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.
This sign has been in the window of a restaurant I pass by ... since forever.
Since forever loosely translates as ‘as long as I’ve been living in Antwerpen.
I love it. And don’t even mind that the window’s a bit dirty. Must eat there one day, then I can write all about it.
Sometimes I miss the mighty Clutha River but anyway, this is my city river these days ... the River Schelde, Antwerpen.
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
Sourced: Merriam Webster Dictionary
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.
Yesterday, at the really friendly airport of Dublin, we booked a wheelchair or buggy ride for Brussels. Just to get me through the long long, unbelievably long trek, from the plane to pick up our luggage. I was okay with doing the rest on my own but had a bad feeling that the trek from the plane wouldn’t be the greatest plan.
We arrived and ... well unsurprisingly really, writes the voice of past experience with Brussels Airport, there was no one waiting . It was a hell of a walk through a largely deserted 8.30pm airport.
No-one anywhere, to even say ‘ummmm excuse me, we booked assistance?’
Limping through, tediously slowly, we found our luggage and wandered over to the money machine to get money. Our hourly bus to Antwerpen was already going without us at 9pm. We were too slow with the limping thing but voila, just to make things more glorious, the money machine was out of cash.
I knew where another machine was and so we picked up our luggage and trundled on out. A bit tired and sore, you can imagine how rapt we were to discover the second money machine was out of cash too. My Belgian bloke was fuming ...
There was a third machine and it had money.
We stopped at Information to ask why we hadn’t received the assistance we had booked. I had warned Gert not to go there. It’s a path to self-destruction and rage. Last time I landed there, just a few weeks earlier, the luggage handlers had slammed my suitcase around, the ensuing damage jamming my suitcase closed, with my coat inside. They had also managed to lose my big strong luggage strap. My enquiries had begun at ‘Information’ too. I was sent around the airport, being told ‘no, not here, we're not responsible, try there’, until I risked missing my hourly bus home to Stad Antwerpen. Again, this guy had no answers beyond naming the group responsible before adding ‘but they’re closed now’.
Smiling kind of grimly, I asked where the best place to eat was.
He said, they’re all closed.
International airport ... people still arriving and leaving ... food places closed, 9pm.
We rolled the case over to a bar and ordered a horrendous panini thing each, with a beer and a wine ... 23euro. Then as we sat there the staff, assuming we were both English-speaking, called the previous customers pigs on arriving at their table. Not because of the mess but because the customers had wanted a lemon slice in their drink then not finished the drink. I suspected it was undrinkable, based on the sandwiches.
I looked inside my crunchy brie panini, the over-toasted one, and saw a pile of meat. I asked the guy waiter what it might be, not rudely, just kind of bemused that my brie panini wasn’t really.
He laughed, looking at me like I was slightly insane, he said, I only the sell the stuff, I don’t know what is in it.
And that was coming home from Ireland ... maybe it's better to land over in Holland and catch the trains home.