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.