Just A Name ...

Yesterday became chaotic suddenly. 

Off the scale really...

I took a phone call from my daughter.  She was collapsing on the side of the road with chest pains but she wasn't sure of the street name.  She couldn't even stand up to put the bike away safely.  And friendly city that Antwerp is ... no one would help her.  Not even with the name of the street.

No one.

I went back there today, to pick up the bike the ambulance people had locked for her, and it's a busy street.  This European city breaks my friendly little New Zealand heart sometimes.  What made those people so cold and uncaring?

Yesterday I called Gert, not knowing what else to do, and he called her.  He managed to recognise her location and called an ambulance.  All of this, bouncing between people and phones, with the added stress of knowing Miss 8's after-school centre was closing and I had to find a way across and through the city's rush-hour gridlock.

As the ambulance people were covering her with equipment to monitor her heart, I was making an emergency call to a really kind Belgian I know.  Sarah saved the day, as did her mum who was able to jump in the car and pick up Miss 8 just as her teacher was calling me, wondering where on earth we all were.

Quite shaken, I set off on a tram to begin putting my family back together.  Jess was in a city hospital, precise location unknown but able to reply to sms's, Miss 8 was safe with good people. I picked Miss 8 up immediately because it was something I could do.

Later that evening and Gert finished his meeting.  He arrived at the hospital, after calling the emergency phone number again to find out exactly where she had been taken, just as the hospital were releasing her.

It wasn't her heart, it was a stomach blockage, she was told.  I went searching.  They're incredibly painful, a collapse on the street is quite understandable as it can feel like your heart. Today I was able to be amused, as I read that coca cola is the 'drug' of choice ... achieving a 91.3 success rate in terms of a cure. 

And so today has been an all over the city day.  School drop-offs and pick-ups, and a return midday for a school play.  The bike rescue, the long icy bike ride home. 

I'm sitting here, wrapped in a beautiful Nepalese shawl Miss 8 convinced me I needed - after 4 days of putting it back.  And I have a glass of red wine, and some good music playing.  I'm exhausted.

Actually, further to the story of the people on that Antwerp street ... someone did come and help Jess eventually.  A lovely Morrocan guy.  And when I think about who I see giving up their seats on the trams or helping young mums lift pushchairs on and off trams, I'm not surprised.

To the others who passed by that young woman on the footpath in a state of collapse.  She only needed a street name, not your blood nor your time.  Just a name ...

So yeah ... it's snowing again.

I took the photograph on 13 March but looking out from my window today, the scene is exactly the same. 

March 20, 2013 and it's snowing.  As I set out across the city on the school run at 7.20am it was all about the umbrella, the correct amount of layers to protect us from the wet cold rain.  On the return, lost in a book on the tram, I looked up and discovered that 'outside' had turned into yet another horrid snowy winter's day.

To try and break the misery that is Antwerp this winter, Gert and I disappeared over to France, to the summer playground of the Parisians ... on a cheap Sunday night deal last weekend.  It rained but I was on a roadtrip and has always delighted me.

Although ... he had fallen on ice last week and sprained his wrist.  Slowly slowly he is healing.  The roads here are lethal in snow and ice, especially the shiny new bricks they've laid on the round-abouts.  He fell crossing the one near home.  We were talking on the phone at the time, and I was feeling particularly miserable after making a freezing cold, roadwork-infested, cross-city trek.

There's nothing quite like hearing the Belgian bloke crash to the ground and lie groaning while seperated by  more than a few kilometres.  I arrived home just in time to head off to A&E with him.  Oh yes, that was a long day.

I suspect I shall be giddy with delight when the temperature goes up and the snow finally stops because it really is Spring.  And rumour has it that these 2 hour city treks will be over as of the Easter holidays.  I really need them to be.  Antwerp, and its current mania for both roadworks and house improvements that seriously impede any progress along the pathways and tramways I take, is a bit like having my own seriously dark and snow-filled cloud over my head at all times.

And so, on that happy note .... tot straks.

Tram-Napping and Other Things ...

As I write this, the predicted snow is beginning to fall ... sigh.  We were all so hopeful when the temperature cranked up to 16-18 celsius last week.  So hopeful that Spring had arrived.  The current prediction is for up to 10cms of snow overnight.  I hope that they are so wrong and that it's less.

Meanwhile I've been holed up at my desk for weeks on end, or so it seems.  I have had all the photographs from Flanders Fields to process and get back into the world as quickly as possible for any publications that might have wanted them.  I had the wedding shoot too.  They are in-process and almost done.

One of the more difficult things about being the photographer is that your work can go on long after the event, long after those who did their work on the day ... in the moment, are finished.  It's a strange and lonely job sometimes, with 80-90% of the work happening after the event, in some lonely room somewhere.

However the adventures are grand.  And I'm pleased with the results.  There should be more than 200 wedding photographs by the time I'm finished.  Photographs that tell the story of a beautiful wedding here in Belgium.

Flanders Fields ... well, that's always about the people I find there.  Old friends, new acquaintances, and some delightful adventures.

I'm hungry to travel again but I am making myself sit still until I am organised here.  I have spent these grey freezing cold winter weeks organising my working life, exploring new directions, especially writing again. 

Old friends have appeared in my inbox and there was a whole lot of delight over the idea that Murray might pop over to visit.  Murray from those 4 years back when I lived on the airforce base in New Zealand.

One of my oldest friends arrives later in June and that will be grand.  It's been a long time since I've seen him.  And there's a wedding to photograph in France in August ... the photography workshop in Italy too.  The last being the pièce de résistance perhaps.

My life seems like a big old complicated tapestry.  I've been been woken at 5.15am these last few weeks, as my daughter wakes to go out to work.  Then I'm up and out the door, catching trams to get little Miss 8 to school on the other side of the city Tuesday till Friday.  It's a 2-hour round trip and definitely hasn't helped with the winter blues. 

Rinse and repeat, as I'm on pick-up duty Monday to Wednesday.  I'm dragging myself around by Wednesday, dreaming of open-roads and long journeys as I try not to fall asleep on the tram home.

I have been reading when not tram-napping.  Superb books ... two fictions based around actual lives: The Truth About Lou by Angela von der Lippe and Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh.

Lou Salome seems to be a fascinating creature who first came to my attention in Irvin D. Yalom's book When Nietzsche Wept.  I am now pursuing Lou via various means.  The second book is about Robert Capa's affair with Bergman.  I have a few books on him so this dip into a kind of fact-based fiction is delicious.

And I picked up the second book by BBC journalist, Frank Gardener.  The first, Blood and Sand, was a fascinating read. 

Still to come is my big book review of True Vines, written by the multi-talented Diana Strinati Baur.  A delicious novel that came with me across the world when I flew home to New Zealand.  The same Diana I'm putting the Your Beautiful Truth Retreat with in August in Italy.

I love books ... rereading the best again and again over the years.  I've had Isabel Allende's My Invented Country tucked away in my handbag for emergencies.  It's small and packed with wise words.

And that's me lately.  Photography, reading, tram-riding, houseworking, winter me.

The image: a tray of champagne that floated past me at the recent wedding.  Random but beautiful is my idea of it.

Photography & Story-Telling Workshop, Italy

 'When we (Di and Diana) initially sat down to talk about what kind of experience we wanted to create, we were clear and in agreement on almost everything. First we wanted this to be a very small and private women’s event. It was important to us that it take place in beauty and peace. We thought it should be in a place we had to ourselves, so that we could just be ourselves. We wanted good food, wine, scenery, comfort, the potential for creativity, and relaxation.
But more than anything, we wanted to create a space that would encourage woman to tell their stories – through photos, art and words – and to use our combined experience as guides, mentors and artists to provide a mirror to each woman’s intrinsic beauty.'

You can read more about the retreat Diana Baur and I have put together over on our new website ... Your Beautiful Retreats.com

We are so deeply excited by the week we have planned.  We are offering 4 places, and two are already gone.  If you would like to join us in Italy, let me know.

You can wander through the location of our retreat over on Diana's B&B website ... Baur B&B and read the reviews Diana and her husband have received here.