Milestones ...

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In this new life ... this English life, everyday seems to offer up the possibility of achieving some new milestone.

Today it was walking into the village to find the small bus that runs through the Surrey countryside, village to village.  It was about finding it and getting to my Sainsburys Superstore of choice, and back.  You're only halfway when you reach the top of that mountain and, as usual, I have no idea of my location here in this new world.

It ended up being such a lovely story though.  I was jog/trotting towards the stop, unusually late, when I saw the bus driving towards me.  I body-languaged, sadness and despair ... I may have waved and, much to my surprise, it stopped. 

I was so grateful!!  There was a lovely gentleman driving and I felt like I had stepped into a most marvelous English story as I boarded.  He was dropping off two friendly older woman, who welcomed me to the village as they left the bus at the next stop.

And I traveled with that lovely man, as he picked up other customers, talking ... of course.  Everyone chats on these buses (and so I've found a happy place).  And honestly, the English just keep impressing me with how lovely they are.

I shopped, and felt so successful as I sourced the ingredients for my Slow Cooker Coq au Vin.  I had bought the slow cooker, and a toastie pie maker/ meat griller too, as I settled into my new place.  But then I found a most marvelous little oven, with hotplates on top, for 50 pounds and so I have all I need to cook.  All and more:-)

I have a toaster.  I don't have a Nepresso machine yet but I will have one day. 

Soon I shall be back in that place where breakfast is my holy moment of the day.

I cooked Persian Chicken a few days ago.  I was so rapt to create something familiar and known.  I cooked rice too.  The little oven/stove top (the size of a microwave) does all that I need but still, I found the slow cooker in the January sales over here ... I will use it too.  Tomorrow.

I am settling in.  Losing weight.  Walking a lot. 

I found a desk.  It's so central to my life. I don't know if I realised how central until I tried to work.  But that's a story for another day.  The new desk, a huge pine table really, should be here at the weekend, all going well.  I love the secondhand possibilities out here.

The photograph ... there were some dead roses and I asked if I might borrow them before they were thrown out.  I quite like the result, then couldn't resist adding a border because ... you know.  And the text too.

It's stormy here tonight.  There are trees and woods around me.  I walk to the village on a road that passes through the woods.  There will be photographs.  And I will get better at telling the stories from here.  There have been so many. 

There was a Sunday dash to London ... mostly because I'm never sure of how long it takes to walk to the train station or the village and so dash I do.   I think I have it now.  And seeing Lenn again.  I did enjoy staying at his house these last few weeks.  He's family now.  I haven't told him. 

For the first time in a long time I have almost all of my UK stuff in one location.  I've been all over the place since leaving Belgium at the end of August. Portsmouth, Farnham, London ...  Kim and Andy have been magnificent friends.  I don't imagine I can ever capture all that they have done for me.  It's been grand.  And Lenn.  And others too.

I was reunited with my digital radio at the weekend.  I do love it.  I wander between Planet Rock, and Magic - where lots of nostalgia is played.

I sleep in a beautifully comfortable king-sized bed.  There's a pile of books on the empty side.  I'm reading a biography about Martha Gellhorn, that magnificent journalist, who said Robert Capa was her true brother.  And D. H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', at the same time.  It works.   And really enjoying the second after so many years of reading of him in relation to Katherine Mansfield, who was a friend of his. 

And we're into the second book of the Inkheart series, MIss 11 and I, reading it via skype.  We both love it, so much while we miss living together.  But anyway ...

So that's me.  More to follow as my camera comes out to play in this new world I'm discovering slowly.

Australians ... you've got to love them

Watch as Lee Lin Chin and Lambassador Sam Kekovich embark on 'Operation Boomerang' - their mission to save Australians abroad from going without the essential lamb barbecue on Australia Day. Operation Boomerang is the brainchild of commander Lee Lin Chin.

Seeing With New Eyes ...

A different camera, an altered frame of mind, a short time-frame ... perhaps all of these things combine and allow me to see the city with new eyes. 

There is more curiousity in my gaze.  And more work involved in capturing the shots that I want. 

Then there's the naked, almost black, winter limbs on the trees and they have been challenging me too.  I have wanted to capture the familiar things I see beyond them.  They partially obscure, offering up a new way of seeing this castle, that clock ... and that is intriguing me too.

Street Scenes, Antwerpen.

I didn't sherpa my camera gear with me to Belgium this time.  There were Christmas gifts to bring and small things of mine I want to take back to England.  And I was trying to be realistic about my ability to carry everything back through London's Underground, most particularly when I hit all those stairs over at Green Park.

All that to write that I'm using an old DSLR while wandering here.  A small Canon EOS 400D.  It was packed in all my 'stuff' stored here, waiting for me.  And it's been fun.  I've had to work a bit harder to capture some scenes but the camera itself is so very much lighter than my Canon 5D MkII.  I simply slip it into my handbag and I'm off.

I spotted the following scene from the tram you see in the middle, above.  I hopped off and walked back to the side street, where the light was shining, just so ...

Saying Goodbye to Belgium.

I have spent this last week quietly wandering the city and saying goodbye to it. 

I have just another few days to tidy up loose ends and then I am gone.  

The good news, for me, is that in examining the 10 years I spent living here, I realised that I did find ways to be happy here, in this city I didn't really expect to stay in so long.  The Belgian bloke and I had talked of the possibility of New Zealand and Istanbul ... way back when we began but he needed to stay for his children, his career.

Over these years I have explored most of the country and was fortunate in meeting so many Belgians who became friends.  I'll miss them. 

There were the photography exhibitions, some of the best times of my life.  And the NGO job over in Brussels, that one where I did their communications and photography.  That one I put to one side for the 3 months as sole exhibition photographer in Berlin.  There were the corporate and private shoots.  And the portrait photography, individual and family, always.

The photography workshops over in Genova, Italy ... a million hours of weaving a network of good people and experiences that finally came together in the very best of ways back in the summer of 2015.  Just as my Belgian world was grinding to a nasty halt.

But living in Antwerp, I attended so many remarkable events, and was interviewed for television three times - interviews that varied in length but they were always curious about why this Kiwi was living in Belgium. 

I read an Antwerpen poet's poem in public and was praised by his widow for my reading.  I was also recorded reading an ee cummings poem for another city project.  I volunteered as a photographer at the integration centre, and had my immigrant story added to others stored in the new Red Star Line Museum.  I worked as a photographer in so many places, so many times out on Flanders Fields where the people of the Westhoek warmed my soul.  I met prime ministers, actors, governor generals and all kinds of other folk too.  Lots of Belgian politicians.  I voted in two elections, at very least.  Maybe more.  Belgian elections have this way of blurring into nothing for me.

There have been years of hard work, often unpaid but they were years rich in experiences and people.

Then I spent summers exploring Europe with the Belgian bloke, pockets of time taken out from our mad busy worlds.  I took him home to my New Zealand world and we wandered all over my country too.  Then there was Genova, Istanbul and Berlin.  Stavanger, thanks to Ren.  We explored Holland, Germany, France and Luxembourg too.  There was Salamanca, the opera singer's wedding in Madrid, and the Australian/English wedding we captured out in the English countryside; the weddings we did in France and Berlin.  Extraordinary weddings, extraordinary people.  There was Ireland and Rob ... 

So many of these trips were about visiting with friends I had made through the years. 

I never did learn the language.  I tried, my attempts were usually met with a disbelieving 'Wablief?'or ... 'We'll talk English'.  Or they'd simply reply to me in very good English.   That said, right about now, I find myself thankful I didn't learn Nederlands.  It would have seemed like such a horrific waste of my time as I leave, and I never had bucketloads of time to waste ... until the end.  Up until then, most of my time was used twisting and turning and trying to find ways to earn a regular income with that camera of mine. 

So all that is left for me here, is accepting that the big old story set in this Belgian world is ending for me.

Now to begin again, again.

He met Himself ...

I recently spent a couple of hours photographing the family of this divine little man.

We played in the room with the most light and I took a variety of images, capturing light in ways that surprised even me.  Later we wandered outside in a cool London morning and voila, the light was so absolutely perfect.

But here, he discovers his reflection.