WHO WANTS TO BE A TOURIST ANYWAY? - WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE - IN BRUGES

For years I’ve pondered the dichotomy between architectural intent and the architectural photographer’s perception of art.   Architects by and large, go to great lengths to produce buildings which are meant for the occupation and use of human beings, yet the great photographers of their art  go to seemingly greater lengths to ensure that not one person is seen in the completed building, presumably in an effort to portray it as an inanimate piece of sculpture rather than a breathing machine filled with human habitation.

Today, as if the world doesn’t already know, we are in the middle of a heat wave of disconcerting extent.  Despite being older and wiser and knowing better than to do so, we wandered off into the heat haze not long after lunch o’clock, to complete a couple of errands.  We can’t be sure how much heat was radiating off those ancient cobble stones, but with the air temperature in the shade hovering in the mid thirties we guess the answer lies between “quite a bit” and “a lot”.   If there had been a cricket match on, one of the commentators may well have given a “players’ comfort score" that was very low indeed.

Despite all of that it was a shock to find the main square looking like something of a ghost town. 

It’s the first time after many months of cumulative life in this city that we’ve actually seen the square vacant.  

Combined with the lack of horse drawn carriages, the horses having quite reasonably been given the rest of the week off on compassionate grounds, and given the resulting silence and lack of bustle, it felt for all the world as though something was amiss.

Though we may complain about the usual summer encroachment of thousands of tourists into “our’ space, perhaps without them we should reluctantly admit there is just a little something missing.