A Rainy Day in Southsea, at Drift, in England

I was searching through photographs taken just before I left Belgium.  This caught my eye, taken in our end-of-summer Belgian garden.

Today, it's raining.  It's 4.32pm as I write this and already it's dark.  Winter is coming, at speed.

The good thing ... I found a bar/restaurant/night club/diner ... a true social hub.  Everyone comes to Drift.  All ages, all walks of life.  It seems that if I sit here by the entrance, I will surely see a cross-section of the Southsea community.

It's warm and I'm glad to be here, quietly eavesdropping on the people around me. 

Meanwhile, a little bit of summer ...

Winter in Antwerp ...

These mornings, returning from the 7.30am school run, I stink of the pollution that's out there in this city. 

It was -10 celsius today, with frozen snow everywhere, and the 100,000+ per-day highway that cuts the city in half was roaring with traffic from all over Europe.  My hair and my skin stink of the fumes.  It reminds me of Istanbul on its worst polluted days, that city of 14 million+ but here there are no sea winds to blow the hugely polluted air someplace else.

They tell us that the weather will continue to hover around minus 10 overnight, rising to zero celsius, if we're lucky, with some more cold-cold coming over the weekend.

And so it is, winter in Belgium.  I might just concentrate on those photographs taken back in New Zealand.  This plant was spotted down in the garden of Christine's parents ...