers are digging their sheep (often dead) out of snowdrifts. I had a Canadian couch surfer stay last week who told me that the snow came ten days earlier than usual and was deeper than anyone can remember. Hey,in my books the Canadians know their snow (and probably have as many words for it as the British do for precipitation). Today the skies are blue –although overnight temperatures will go below zero for the coming weeks.

Nichiren says spring always follows winter. Sure is a long time coming! To remind me of that possibility I bought some flowers for my table this weekend. I've lived a long in the Netherlands, where cut flowers are really cheap. They were one of the first things that fell off my shopping list when I moved to Belgium, so having flowers on the table again feels like a real act of self-indulgence