About home

Having been away for the best part of three weeks, it is good to be back home. Home is where I feel most at ease, which is how it should be. Everything I might need is close to hand. Home is the best place to relax and be with my family; until of course countless everyday tasks of maintenance, administration and the business of merely living present themselves. But they bring their own sort of domestic satisfaction once accomplished.
It is often said that people’s homes are a reflection of themselves. Homes are best shared, so ours is a reflection not just of me but also of Clara and the children. Since “about being here” attempts to give a reflection of myself, I shall describe my home.
I don’t want to give an estate agent’s description. Home is more than a house or an investment in real estate in which you happen to live. I think I’m allergic to the expression “a nice property”. Home is not “Ideal Home” either, it’s not posing for a sterile photo in a glossy magazine; it shows all the signs of being in regular use and is cluttered with the accumulated paraphernalia of experience past and present.
We moved in here in 1989 shortly before Julia was born. It’s an average sized Brussels town house (ie in a terrace) built in the late 1920’s with a garden at the back. That means it’s tall and thin (5.5 metres) with five levels - so you get to do a lot of stairs living here.
The ground floor has the characteristic three rooms “en enfilade”, though the largest, the kitchen-dining room, is actually built out at the back. It’s the largest and most important room in the house and it opens straight onto the terrace and garden, to where activity spills over in the spring and summer. It’s quite light and you can see the plants and flowers in tha garden out of the windows and in the other direction from the dining table you can survey the ground floor right through to the front. This room is central to life in the house and reflects the importance to us of preparing food and eating together. In the middle room is the piano, a desk, the large CD collection and a large wardrobe for outdoor clothes. The front room inevitably has a large sofa (including a section for siestas) the TV, hifi and a lot of books. There are a lot of my paintings on the walls (mainly watercolour landscapes), in the middle room a big portrait of Clara and the children when young (painted by an artist who used to live down the street) and a big mirror above the old marble fireplace (sadly the fireplaces don’t work). There are also plenty of plants on the ground floor including a big monstera in the kitchen. Generally throughout the house the walls are white, the floors plain pine boards with rugs here and there and the furniture light-coloured wood (cherry in the front and middle two rooms, beech in the kitchen, oak on the first floor). The white seeks to increase the light and act as a neutral backdrop for the many pictures and photographs, the wood to give a feeling of warmth.
In the hall there is some fine original floor tiling. Other period details include the old doors and some nice plaster ceiling mouldings on the ground and first floors. I like these old details, they give the house some character. The ceilings are generally quite high giving a feeling of spaciousness.
On the first floor is our bedroom looking onto the garden and the office which doubles as dressing room. On one side the wall is taken up by cupboards built by a carpenter from Burgundy (who sadly died young), on the other is a very large desk on which sits the computer I am writing at. There are lots of pictures and books on this floor too. Then there’s the main bathroom in white and light blue.
Julia and Thomas have a room each on the second floor and a shower room. Thomas’ room in yellow and red (his own choice) breaks with the house colour scheme and is quite original in other aspects too, but despite the varied odds and ends of furniture it is usually quite neat. Julia’s room has smarter fitted furniture but is usually quite disordered.
Right at the top, the attic is a nice quiet light space which is a good place to get away from everything. It serves as spare bedroom, music room, kids’ study room, occasional studio and last home for unwanted items of furniture, discarded toys and less than likely to be re-read books.
Right at the bottom we have a large healthy dry cellar in four parts (the house is on high ground) which provides the space to store bikes, outdoor equipment, skis, wine, tools, suitcases and bags, miscellaneous junk that might come in for repairs etc. Here too are the washing machine and boiler and plenty of room to dry clothes through the long cold and damp season.
I mustn’t forget the long wooden staircase which offers plenty of wall space for posters, postcard collections, paintings and photos of the children.
The house is a generous size for a family of four, comfortable, quiet, warm, reasonably light. In short it feels like home. When we first visited it, it somehow felt right, that it would make a good home. I wouldn’t dream of moving, the idea strikes me as quite unnecessarily life disturbing. Alongside the inside of the house, other important considerations that make it home are of course the garden and the neighbourhood, but I shall write about those another time.