A Delicious Day here in Antwerp

Note to reader: The words ‘delicious’, ‘delightful’ and ‘lovely’ are used often in this post.  Just so you know …

Yesterday was one of those delicious days I don’t want to forget but today finds me train-traveling to Leopoldsburg, with no time to sit down and savour my yesterday howevere I have packed my tiny blue travel laptop and so, here I am, writing from the train.

But perhaps it didn’t begin yesterday.  It began months earlier, when a woman called Karla wrote me a note enquiring about family photo-shoots.  It didn’t work out then but later it did. 

And the shoot was so much fun.  There was the pleasure of meeting the loveliest family, photographing the baby with the bluest eyes, hanging out with a friendly black labrador … stuff like that.

We stayed in touch, worked out a date for the photographs to be picked up and voila, we arrive at my yesterday.

Karla came over, toting her beautiful blue-eyed baby, accompanied by this lovely Irish woman who brought her very own chuckling bundle of delightful baby boy.  Really chuckley … I can’t emphasise how delicious his giggle is.  I’ll photograph him one day, it’s written all over his face when he laughs.

We sat down at my kitchen table, with tea and coffee, and talked, in that intense and delicious way that strangers sometimes do and voila, my marvellous yesterday had begun.

We looked through the photographs first, we learnt something of each others lives, I was introduced to my very first colour therapist and did I mention … we TALKED.

The babies played while we toyed with new ideas for each others lives and businesses.  There was that delightful click of like-minded souls meeting, it’s something that always amuses me.  While right-wing populist politicians work at making us fear ‘the other’, there we were, as is more often the case, finding connections across 3 different cultures and histories.

Karla and Marcia didn’t really know Antwerp at all and so we wandered into the city for a lunch.  I couldn’t resist and despite rain, I introduced them to my most favourite square here … Hendrik Conscienceplein … created by the Italian Jesuits, it soothes my soul sometimes.

We stopped in at the soup cafe, Comme Soupe, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  It’s tiny but the soup is a truly satisfying work of art.  I should have taken a photograph but I will return there, I promise. 

Tiny cafe + two pushchairs meant that we didn’t like to stay longer than need be but afterwards, we crossed the small space to the Cupcake Cafe called Lojola Coffee and Cake, at Hendrik Conscienceplein 14. Oh my, if in Antwerp, you must pop in.

We chose divine little cupcakes to compliment our coffee and we were happy.  Delighting perhaps, in the dollhouse-like playfulness of that little cafe.  Mmm, photographs to follow.

And it was almost 4pm … so suddenly. 

We said our goodbyes in the city, and off I wandered on my next big adventure.  The buying of the Nespresso coffee machine.  Just the espresso part … inspired by a desire to avoid future pain when searching the city for good espresso. Genova and her beautiful coffees ruined me.

I felt childlike but I don’t think they knew in the shop.  Remember that feeling of having that birthday money clenched in your hot little hand as you marched off to buy that thing that you really truly wanted, forever?  It was like that.

I chatted with the woman in the busy Nespresso store, staffed by many.  She had been in Australia.

You know, the more years I am away from New Zealand, and realising both my brothers are married to Australians and living there, the more I feel that we downunder people are fairly similar and there is no insult in mistaking me for an Aussie.

Beaming, and still feeling like a small excited kid, with my coffee machine bagged up and in my hand, I boarded a tram home and had this nice looking guy beckoning to me, wanting me to sit with him.  Gert and I had managed, quite by chance, to find the same tram to ride home.

Well yes, he did have to suffer quite some Chitter-Chatter by Di on the way home.

I didn’t dare caffeinate myself after dinner.  Chitter chatter on a tram after work is one thing, he can do it … just.  Chitter-chatter at 3am, of the over-caffeinated kind, is something else.  I had my first little espresso this morning and it was good.

Lately, life has been all about intensely good friends and meeting lovely people.  Thanks guys.

Anyway, you see it, yesterday was a very good day…

 

Kathleen's Mum

I’m sure that every person who meets this delicious woman falls in love with her ... in all the various forms of ‘falling’ that there are.

I just adored her.  And this photograph almost seems more painting than photo but I think it suits her and so here I am, sharing this beautiful person with you.  I caught her at work in the kitchen ... but really, no one has made me giggle like she made me giggle.  Not in a long time.

The Bride

Clare was the bride, an Australian I met when we both lived in Istanbul.  Back then, we never predicted our Belgian/English lives, not during those crazy days of teaching English and exploring that ancient city.

Her wedding day was a day of laughter and tears ... happy tears. Just processing the photographs brought back all the emotions of that special special day.

Madrid, and a second beautiful wedding photographed

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.

The Australians

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. 

Tony Madigan ... a remarkable man.

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 ...

A Slice of Life

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.

Ira Glass ... American public radio personality and wise man

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Extract from Ira Glass on Storytelling, part 3 of 4

However, the actual quote was found over on the lovely Leonie’s Blog.

The Father of the Bride

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 ...

 

Courage ...

‘I was told the Holocaust happened because the world was silent. So obviously I cannot stay silent when horrible things are being done in my name.’
Yonatan Shapira is the grandson of a woman who was killed in the Holocaust.  In the link above, he explains why he will be on the Gaza Flotilla.

I was moved to tears by Yonatan’s very simple quiet calm explanation.

Internationally acclaimed poet, Alice Walker, has written this essay on why she is sailing to Gaza on the Freedom Flotilla.

The world is finally watching, and I hope to God that no one is murdered this time.

Rumi

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”
~Rumi

I liked this too much not to note it somewhere.