The Darkness of Bruges

She held nothing back. That was her way; maximum disclosure, honesty. Full and brutal honesty. There were incidents in her past, incidents that scarred her. Left their mark. Below the surface but ever present, just awaiting the right audience. The right amount of alcohol. Tonight, he was her audience and the drinks he bought encouraged a reckless stream of honest histories. He had bought more than her time; he’d acquired a dark world he never knew existed. A world he wanted to believe never existed. How he wished he’d just smiled and moved on.

Later she’d not smiled but had moved on. Into the Bruges night.

Earlier

The writer was in Bruges.

No, no; that won’t do. Say that again.

“The writer was in Bruges.”

Two lies and one truth in just one sentence.

He was in Bruges. True

But frankly, he was unused to being written about in the third person. An unnecessary literary conceit.

Also - to be picky - the description ‘writer’ does some heavy lifting in those five words.

Noted. But let’s move on.

The writer was in Bruges.

The Search for ‘the’ Bar

He walked through the pre Xmas crowds. Not for him the overpriced Christmas markets, the ‘hand-crafted’ baubles from China sold out of MDF huts by bored vendors on minimum wage. His purpose was more focused ; get pissed and write some scabrous observational piece from the vantage point of a bar stool. He’d done it before; in Antwerp. In Krakow. In Delph. And now Bruges; pretty and full of tourists and beer. His sorta place.

But although the beer flowed, the words would not come. Like a semi-drunk middle-aged man with a hot chick, it just wasn’t happening. His fingers poised on the keyboard, his eyes searched around the bars for life, for action, for those human foibles that populated his brand of travel writing.

It was raining. He’d got wet looking for that perfect bar. The perfect bar that had the right balance of observable transient people, friendly staff, couples decoupling or attempting to couple. But today, it wasn’t happening.

And so he stumbled into the night, this place and that place and until he found the place.

The Real Story Begins…

Delaneys Irish bar. Oh the shame; an Irish bar in Bruges. He always avoided these, preferring, demanding local hostelries. But frustration and writer’s block blew him out of the rain and into Delaneys.

It must have been at the bar. It must have been that they were English. It could have been that they were away from home, looking for a good time away from all that home implies. Maybe a trail of bars paved their route and they were already semi drunk. But whatever the catalyst, they got talking.

A taller girl, polite but unengaged with the Writer, perhaps less refreshed, perhaps annoyed with her friends, kept her distance.

Another - let’s call her Roxanne - had a look of a chunky Michelle Pfeiffer about her. Or Cameron Diaz. He couldn’t remember which. She was on a mission. Some recent messy break up with her boyfriend back home, who, frankly, was a user and a loser. Or that’s the story her friends shared and who was the writer to dispute this? Men all are, in retrospect.

Did the writer rule himself out of Roxanne’s temporary redemption at the hands of a stranger in a foreign city? Did she, instantly comparing him to taller, fitter - younger - options in the now crowded bar, make it apparent he was not to be the author of her subsequent regret. Maybe.

We all like to believe we are agents of our own destiny. The writer, occasionally, believed this. That we briefly ascend above the quotidian and break free from the set of tracks life has assigned us. Or maybe it’s all chance and serendipity. He also believed this and perhaps his solo treks, his bar stool philosophising, was a detached celebration of this.

Life in the detail is infinitely wondrous. It’s when the lens pulls back you get to see ants scrabbling around in the preordained fashion.

She - let’s call her Karen - instantly attracted him. She was shorter, with auburn hair. Perhaps prettier than in a less obvious way than her blonde friend on a mission. But she held one key advantage, she wanted to talk and she liked, for some reason, for some explicable reason, to chat with The Writer.

Being older, he held certain advantages. Life experience. Not having to worry how to pay for the next drink. A certain level of education and a lifetime of talking to customers, knowing when to listen, when to prompt, when to take control.

The drink flowed. The laptop, encased in a backpack, beyond a reassuring weight by his feet, was forgotten. No observations from the cheap seats tonight; he was now in the play itself, finding his voice as an actor.

To his studied witticisms and cod philosophising, she was open, a torrent of life history, describing characters he would never meet, out of context situations he could only dimly comprehend. It was pleasing to him. Everyone has a need to confess, given time, given circumstance and he allowed her the time.

Roxanne, naturally given her looks and stated mission, was hit upon by several gallants. One in particular, inappropriately old the writer sniffily thought, was doing better than the rest and the two faded from the rest in time honoured manner. Minutes later they were wrapped in a kissy embrace against a wall.

The writer and Karen moved to a table with their drinks and - fastidiously - the precious laptop. She was engaged, or about to be engaged. The perspective husband was all right she supposed but - I dunno - Karen, on this night, with this person, given distance, was unsure whether she was making the right decisions.

She was twenty nine.

There’s a darkness in all of us. Who can doubt this? Sensing opportunity but not the tools, The Writer sensed a rare opportunity. Uncertainty of affection in a bar, away from home, is where a surface level conversion can start to operate on many levels. She, finding someone sensitive - a Writer, don’t you know, was with someone she could unburden herself upon. He? Well you know what he was thinking.

And she talked. Karen was an amusing anecdotalist. She made him laugh. He remembered this. She was funny but then, suddenly, serious, very serious. The amusing tales morphed and reshaped into a dark world of awful men, shocking memories, betrayals of trust. Fathers not being told in case they acted upon learning the truth and ended up in prison.

The Writer knew that maybe it was like this. That behind many women there were stories like this. Not the stories he liked to write but unwritten stories held within. Karen told him of two in a ‘that’s life’ type way. Not self-pitying. Not looking for sympathy - far from it - but related facts, just facts. She didn’t cry. There was no anger. Just resignation. Life’s like that, you know? What can you do?

The Writer went outside to think, ostensibly to vape. There was much to think about in that narrow, focused way drunks have. Was this how life really was? And if it was, what was his place in it? He had a code of honour, a belief in romance, in inevitable destinations through smiles, mutual attraction, consent. How much pain and regret and anger was there hidden? How much had he missed as he glided upon the surface of things, idiot-clever, never seeing another world below?

Back in the bar the table was empty. Where was Karen? He searched the bar looking for her. Not here. Not there. Roxanne had detached herself from her erstwhile paramour and was now closely engaged with one of his younger friends. The first guy seemed angry and was being rationalised by the taller girl of the three. There was a version of ‘leave it, she not worth it’ speech in her mouth. He seemed unconvinced.

And then The Writer spotted Karen. Over at the far side of the bar perched on a bar stool next to a balding man with his arm around her. She was leaning in. He seemed happy with his possession, no doubt plotting next moves. The Writer already crestfallen, fell further. His place here was now redundant. His part in this play had been written out and he should gracefully exit left.

Something made him go over. He’d chatted to her for an hour. They had bonded. It seemed polite to say goodbye. To be the good guy he always imagined he was.

“Thank fuck you’re here! This guy is like a bloody octopus!” Karen detached herself and, picking up her drink, walked over to The Writer. His smile was instant. Doubts moved away as they went back to her friends. There was commotion between the two suiters of Roxanne that was rapidly attracting a crowd. Karen and friend formed an uneasy wall between the men, Roxanne and several late comers amused by the spectacle.

All was uproar and raised voices. Roxanne, now pissed, was arguing with her friends. She’d made a decision and wanted to go home with a third guy who, silently, had joined our group. He seemed sober, well dressed. Good looking. Yes, yes, just the sort thought The Writer bitterly.

The girls were arguing amongst themselves. Old enmities were brought up to met by counterpoints from way back. The taller one took charge. She was the most sober and clearly was the mother of the group. She suggested they take this outside. They all agreed. Karen raised her eyebrow at The Writer as they went outside onto the terrace. He stayed at the bar ordering a fresh Kriek. Best to stay out of it.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Alarmed he rushed outside to see the three girls in the distance passing De Verliefden statue walking away at a fast pace.

Out into the darkness of Bruges.

Hand On It, Rejections from the article

Let’s not batter the veneer of this literary creme brûlée too hard with our spoon. 

And my favourite:

Was life as the perpetual outsider, the not so detached observer of human follies finally realising the stinging words pointed at others were but pale cousins to the unwritten rebuke subliminally hidden ? 

Krakow: What to do, see, eat, avoid.

(In which Tim, donning the ill fitting mantle of a travel writer, eschews bitchy bar room observations and talks about his general thoughts on Krakow. Probably not going to go too deep into the historic churches, castles, squares. There’s other bloggers for that. This is more about my impressions. Which is a pretentious way of saying, it’s some lazy old bollocks I wrote semi pissed into my notebook whilst writing the other two parts to my Krakow Trilogy.)

Anyway, Krakow.

Yes beautiful. Definitely come here. They speak perfect English everywhere. I quizzed a barman about this. It’s the linga franca of our age. We all are dragged back to the universal English. Sorry French. Germans. Italians who, outside their own country have to meet serving staff in a third language. Our greatest achievement perhaps? The default option - the bitcoin of language.

I don’t really do touristy things but, here’s a couple off everyone’s top ten of things to do in Krakow:

1) Wawel Castle. Yes, it’s the number one place to see and rightly so. Get your lazy arse up that hill and snap those tourist shots; you know the ones… The ones you get out your phone for and bore your friends with. It’s mostly free. Pay to wander around inside and pretend to be interested in 16th century tapestries, or something. I took the dragon’s cave steps down to the town for a small fee.

2) Oskar Schindler Factory museum. Well worth a trip across the river. Thought provoking and deftly handled. Read my article here.

3) Old Town Square. Yeah, it’s big. You’ll probably spend most of your time there anyway.

4) Get pissed in various bars and write scabrous & bitchy articles through hazes of practiced ennui enthused vodka. Read mine here.

5) The dumplings. Yeah, why not.

6) Parks and cleanliness. The whole of the old square is surrounded by a greenery. I believe this is the moat converted to parkland. Very lovely.

Food and Drink

There are lots of bars and restaurants. Where did I eat?

Polish cuisine. You can’t avoid the pierogi - those stuffed dumplings (meat / spinach, cheese, take your pick). I went to Mirror Bistro which is a pierogi specialist. I had the Borsch with an egg followed by meat pierogis with caramelised onions. Very traditional. A bit dry for my liking - wish I’d have paired with a cream sauce for that satisfied ‘fuck it, I’m on holiday’ experience. Washed down with beer. 82 Zloty (£18!)

As I’m trying to avoid potatoes / wheat etc, I looked up and went to salad bar Chimera. It’s situated in a street adjacent to the main square. Yeah, I know a salad bar sounds crap but this was a good find. It’s a pretty place in a covered courtyard. There’s a long counter with various salads but also the odd meat dish too. You pay per portion. It wasn’t expensive. I had a plate full of various salads and chicken washed down with beer and (the free) freshly squeezed orange juice.

And yes, I went to a Taste Poland (Grodska) fast food joint just off the main square (Grodska 38). I had more Pierogi, a Polish sausage and pickles plus my inevitable beer (see photo above to the right). Nothing to be snobby about, it was lovely and just what I needed. Fast and friendly service (you get a beeper which goes off when your order is ready). 78 Zloty (£16). If you need a quick but authentic fuel stop, I’d go here.

But I spent most of my time in bars. You know, how else does this stuff get written?

My favourite was B.O.H.O to which I returned three times. It’s on Stolarska 6 which is near Planty Park. Read my pissed up observations of this bar written on my three visits through hazes of practiced ennui enthused vodka here.

Black Gallery Pub. (Mikołajska 24 - just above Planty). A good stop off, intriguing bar on a couple of levels, wooden look, friendly bar staff. Worth a beer before (or after) dinner.

Other random observations

Some observations about Krakow, Poland and the Polish based on a couple of days wandering around Krakow. Hot-takes are the best takes!

Denim shorts (mainly light denim like the 80’s never stopped). Must be like a national dress here in Poland. The temperature hit 30C whilst I was here and it seemed all the men - and a lot of the women - got their denim shorts out. Now, I don’t possess a pair and so, caught short, I constantly looked like a tourist. This is a disadvantage especially later on at night walking through the old town square and the main roads leading from it. A single male being identified as a tourist is not fun (see below).

Mobile phones. Polish people actually put their mobiles to their ears and have discreet conversations. And don’t put the recipient of their call on speaker phone. Oh how quaint and different from lovely Britannia where it is de rigueur to yell at the mobile and entertain your enraptured public with both sides of your conversation. The Poles clearly need to catch up.

There are some tramps in Krakow. They congregate darkly on the outer benches of the parks. With unkempt beards, unwashed clothes and scrappy backpacks, they pass local firewater between themselves. They don’t shout, they don’t harass. They don’t pitch tents on the pavement, shoot up drugs in front of you or lie comatose outside international rail stations (BTW: Krakow station is immaculate and a living embarrassment to the UK). In a way, the tramps of Krakow remind me of the old school alkies I remember from the 70’s who used to hang around Rochdale’s war memorial, dissolute but discreet. In the three days I was here, I wasn’t harassed by beggars once. 

But I was harrassed during the day around the main square and river by a constant sea of hawkers, hawking their city tours, river tours, guided tours. They’re easy to spot and avoid as they like to dress up in colourful outfits. At night though, mmm, it’s a different story…

As a single man walking through the main square and the roads leading from it, I was constantly approached by, what’s the right words, pretty women who wanted me to come to a party. How friendly of them! Seemingly these parties are where women take their clothes off for money. For variation, their male counterparts - with a knowing nudge, nudge, wink, wink, also offered to take me to these self same parties.

Frankly it’s annoying and put a downer on my evening walks. However, Krakow isn’t the only place where this happens but it’s seedy and makes you distrust friendly faces and pretty girls. 

Pedestrian crossings. A strange observation perhaps but a telling one. Everyone waits for the green man signal before traversing the road. Even when there’s no traffic. Respect the culture. 

Travel

I went for three days late August 2025. I flew from Gatwick on Easy Jet. It takes just over two hours to get to Krakow. There’s a train station at the airport which takes you in twenty minutes to the central train station in Krakow. Tickets are easily bought from machines at the station or sold to you on the train. The trains are immaculate so much so that I wander up and down a few carriages thinking I was in first class. No, they’re just clean and comfy. I stayed in the IBIS budget next to the main shopping centre (and the main train station). Probably a 15 min walk to the old town. I didn’t feel unsafe wandering around - other than being accosted by enthusiasts of strip clubs. My flight back was with Wizz Air.

I booked via lastminute.com. The cost was just under £500 for the return flights and two nights at the hotel. Food, drink and entrance fees are cheap once you get there.

Thoughts from B.O.H.O. bar in Krakow

(In which a sweary Tim, vodka in one hand, beer in the other, laptop twix and between, attempts to summarise Poland’s second city sat in a bar; gradually sliding into a lulled pissness. The late summer heat is on in Krakow, the sun is shining and yet he manfully pens this hipshot hot take from within a bar taking refuge from tourists, near and perhaps within, the historic centre. Could I instead be sightseeing? Could I be looking through churches? Could I be describing the architecture? No. Fuck that. Même merde, endroit différent. For a similar cockeyed take on foreign cities, see my Thoughts from a bar in Antwerp)

Part of the Krakow Trilogy

The smoke fills the bar.

Diverse young people - in Gothic attire, suits, sporting tattoos, nose rings, ripped clothes, beards - smoke cigarettes like it’s Brighton 2007. Almost nostalgic, in fact.

Now, I’ve been around. Liberal Netherlands, for instance. Sans joint, you’re outside the joint these days. Alsjeblief. But here, and obviously not all bars in Krakow, smoking seems tolerated in some. I thought it was an EU-wide ban. Clearly not. Fans silently whir above me.

I don’t smoke (vape, anyone?) but the libertarian in me, likes the choice. I always thought - before the COVID gestapo overreach obviously - that blanket smoking bans were wrong: What about having smoking pubs and non smoking pubs? Let the public decide. But I lost the argument I never made.

Anyway, my new favourite bar in Krakow - B.O.H.O (on Stolarska Street) - doesn’t care. The clientele aren’t 50 something American tourist Karens waving their hands dismissively at the smoke, but locals and me. I sit inside. The small tables outside scoop up whatever tired tourists there are. Good, stay out on the pavement.

I mean, who’s here with me right now in this back room (with open windows onto the street)?

On the next table, we have blonde mullet guy talking to - chatting up? - a brunette girl who is giving him too much eye contact for my liking. Get a fucking room! They’re both about twenty and lean ever so closely together and pore over each other’s mobiles to demonstrate a point / show an insightful Tictoc (or whatever kids use these days). Both smoke. And both - betraying their age perhaps - are drinking some iced coffee / chocolate concoction. I think, and who cares what I think, they’ll be some fumblings, some awkward love making tonight.

But maybe he should get her a vodka to help nature take its course?

Permed heavy rock guy in a long overcoat (why? It’s 25C) has just left with strappy top free spirited girl. Part of me hopes that, outside the bar, she thanks him for the coffee and overlong discussion about Star Wars minutiae, and then leaves him for the comforting vibration of a rampant rabbit or something. (Editor’s note: What the fuck do you know about this Tim? Straying from the path into the dark of Mirkwood here, methinks?).

We have tattooed lady in black lipstick and shades pouring over hand written sheets of paper. Maybe her novel. She has an oversized coffee and an ashtray in front of her. She earnestly consults her phone and then carefully writes onto her sheets of paper. Edits to her masterpiece? A manifesto of hate and dislocation perhaps. More likely unrequited love and pussycats? Dunno. She offered me her plug when my laptop looked like dying which was nice of her. Battery packs are a life saver in more than one way.

Blonde couple next to me have finished their drinks but have just lit up anyway. Money seems tight. Mmmm. Anyway. Her eye contact is getting ever more suggestive. As are her ‘innocent’ hand and knee movements that accidentally touch mullet guy. He seems clueless. Take the W mate. And yet. And yet. He prevaricates like he’s channelling the younger Tim Robson. Unable to close the deal, he’s moved back into his chair. As has she. That fleeting moment lost. Maybe I should help out?

I wonder, have they ever seen Indecent Proposal? Probably not. Am I playing the ageing satyr? The world weary roué? One million dollars reduced to a round or two of vodkas? Bad Tim. Bad Tim

They liven up to Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs. It’s that sort of place. English Indie music. Perhaps I should let slip that the tune they’re half singing along to to, I saw performed at the Brighton Centre Feb 7th 1987. No? 1987! That’s like, a long fucking time ago granddad!

(The gig was to follow up on the beefed up version of Pretty in Pink which enlivened the movie de jour of the same name and briefly tickled the charts in 1986. All I remember of the gig was that they wore ridiculous raincoats which seem daft even in 1987. Not cool, just stupid.)

They sit engrossed in their own phones. She texts. He looks at something ephemeral. They leave. Probably it’ll happen on the balance of probabilities. Maybe not. I hope so. He put in the hours.

Two blokes in front of me smoke and tap on their laptops. No novels being created here. There’s a matrix of coding on one screen and impenetrable graphs on the other. Must be working. They flip between languages as they sip coffee.

Another couple sit in the corner. Apart from tangentially touching lighters and an ashtray, they sport an empty glass between them. He talks a lot. Baseball cap, wire glasses; he has views. Lots of views. The not unattactive girl robotically nods but leans her head against the wall, eyes closing. Although he’s speaking Polish, I think I can understand what he says. Roughly translated, ‘blah, blah, blah, I like to drive women away with a shitty stick’.

In fact; am I the only one in this bar who actually buys booze? The rest seem to get a coffee, a free water and then smoke cigarettes and live their life. Beardy who’s joined the two laptop nerds even takes a sip from a flask hidden in his bag and laughs as I spot him doing it. This is a fucking social club for writers, nerds and nerds trying to get laid.

Then a lady in a long red and tight dress walks in; all mystery and old time glamour. I try not to stare. She plonks down a thick feminist text and a packet of cigarettes on the table next to me and disappears off to the bar. Chance, serendipity both laugh their arse off at me. Me, who has to leave in ten minutes for the airport and out of Krakow, leaving Poland behind. I have The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera on the table next to my beer, my vodka, my laptop. Maybe she could have been the one. Maybe she would be more than just a bitchy footnote in a blog. A might have been. Indeed; She. Could. Have. Been. The. One.

But time. Circumstance. They mock my foolish thoughts and dreams.

So I drink up my beer, chug the vodka and finish this blog to the sounds of Ed’s Funky Diner.

Need a piss first though.

---

Slightly More Serious Review

B.O.H.O Coffee and Bar is within the Old Town area of Krakow, quite near to Planty Park. Small tables front the property. Inside it’s a pleasing mismatch of a large red armchairs and sofas, indispersed with more standard wooden tables. The bar staff are friendly, everyone smokes but - apart from a wannabe English writer - no one seems to drink alcohol that much. I make up for them. Could be that I came during the daytime.

It’s a cosy bar spread over three linked rooms and is frequented by locals, distressingly way younger than me. There’s a studenty / just graduated vibe to it. The atmosphere is welcoming though and was the perfect place for me to write - in fact - it’s harder to spot those without a laptop than those with.

The music tends to be (or at least when I was there) Indie music from the 80’s. No problem with that!

I didn’t sample the cakes / food etc. They would have got in the way of my beer and vodka chasers so I can’t comment on the food but it looked good.

This was my favourite place in Krakow. It must have been; I returned there three times over three days in the blazing sun of late August 2025. Yes, the vignette above is a composite piece. All art is, by definition, arrayed in the robe of artifice my friends. I make no apology for that. It’s my literary Impressionism in action.

But for further and more sober insights into Krakow and where else other than a friendly bar to go to, check out my Krakow Trilogy.

Oskar Schindler's Factory: Thoughts

Thoughts..

Like many in the 90’s I saw Spielberg’s Schindler's List. Whilst an undoubtedly moving film, it’s probably not one you’d want to watch twice. A tale of one man’s redemption through good works as he battles the Nazi occupiers cruelty in their persecution of the Jews in Poland.

I’m in Krakow this week.

This morning I got up early and walked across the Vistula River and onto the Oskar Schindler Museum situated in the same factory buildings where he protected hundreds of Jews from the Nazi authorities and death.

I didn't know what I expected. A worthy museum perhaps, with exhibitions of metallurgy perhaps and a dry retracing through the themes of the movie. That’s not what I found.

I would say three quarters of the museum concentrates - through photographs, movies and artefacts - on the history of Krakow during the build up to the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland.

You start at the top of the building and work down as the exhibitions take you through life in Krakow through summer 1939 to 1945 and the inhumanity and savagery - even pettiness - of the Nazi occupation. The tragedy of the Polish people generally, and the sizeable Jewish population in particular, is laid out through well chosen and contemporaneous displays.

Aside: It’s quite shocking to see displays of original Nazi regalia, from banners to machine guns, right through to branded tableware. These days the swastika is so verboten it’s quite a reality check to see the real deal that, instead of some lazy reference point, was actually - not so long ago - a living symbol of real evil.

Swastikas aside, there are many other pointed reminders of the executions, restrictions and even the Germanification of Krakow (language, education, housing; even street names). (1) We in Britain, through the English Channel, Spitfires, the Royal Navy, Churchill and good luck (the free Poles too!), avoided having to face this calamity. (2)

Unlike other museums I’ve been to, the fact that this one is cited in the actual location of so much history, is somewhat humbling. (3) A couple of times, I will admit, I was holding back tears. History weighs heavy in the location, in the subject matter. And it wasn’t so very long ago. And, if history is any guide and the human condition doesn’t change - and it won’t - this could be a path we go down again.

It ends with the Soviet occupation in1945. The Poles gained a country but lost their freedom.

So, what do I conclude:

1) Definitely go to this museum. It’s well worth it and any museum that provokes thought, reflection and a sense of an individual’s heroism against a harsh world is worth the (low) admission price.

2) A renewed hatred of the Nazis. There’s a reason they’re viewed in such disgust. I would caution though that they weren’t the only ones in history with a bad reputation (all countries, peoples and cultures are guilty). They might not be the last.

3) There is hope. I walked back through Kazimierz - the historical Jewish district of Krakow. I sensed no animus but instead saw Jewish shops and restaurants (and even an Israeli flag). Many tourists. History is long with many winding roads shaded from view. Perhaps, sometimes, they lead from a dark place into the light. It’s never perfect though.

Notes

1) Ignorant buffoon that I am, a cursory reading of history reveals the Germification of the Polish language and culture isn’t confined to 1939-45. The whole 19th Century after the Partitions of Poland (1772/95), for example. In the interest of balance, the forced deportations of ethnic Germans from Poland after 1945 shouldn’t be ignored. Which all goes to show, with history, the more you know, the less you really know. Always be alert to simplification, in both broad culture and - most particularly - in the narrow interests of politicians who use collective ignorance to drive a nefarious agenda.

2) The semi satirical American put down of Brits: “You’d all be speaking German if it wasn’t for us,” never felt so chillingly real.

3) A similar sensation you get in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Different country, same tragedy.

Thoughts from a Bar in Antwerp

He sits back, laidback, all crotch display, leather jacket and quaffed hair. She’s not the first, the last, or the most important but she is in front of him right now sipping - through a straw - a double gin and tonic though I’m sure she only asked for a single. They smoke. They’re hip, seemingly equal, but this lopsided negotiation has but one outcome. 

So, that’s right in front of me. A tired seduction above 40.

What else? What else?

Family, older father, younger mother watching his beer intake, hunched teenage son. I predict quick sex after some drunken pleading. In a Novotel or Ibis Budget, hopefully not with the child in the same room.

We have Mr Buff, all tight black tee shirt, beard, tattoos and razored hair with obligatory blonde to my left. She’s sat almost on top of him so they must be new or asymmetrical. She rests her face on an elbow in his direction. He leans back; power move. Later, not much later, I suspect he’ll be shaming her into acts that her mother never told her about. Bad boy. Forgotten when she meets the corporate guy with a good income and pension. He’ll not be a bad boy.

Old guy sits on my right in a puffa jacket and a whiskey cocktail. He has his hair but no life, no future. He’s delaying going home to his little flat and a warmed up dinner. He stares into the mid distance, defeat in his eyes. Nothing will happen. Nothing has happened since his wife died ten years ago. 

But wait! Family has allowed the mulleted teenage son to leave and I just saw the older father place his hand on the younger mother’s hand. ‘Yeah, go and look around, sonny. We’ll be here.’ Guy wants to get pissed, she wants a relationship talk. I’m now predicting a long unsurfaced argument will get in the way of that perfunctory sex. Talk is dangerous.

Over to my far right are two older ladies drinking coca cola. As the bottles stand on the table, they discuss their menfolk or lack of and seem very engrossed. Too far away. Too… Yeah.

The family have left together. She looked me in the eye - once, twice - sphinx like in her appraisal as the older husband pays the bill unaware his wife and I shared a moment. A moment she shares a thousand times a day. Does he know, it just takes a brief lowering of his wife’s guard (or regard) and he’s a cuckold risking his pension rights and denied seeing sulky teenager on a regular basis?

I order another Kriek. The waiter’s aftershave arrives before the drink. No peanuts this time.

And apart from an odd guy in a camouflage baseball hat looking at his phone, beyond the too close couple, that’s it? No one else for me to critique on this rainy Wednesday afternoon in Antwerp?

And your author, who is he?

Indeterminate forties / fifties (probably the latter) in a black gilet, Hackett shirt, tapping away at his laptop. Running from life, writing about real life wishing someone - Her? Her? Her? - would see him as a F.Scott Fitzgerald, a Hemingway, an exiled Oscar Wilde (without the gayness, obviously).

Watching the girls go by. Imagining a story within each. Not their worst story. An above average time bar hopping and chatting about history, literature, consensual politics. But, maybe not the best evening ever.

But probably mine. The laptop would disappear and the story would be unwritten. A Secret. Until recalled years later on a blog, as a short story. Names changed, obviously.

And then a blonde beauty walks in wearing a tight sweater and smiles at me innocently. The world is in that smile. A world of possibility, of redemption, of long overdue new beginnings. Of course, a taller, equally blonde male follows her in tow. Of course. But that smile. That smile, now looking at a glass of Rose as her immature boyfriend makes a show of pouring a Duvet. He plays her a TicToK video and she rests her head on his shoulder.

Young love, eh? Whatever happened to young love? That older couple from earlier on; there was no pretence at world changing romance in their dialogue, within their cocoon. It was, sex or no sex. It was do this or I’m not bothered and I’ve got 20 other women who will. The cracked makeup smudged on a pillow and no follow up the next day. It’s how it is now, yeah?

I hope the young couple next to me make it. Within age lies corruption. They may last. They probably won’t. Then it’s just another - what? - another sad story, unspoken. A failed domesticity only remembered by the two and then asymmetrically as some future partner witlessly blunders into “So, you? How many?”

Each day brings the possibility of immortality. But each day is just, everyday. And everyday is just like the last. 

Carpe Diem, motherfuckers.

Postscript

Later. A bar in Antwerp. International group speaking English as their Linga Franca. Unfortunately I therefore overhear as they overshare. The women talk excitedly about their facial treatments - what they’ve had, what they will have. The eldest is 35. The 28 year old agrees and swaps her needle around the forehead stories. Silently, I’m appalled. When they move onto STDs and their ‘it was just sex’ anecdotes, I clutch my pearls, pick up my skirts and run. Fun times in Belgium.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - What A Bitch !

“He greeted Marion with his voice pitched carefully to avoid either feigned enthusiasm or dislike...”

— Babylon Revisited - F. Scott Fitzgerald

(In which Tim feigns false modesty as an interesting new way to flex. Reads anew F. Scott Fitzgerald and genuflects before a superior writing talent. There’s gonna be some pretension. There’s gonna be some bullshit. Long blurred bar session profundity! From a bar in Delft.)

I used to think - fleetingly - that my words would stand out in the crowded square of imposters and rivals. That my too personal stories, barely disguised from real life, replete with humorous bon mots were of a durable and sagacious vintage that would elevate my prospects in both the literary and material world.

And, do you know, occasionally - very occasionally - like transient icebergs poking through a storm tossed sea, I felt they did. But each emerging peak, each success, just allowed me a new vantage point upon yet greater heights. Ascending upward, I realised I’d scaled only the foothills, unflattered by the comparisons far above. (1)

On a trip to The Hague recently I took a small, pocket sized copy of F. Scott Fitzgerard’s Babylon Revisted. Reading through, I became aware that I’m (once again) a poor man’s Salieri to Mozart. I’m a good enough writer to recognise I’m a hack writer by comparison. But how? What are those authorial ‘tells’, those embedded hallmarks that shine through flashing greatness?

I would suggest that there are three signs of obvious literary talent. (There’s probably many more, and if I wasn’t in a bar in Delft sampling beers strong and stronger, I’d enumerate them all. But a narrow focus - a well formed list of three - is the consequential benefit one derives from a slow descent into drunkenness, don’t you think?)

Firstly, concerning the nuts and bolts of writing itself: Is the prose any damn good? In Fitzgerald’s case, yes, very much so. When reading, certain phrases and constructions sing out to elevate the experience above the quotidian, the commonplace, the hackery. All good writers employ stylistic devices, those elegant phrases and tricks that artfully chime like a beautiful bell to the soul. But not all ‘greats’ are the same. To me, slip sliding away into fuzzy numbness here in The Netherlands, there are three types of prose that elevate:

1. Beautiful or lyrical prose (F.Scott. Balzac. Martin Amis, sometimes.)

2. Stripped back writing (Hemingway being an obvious exemplar)

3. Experimental - for example Clockwork Orange, On the Road Again or Last Exit to Brooklyn

Of the three, I value the first most of all. I can almost feel it when a well turned phrase hits home. It almost hurts. Why didn’t I coin this, think of this, work harder on my own flabby prose? Was it lack of work or lack of creativity? Each chiming phrase is a rebuke. I envy. But I recognise the brilliance.

“But the stillness in the Ritz bar was strange and portentous. It was not an American bar anymore - he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it. It had gone back to France.”

— Babylon Revisted F. Scott Fitzgerald

Secondly, characterisation. Are the characters well drawn? Are their motivations believable? Is their place in the story apposite, their character sketched sufficiently deeply to avoid becoming cut outs or cyphers, mere third spear carriers from the left wheeled embarrassingly onto the page to mumble a line or two before shuffling off forgotten like a drunken burger after midnight?

As a writer, I find characterisation one of the hardest things to get right. There are some authors who write just for men with the result that their female characters are pale facsimiles of real life women. Similarly, some female writers struggle with male characters and so resort to a stereotypic landscape populated by bastards or wimps. Speaking personally, I don’t have an issue with the sex of my characters. My problem is more fundamental than that. Essentially, any character that isn’t me suffers from that very fact; they are not me meaning they are ill-drawn and one dimensional - pathetic straight men made to suffer my character’s one liners, inner monologue, whilst facilitating tendencious plot development.

But read someone who does it well - an Austin or Dickens, for example - and you roll yourself in a fleshy world of believability. You can imagine the characters in real life, understand why they do what they do, how they drive the plot forward naturally. I’ve always been intrigued how this is done. Do the authors sit down and plan their characters (as suggested by numerous colour-by-numbers writing schools) or do they just carry them in their head and understand each line, each interaction, each movement as they write?

Don’t know. Not a great writer. Ask them.

Thirdly (and lastly) - plot. Writing is telling stories. Is the plot engaging, does it draw you in, want to turn the page, speed read to get to the next chapter akin to binge watching a gripping series on Netflix? Mmmm. There’s many a writer who plots like a mathematician, algorthymically making sure each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, pacing the reader so that the denouement is both satisfactory and surprising. This is where I have my biggest reservation. Although I love a good ending, the symmetry of a three act play or movie or book, part of me loves the realism of unsatisfactory endings. For example, I loved Brett Easton Ellis’ Rules of Attraction that both started and ended in mid sentence, breaking in and then checking out of the narrative. (2) Like life. Unresolved. Messy. Not cute.

Of course, certain genres demand neat plots, crime and thrillers for example, romantic books. And so whilst I respect good plots - no I really do - to me they’re not a deal breaker. But let me interpret plot somewhat more loosely. Let me replace ‘plot’ with ‘narrative’. Does the narrative hold together, does it make you want to stay the course and follow the authorial voice, the characters, the worldview described? Yes? Then you has you a decent narrative.

I don’t necessarily need to know that it was the butler who did it with a candlestick in the library. But I may want to know about the characters’ actions leading up to, and after, during. Not all murders end up with Colonel Mustard buggering Professional Plum in the Hallway. Er, neither does Cluedo Tim.

Yeah. Losing it. Affligem Dubbel kicking in. Bar by a canal somewhere in Delft. (Where? Cafe de V I think, according to the menu) filling up with Dutch people eating, drinking, speaking English when asked.

So, plot and narrative. Losing the plot. Maintaining a narrative. I’m a real life example of that. Now. But my central point is, tying it all together; I was shocked into wonder, annoyance and competitiveness as to how bloody good Babylon Revisited is.

F. Scott Fitzsgerald. What a bitch!

Notes

1) Notice how I eschewed the Titanic reference? Eschew the obvious. It’s what separates us from AI. The human brain is - when engaged - synaptically more creative than the AI. That’s what annoys me when people revert through laziness or foolishness to using AI in place of thinking.

2) I now know this starting in the middle thing is called In Medias Res. I warned you at the start of this article I was going to be pretentious but not as annoying I will be next time I find the opportunity to use this Latin phrase. Wanker.