This Time Last Year ...

On this day last year I was posting photographs of Mount Tongariro erupting because I was back home in New Zealand and had recently driven past that North Island volcano.  On December 1st I had arrived at my sister's house, down in Dunedin, and was catching up with her and her beautiful family for the first time in 8 years.

Eight years can go by in a flash ... and they did.  I was always coming home soon but getting home was a hellishly expensive business.  Fortunately I lack a sense of time passing and, while I longed for  home and family something fierce sometimes, I got by.    I was even more delighted when I discovered everyone still there, where I had left them.  

Old friendships had survived, babies and toddlers had grown, and there was enough good New Zealand pinot noir to make sure I survived how old all the babies were now, and laughter too, making every day there so very special.

I was talking to Dad tonight, harassing him in his 9.30am Monday morning from my 9.30pm Sunday night.  Since I stopped traveling so much I've made a point of startling him with a phone call far more regularly.   He's stopped with his startled, 'Is that you Di??!' and is no longer surprised when he hears my voice from some 16,000kms round the world.  I used to disappear for months sometimes.  It's that time passing problem ... no sense of it.

So anyway, all this to say ... this time one year ago I was home in New Zealand.

I may have even taken the photograph that follows today, precisely one year ago.  Sandra popped us all into her car we wandered off down my beloved Otago Peninsula.  This view, on the way home via the high road, is one that I had always loved.

The Island of Ireland Peace Park, Belgium

 

I think I'm almost cheating tonight.  It has been a day of a great many ideas but nothing that is ready to be written of and so, I'm going to post one of a series of my photographs appearing over on the Messines 1917 website run by two of my favourite folk here in Belgium.

Martin wrote: The Island of Ireland Peace Park with its distinctive 34-metre Celtic Tower and its evocative stones of remembrance, was opened on the outskirts of Messines 15 years ago in a ceremony that was hugely symbolic of not only the past but also the future.

The occasion on Armistice Day 1998 was the first public event at which a British monarch and an Irish president had officiated jointly. President Mary McAleese inaugurated the park in the presence of HM Queen Elizabeth II and HM King Albert II and Queen Paola of the Belgians.

There is so much more to read about the Peace Park over on the Messines 1917 blog and some more of my photographs too.  I'll leave that with you. 

Also, I didn't know it but Martin wrote, the Tower is designed so that the interior is lit by sun only at 11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month.


Terry Windling, on Blogging

Here's what blogging is to me: It's a modern form of the old Victorian custom of being "At Home" to visitors on a certain day of the week; it's an Open House during which friends and colleagues know they are welcome to stop by. I'm “At Home” each morning when I put up at post. Here, in the gossamer world of the 'Net, I throw my studio door open to friends and family and strangers alike. And each Comment posted is a calling card left behind by those who have crossed my doorstep.

Terri Windling, extract from, Reflections on Blogging.

I love when this woman writes.  She's wise and her blog posts are another of the places I go when I'm searching for those things I lack here in my world. 

She has a dog, a forest, some hills.  She writes, I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.

I loved today's essay on blogging and can only say yes.

Yesterday I was working with photographs and history of that beautiful fountain in Genova ...

 

Book Work ...

I first arrived in Genova back in 2008.  I have been returning, as often as is possible, since then.  I would live there in a heartbeat.

I have been reading through notes made and books I've bought.  The port of Genova, active since 5 BC.  I found the note that recorded the fact that I almost cried, in front of strangers, that first time I saw the Ligurian Sea from the path at Nervi.  I had written in my journal that Genova seemed more and more, to me, like a place where New Zealand and Istanbul met and become something more beautiful than either ... back on 21 October, 2008

I saw this scene this year I think, and couldn't resist it

Really?

Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again. The world calls them its singers, poets, and story-tellers but they are just people who have not forgotten.

L.M. Montgomery.

Since autumn began I've been attempting to fit my book in around family commitments and being a housewife.  It doesn't really work.  I remember those days back when I left for the office.  I recall the feeling of relief, of being in that safe space defined by clear boundaries marked 'work'.  That place where the threshold was rarely crossed by 'family'.

There was a degree of separation found there.  A door more-or-less closed on the reality that is home life and all  of those things that happen there ... from poo-filled nappies and sleepless nights, to sick cats and people you have powerful emotional ties to.

Work was always a place where I existed at another level.  Where, more often that not, objectivity was a state of being more simply found.  And I was paid for my presence, my hours, my labour.

Working from home, around a family life I rarely decribe here, oh my ... it's a topic I almost never touch.  But there is no degree of seperation.  I use the bathroom here amd I realise that I am also the cleaning lady and dammit, I haven't cleaned the bathroom lately.  I go downstairs for lunch and realise I'm the baker and that a new loaf needs to go in for breakfast tomorrow.  I make a coffee and see the dishes need washed and dried and put away.  I take a shower, need a towel and voila, I realise there are 3 loads of laundry there in the queue.  And what's for dinner tonight ...?

And really, I just want to hunker down in that seperate space called 'the office', and work for my money, and be objective but it's so unrealistic.  I was trained from a very young age that I needed to be responsible ... as the eldest sister, as a good little girl from Mosgiel. 

Gifting myself permission ... no, gifting myself the luxury of writing all day, it's something I am battling with at every level.  This last week has been impossible.  There are moments where I can do my writing work but as it is only the'possibility of income' ... can I even call it work?  Don't so many, as in those who know 'money doesn't grow on trees', view it as a luxury?  This writing lark. 

When you read of money and trees, did you find yourself adopting the deep voice of your father or some other remembered voice of authority?  I think only men have said that to me.  They get so mad with me and my lack of gratitude.  It's only the housework and the family.  You have it so easy. 

But I'm wondering ... 'really?' 

Anyway, I'll work it out and meanwhile, the image below.  My childish self loves the notion that there are the possibility of other worlds in puddles.

A Small Slice of Genova, Italy

For me, the fountain in Piazza De Ferrari represents the true heart of the city.  Then again, I am a foreigner and I may have that wrong but anyway ... I've taken a few hundred photographs of that fountain since first visiting in 2008.  Slicing it up, as I slice up everything. Examining it in different lights, falling in love with the fall of the water one day, then a reflection another day.

On this day the fountain was still and I was able to get close, wanting both the text and reflection of Palazzo Ducale.

Genova ... it's a city I could spend the rest of my life photographing.  I never expected to find one place that would capture my interest in this way but it has.  The more you explore Genova, the closer you go, the more there is. 

Then again, if I was more than 2,000 years in the making then I might be fairly complicated and interesting too.

Woman Enough ...

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas -- inspiration.

If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.

Doris Lessing.

This ... this is so true for me.  I recently deleted my facebook account and experienced a most astounding silence.  It took time to adjust to a life without interesting voices crowding in but I did.  And I loved it.  I wrote.  Eventually though, I realised how little people-contact there is in my everyday world and so I went back to facebook.

The alarm goes every morning at 6.45am here.  I have breakfast ready by 7.30am, when I'm home, and I'm usually here at my desk by 8.30am.  And then I read my way into the place that I work from.

It's a mixture of going through email, a scan of my facebook wall for news of the world, catching up on my blog feed and picking through a selection of new reading there.

There's no physical journey, beyond climbing the stairs to the first floor but there is some kind of journey into that place where I work.

So much can go wrong ...

I think it's why painters have studios, photographers too.  Ateliers.  Mine would be locked some days, with no visible signs of life showing.  I have this 4 hour window of time where I can concentrate intensely.  It's the time when the best of my creativity comes out to play.  I know this but I can't always hold onto it.

I'm studying the 'how' of it because I have had 5 disasterous days in a row, with life crashing into me, again and again.  I think, in the process of opening your self to dig deep and create something that didn't exist before, or to write of something you love so that the passion leaps off the page and convinces people ... you need to go to a place where you can take off your skin and just kind of feel your way with your nerve-endings, with your senses perhaps.

An argument can lay waste to that 'place', to that state of being.  Or realising that this person or that really needs you, or that the house is a mess.  That particular 4 hours out is all that I require but it's so difficult to actually take that much time in the world where I live.

Exit Stage right, and Genova.

I have a favourite poem by a writer I've loved for years. I've posted it before so forgive me if you have already ready it.  Otherwise, maybe this captures something of the struggle ...

Woman Enough

Because my grandmother's hours
were apple cakes baking,
& dust motes gathering,
& linens yellowing
& seams and hems
inevitably unraveling
I almost never keep house
though really I like houses
& wish I had a clean one.

Because my mother's minutes
were sucked into the roar
of the vacuum cleaner,
because she waltzed with the washer-dryer
& tore her hair waiting for repairmen
I send out my laundry,
& live in a dusty house,
though really I like clean houses
as well as anyone.

I am woman enough
to love the kneading of bread
as much as the feel
of typewriter keys
under my fingers
springy, springy.
& the smell of clean laundry
& simmering soup
are almost as dear to me
as the smell of paper and ink.

I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.

Erica Jong.

I had to shower, dress, go find a birthday present for a party this afternoon.  I had to get lunch from the supermarket.  After it all, I came back upstairs just after midday and experimented with layers and frames for my photographs ... trying to 'play' my way back into writing. 

Let's see how the rest of it goes.  The shot ... a city street in Genova.

Puerta Del Sol & Botart de Amberes, 2013

Founded in 1998, Puerta Del Sol is my wine shop of choice here in the city of Antwerp. The quality of their wine leaves you knowing they really care about wine. They visit each of their suppliers, check-in during the harvest to see what techniques are used and, over the years, have developed the ability to know immediately if the wine has been enhanced in ways that fail to meet their quality control standards.

I wasn't surprised to learn that Puerta Del Sol was born out of a passion for wine and Spain shared by owners – Guy, Frank and Jules. They host wine-tasting weekends several times a year, an open-door day, where people are welcome to come along and taste what they have in stock.

Something I find relatively common here in this Flemish city is modesty… a failure to beat the drum loudly. And so one day, in a conversation where I asked the right questions somehow, English-speaker that I am, I learned about a rather exciting art initiative organised by Puerta Del Sol. 

BOTART is an art project that began in Mallorca, with Araceli Servera, oenologist and member of a  family that has been creating Ribas wines since 1711.

The Ribas website explains that BOTART is all about 'uniting the world of wine with the world of creativity'. The central ideas is about raising the profile of artists living and working in their respective regions in Spain. That said, over the years, the Spanish version has extended its reach and in amongst those Mallorcan artists already featured are German and Egyptian-born artists. The Antwerp version, known as Botart de Amberes, is still all about artists here in Antwerp.

BOTART acknowledges and celebrates the creativity that goes into both painting and the art of wine-making. Honoring the fact that passion and imagination are required in both disciplines.

As retailers of the Ribas line of wines in Antwerp, Puerta Del Sol decided to answer the Spanish BOTART with their own version here and so Botart de Amberes was born. Heading the project are Guy Voet from Puerta Del Sol, Ernest Van Buynder of Mukha, and Adriaan Raemdonck from De Zwarte Panter Gallery. Together these three invite artists to take part in Botart de Amberes.

The 2013 event was not just about celebrating the two new artists - Guy Leclercq and Leonard Leenders - but it was also about the fact this is their third year running the project.  Previous barrel artworks have come from Frieda Van Dun, Carolien Huber and Nick Andrews, with each barrel  painted in a style that is representative of the artists usual work. 

And just in case you're thinking these guys sound like people you might want to buy wine from, English and other languages  are absolutely no problem.  They're Belgians from Flanders.  They do languages ...

You can find them and their divine wines at their shop here in Antwerp - Puerta Del Sol, Ter Rivierenlaan 118, 2100 Deurne.

The shot that follows was taken during speeches made at this years Botart de Amberes, on the evening when the two new artists were announced.  I love looking for shots that are a little unusual and this was taken without flash in the offices of acerta, hosts of the event.

Nina Coolsaet, Bodega Mas L'Altet

I was out photographing an event for friends on Wednesday night and while there I met a lovely woman called Nina Coolsaet.  She is a Belgian Bio-Engineer living in Spain and she has the most delightful story about her Spanish family  and their vineyard located to the north of Alicante.

Avi, Catalan for 'grandfather', is the name on the label of wine being tasted today and it is produced on their bodega called Mas L'Altet.  This morning I had the pleasure of beginning this misty cold Antwerpen Saturday over at Puerta Del Sol, interviewing Nina.

Interview to follow.  The photograph that follows, Frank, Nina, and Guy at the Botart de Amberes Event, 2013

Balance ...

I am always searching for a kind of balance in life ...

I work hard. I work long hours.  There is no income.  However I have finally decided to commit to the life of an artist.  And I'm lucky, my Belgian bloke is pleased  that I am finally writing again.  It was the thing I loved first, the thing friends back in New Zealand most associated with me, it turns out.

So I write in the mornings these days and depending on whether I'm on the school pick-up run, which is lunch-times two days per week, my writing often runs on into the afternoon.  And the evening.

And I edit for friends and causes I believe in the way some people do crossword puzzles. That's my hobby.  I love making texts beautiful.

And I can be lured out of the house to shoot an event or a portrait for friends I admire or whose business impresses me. That was last night.  And I sparkle on the inside.  I love the energy that shoots through me when I'm working with my camera. And I always meet really superb people.  There was this wine-maker last night.  An extraordinary woman that I will interview on Saturday.

So I have all these things that I love doing but they rarely involve money.  And making them earn money while bowing to the gods of taxes, social security, and etc, can only be described as a Kafka story.

Do I kill all the art and get a real job? 

It feels so much like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I can create beauty.  I'm pleased with the shape the book on Genova is taking.  My photographs seem to please people and even if they don't, I find them pleasing.  I printed 20 of my Genova photographs off as A4 colour photocopies. 

I was like a mother with her new baby.  Who knows if the baby is ugly, I was that mother who was besotted.  The images looked so powerful laid out in front of me.  I needed that.  I was bored with looking at them on the computer.

The scales that weigh the content or purpose of my life are sensitive things.  Sometimes I have them in balance - my work is good, I should continue with photography and writing, the housework, and this crazy extended family of mine.  Other times it's ... who do I think I am.  Some princess who can live so irresponsibly and lightly in the world!?  I must find a job!'

We live in a world where the arts are always first against the wall in budget cut and yet art is the thing that makes humans different to animals, isn't it?  Art is the place we all escape to ... into books, into music.  And yet the raised eyebrow, the idea that we are spoiled ones ... oh how that messes with my head.

I was out with a friend last night and I said, I should get a job.  She said, but you work.  I said but I make no money.  She said you work really hard.  We laughed.  I do enjoy Ruth's company.  She keeps me sane.

So here I am, living what feels a little like life in bubble.  If I float out here, kind of disconnected from the world, then I can write this book I've been carrying inside of me for a long time but ... like being on the edge of a cliff, I can't look down.   If I look down, I'll may fall into despair and despair means I struggle to write and create.  Bitterness is deadly.

Lately I've read through a million job decriptions, trying to work out who would hire me, woman of strange abilities.  And I can't get past what I might gently call the 'wankspeak' of job descriptions.  I think you're meant to apply anyway and then everyone laughs and says noooooo, you're absolutely what we need but we had to write that other stuff ...like,  fluent in 17 languages, with the ability to get our newsletter out into the world in 17 seconds flat.  But maybe it's better those jobs have seemed impossible.

This morning began with a bit of a crisis.  Oh, you guessed.  Maybe I've written it out of me and tomorrow I'll delete this and we'll pretend it never happened. 

But make no mistake, this needs to be read knowing I'm smiling.  I have fought off the despair.  I'm going to write now. 

Under The Tuscan Sun ...(or a recipe for dreaming)

Whenever I am unable to create my own sense of beauty, I have this book that has traveled with me since the 90's.  The date I wrote in the front reads 'pre 1999'.  I remember how it saved me when we moved to Te Anau, from the disruption and loneliness that is moving, and that it has saved me so many times since.  For me, there is this sense of falling into the beauty that is Frances Mayes prose, like sinking below the surface of a swimming pool, immersed for a while.

Whatever a guidebook says, whether or not you leave somewhere with a sense of the place is entirely a matter of smell and instinct.  There are places I've been which are lost to me.

I've heard so many angry women talk of Frances Mayes book 'Under the Tuscan Sun' - and make no mistake, I am talking of the book not the movie, which is another story entirely - and these women rage about this book and that woman's unrealistic portrayal of a life lived partially in Italy.

I listen, sometimes I speak up but mostly I quietly decide that they are not lovers of beautiful poetic prose writing ... that they simply lack a dreamy writerly soul. But truly, I'm not sure why I love what they hate.

The outrage ... I would love to unpick it, to understand where it comes from. 

The second-floor bedroom that opens onto a brick terrace gleams.  They've made the bed with the new blue sheets and left the terrace door open to the sound of the cuckoos and wild canaries in the linden trees.  We pick the last of the pink roses on the front terrace and fill two old Chianti bottles with them.  The shuttered room with its whitewashed walls, just-waxed floors, pristine bed with new sheets, and sweet roses on the windowsill, all lit with a dangling forty-watt bulb, seems as pure as a Franciscan cell.  As soon as I walk in, I think it is the most perfect room in the world.

These are soul-soothing words for me.  I once lived in the brick house of a friend who was so good to me when I divorced.  It was everything sensible, that borrowed brick house, but my soul needed something else.  I found a funny little 1.5 bedroom cottage out on the Otago peninsula. 

I moved there and was happy.  I would drink my morning coffee out in front of the massive rough wooden-framed windows that made up the front wall of that  cottage.  My view, a few metres of lawn, maybe 2, a small road just below, and the sheltered water of that beautiful harbour.

I require beauty but mostly it's simple.  It's about Nature and good air, it's about views that make you stop and dream for a while.  It's about having a dog, when possible. 

New Zealand spoilt me in a way.  My Belgian bloke understood more of me after our trip home last year.  He realised that while I believe natural beauty is a right, he understands beauty is a luxury.  He comes from a small country, 1/10th the size of New Zealand.  In Belgium there are 11 million people, New Zealand has 4 million.

After a few days, my life takes on its own rhythm.  I wake up and read for an hour at three a.m.; I eat small snacks - a ripe tomato eaten like an apple - at eleven and three rather than lunch at one.  At six I'm up, but by siesta time, the heat of the day, I'm ready for two hours in bed.  Slumber sounds heavier than sleep, and with the hum of a small fan, it's slumber I fall into. 

Finally entering into university studies at 34 was one of the best things I have ever done.  There was an appreciation of all that I studied, an excitement that I might not have felt back when I was 18.  In those days, I lived in 4 different homes along the peninsula.  My first husband and I bought an exquisite cottage down there back in 1999.  We divorced and I lived in a series of cottages on that narrow strip of land between the harbour and the Pacific Ocean. 

Under the Tuscan Sun got me through dark times and lonely times too.  It was like a burst from a sun-lamp perhaps.  It traveled to Istanbul with me, as one of the few things I could take from the old to the new life.  It lives here on my deep-red book shelves in Belgium, a much-loved book that I recently pulled out as these autumn days grow grey and the darkness comes so much earlier.

For me, the book is a meditation on the beautiful moments, written in the prose of a woman who began as a poet and went on with prose.  It's a writers book.  A book for dreamers and lovers of beauty. 

Siesta becomes a ritual.  We pull in the shutters, leaving the windows open. All over the house, ladders of light fall across the floor.

 

 

Excellent Stuff Found Lately ...

I love the work of war photographer, Robert Capa.  I have his book, Slightly Out of Focus, and two fictions based around the facts of his life, Waiting for Capa, and Seducing Ingrid Bergman.

Last night I discovered a 1hour and 23 minute documentary about Capa, on Youtube, titled Robert Capa: In Love and War.  Brilliant!  I was searching for information on another war photographer at the time. 

Note to self, never watch two documentaries about war photographers back-to-back.

Erkan Saka's Daily News is one of my favourite news sources.  I have recently deleted my Facebook account and unsubscribed from so many different newsletters and updates but kept Erkan.   I think it's clear why he's undeletable.

Laurie, a lovely friend, introduced me to Ed Sheeran's music and this song has to be a favourite.  Peter Jackson agreed and this song was created for the Hobbit movie. 

Russell Brand, comedian and all kinds of other things, is out there doing his thing.  I can imagine how that red-necked friend of mine in Australia will love this link.  Here's the interview that started it all ... for me anyway.  Jeremy Paxman almost seems to take on more than expected when interviewing the Russell.

People, he's a comedian.  I've had to remind people although so is Jon Stewart...

I've committed to the NaBloPoMo month of daily blogging ... an interesting challenge, to rock up here everyday and write something that I've decided is okay to publish. 

NaBloPoMo ... I was inspired to sign up by this beautiful soul. It's all about turning up and writing, and I needed to work on that habit. 

I was gifted the documentary Restrepo recently.  Tim Heatherington was a rather remarkable war photographer, a rather remarkable human being actually, killed in Libya in 2011.  This documentary was the result of being embedded with a platoon stationed in Afghanistan.  He worked on it with Sebastian Junger, author, journalist and documentarian, most famous for the best-selling book The Perfect Storm.

Nate Thayer wrote of a musician's protest against 'working for exposure', as opposed to cash, going viral.  An important story.  One that is happening across the arts fields, as musicians, writers and photographers are increasingly told, by large corporations and organisations, that there is no budget for the ... 

A long overdue conversation. 

News to end this post with.  I sparked a bit of conversation back when I was still on Facebook.  Turns out that I might be the only person of my generation in the world who didn't know the music of Van Morrison.  To be fair, I knew a lot of songs once I started really looking but he has so many sounds ...

Okay, fairly shameful.  I was watching my favourite television show of all time ... The Newsroom, and there was Van Morrison, singing that song.  I picked up some lyrics, searched them, found him.

And now ...the Ostrich.

Merel - Life is an Art, Art is my Life

Merel is a Belgian artist who lives and works in the centre of Antwerp since 1980 and devotes herself entirely to the practice and distribution of her art. 

Extract from Merel's book, Life is an Art, Art is my Life.

I recently had the pleasure of attending one of Merel's art exhibitions. An opening reception for  Life is an art, art is my life, at Leonhard's Gallery, here in Antwerp.

My lovely Belgian friend, Ruth, had introduced me to Merel's art and invited me along to the opening.

There we were, it was almost time to leave, and I was looking through Merel's exquisite hardcover coffee-table book while Ruth and Merel chatted.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered the page photographed below.

There was some surprise, much laughter, and conversations about how it happened.  Anyway, I really admire her work ...love it, wouldn't mind some on my wall.  One day, when I'm working again, I'll go buy a copy of her book.

As always, Ruth, thank you for another lovely adventure.

A Beautiful Window in Antwerp

This beautiful window is located at the end of Tram's 10 and 11, in Melkmarkt. 

I love it and stopped to photograph it today.  Later, editing it, I was bemused by the way there were almost no straight lines, beyond the window frames, on the ancient building that houses it.

The warmth of the window, the way the instruments are displayed, the light ... it all called to me so much more than the building itself and so I cropped the image down to the window. 

Autumn Scenes in Antwerp, Belgium

It's a grey and miserable autumn day here in the city and that was me, out the door and on the tram, on school run by 7.30am.  To complicate things, Wednesdays and Thursdays Miss 9 's school closes at midday so I get an hour or two at home before I'm back out and across the city to pick her up. 

Who knows why I imagined I could handle my red umbrella and my camera but I did.  I created a couple of montages - photographs taken as I wandered across Antwerp city.  A tram from the suburbs to the city centre, then a walk that wends its way through cobble-stoned backstreets and ancient buildings ...

4.30pm, it's still raining and we're losing the light fast.  It's not even winter yet.  But anyway, my adopted city ...

There's the tree-lined street ... that I don't live in.  The tram tracks curving off into the distance.  And the beautiful park I live near.  The one that often has a 'beautiful mist' softening the scenes there.  'Beautiful mist' because, pretty as it is, it is actually the horrendous pollution created by one of Europe's busiest highways just next-door there.

The next montage was made up of images I found in the city.  Antwerp is a city of painters.  Rubens also lived here and there are statues all over the place. 

Reflections, taken on the street I call the street of the antique shops.  I loved the soldiers and the wine glasses... I tried to capture them while including the street scene too.  It made what might have been a miserable day almost fun.