All Blacks Vs France, the final of the Rugby World Cup

It’s been good to sleep through the night and not spend the day anticipating the big match being played in New Zealand in a couple of hours ...

New Zealand’s All Black rugby team is pretty much the best in the world.  Somehow though, when they reach the rugby world cup finals, stuff happens and they rarely win. 
It’s bizarre.
It’s devastating.

We’re a small nation of just over 4 million people.  Rugby is a religion there in our land downunder.  We love being the best, as a nation ...

Then there’s France, the team that reached the finals, not so much because they were the best but because they managed to get past some excellent teams.  Sport is like that. 
As Kay wrote on twitter this morning ... All NZ is one large, hot, tin roof tonight! Go the AB’s! If u support France; may the best team win!

Must go.  We’re off to watch the match with a whole lot of other kiwis ...

Autumn means Easter to Me ...

I’m not sure my unconscious will ever adjust to this upside-down life in the northern-hemisphere.

The leaves are changing colour and we’re waiting for our first frost which means ... it’s almost Easter.  But no, that was a New Zealand thing.  Here it’s already mid-October. although Belgium had been enjoying high temperatures as late as last week. 

I took the bike out this afternoon, needing to stretch. I took myself and my camera into the park on our beautiful day.  We’re blessed with this city park, and mostly I love it even while struggling to forget the massively busy European motorway right next door, the motorway that, if I wake in the night, sounds like a Spring tide at Tautuku, on the lower East Coast of New Zealand.

Anyway, today it was pretty.  There was a blue heron down at one of the many ponds, hanging out with the big white geese and the ducks.  The moles hills were there mocking mans efforts to tame nature too.  I love those moles ... there to remind us, surely, that we’re not quite able to tame and maintain everything out there in the natural world.

An Everyday Scene at the Stadsfeestzaal on the Meir, Antwerpen

Antwerp has 165 different cultures living within its city limits, and mostly we all do okay. 

I love the vibrancy of the cultural mix ... riding the tram is like wandering the world. To me, this foreign creature who found herself living here ... being Belgian stands for so many things but on the good days it’s all about a this tribe of people who have a huge degree of tolerance and acceptance of the other. 

A Little Glass Kiwi

It has been 7 years since I was last home, 7 years since I last saw so many people ... and now I have one of those long-ago people here at my house.

Valda was my first mother-in-law, mother to Chris - my first husband, grandmother to my daughter Jessica.  I’m not sure if you can imagine how delightful it has been to catch up with her.  This woman who has known me since I was 17 years old, something so rare in this life of mine.  I had my daughter when I was 21, so not even she has known me so long and no one in my Istanbul life, nor my Belgian life, has either.

So we have spent the last few days catching up on extended family news, with Valda delighting in time spent with her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter too.  It has been lovely.

But there this small thing that did make me giggle.  The photograph below ... the glass kiwi.  It’s a wine bottle stopper.  An exquisite wine bottle stopper that Valda brought me from from home.  And it shows me, even after all this time, Valda still does know me rather well.

Our Garden in Antwerp

The temperature rose unexpectedly today ... unexpectedly because I had imagined summer was done and autumn was here.  It’s at least 23 celsius as I sit here in the garden, as per instructions from Gert.  He told me to take the laptop outside and work in the sun, using the small table he bought me for precisely that purpose.  He said ‘rest’ and so here I am, sure that my neighbours, the ancient man and his lovely wife, are wondering what on earth I am doing out here, with all of my gadgets.  I brought my camera gear too ... just in case.  The garden has poppies and sunflowers and all kinds of other things tempting me.

It was painful moving everything out here and I processed the sunflower image without really being able to see the screen.  The roofers are a bit noisy just a few doors ... or rooftops away, although their music is good.  Blaringly loud workman-style music, the same the world over I suspect, as the sound of it surely takes me back to the sound of my dad working as a fibrous plasterer or wallpaperer,out on a job.  God only knows what toxins I’m breathing in as they weld their way across that rooftop but even that is the nature of Antwerp.  You can be 110% sure you don’t want to know what you are breathing in in this city situated on the crossroads of Europe ...

Gert finally found one of our black garden toads the other day, so I guess its wondering what I’m doing out here too.  We hadn’t seen them since the autumn but there he is, making his home in the compost heap Gert is developing up the back of his garden.  The birdfeeder has been left empty since spring, as if we could have saved the elderberries from the wickedgreedy pigeons who have spent the summer gorging on them anyway. 

And clearly I’ve made the delighttful discovery that I have wifi out here in the garden.  I’m less happy about spiders, wasps and toads when it comes to gardens and more about wine, the laptop and flowers.  Although today it will become more about painkillers or red wine sometime soon.  I read that red wine really does ease arthritic joints and my joints have been honouring the high-impact motorbike crash back when I was 18 ... they creak on the stairs and ache in the cold.  What’s that about then ...

Anyway, a little snapshot in words and image from this summertime day here in Belgium.

Het Internationaal Schutterstornooi - a toast

Sometimes, lovely friends pull you into the most magical experiences…

Dank u wel, Jurjana, for a day full of ancient wonders and beautiful photographs.

This photograph arrived, via Jurjana, just now and it made me smile.  It’s rare that I am ‘in’ a photograph but I had to post it.  There I am, in the midst of the archery guild members while they make their ancient toast, in the very old City Hall here in Antwerpen.

Photo credit goes to Tom Meeus.

The View from Antwerp Town Hall ...

On a good day, with a telephoto lens, this is the view from Antwerp’s town hall ... a beautiful ancient building here in the city of Antwerpen.
They say that it is clear that it was built by a city at the height of its power and wealth.  It was finished in 1564 by architect Cornelis Floris de Vriendt and the interior decoration dates mostly from the 19th century, or so I am told.  It was a good day.

 

New Zealand Guests

I just had the most delightful weekend with Leonie and Nick ... surely two of the loveliest New Zealanders living in London.

More stories to follow, I just need permission to blog some photographs.  Meanwhile, here’s one that Leonie spotted and I stepped back a bit with the telephoto lens and shot over her shoulder.

Thanks guys, I’m still smiling over spending time with you both.

 

Saturday Seen ... Scene ... Mis En Scene

1 a : the arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production
  b : stage setting

2 a : the physical setting of an action (as of a narrative or a motion picture) : context b : environment, milieu

Origin of MISE-EN-SCÈNE: French mise en scène

First Known Use: 1833

Related to MISE-EN-SCÈNESynonyms: decor (or décor), mise-en-scène, scene, set
Sourced: Merriam Webster Dictionary

Gumboots and Muffins and Ruth

My life is busy ... it’s kind of action-packed.  And if it’s not action-packed, then my mind in one of those really really busy ones.

Mostly, I believe, my life is like this because I like it that way however there are days when I just run in the brick wall of tiredness & confusion.

My body goes along with me for so long and then, voila ... it just gets cross with me. 

So yes, I can zip over to Ireland, drive for the first time in 7 years, traveling over 500kms from east to west and then back in 4 days.  Go fishing, go boating (and find out I'm not good on boats), climb up the side of a small mountain to visit an extraordinary church, and spend those few days in a house full of delightful Scottish people ... and their accents.

I can have an Australian Blue Heeler dog run into my legs at the speed of sound and I can attempt to walk the resulting pain out but ... I believe it was about there that my body started rebelling.  The ankle swelled, it was painful all the rest of that day.  Less painful on waking, it continued with the attention-seeking swelling.  I ignored it.  It persisted.

Brussels Airport taught me a lesson about asking for help, when perhaps it was too little, too late.  So the ignored swelling went crazy and made me quite the miserable creature, with nothing but that long corridor in front of me.

Yesterday I did stuff I don’t remember ... but I did stuff.  Really.  There was laundry and dinner and answering emails and stuff.

Then came today, and I had the most hilarious appointment.  I do love my Belgian friend, Ruth.  She’s a writer who has just finished her first book (which went on to win the Gouden Meeuw award in 2011) but more on that when she has copies for sale.  Anyway, there was this thing she needed me to do today ... this thing that I can’t write of without smiling .  She needed a photograph of herself.  She had a plan.  She needed me to photograph her up on a roof with a book.  Not her book but anway ...

I couldn’t resist.  I started taking photographs the moment she got on the ladder, wearing her cute little gumboots pictured below.  Then there was this moment ... captured while she was between the ladder and the roof. 

And later, when she was climbing down, I’m fairly sure I would have stopped taking photographs in time to catch the ladder as it fell ... had she not stopped it with her feet. 
Yes, I’m sure I would have.

We recovered over coffee and her delicious homemade blueberry muffins.  I left the house with far more than I arrived with, including a signed copy of her book!  Dank u wel, Ruth, for picking up my tired self, making me laugh, then filling me up with delicious food and good coffee. 

Meet Ruth, or some of her.

The Belgian Bloke ...

I often travel alone ... I’m lucky, the man who found me in Istanbul accepts that a New Zealander living in Turkey might be a bit of a wanderer.

But sometimes he travels with me however I can’t always blog all about that while on the road.  It’s the kind of information burglars might rather enjoy.  There’s the whole google face recognition thing these days and so, when I travel with my Belgian, he’s often not mentioned and it’s sad because I do enjoy traveling with him.

This trip to Ireland was special in so many ways.  He had decided he wouldn’t be driving.  Instead, he had hired an Irish rental car and it was all about me getting back behind the wheel after 7 years as a passenger. 

It has to be said, I loved driving back in New Zealand.  Loved it with a passion!  Friends visiting New Zealand can attest to that, although I would rather they didn’t critique my style here.  Yes, that means you Diede, and perhaps Mary Lou too.

Anyway ... I was a little bit nervous about it all.  7 years is a long time. 

The rental car bloke in Ireland said, ‘so you’re okay with a 2011 Peugeot 308?’  I think I gave him a wee bit of a fright.  I didn’t hug him but I might have said, ‘I’ve only just arrived in Ireland and here I am, having a really excellent time!!!’  He almost smiled, which we felt was an event, as Gert and I weren’t sure he smiled a lot normally.  It was possibly the equivalent of a hearty laugh from a more easily amused bloke.

We trotted out and loaded up the car.  Gert had maps.  He’s great with maps.  I’m not.  I never know where I am in the world.  I accept that.

We did all kinds of M Roads on our journey from Dublin Airport across to Galway, over there on the other side of Ireland.  It was grand.  I had imagined I would sit around 90kms p/h in the slow lane in those places where the speed limit was 120kms but do you know, it all came back to me.  120kms was okay.  Gert liked my driving.  He’s a Flemish bloke.  He’s fairly blunt when it comes to truth-telling.

And we timed it nicely.  His directions were excellent.  I didn’t drive him crazy, not once.  A miracle.

Anyway, we arrived in one piece at the home of the lovely Rob and Angie and just kind of stepped into this magical time of wandering and boating and fishing and stuff, in Ireland.

I took this photograph of Gert fishing ... but that’s a whole other story, involving trees and fish and things.