My parents' shop

I wrote the rest in French, but for this sketch, which I finished at home, it seems more natural to write in English. Go figure.

One of my priorities when I was in Namur for the Urban Sketchers Belgium event "Dessiner Namur", was to sketch my parents' shop. It's now a Zara and the interior looks nothing like it used to. But the façade has been kept, and seeing it there brought back so many memories. I had to wait until the Sunday morning so that I could sit across the road, in front of another shop, with a clear view across the Rue de Fer. I started sketching before having breakfast even. With a result that I started feeling a migraine coming on and had to leave after drawing in ink. I added the colour when I got back to Ireland.

The façade is quite unusual, with its mosaic tiles. Most buildings in the town have stone window surrounds with brick. I don't know when the house was built and why it was built in a different style. All I know is that it survived the bombings during WWII. The neighbour's house wasn't so lucky.

As a child and a teenager, I spent more time in the shop than at home in Champion, on the outskirts of Namur. We went to school in Heuvy, just outside the town, and then for secondary school, it was the Lycée first, then the Athénée when the two schools merged. I did my homework in the office, and when I was done, I would go up to my grand-aunt and grand-uncle for a glass of chocolate milk and a petit beurre biscuit and to watch a bit of telly. I also roamed around the back of the shop and the empty apartments above. At one point, before I was born, three families lived there, my parents, my grandparents and my grand-aunt and uncle. My parents built a house in Champion and we moved there a few months after I was born. My grandmother on that side of the family died when I was 6. My grand-uncle when I was 18 I think. And my grand-aunt when I was already in Ireland (after 1986). There were two sets of stairs, more if you count the stairs to the workshop. The apartments were connected. There was a lot of storage space at the back, some open to our customers, some less salubrious. I remember the attic and feeling that the floor could collapse any time. And some of the cellars were pretty scary. When I was 17/18, my parents let me use the shop as a base for me and my friends to sleep during the Fêtes de Wallonie. It was pretty special. I knew every nook and cranny. It's still engraved in my memory.

I'm glad it's still standing. And I still have my memories.