Sun Day

I've been thinking about this question that so many people ask me, what are you doing in here? I know it's a simple question and it's not intended as anything particularly deep, but it's a question that really gets under my skin. I wonder to myself, what am I doing here? There is an artistic argument to it (or maybe it's a social one) but in many ways this becomes less and less important to me. Why do I sit in a little house every day? Why would anyone want to do that? Then I was thinking about how I have spent so much of the last few years rushing around like an idiot always trying to do more than I have time or energy for. The consequences of that are that need to stop sometimes and I think this little house is my stop, my pause. For 4 hours per day I have to be in one spot and just meet people, very intimately face to face. I have no control over who I meet, it's someone who just happens to bend down, maybe they don't speak my language, maybe they haven't even learned to speak any language yet. And for those 4 hours I have to surrender to what is around me. There is something to learn from that and I think it is no accident that I am learning it now. So, I'm sure I wouldn't give you this answer if you bent down to my window but this is the closest thing to why I am doing it as I can imagine.... for the moment.

Can you believe that these three people have never met each other? Well they have now of course, since I introduced them.

A small army of children, baring the hands of parents, was the air that I breathed in Gent yesterday. Amber came baring fruit (literally)

so I knew it was going to be a good day.

Here are some pictures. I really like this first one, it's like a person, a house, a fish and a hat all in one.

Pirates don't really ever go out of fashion do they. Is the costumes, the hat, the lifestyle? Maybe the pay? Or perhaps the idea of just being with your mates without parents to tell you to eat horrible green things when you don't want to.

Friendly monsters, don't worry

And this is Anya from yesterday. Recognise her?

A family visit - actually I think this is record, three kids in three windows and mum at the front

Houses with personality to burn.

There was an air of caution when I was dropped off in the round point behind Sint-Joseph last night. It’s hard to conceive how there could be so many people packed onto the streets at one time. The evening as it happened was like a delicate dressing over a well roasted day and my letterbox swelled with notes and pictures.

Gent Fest Ravers

At last someone who doesn’t take a door too small for your head as discouragement to get inside. This guy tried several different techniques, this was perhaps the most successful though wearing nappies may have been a mistake as it stopped him getting any further.

Others were happy to look in from a distance.

This is a great note dropped in through the window by a teenage girl, and I really wish I’d been able to talk to her and find out what the point is. People often ask me what the point is and to be brutally honest it gets harder and harder to answer. I thought there was a point at the beginning but now I think there may be no such thing as a point and that home is where the point is, or the point is where the home is. I want to understand her point though because it is a good one and I like a point that is definitively good.

Not sure if she was giving Barbie a look inside or if she was just showing off because I didn’t have a Barbie and she does…?

This guy has a fresh arm full of Japanese-inspired tattoos, the fruits of two years labour.

And this is from Lara, I like the fact that we got one whole page each, I get to have a mouth full of teeth and legs! I am interested that it says 7 though, does she think that I am 7? If she is 5, perhaps this is a good guys that I am at least a couple of years older than she is.

I was parked outside a bank after all.

These guys were great, locals with plenty of patience for newcomers.

And this is Anna and Anya, and despite how it looks they really don’t know each other. Anna is from Spain but moved to Belgium to study.

Houses with personality to burn.

A good offer from Deborah, I accept your offer.

An architect I admire in New Zealand tells a story about being approached in a pub by a guy with an enormous beer jug full of coins. The guy slammed the jug down in front of the young architect and said, here you go this is how much I’ve saved up, now build me house. So he did, using found bricks and recycled wood. I have seen the house (from the outside at least) and it is truly a beautiful place.

It rained, it shone, they came they went

A day full of contrasts, a lot of interesting drawings and a street full of shoppers. My first visiter was Jonathan from the day before, he’d thought about it and come back today to give me this comment. A sentiment I can relate to, cos I don’t think my dreams are at all wrapped up in a home. But then in some ways this little house has been like a dream home because it has taken me places that I would not have been otherwise and, come to think of it, there are so so many people I would never have met if it were not for this dream home. (ah always contradicting myself damnit)

And all the way from Picton, New Zealand, this is Carlynne. True to character for all kiwi’s you may notice she has a beak, this is very practicle for collecting worms and small bugs that live beneath the ground. Carlynne has been travelling all over the place and has a jacket full of badges to prove it.

I’ll show you the artwork first, then the artist. In fact, there is a story behind it. That is me inside the house seen through the window. Beneath the window is a sad face but this is the house that is sad not me, because it is not very big and it is getting rained on.

And here is the artist.

Some great random pictures, some of them I think you with recognise, others may be a little more open to interpretation.

And my favourite for the day, I like this house because it looks like it has personality. The sun is like a big eye with lashes keeping it company and inside is a fine cool blue.

My terrific minder team, Ying and Yang, a perfect pair.

And what do you know, this is another New Zealander, they are everywhere clearly. Verena is buying a childrens book in every country she visits and this is apparently representative of Belgium.

And just to prove that Gentese people are not easily put off, here is proof that when the rain comes the smiles just keep on coming.

Some moving images of the rain rain rain

Click HERE for a blog review, also some beautiful pictures

HEY thanks to both Suzan and Jonathan who both took up the challenge for me, thanks so much. Here it is in English.

Gent – My second day of street theatre festival brings me to the Veldstraat. No, not for shopping, because that´s not what people do during festivals, but to let me be surprised by a large doll house.

As a child, I dreamt of a doll house like that, but I never got one. We played with Cindy, the more define version of Barbie, my parents thought. We made clothes and my sister and I used to be busy for days to improvise our own doll house. But I never had a real doll house, like the one before me now, in the middle of the Veldstraat.

There are kinds of people who walk by without noticing, others who take a quick look and walk on. Then there are some who take the time to read the the accompanied writing and a few even dare to put a message in the mail box of the little house. Children are a lot more playful, bend down on their knees and curiously peak through the little windows.

´There is a man in that house!´ comes from a children´s mouth full of surprise. Stephen, the man who inhabits the house is indeed stuffed inside his house. At one a clock this afternoon he went inside and at five he will squeeze out again. An adventure on its own, because he will have to make himself very small to fit through the little door? ´Don´t eat too many apples, sir!´a blonde curly head whispers to him. ´Because otherwise you will get too fat and you will never get back out …´ You think so?

I walk around, especially enjoying the reactions of the spectators because to lay myself down on my belly like that and interview the householder for this piece of writing, would go just a little too far. Maybe if there weren´t so many people around or if I would have had one pint too many to drink, I would have, but it is way too early for that …

Are you curious and would you like to drink a cup of tea with Stephen, you can! On Saturday between 18.00 and 22.00 o clock at Sint-Jacobs and on Sunday between 17.00 and 21.00 on the Sint-Baafssite. And you should certainly have a look on his site. Worth your visit, because when you look through the window, you sometimes get flashed!

The name of this act is a mouthful …'Baby, where are the fine things you promised me ?'. The owner of this house and the act is Stephen Bain from New Zealand. He comes from very far to carry out his message that we should be more satisfied with the smaller things in life …