In Madrid, beautiful people who love hard and laughed often, gathered from all over the world however ... weaving their feline way in and out of the wedding preparations were 4 incredibly special Spanish cats.
Nene was my nemesis. He had worked out he was the Alpha Creature to whom I should submit.
I was torn between stopping him from eating the flowers, arranged for the wedding reception tables, and well ... photographing him eating those flowers.
I met this lovely couple in Suffolk, and really enjoyed listening to Graham’s stories of his time spent living in Italia.
I made a small formal series with them during the wedding in Suffolk and was delighted to capture something of just how lovely they are.
I met Tony at Kathleen and Manuel’s wedding in Madrid.
He was the pipe-smoking guy talking with the fabulous Peter after the wedding ceremony. My camera wanted to capture him.
It turns out, he is Kathleen’s rather superb voice teacher. He plays guitar like an angel ... I suspect there is more but I’ll find out and get back to you.
Anyway, meet Tony Madigan ...
It’s been busy lately, for weeks and months really ... an odd kind of unpredictable busy but these last 24 hours or so have felt slightly exceptional. Full of good people, but exceptional.
Sunday afternoon found me feeling unwell. I tried sleeping it off but only succeeded in messing up my ability to sleep that night. Monday, I was up, on 4 hours of sleep. I was heading for Brussels and had it all mapped out in terms of train times and which tram to catch to this new part of the city.
My idea was that, somewhere along the way during the day, I would find myself a really good espresso for strength.
I arrived at Antwerp’s Central Station with not enough time to join the queue that had formed in the coffee place. I wasn’t prepared to have just any old coffee, I needed a really good espresso. This much I knew.
No coffee ... I had no sooner settled on the train than I heard the conductor announce that this train would not be stopping at North Station ... my destination. Okay, it said it would on the website but it wasn’t and so ... I climbed off in Mechelen to catch something else. As I was waiting, a young man came sprinting up the stairs, just missing the Brussels-bound train I had left. He threw his bag down angrily. I waited a moment and mentioned the fact it wasn’t stopping at north station and then, voila, we ended up chatting a while.
His English was impeccable. He was a student on his way to a mathematics exam but better than that, he was studying law and politics. After talking of his year in Australia, we boarded the next train, held our breath while it tried to break down and the train guy announced that it had ... before it suddenly and successfully pulled out of the station. We talked about Belgian politics all the way there. Interesting, so interesting, as we head into a second year without a government since the last elections.
We said our goodbyes, I wished him luck although he was very relaxed about it all, and I wandered off to spend some time with the loveliest family over there in the big Belgian city. They had a son with the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen and a delicious black labrador, as per the photograph below. Anyone who knows me will know how I’ve been yearning for a labrador here in my Belgian life but never mind, it was enough to get a bit of a dog-fix for now.
After time spent in the park, the lovely family dropped me off on a tram that would get me back across the city more quickly however ... they assumed they were dealing with a normal adult who had a reasonable knowledge of Brussles. I was ‘misplaced’ for a while but amused. It’s never really that serious and getting unlost usually makes me laugh at myself. I climbed off at Parc and found Central Station by some weird kind of instinctive luck.
I NEEDED a coffee by now. But every place in the station, open at 3.30pm, looked like a place that make rubbish coffee. I know ... it’s about me being a brat but I’m still readjusting to life after the exquisite Genovese espresso.
I bought sparkling water, sadly, washing down the brie baguette thingy for lunch and boarded the train home ... falling asleep along the way.
By the time I reached Antwerp Central Station I NEEDED a coffee. I wandered into Starbucks, hoping their espresso was at least decent, as I can’t stand their other coffees. I followed the queue of people waiting, right to the end and voila, I was at the other exit door, so I exited. Tram home, falling asleep, aching.
Made it home and found it full of Miss 7 and her mum.
Dinner was cooked by my very kind husband.
Miss 7 was storied up and put to bed,then I couldn’t resist downloading and going through some photographs.
Getting late, I wanted to do one last check of the wedding photographs, before burning the 1,000 to dvds for the different bride friends who have been patient as I’ve sprinted through life since their weddings.
I fell into bed.
Jess phoned, ‘How is Miss 7?’
‘Okay’, I replied.
‘Okay ... good’, she tells me ‘but keep an eye on her because I’m vomiting’.
‘Oh ... she did say she had a sore tummy, I thought she didn’t want to sleep’.
1.32am ... Miss 7 starts vomiting.
I’m so tired. The only solution seems, in that moment, to carry her bedding and put it next to my bed.
I do it. I almost fall down the stairs doing it and ponder how nasty that would have been as I continue down.
We sleep until 3.23am when she vomits.
We sleep until 6.20am when she vomits again.
I consider this an uncommonly civilised kind of vomiting, as usually sleeping between bouts is all but impossible.
Morning finds me here at the computer. Miss 7 on the couch, watching tv, drinking powerade slowly, sleeping a little ...
So it has been an active few hours, and then some, but by crikey ... I did meet some truly lovely people. And a really nice dog.
The World Cup Bike Trials are on here in the city ... there were some stunning things being done on bikes.
This is what it’s all about ...
Stunning!
I admire this man so much ... and for so many reasons.
I admire him because, along with his delicious wife, he created one of the most beautiful souls that I am privileged to know.
I admire him because he had a terrible stroke last year and fought back so hard, with so much grace and humour, that he managed to fly over to England from Australia, and walk that beautiful daughter of his down the aisle. No one imagined it possible at one point.
I admire him because, even today, he retains this charisma that leaves you sure he will continue to fight his way along that road called recovery.
I feel so very lucky I was there to witness it all and capture this moment during the wedding of Clare and Chris.
Instead of a ‘quite a few’ wedding photographs, there are 100s of this truly exquisite Australian/Brit wedding. Finishing up this week ...
One of the things I loved about working to capture the weddings in both Suffolk and Madrid, was the time I was able to spend on the fringes of those families involved. When you’re a long way from home time spent with families, anyones family, are pretty much never taken forgranted.
In Suffolk, a stunning manor house was rented over the weekend, as a place for the bride and groom’s families and friends to gather together. The kitchen was the heartbeat, the hub of operations ... and there was almost always somebody there boiling a brew or simply gatheringto chat around the long kitchen island on those high stools.
There were back stairs too, for the servants I imagine, as the main stairway was a little bit spectacular. Anyway, I captured one of small stars of the weekend peering in at us all ...
Sometimes, it is the most excellent fun photographing people you know for serious things ...
We are so many selves - daughter, mother, wife, the person we need to be in our work.
Sometimes, a photography shoot has to be about taking the time to find the personal Self, that one that is Us.
I apply my own professional oath, similar perhaps to the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors ... although my oath is more of a commitment to not being photographed by anyone else.
And so it is, when I’m exploring a venue for ‘spots’ to work, I need models. I have variety, some get grouchy after the 50th location test shot but by crikey, I do know some lovely ones. The bride and groom photographed beautifully here the next day.
Dank u wel to my favourite model.
Sometimes, if we were fortunate, we had this dad who meant the world to us ... and it was enough just to sit there on his knee, hugging the hand that he held you with, while he talked to friends.
Chance encounters change lives. Close friends, passing aquaintances and even characters who emerge from old books often leave footprints across my heart. By opening mysterious doors, the influence of others has inadvertently altered the direction of my life.
Colin Monteath, from Under A Sheltering Sky
Sunday was one of those long enjoyable days spent wandering under this very very warm Italian sun ... and at the end of it, the only thing that could have improved the cold shower I took on arriving back at the apartment would have been remembering to take my 1.5l bottle of sparkling water into the shower with me.
Sund
ay in Genova began with Yoda, my phone alarm, waking me at 7am. I was on the road by 8am and heading for Pavia, a small city somewhere between Genova and Milan.
10.25am and I finally met the man who has been a source of website inspiration to me for more that a few years. I first ‘met’ Alex when he was a blogger and then watched as he made the leap into something bigger and more complex over time, developing into something more than he began with, something excellent.
And so, with our much-loved Canon EOS digital cameras in hand, we wandered, chatting as we attempted to capture something of the architecture and alleyways in Pavia.
Alex is no slouch when it comes to wide-ranging conversation either and we covered much ground over hours ... hours broken up with coffees, a lunch in a beautiful piazza, gelato, and a cold drink at the train station while we waited for our respective trains to arrive.
12 hours later, one long hot train ride stuck next to a lanky youth who wanted his space, and I staggered in the door, heading straight for the shower, desperate to wash the heat of the day and the ache of endless walking out of me. I’m happy to note that, as usual, the weight is dropping off me out here in the world and yesterday’s long walk surely melted some more of me.
I’ll let the photographs give you a taste of the day admitting, a little shamefacedly, that I went there knowing nothing about Pavia. But really ... it was more about finally meeting Alex and taking photographs than it was about place.
I think I arrive once there are flowers on the kitchen table ...
Here in Genova there is always someplace to buy flowers and Paola’s round dining table invites flowers, even if I still haven’t quite organised a vase. Today one of my water bottles has been sawn-off to play hostess to flowers bought at a market on Piazza Scio where we also discovered a large market and the sweetest smallest tomatoes.
These last few days have been days of long conversations, where two old friends caught up on 5 years of absence and massive life changes. We reminisced, laughed over pizzas and red wine, caught boats and journeyed through that favourite space we most enjoy – the place where the land meets the sea.
Genova was good to us, providing us with the very best foccacia at the beginning of each day or, on alternate days, unbelievably good breakfast cappuccino. We had days of wandering, cherry gelato, inexpensive yet good red wines, slow mornings and late nights.
Pippa came to me 2 weeks out of New Zealand, via Haiwaii and Vienna, and our 5 days passed quicky. Yesterday we caught a train to Milan to say goodbye at an airport bus stop in a city on fire with heat and humidity. We talked through the 2 hour train trip to Milan, and then, after the goodbye, I possibly became one of the few people to have travelled with a slightly nervous, world-wandering friend, from Genova through to Milan only to leave her boarding her airport bus while I returned on another train within the hour and head straight back to Genova.
That would be the train where the air-conditioning in my carriage was broken. Being a creature who prefers heat not too much above 20 celsius yesterday was a struggle and I struck out in search of a cool place only to find myself standing on tiptoes in a corridor, trying to catch something of the slightly cooler breeze as it came in through a high window.
A very short elderly woman spotted the breeze in my hair, and came to stand in front of me, continuing to fan herself furiously as the breeze was never going to reach her. We all laughed, her son too, and I resisted the temptation to offer to hoist her up to the high window.
Eventually a harried, sweating conductor came to our rescue and led us through to carriage 5 ... or I think that was what he was saying. I flopped into an air-conditioned 6 seat carriage with two men who left at the next stop. I could only smile over my own paranoia that they were moving away from this smelly foreign woman.
Those last tunnels before Genova held us captive longer than necessary, as our train queued to weave its way into the main station ... the station I didn’t really know how to get ‘home’ from.
I read bus stop lists and decided on Bus 33, it would reach Piazza De Ferrari eventually and I was too tired to do more than smile as Bus 33 climbed up into the hills behind Genova and took me around my destination, the one marked out clearly by the giant ERG sign down there near the old centre ... round and then down.
I saw the city from the heights and its a beautiful city ...
In these days of wandering without intending to talk, I have discovered some truly special people anyway ... the lovely man with the vegetarian cafe, who has since asked if one of my photographs of him might be used in an article for the Corriere della Sera; the man and his wife with the farinata shop close by and the pizza people…
The woman who sells me my breakfast foccacia discovered I come from Nuova Zelanda today ... we reached a point of understanding and agreement via gestures and our few words in common, regarding the fact that we both loved our countries of origin but admired each other’s too.
The cafe where my favourite cappuccino is made is called Cafe Boomerang, in honour of the owner’s visit to Australia, and the gelato guy had an ‘I love you!‘moment when he realised I wanted the details of his shop for this website.
The internet cafe people are just as I left them last year but the vegetarian cafe has free wifi too, so I’ll wander between them, so as not to seem too internet needy perhaps ...
There is so much here in this tiny corner of the city, so much to love. I’m holidaying with Gert for a few days now, trying not to talk to or photograph interesting strangers but it’s difficult.
Even the man operating the boat trips to Camogli, San Fruttuoso and Portofino is going to cycle New Zealand next year.
It’s good to be out ...
Ciao for now.
Some extracts: A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words.
He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.
As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone.
The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.
The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind.
...I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us.
But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they are other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other peoples' stories and books.
Nina’s Ornamental blog is the place I wander to when I’m in need of that feeling I found in New Zealand.
I used to live in this funny little cottage with huge windows on the edge of a harbour, and I had a beach for each mood back in Dunedin. And there was a creek my Labrador and I ran away to when we lived in the mountains beside Fiordland National Park. Lake Te Anau did just as well.
There was a tiny road that twisted and turned, taking us to a small bay in Marlborough Sounds while we lived on the Airforce Base in Blenheim, and there once was a place where the mighty Clutha River flowed into a smaller quieter side-stream and that became ‘our place’ while we were living in Cromwell ... although some days we’d throw off our responsibilities and race through the Kawara Gorge to visit the Arrow River in Arrowtown.
My dog was a wanderer too and travelled all over New Zealand with us. She died at 16.
I always had a special place and a dog in New Zealand. Here, in Belgium, I miss the wild peace of home. Just ‘being’ in Nature is far more difficult, perhaps because Nature is much less powerful by virtue of so many centuries of ‘civilisation’.
I’m looking for a golden labrador crossbred with some kind of sheepdog because I’ve had labradors since I was 9 and the best was a crossbreed.
Meanwhile I couldn’t resist parking my bike and taking this photograph because the scenery on the way from the new house to the old apartment is nothing to sneeze at ...
Tot straks from Belgium.
Most days we have spent 10 hours out taking photographs, returning to the apartment to organise and process them but I have never managed to keep up ... having taken 586 photographs on Saturday alone. My photo folders are overflowing and after a hectic 48 hours of good people, a beautiful hotel, a niece from New Zealand, 2 kiwis who lives here, a little too much red wine on a warm Istanbul night and amazing photographic opportunities, here I am, processing and trying to put things back in order, having not even had time to view the images taken at 6.30am Saturday out on the Bosphorous.
Istanbul is one of those cities where I can’t stop using my camera, it’s a passion, a compulsion and a pleasure but my body is protesting.
I fly tomorrow.
