The People's Wine, Pinot Noir, New Zealand

I was talking to Julie tonight... she's back home in New Zealand these days, after months spent  wandering the world.  I was reminiscing about a red wine I had enjoyed while I was home.

I remembered there was a truck on the wine label, laughing over the fact that I don't think I ever paid full price for a bottle of The People's Wine - that pinot noir.  I found them on special where ever we wandered.  And, of course, I took that to be a divine sign to drink more because they were retailing for $22nz normally.

There is a photograph, of course ...

Saturday Morning

I don't know how we keep meeting these people that become important to us. Will it ever stop? Are we looking for them or were they always there under a current and we just stepped in the creek at the right time.

Amy Sharp, extract from, We will meet in a flower shop or on a corner in the rain and then later I'll tell you everything.

I'm awake before anyone else, on this Saturday morning in Belgium, and I have my laptop here with me downstairs.  It's resting on a tower of toilet paper, bought on special deal yesterday. I must take them upstairs but for now ... a useful laptop table.

The Tasmanian arrived last night.  Jobe is a lovely bloke who visits periodically, when he's not partying his way through Europe.  I've told him, more than a few times, he must put together some kind of book.  He's much-loved where ever he goes and the photographs of him hanging out with happy strangers in Poland and London and every place else, make me smile.

It's too cold and the pollution hangs heavy outside otherwise I would be off and wandering this morning. Like I did early one morning, back at Cooks Beach, in New Zealand.

Manuka Flower, New Zealand

When I lived in New Zealand I used to love getting up with the sun sometimes, wandering a while with my dog and my camera.  Last year, those days spent at Cooks Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, were painfully exquisite.

It was something else to return with eyes hungry for home.  I saw ordinary everyday plants like the flax bush or the manuka flower in an entirely different way.  It was as if I was celebrating the familiar and elevating it to the point of extraordinary by virtue of not having experienced 'everyday and familiar' for 8 years or more.

I needed longer, more time to soak up the beauty I saw there. 

A Winter Bouquet by Dieter

We were buying a Christmas tree on that particular day but guided by some wicked and mysterious impulse, I raced off inside while Gert was watching the tree being loaded onto that trolley, and asked Dieter if I might buy one of his beautiful bouquets.  Just flowers this time, I told him.

And this is what he did.  

Christmas ...

Last year was the first 'real' Christmas I had had in 9 years.

I left New Zealand mid-2003 and experienced my very first northern hemisphere non-Christmas in Istanbul that year.  Living in a predominately Muslim country meant that life didn't stop for Christmas. The weather was rubbish.  It was winter.

That year I was given the day off to celebrate Christmas because I was considered a 'christian'.   And my Turkish boss took me home to her family that evening, generously celebrating Christmas for me and with me.  The next year I was teaching English conversation class at the university on the day, then raced off to English friends to experience my first-ever English Christmas (in Turkey).

Then came Belgium and the next few years were spent attempting to get used to the whole Christmas-in-winter thing.  But the traditions here have simply moved Christmas so far from my New Zealand origins that I don't experience Christmas as Christmas.  It's just this strange holiday that people mess about with over December, beginning on the 6th - that day when Sinterklas comes, leaving gifts for the children who then, more often than not, have to head off to school after present-opening.

This time last year though, I was home in New Zealand and it was magnificent.  With a little bit of terrible thrown in too.  I was trying to do that final organising of a lifetime's worth of possessions.  I needed them to fit into just a few boxes so I could store them before shipping them over to Belgium.  I think I arrived at 4 medium-sized plastic containers ... giving the rest of my stuff away or throwing it into the rubbish.

Christmas Day, 2012, in New Zealand was so familiar and delicious however throwing out most of my previous life and trying to pack two 21kg suitcases to fly in the morning ... it was difficult despite being the best Christmas day I had had in a long time.

This year, I seem to have misplaced Christmas.  I haven't bought any presents (except for that gift organised for Miss 9, shared between 4 of us.  A gift she will love because it is simply marvelous).  Nor have I sent any cards. I haven't even managed to organise Christmas Day but perhaps that's because it's not really Christmas Day to me anymore.  There is none of the excitement of summer, of cherries and strawberries, of finding a box of new potatoes ... it's just so different.

It will come together on the day, we have children around and I'll make sure it's marvelous for them but I am suspecting that Christmas just is that thing I don't get excited about anymore.

Let's see how it goes.  Meanwhile ... my people, last Christmas in the land Downunder.