At times you have to wonder if we really do have free will or that there is some devine hand guiding what we do. Last week I was studying the iron age salt routes that may have run across south east Lincolnshire from the Fens. It is early days but it would seem that the most likely route at the moment was via Corby Glen. Nothing particularly special about that apart from Corby has one of the oldest sheep/wool fairs in the country going back to the 13th century. No doubt most of the wool traded at Corby would have found its way through the fens to Boston – again probably following the old salt routes.

Again, nothing too unusual here. Then our plans to visit the Lourve at Lens fell through do to it being a public holiday. David, my partner in crime, then suggested we go to Bruges – which is somewhere I’ve always want to go. This is where, if you believed in conspiracies rather than cock ups, you could start to see some form of a connection. Bruges in the middle ages made an awful lot of money from dealing in wool, particularly english wool. One of the main ports that exported wool to Bruges was Boston, which in course, leads us back to Corby Glen and their sheep fair.

Then, whilst I was walking along the docks at Dover I found a small monument that celebrated the return of Charles 2nd to England, through the port at Dover. During his exile from England his main base was Bruges. And I’ve just been listening to a podcast about William Caxton who was a senior merchant at Bruges and may well have printed his first books at Bruges (Although it is just as likely that he made them at Ghent but I think there is still a Bruges connection). Suddenly in the last week Bruges seems to have become the centre of everything I’m doing.

This makes an interesting tale but anyone with an once of sense would see that this is likely to have happened given that:
1, I’m interested in trade and trade routes which ran through the east of England. If this is the case then Bruges was bound to appear given its importance in the Middle Ages;
2, I’m interested in Dutch, and by that I also include Flemish, painting from their ‘Golden Period’. Again, you can’t have an interest in these things with having an interest in Bruges;
3, I’m interested in all thing historic and so I always examine monuments, in this case the one at Dover.

So perhaps it is not surprising – unless of course it is part of the devine plan for me to have these interests and so Bruges is just a manifestation of a higher plan or perhaps it is just a load of nonsense. Me? I suspect the last point is correct but you just don’t know!

As for the painting I don’t believe their is any Bruges connection but perhaps the plan is just too subtle that I can’t possibly begin to understand it. Oh I give up. The painting is me slowly edging towards complication with no Flemish connections although Jan Van Eyck wore a turban in his probable self portrait as does the woman – so you just don’t know…shoot me please!

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk