Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Peter and Chantal left a day later than planned and headed to Paris instead of Stockholm. That’s the beauty of travel ad lib.

Eloïse is back at playschool after half-term and loving every minute of it. Wanda told me that Eloïse now almost exclusively speaks Dutch while she’s there. It’s both surprising and pleasing how fast the transition has occurred. Sarah even caught Eloïse speaking to herself in Dutch whilst playing on her own the other day, which really shows how natural it’s becoming for her.

Possibly our most pressing furnishing need was answered yesterday morning when our dining-room lighting was delivered and mounted. We purchased a couple of Lumina Galileo lamps from a local shop and are very enthusiastic about the results. To my great delight, it’s now possible to read the paper after 17:00 and the lamps add a sleek, classy touch to the room, especially when combined with a dimmer switch.

I had first wanted a different kind of light (a horizontal mounting bar with three adjustable hanging lamps, each of which is turned on, off and dimmed by holding and releasing the 12V wires on which it hangs), but I decided to ignore my appreciation of the engineering and make a purely aesthetically based decision. Sarah’s conviction that the Italian Galileos were the better choice also played a vital role, of course.

We’ve also ordered a standard lamp for the living-room. It has a dark wooden base and will be crowned by a lampshade that we’re having hand-made from horsehair by a local craftswoman. It sounds dodgy, but it’s an obvious choice once you’ve seen an example of the finished product. Her lampshades and, indeed, other pieces of art made from horsehair are absolutely beautiful.

The three of us continue to feel very content in the house. The weather has become quite chilly over the last week and the house has a lovely, cosy, warm atmosphere to it. It’s simply a joy to spend time here, reading a book, watching TV, eating with friends… whatever. I find myself very much at ease here and continue to be surprised and slightly perplexed at the fact that it feels so perfectly our own home. Possibly that’s due to the painting we had done; possibly it’s just the fact that the house is dead right for us, anyway. I don’t know.

The house has been in scaffolding for the last couple of days, as workmen have been repairing some of the brickwork around the perimeter of the house.

Much of this brickwork hasn’t seen any repair since it was first put in place some ninety odd years ago, so I think next spring will see us performing extensive restoration work on the exterior. Some areas, however, couldn’t be delayed until after the winter, so those were tackled this week. The second floor balcony, the first floor bay window and the ground floor conservatory front wall were all repaired, so we should hopefully now stay watertight during the upcoming winter.

We’ve been in the new house for just over a month now and, at this point, it’s hard to imagine that we ever had any doubts whether buying and moving into the place would be the appropriate course of action. The three of us all love it and feel very much at home here. It’s hard to imagine being anywhere else now.

I love to sit in my office, listening to the Sonos, and look out the window at the autumnal scenes of bakfietsende mothers bringing their tiny tots to playschool. Bronzed leaves, driven by the wind, cascade across the street; spiders crawl over webs spun across the window frame; people arrive for work and exchange a momentary glance with me. Perhaps they’re as curious about me as I am about them.

We’re still missing the touches of a lived-in home, but that will change when we get our artwork back from the framemaker’s and hang it up. I’ll also continue to haunt the local auction rooms in search of items that just seem to belong in our home. Too many of our walls are bare at the moment, but we need time to grow into the place.

For now, the world outside my window is a living tapestry.