prolific.org » kindness http://prolific.org ISSN 1568-2218 | Established 1999 Wed, 23 May 2012 14:46:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Gent memories http://prolific.org/2007/12/16/gent-memories/ http://prolific.org/2007/12/16/gent-memories/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:12:21 +0000 Caroline http://vonbpress.com/2007/12/16/gent-memories/ Continue reading →]]> Gent, kermis
I could tell you about the time I spent in Gent, but then I’d have to… you know how it goes. One lasting memory? Perhaps the very honourable Mr B, composer, Northener, keeling over as he gets up from his seat in Café des Arts. Says he: ‘The chair is drunk. Not me.’

As for the city, the little I’ve seen of it: small, tidy, quaint here and there and a little posh in places. And absolutely lovely service and kindness everywhere we went. Yuji, at Café des Arts, especially, put up with our whims with a smile and once he got the go ahead from above, was generous with the bottles of local spirits. Please, my Flemish friends, never let yourself be annexed or even influenced by your Northern neighbours.

I’d recommend Hotel den Yzer to both budget and more upmarket travellers, if you can give up on luxury for a minute. Almost monastic in its simplicity, its authenticity will warm you. Old world charm beats the creepy vinyl seats in the nearby Ibis hotel any day.

The music was poignant, the temperature icy. The sun shone brightly, the company was dear. Bring on Christmas.
More details at Hydragenic.com

]]> http://prolific.org/2007/12/16/gent-memories/feed/ 2 Mrs Lynch’s Christmas pudding’s always the same http://prolific.org/2004/12/19/mrs-lynchs-christmas-puddings-always-the-same/ http://prolific.org/2004/12/19/mrs-lynchs-christmas-puddings-always-the-same/#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:35:39 +0000 Caroline http://vonbpress.com/2004/12/19/mrs-lynchs-christmas-puddings-always-the-same/ Continue reading →]]> She makes her Christmas pudding in plastic containers, not like her mother, god rest her soul, who’d wrap the thing in cloth and let it hang and rock from her Singer sewing table.

Is the recipe secret? ‘No, I’ve got it on a piece of paper,’ she says, with serious intent. The same recipe for the last 30 years, involving carrots and sultanas and many other things. Whiskey, of course. Just a drop.

It isn’t ‘ripe’ yet, still a little soggy at the top, but Mrs Lynch tells the husband to serve us slices. ‘We’re out of cream,’ she says, despairing. But it tastes heavenly regardless. ‘You don’t have to eat it,’ she adds, almost incredulous we should eat her sticky black concoction. But we want to. Oh, we want to.

She stands on the porch as the husband drives us to the bus stop, in the freezing cold and forgets to wave, her mind already caught on other things. Like the neighbours’ daughter, who she used to mind, who now has a little wan herself. She’s in and out the door and regards Mrs Lynch’s front room her own. Didn’t they buy the DVD player when the little wagon said they should so she could player her Disney DVDs in it? They did.

We thank her for her kindness and the tea, fish and chips and buttered slices of bread, the biscuits and the cider and washing up when we said to leave it. But it’s no bother, didn’t the husband do the cooking?

So he did.

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