Family ...

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 ...

I have a new laptop ... a Dell XPS Laptop

I have this new laptop and it has been a revelation in 21st century technology for me .... as I had no idea that photo-processing could be done at the speed of light. 

I have gone from my HP Pavilion dv2000, which started out life as a recall model that ran at boiling point, melted the second new battery invented to angle the base and allow extra air through, constantly required a cooling pad, and had a dodgy screen.  It was a laptop that had really just limped though this last year with multiple crashes and failing health.

Yesterday a fast and fabulous Dell XPS was delivered.  And no, they’re not paying me for this.

Frederika Flintstone is no longer pedalling the stone car ... Frederika is, in fact, flying a fighter jet at the speed of sound and is bemused by her wonder and awe.

Lorenzo Jovanotti is singing Bella as I write this ... it seems entirely bouncy and appropriate.

David, Ralph and Vincent

Ridicule is a terrible whitherer of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Found over on David du Chemin’s blog ... brilliant post.  He is writing wise words from his hospital bed in these days.  He pulled me in when I read, ‘I don’t know a single artist that doesn’t wrestle with cycles of self-doubt, second-guesses ...”

He, in turn, linked over to Vincent Versace

I loved so much of his article too ... a slice: Every image you create is an expression of the artistic inspiration that moves you. You express your creative voice by developing the ability to show what moves you without screaming for the attention of others. It means getting out of your own way and, in the moments when your creative spirit is moved, trusting that what comes from those moments will be good. Your goal should be to trust what you feel and constantly strive toward personal excellence and elegant performance. When your effectiveness becomes effortless, your images will move the viewer solely by the power that caused you to be moved.

Somewhere in Suffolk ...

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.

There was this party last night ...

And it was a most excellent party.

One of the delights in life are surely the people you meet along the way.  And so it was that last night, some of the people ‘met along the way’ all came together at my house and we partied up a storm.

Partying mostly consisting of excellent conversations with all kinds of interesting people.

Where shall I begin ... Peter and Julia flew in from Berlin, delighting us by staying a week.  They cook like angels and we have enjoyed pumpkin quiche and this stunning little Italian pasta dish.  Tonight real Italian risotto is rumoured.  I tasted my first neuhaus chocolates courtesy of them and have some lovely lillies coming into flower downstairs.  Grazie!

Michelle flew in from New York city a week ago and came to spend a night in our world, before heading off to Leiden and Rome - leaving me owner of a book on New York - that city I’m spending Thanksgiving in in 2010.  Shannon, the other New Jersey girl, jumped on a train and wandered in from Leiden yesterday.  She gifted me a beautiful new birthday scarf that I’m wearing now.

Stephanie, Patrick and Catalina stunned me with the gift of a pasta-maker, wine and flowers.  Paola and Simon rolled up with these STUNNING limoncello tirimasu (recipe at the end of this post) that were devoured almost as soon as they were set out, asking me if I had received their gift in the mail yet ...  Not yet but I am curious. But they arrived carrying stunning stunning food. 

It has to be said at this point that, I deliberately didn’t tell people it was my birthday or told them not to bring gifts.  I have obedient friends ...  but we love hosting these parties and having Peter and Julia staying seemed like a rather good excuse for a party before Christmas.

And so Shelia and Sandy, the Brits from Brussels, also rolled up bearing food - a most delicious New Zealand pavlova, with all the trimmings, charming everyone with themselves.  Lucy, a lovely Belgian, and her husband Charlie, with his Scottish accent, the one that pokes at my genetic memory and makes me smile came too, as did Cloe, Brian, Aidan, Jason, and I am going to do the unforgivable and write Cloe’s Mum - who I very much hope to visit with again in quieter circumstances.  The parties are excellent but I always wish it was simpler to talk with each and every person I know ...

Wendy and Patrice drove in from faraway places, the New Zealander and her American/Belgian husband, bringing with them Barry, a kiwi from home.  It turns out that he was an Otago Boys boy while I was a Taieri High girl ... growing up 20kms apart.  New Zealanders do this thing that we did last night, where we exchange information about people we know and places we lived back home, in that land downunder, and it turns out that while I was living in Antimony Crescent in Cromwell, he was there on Waenga Drive ... the road I drove to get home.  I wish we could have talked more but the house was full of so many truly excellent people.

Jurjana came in, resplendent I decided, in new boots and a look I hadn’t seen her wearing before.  She was bearing gifts of chocolate and book vouchers. Oh ohoh, the pleasure of BOOKS.  I shall be in FNAC on Monday, choosing some new ones.  I don’t really care so much for diamonds or jewels but books ... books are something else entirely.

Jessie and Oliver were there, as was Miss 6, who was more than happy to spend time with little Miss 2.  Quite some time, as it turns out the party finished about 2am ...

Then today, Ruth rolled in from Brussels and we’ve spent the day, all of us left here - Shannon, Michelle, Gert and I, Julia and Peter, just talking and eating, cooking and talking some more ... lunch at 5pm, eaten with the promise of risotto later tonight.

These days where Peter and Julia’s week-long-but-really-too-short visit coincided with my birthday have been truly delicious.  You can imagine it, can’t you?

November is all about me flying over to America and going on one of those wild crazy rides that I seem to do.  It’s all about Veronica and her family, with a Thanksgiving with a truly special man I shall be delighted to finally meet, it might be about an old friend in Ohio and then there’s Tonya flying in from Canada.  Let’s see how it all goes.

However, for now, last night and these days have been so much more than I could have known to wish for, and so thank you to everyone who make my birthday close to pure delight.

Limoncello Tiramisu (For 4 people) By Paola.
250g mascarpone
3eggs
100g sugar
2 lemons
1 small glass limoncello
10 to 15 savoiardi biscuits

Beat yolks and sugar. Add mascarpone and mix. Add lemon juice. Beat the whites until fluffy and add.
In a small pan reduce 100ml water and 40gr sugar on hob for 5 min. Off heat add limoncello: dunk biscuits in this liquid and line a container with them. Add half the cream. Make another layer. You could finish off with lemon peel. Enjoy.

Tom Dice, Me and My Guitar

So maybe I should get a nine to five
But I don’t want to let it go, there’s so much more to life
Tom Dice, extract from Me and My Guitar

There was me, the New Zealander with dual citizenship feeling the Belgian part of my identity, watching Tom Dice, my favourite new singer, competing in Eurovision 2010. 

I ended up watching the show by accident ... only to find myself on the edge of my seat, as Tom slid up and down the placings from 1st to 6th. 

But I love this song ... the ultimate artist’s song surely.

Pearl S. Buck, Creative Minds

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off…

They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.
Pearl S. Buck

Remembering ...

I love the way we can bring the past alive in our present ... recalling the people we loved and lived with, the way that they made us feel.  I find everyone is still there, solid memories, whenever I manage to call them up.

7am here in Italy, a cup of coffee from my travel coffee-pot and a packet of Italian shortbread-like biscuits ...voila, I find memories of Nana and pre-breakfast coffees back home at her place, in Invercargill, New Zealand.  Us chatting as she sped through her daily Southland Times, reading the news.

If we could have imagined the future ... ‘Hey Nana, in 2010 I’m going to be sitting at Paola’s kitchen table, in a small and ancient city in Italy, window open so I can hear the sounds of the city waking, drinking coffee, just like you and I are now.’

Nana, who never left New Zealand in all of her life.  I wonder if she dreamed of it.  We never talked of those things.

Or a conversation with Mum ... ‘So I moved to Istanbul in 2003.  You would have loved it!  The people are so friendly, the summers are warmer than here in Mosgiel, the life ... Come with me?

Then Belgium in 2005 and mum would have flown in.  Creating a garden on that first balcony in Antwerp.  And then she would have spent evenings out there, ignoring the mosquitoes, drinking white wine and watching as the sun slipped below the horizon. 

Genova.  I’m sure she would have refused to leave Genova.  We would have laughed about me being my mother’s daughter perhaps, with a need for the sea and serious hills, and maybe we could have planned opening some kind of B&B here, satisfying our oddly hospitable souls and the pleasure we find in knowing people.

And my lovely little sister ... the one who has always been older and wiser, even if she was born after me.  We used to talk across the space between our single beds, back in those days when we shared a room.  If we had imagined my future  life we would have been guilty of inventing wild and untrue tales ... ones where Istanbul, Antwerp and Genova were flights of fanciful imaginations.  Impossible dreams.

She needs to come here now.  I need her in my life.

But Genova ...!

Did you know that swallows fly up and down Via Lorenzo, screeching like hysterically happy young girls playing chase at an out-of-control birthday party.  They amuse me, those swallows, even as I realise I can't begin to caputre their antics with my camera.

And do you know how it sounds to wake to the sounds of a cafe directly below your bedroom window?  The clatter of cups and saucers and everyday Italian conversations that fly in through my window.  The one that is open behind still-closed green shutters, just across the room.

Did you know that this woman, a few thousand miles from home, from past lives, from the people she first loved, finds this Ligiurian city an exquisitely beautiful place to remember and miss them?

Church bells ring in through the open window ... 8am.
Time to begin the new day but Sandra ... come over one day soon.

Ciao from Genova, both feet in the present, as I think what to do with this day.

Reminiscing the Future ...

I love the way we can bring the past alive in our present ... recalling the people we loved and lived with, the way that they made us feel.  I find everyone is still there, solid memories, whenever I manage to call them up.

7am here in Italy, a cup of coffee from my travel coffee-pot and a packet of Italian shortbread-like biscuits ...voila, I find memories of Nana and pre-breakfast coffees back home at her place, in Invercargill, New Zealand.  Us chatting as she sped through her daily Southland Times, reading the news.

If we could have imagined the future ... ‘Hey Nana, in 2010 I’m going to be sitting at Paola’s kitchen table, in a small and ancient city in Italy, window open so I can hear the sounds of the city waking, drinking coffee, just like you and I are now.’

Nana, who never left New Zealand in all of her life.  I wonder if she dreamed of it.  We never talked of those things.

Or a conversation with Mum ... ‘So I moved to Istanbul in 2003.  You would have loved it!  The people are so friendly, the summers are warmer than here in Mosgiel, the life ... Come with me?

Then Belgium in 2005 and mum would have flown in.  Creating a garden on that first balcony in Antwerp.  And then she would have spent evenings out there, ignoring the mosquitoes, drinking white wine and watching as the sun slipped below the horizon. 

Genova.  I’m sure she would have refused to leave Genova.  We would have laughed about me being my mother’s daughter perhaps, with a need for the sea and serious hills, and maybe we could have planned opening some kind of B&B here, satisfying our oddly hospitable souls and the pleasure we find in knowing people.

And my lovely little sister ... the one who has always been older and wiser, even if she was born after me.  We used to talk across the space between our single beds, back in those days when we shared a room.  If we had imagined my future  life we would have been guilty of inventing wild and untrue tales ... ones where Istanbul, Antwerp and Genova were flights of fanciful imaginations.  Impossible dreams.

She needs to come here now.  I need her in my life.

But Genova ...!

Did you know that swallows fly up and down Via Lorenzo, screeching like hysterically happy young girls playing chase at an out-of-control birthday party.  They amuse me, those swallows, even as I realise I can't begin to caputre their antics with my camera.

And do you know how it sounds to wake to the sounds of a cafe directly below your bedroom window?  The clatter of cups and saucers and everyday Italian conversations that fly in through my window.  The one that is open behind still-closed green shutters, just across the room.

Did you know that this woman, a few thousand miles from home, from past lives, from the people she first loved, finds this Ligiurian city an exquisitely beautiful place to remember and miss them?

Church bells ring in through the open window ... 8am.
Time to begin the new day but Sandra ... come over one day soon.

Ciao from Genova, both feet in the present, as I think what to do with this day.

Moving + long crazy days = Chianti

It seems possible that this bird, photographed in a lovely park on the side of a hill in Portofino, had just read my appointments for the week diary ... hence the startled look on her face.

You see, this morning began at the rental agency, where Gert and I signed for the quirky house.  The one we can begin the interior repaint as of Tuesday.  The road will be long but hopefully worth it.  Then Jessie and I spent the rest of the day preparing our current apartment for possible new renters - to be read as, Jessie and I spent almost all day cleaning, scrubbing and dusting things.

I have agreed to take on an English student for a month, he arrived today and we mapped out how his sessions would go over the next 4 weeks.  He's the loveliest Turkish guy.

I checked in with the NGO, worked online for them and made plans to go in on Tuesday ... not Monday because I have an English lesson and then later, I’m being interviewed by a journalist.

Wednesday Diede and his family will call in on their way home from France. 

Thursday and Friday might be taken up by work in Brussels, as the NGO is moving office in the weeks ahead too.

So it seems wise, and not an altogether wicked idea, to invest in some chianti and at the end of each of the long days I see ahead of me, to plan on sitting back with a glass of red wine and working on this website of mine.  Jessie and I have some delicious surprises in store for readers in the weeks and months ahead.

Tot straks from Belgie.

Colin Monteath, Photographer, Writer, Explorer

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

Bar Boomerang, Genova

One of my favourite places, here in the city of Genova, is Bar Boomerang. 

Initially it was the name that I noticed.  Then the fantastic, never-tasted-better cappuccino drew me back again and again.  On this, my second visit to the city, I discovered that their aperitivo is the nicest aperitivo I’ve had so far.

The staff are friendly, clients are important to them and their passion for the work comes through in all that they do.  If you are in Genova, I recommend you find your way to this cafe and decide for yourself.

In a small interview with Simona, the patient barista (patient in working with my New Zealand English), I asked a few questions about the cafe. 

She explained that the name had orginated from a visit that Marta, the owner, had made to Australia.  Marta and her husband enjoyed the trip so much that they named their Genovese cafe Bar Boomerang.  I need to explain that what we would call a cafe in New Zealand is a bar here in Italy, although alcohol is served so perhaps it becomes something of a hybrid.

Open five years, the bar is located on via Porta Soprana, 41-43,  not far from the ancient Genovese gate known as Porta Soprana. The gate, built in 1155, was originally intended as a defense rampart, with access for commercial traffic arriving via the interior, and acted as a barrier to would-be conquerors like Barbarossa and others.  Today it stands permanently open, welcoming foreign creatures like me inside this ancient part of the city.

As a tourist, a sometimes shy tourist without l’taliano, I was a little intimidated about just how to order my coffee. Of course, it’s quite simple. You wander into the cafe, order your coffee, select something to eat if needed and take it yourself.  In most bars, you can either pay a little extra and take a seat or stand at the bar and drink without sitting.

You pay as you leave.

At Bar Boomerang, their work is a passion and I’m sure that is what makes everything taste so good.  Simona took me through the four steps required to make good coffee.  Obviously you begin with good coffee, then you make sure your machines are clean.  The third step involves making a good press and the fourth, well that surprised me, it’s about noting the humidity and any changes in the humidity.  If it changes, the settings on the coffee machine need to change too.

The coffee is so very good.  It’s one of the things I missed for weeks after leaving last time and I expect it will be the same this time.

Most people know Italians take their coffee very seriously.  I asked Simona about the ‘rules’ and she explained that a typical Italian customer might have cappuccino or latte in the morning. Milk coffee is only for mornings and laughing she said, not before or after lunch or dinner.  This is more of a tourist thing or maybe in winter, on a really cold day.  Expresso is for all the time, after lunch or dinner particularly, as its role is to aid in digestion.  You could typically follow the expresso with a liquer of some kind like limoncello, grappa or jagermeister.

I feel more relaxed when I wander into the bars here now, still imperfect and prone to crave cappuccino at inappropriate times but less worried.

Bar Boomerang is open from 7am until 9pm,  6 days a week – closed Sunday.  They also serve lunches but that’s another post over on the blog. 

Pizzeria Da Pino, Genova

I ate more pizza than I should have in Genova but eating becomes very much something I can’t be bothered doing when I’m out wandering ... cooking is even less likely to happen and so the pizzeria across the alley became a second home, specially while Pippa was staying. 

One night, I popped into the kitchen and took a series of photographs at Pizzeria Da Pino.
I liked this one.

Pizzeria Ravecca da Pino, Via Ravecca, 23r - 16128 Genova.

Alex Roe and Pavia, Italy

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.

Sunday 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.

Piazza delle Erbe, Genova

PasseXout internet cafe is one of the places I haunt while staying in Genova, is the internet cafe down in Piazza delle Erbe.  It opens at 10am Monday to Saturday, closed Sundays ... understandably closed, as they stay open until midnight or later.

The staff are friendly, they speak English and will sign you into their system as long as you can provide them with ID.  When I returned after almost 9 months away, I still had .80 cents in time sitting there in my account.

They don’t offer a wifi service but you can print A4 and A3 papers there.
Internet time costs 3 euro per hour.  Free wifi is restricted to a few cafes, 2 more since I was here last year but forget about Sundays, I haven’t located a Sunday internet source yet, and I have never seen more than 2 secured wifi signals floating loose here in the old part of the city.

No, my hands aren’t shaking ...

Anyway, PasseXout is located at Piazza delle Erbe 12R, and if you want to know more, you can mail them at ellepiemmesas@libero.it.

Bottega degli Aromi is just next door at 16R Piazza delle Erbe and I was so very glad I wandered in this time, as the mosquitoes decided to feast on me.  Initially, I did the usual and saw the pharmacist who gave me cream with hydrocortisone in it.  I resisted smearing it all over my bites not liking the idea of the cortisone.

Bottega deglia Aromi was an impulse followed.  I popped in to see if they had anything homeopathic and they did.  Crema cinque Fiori is the cream version of Rescue Remedy and my bites were much happier after it was applied.  In English the cream is called Five Flower Cream and comes from Healing Herbs.

You will also find Mario Rivaro and his exquisite gelato on Vico delle Erbe, 15/17R.  My favourite flavour is the cherry gelato, the piccolo version in a cone is more than enough to satisfy on a hot day.  However, that said, every choice offers new delights ... the lemon meringue gelato is stunning, as are the chocolate varities.  Tasting them all is too much to ask.

Piazza delle Erbe is one of many excellent places if you are looking for lunch or an aperitivo in the evenings.  A popular local haunt, you can order from various bars.  It reminds me a little of Campo dei Fiori in Rome but unlike Rome, locals outnumber the tourists

Ciao from Genova.