Saturday Night, Antwerp.

Saturday night, and here I am  ... listening to my hour-long video of a dawn chorus I recorded back in New Zealand.  It seemed insane to wake that early, at the time but now, I'm really glad that I did.  But it's always been easy to wake early in NZ.

And I found the video of me driving through the Homer Tunnel too but it needs downsizing to load here and so, tonight we'll make do with a photograph of the road home to my most favourite house ever.

I loved living out at Broad Bay, Dunedin.  Madly, truly, deeply. I loved everything about it really.  The winding crazy road home.  The proximity of the water.  The huge selection of beaches.  The birdlife.  The air. 

Everything.

And then someone offered me a job in Istanbul ...

It was a good day ... !

It's your wairua journeying here to your turangawaewae... your spirit returning to the place you belong. nothing can keep you from being here... not physical time or distance love you.  can't wait to you are here in person though, sitting on my porch with a wine and laughter xxxxx

Pippa.

It was one of those awful days that became magnificent.

The infection on my back has healed but I had to wait until tonight to hear that from the doctor.  The story of why I was there is almost laughable, now that I'm on the other side of it all ... but that's for another day.  Perhaps.

Meanwhile I'm assisting in organising a symposium later this year.  The subject is so very dear to my heart.  We worked hard on it today, more to follow tomorrow.

Then I had a rather exciting project arrive in the mail tonight. 

And the words at the start of this post came from Pippa's Facebook post ... I had written to her back in New Zealand saying, ' It's you, you're working the magic of the land on me. I know the smells and the air and the views somehow.'

She has moved house and is posting photographs of the landscape she sees. 

Pippa replied with the words I posted first.  I think she's right and, one day, I hope to be home again.  Sitting out there on her porch, drinking red wines and telling tall stories ... like we have done through the years.

Christmas ... as experienced by Antipodeans

I love this song, it makes me all teary every year when I'm missing home like hell because a northern hemisphere Christmas can only ever be a rotten-Dunedin-weather-kind-of-Christmas. 

I grew up near Dunedin, on the east coast of the lower South Island - situated around 40 degrees south in latitude.  We had some appalling weather some of our Christmas days. 

Anyway, Tim Minchin is an Australian living in London and he wrote this song for his baby daughter.  It started out amusing then startled me as he simply captured what Christmas is like in the lands downunder.  My mum loved her white wine in the sun.  Socks, jocks and chocolates was all Dad ever wanted for Christmas.  Later it became about golf tees and golfballs.

There's so much fuss about religion this Christmas but for me, it's simply about family and spending time with people you love.  Red wine in the sun would be quite fine with me, back home with my brothers and sister, my Dad and my nieces.  But this year ... we are 5 here in Belgium, and that's okay too.

Anyway, a little bit of Tim ...

Christmas ... as experienced by Antipodeans

I love this song, it makes me all teary every year when I'm missing home like hell because a northern hemisphere Christmas can only ever be a rotten-Dunedin-weather-kind-of-Christmas. 

I grew up near Dunedin, on the east coast of the lower South Island - situated around 40 degrees south in latitude.  We had some appalling weather some of our Christmas days. 

Anyway, Tim Minchin is an Australian living in London and he wrote this song for his baby daughter.  It started out amusing then startled me as he simply captured what Christmas is like in the lands downunder.  My mum loved her white wine in the sun.  Socks, jocks and chocolates was all Dad ever wanted for Christmas.  Later it became about golf tees and golfballs.

There's so much fuss about religion this Christmas but for me, it's simply about family and spending time with people you love.  Red wine in the sun would be quite fine with me, back home with my brothers and sister, my Dad and my nieces.  But this year ... we are 5 here in Belgium, and that's okay too.

Anyway, a little bit of Tim ...

A Note from a Winter Day in Belgium ...

And the burn-out has continued here in my world but I'm running up the stairs again, finally.  I'm not taking that forgranted ever again.  Now to commit to taking the vitamin D I guess.  Apparently 80% of Belgians end up  deficient in vitamin D ... this New Zealander too.

As for the burn-out, I'm not sure that it's still that.  Now it seems more like I'm looking around and thinking 'what next?'  But instead of attempting to follow multiple paths, I'm thinking of just one or two.  We'll see how that plays out.  I have remained slow ... very very.  And I'm letting it be like that.  I have had a few times of intensity, quickly followed by that descent back into slow.

I know it's a luxury.  More time without income but still, the Belgian bloke seems happy enough with the housewife who has stepped up as me.

Lucy, Ruth and Fiona, lovely friends from near-by, birthday-gifted me 50euro in book vouchers for my favourite secondhand bookshop here in the city.  I stretched it out over 3 visits and I'm rapt with my books.  I finished it on Tuesday, with two books about artist and wise woman - Georgia O'Keeffe, with a third by New Zealand writer, Barbara Anderson.  Oddly enough, I didn't see the similarities in the titles until later but Anderson's book was a slice of home that I couldn't resist.

I had my hair cut too.  'Cut' might be too big a description.  I have finally found a hairdresser who listens to me ... a hairdresser that doesn't immediately start cutting while attempting to make me stylish.  She also found a way of unifying the damage I had done with my boxes of hair colour bought at the supermarket.  I can only adore her for this.

The Belgian boke's frozen shoulders are almost completely recovered.  His flu is gone, and the relapse he had seems to have left the building too ... as of last night.  Fingers crossed.

We're slowly making our way towards Christmas.  We have a tree, some presents, and plans are being made with regard to the food.  Since returning from that Christmas we spent at home, back in 2012, I have flashbacks to how good it was there ... in summer.  And the food.  And the way that my sister made sure I was spoiled.  It was like a journey back to my childhood ... almost.

The haircut and colour ... it's below.  I think I take the worst photographs of myself.  I'd like to claim that the light in the bathroom is bad, that I use a telefoto lens and end up jammed against the wall but really, there are no excuses.  It's more about the fact I quite like the difficult light and employ a little ineptitude when it comes to self-portraits.  I like the blur and shake of it all, the strange lighting and I remain defiant in my use of the tele-foto.  Not something I would teach but I might say, know the rules and then break them.  Don't be afraid to play a little.