Life has been busy, with days tumbling over one another and to-do lists that seemed impossible. The knowledge of things left undone was pressing down on me.
I knew that I had to wait. That there were things to be done in those weeks leading up to us taking my daughter and granddaughter to Frankfurt. And we had the lovely Australian called Jobe staying with us in that last week. A Tasmanian, and a friend of Jessie's, he ended up helping her with the packing and cleaning here in this Belgian life, in-between visiting Bruges, Brussels and Antwerp.
Saturday rolled round and exhausted, we 3 New Zealanders and the Belgian packed ourselves into the car and began negotiating the roadworks that hugely delayed our 4-5 hour journey between here and Frankfurt.
It was hot. The rental car didn't have A/C. One series of roadworks saw us take 30 minutes to crawl 3kms. We were stuck in it for 45 minutes ...
But Frankfurt is beautiful. It's not my beloved Genova but the city planners have bowed to Nature, seemingly respecting her. It's clean, it's pretty and it was okay leaving my people there.
Home again, and the itinerary for the 2 and 5-day photography workshops is done. I have projects and plans all over my working desk here, forcing me to move my book work upstairs to the now spare big bedroom. The step children have gone home ... it's just about me and my work. Well, there is 3-storeys of quirky Belgian house to clean and reclaim but that can be baby steps.
Summer comes and goes here, on a daily basis. We can go from an ordinary 15 celsius kind of day up to 29 celsius, almost in the blink of the eye. Gert's rhubarb is going crazy ... actually his garden is. There are parsnips and silverbeet seedlings, raspberrys, and the herbs are ferociously wild. My Jasmine and Lavender are pleasing me ... actually, it's not bad outside, in the tiny pocket-sized Belgian backyard.
And I have a title for my book on Genova that is so unbelievably perfect that I shall keep it completely secret until publishing.
I'll leave you with a photograph of Miss 7 and I messing around with the camera in Central Station, here in Antwerp sometime last winter ...
