IN THE DRIZZLE IN BRUSSELS AND CONVERSATIONS WITH LOUISE

Do you remember in one of my previous posts how I cautioned against swaggering remarks and how my old uncle used to say that someone up there was always listening in and would have the last laugh on us? Well, I have yet another confession to make. I used to laugh at over-zealous, doting Greek mothers who sent food to their adult children or stuffed it in their suitcases and carried it all the way to whichever part of the world their progeny resided. In fact, both Yiannis and I used to laugh and snigger and say things like…`WHAT!!!! Carrying meatballs and moussaka all the way to New York!!!! Is there no food in the Big Apple????’…Then there was this one friend of ours that wrapped and sealed and bundled a raw chicken amongst her clothes to London to cook it for her son and we broke out into hysterical gulping laughter when she was out of earshot. When Annie was studying in England, we visited but never took her any food. We were above all that, the superior beings that we were. Now Annie’s got a husband and baby and what are we doing?

I have a perfectly logical explanation for it all. Yes, yes, I took items of clothing for the family, especially for little Miss Loulou but that’s acceptable I’m sure. Oh yes, we did take 5 litre cans of olive oil and thyme honey and dark chocolate with roasted Greek almonds and that’s perfectly alright because they can’t get stuff like that in Brussels surely. But we never took cooked food except for that Christmas cake that I baked without consulting the recipe and it crumbled and I took it anyway and we ate it with a spoon. But that’s the limit. But at New Year’s when they visited, Yiannis and I were stricken with covid and felt so bad and needed to make up for it. So when Annie asked if I could bring some home-cooked food, I jumped at it and seized the opportunity to stuff their faces and make up for all past regrets.

So the week before the end of April, I shopped and cooked, paying heed to all details of recipes I had committed to memory. The first on the list was Mum’s Shepherd’s Pie, as far as I could remember it. Mine was a little different…the potatoes went into the pie with the mince, carrots, peas and button mushrooms, all covered with a lovely pie crust, brushed with egg yolk to give it that golden shine. Then there were the meatballs cooked in ripe sweet tomatoes from our very own garden. Last but not least was my famous chicken curry, which I could cook with my eyes closed since I had whipped it up so many times for friends and family and random people and every occasion and non-occasion. All the logistics was carried out by Yiannis, the sealing and packing with his own contributions on the side, two 5 litre cans of olive oil, cheese and spinach pies from the bakery, honey and chocolate and tsoureki– braided Greek brioche that came out of the suitcase in Brussels like it had been sat upon.

So there we were on the early morning flight to Brussels. Laurent picked us up from our hotel on Montgomery during his lunch break to let us into the flat to load the food into their refrigerator. Annie was at work and Louise at the crèche. So once Laurent left, we didn’t hang around the flat but foraged the streets for some lunch. It was siesta time and all eateries were closed except for Chez Sun, a Chinese joint, holed into an old building. It was dark and poky with no more than 3 tables. There was an altar with a sitting Buddha and a bowl of plastic flowers and Christmas lights in them. The owner cooked the food and served it. It was so surprisingly good that we forgave him for the plastic flowers on the tables and more of them stuck on light fittings.

The following days, we had such a grand time with the family. The first night we dined at a bistro. We walked through the park to get to it. Miss Loulou, all 2 years and 3 months of her with a head of curls and an impish grin, ran ahead with abandon until she came to a flight of steps and condescended to take Yiannis’ hand. At the bistro when we raised our wine glasses to toast to health and happiness, she raised her water bottle and clinked our glasses. Miss Loulou is a talker, who has volumes and volumes of things to say and babbles out in a French intonation that nobody understands, except for a couple of words like chat and chien, cat and dog which she sometimes says in English for my convenience. Since Yiannis speaks to her in Greek, she thinks that the poor man’s just drivelling and points to the cat or dog and enunciates it in French to help him pick up some language skills. As for me, I speak the language her mother speaks to her, so she rolls out her tongue differently and rattles off to simulate some sort of fluent uninterrupted English speech.

Miss Loulou, in the terrible twos of toddlerhood, is staging her own rebellion, her show of independence. She knows exactly what she doesn’t want, which is just about everything. When it comes to getting dressed, it’s…`Non non non!’…`Eat your food Louise!’…`Non non non!’…`Come here Louise!’…`Non non non!’…`Give me your hand.’…`Non non non!’ In the spirit of this non non non mood, we visited the Royal Greenhouses at the Castle of Laeken, with the evening sun glinting off the green metal and melting into the glass panels of the pavilions, cupolas and arcades, creating muted hues of orange, purple, green and blue. This spectacular sight is set in acres and acres of rolling green lawns studded with metal sculptures, gone green over the years, shady trees bursting with lime green foliage, swathes of bluebells and lush carpets of tiny daisies and buttercups and endless meandering paths. Louise paid no heed to our calls to enter the domed buildings with their floral displays. Why would she? It was so enchanting outside and besides, there was a fly floundering in a puddle in the cobbled pathway which deserved her immediate attention. Finally when we did step in, she was as dazzled as we were with the tall palm trees in the winter garden and in the tropical gardens with birds of paradise and Chinese wisterias with flowers hanging like cascades of pale grapes. Miss Loulou ran to each rhododendron bush with bunches of flowers of reds and pinks and mauve and bent down to inhale their scents, much to the delight of everyone. A little later we heard a roar of laughter when she slipped under a roped off area and toddled off to investigate a little further.

From Miss Loulou’s point of view, she and her kind are not terrible toddlers but we, the grown-ups are the terrible tyrants, imposing and unreasonable. When we were sitting at the table at dinner time and eating the Shepherd’s Pie, her piece of pie crust was turned over and she was picking off the bits of meat stuck to it, meticulously, when her father decided to shove some filling on it. First there was a look of total outrage on her face…`HOW COULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING WHEN I WAS HARD AT WORK CLEANING THE BITS OFF THE CRUST!…She looked at me with storm clouds brewing in her long hazel eyes. She babbled out a tirade of fury, complaining to me and pointing an accusing finger at her father. The import of her speech was loud and clear…` LOOK AT WHAT HE JUST WENT AND DID, RUINING ALL MY HAPPINESS AND JOY AND WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE!!!!! DO SOMETHING!!!!! ‘…We shouldn’t have laughed but we did and her anger turned to amusement which was further fuelled with her grandfather sticking his tongue out at her. She mimicked him like a little lizard and her father told her sternly to stop all that bêtises-foolishness, which she didn’t and neither did her grandfather.

Now we’re back in Chania, missing them a bit…but c’est la vie I guess. But there will always be other times and summer’s round the corner and they’ll be visiting again.

So till the next time my friends, cheers.