YOUR FIRST POSTCARD FROM GHENT - WISH YOU WERE THERE...

We've just had a weekend in Ghent (our compensation tickets for getting stranded in Brussels in the Eurostar pre-Christmas disaster). Nothing better for me than wandering round a new city and getting a creativity fix.

One of the things I love doing is searching out independent artisans, craftsmen and artists, and this time we got lucky when we walked into Els Robberechts's hat shop (I can't seem to link to it, but here's the website - http://www.acesoir.be/ or second time lucky, try this.)



That's my new hat she's got on the counter by the way. She gave me a little lesson in how to be a hat wearer, and although I'm not sure I'm there yet, I'm looking forward to experimenting, especially with such a beautiful one.

And she allowed us to peek into her studio upstairs ...



Just as exciting, we met her husband, the master tailor Aravinda, who showed us some of the secrets he hides in his ties. Love it - these are exactly the women my character, Martin photographs in GETTING THE PICTURE. And I shall look at all tie-wearing businessmen with a new curiosity.



And to reassure Els if she happens to see this, this picture below is definitely not going to be the fate of my hat. He obviously wasn't wearing his right...

IF YOU ALWAYS SUSPECTED BOOKS WERE DANGEROUS...

This is a photograph of Elisabetta Gut's artwork, Book in A Cage, 1981, which I saw in Washington last year. I wish the photograph could adequately show how moving it was. The explanation read as follows:

"Book in a Cage represents humanity's struggle to communicate, set against the constraints it places on itself that prevent expression. The open door to the cage is a metaphor for the inherent liberty of ideas. The work, which places a French-Italian dictionary behind bars, also touches on the inadequacy of language to express thought and the isolation that can result."