PhotocatsEyes

When in Bruges...

Do as the locals do. That can varie from NOT taking a horse ride to NOT having tea on a summery outdoor cafe. We sin, and after having watched some of the horses and their handler, go down at a pancake place.

Not before we had at least talked to one or two horses. It is more then obvious that handler and horse are a well oiled team, they know and trust each other. Important, as the horse needs to be controllable in the hectic traffic in Bruges. Streets that were designed for pedestrians and horses, way too narrow for modern day traffic. The cause of the mostly single direction streets in and around Bruges.

I can imagine that being a handler is nice on summery days like today, it probably sucks on wet and worse days. The horses are in stable in winter.

I skipped breakfast on the boat, do not want to pay 5 pounds for an old croissant and a latte. Just went for the latte tout court. I am hungry after a couple of hours of strolling round in Bruges.

We find an empty spot to sit, as it is rather early on the day. C. goes for coffee, I go for tea. Bad points though. I am used to be served tea in England, it means that you get a real pot of tea, an extra pot of hot water, sugar and milk. Here in Bruges, mekka for Belgian tourism, I get a cup with a small pot of hot water, I get a teabag that I have to put in myself, and no milk. Bad bad!
On top of the self catering tea adventure, it is a feeble brand of cherry tea... Yuk... All i wanted was a good cuppa. Break fast tea, as in Lipton or Taylors of Harrogate...

Sitting in an outside cafe is one of the favorite past times in Belgium. Commenting of course on every person passing by, I hated it as a kid when my mom send me for errands and I had to pass the tea or coffee sipping sun worshippers. We see some Shires pass us, big horses, pulling the bus version of a carriage.

Our tea and coffee finished, we go in to the centre of town, can’t miss the souvenir shops. They never would get rich from me, as I am so used to take my own snaps, and I hate lace... under any form.
And that is big business in Bruges!

Several stores have the ultimate Lace souvenir, I find them kitschy and overpriced. They charge double of what it should cost. And I see lots of people actually buy them. Not for me, nope, thanks.

We follow an invisible path criss cross through small streets, ligned up with houses and their stair formed gables. It looks charming, yet, if you are 5.71 like I am (1m74) - the low ceilings are killers. Most houses in this part of Bruges are shops now, with only the floor level up and running.

I love the sign that one of the stores has outside. Love the green color with the yellow letters, and love how they put it in a frame. It’s not for sale, that could have been a fitting souvenir for this avid counter souvenir person.

We get stuck behind a group visitors following a guide. Easy enough, as some alley ways are only wide enough for two anorexia patients.

It is a German speaking guide, I take it the followers are German too, but my knowledge of German is non existant, so I do not understand what the guide is telling about the joker in the upper right drawing.

Some crazy corners in Bruges, I always wondered about buildings in the round. How do you fit a large cupboard against a rounded wall?
It must be like living in a wind mill. Customized furniture might be the solution.

We are in Belgium, in a touristic spot, it means that one cafee is settled next to the other, each with their own assortment of Flemish beers.
Keizer Karel is a famous one, I wonder if it is a triple or not. Beer knowledge is another non existent matter in my brain.

We are slowly heading back to the car, as I have more stops on my trip. I say goodbeye to C., and we promise to meet up again when I come over in October. I wished I could have stayed a bit longer, but every visit is metered. Only so much time to spend here or there. Lots of hello’s and goodbeye’s.

I notice a poster inviting tourists to the Groeninge Museum, a facsimile of what seems to be Flemish Royalty in medieval times. Beautiful poster, if you can crop it down to the essential.

Cut out the house behind it and the street. A nice feature in photoshop: it’s called the crop tool.
I leave Bruges, and go on my way to Kortrijk. I will go where the spur of the moment takes me. I might even stop off at my old house in Heule.
Sounds like a valid plan! Right... More later. We have a real summers day in England today, 25 degrees and blue skies, I should be outside instead of behind my computer...

Hit the “publish” button to my blog, and I will take a small sock outside, to enjoy a bit of sunny sock knitting!
Talk later!

Brugge die Scone

Free translated as Bruges the beautiful. And it is. Beautiful. I missed a lot of opportunities to visit, so I try to not make that mistake again, and go to Bruges before going to Kortrijk, my home town.
It’s only twenty minutes from Zeebrugge where the ferry docks, and I do have a super secret parking spot, where I always find room to drop the car off.

Bruges in summer is totally different then Bruges in Winter. The sun makes all the buildings come to life, there is an atmosphere of happy and let me see more.

Coming over from England, the little cottage houses aligned along narrow streets do seem very Belgian. The old houses, with a front door coming into the living room, one small window, that is as much as you get as width for a living. The houses usually have an attic, with a possible bedroom fixed in, and a
tiny kitchen with running water. In earlier days, women often got water at a general pump on a nearby square. Most old houses have now been adapted to modern life, with tap water and indoor loos, and electricity, but the space can not be altered as that is all there is.

The other side of the street shows me one of the canals running through the whole of Bruges, the reason it is often compared with Venice.
The canals date back to a century that the sea was much closer to town then now. If my memory serves me right, and if I could have paid attention for once in school, I would have known if Brugge was actually a harbor in medieval times.

I dropped off the car, and make my way towards the Minnewater, where I will meet up with a friend. A cutie pie passes me by, and lucky for me, the Belgians are not as paranoia as Brits and Americans, you can snap a photograph of a cute kid without getting harrassed and named names. The little one is walking around with dad watching her, she pushes her pram with dedication. A fun sight.

The minnewater has not changed over the last months, apart from some swans now having babies, and a zillion tourists on the go. It’s early in the day, barely ten o’clock, yet the tourists are up and running already.

I should meet my friend somewhere around here, the minnewater was our focal point. Have to keep my eyes open to see if I can spot her. We are supposed to meet in the tearoom just at the corner of the Minnewater, sadly enough, I forgot to sync my iphone, so I do not have a phone number on me to let her know that I am cruising the neighborhood of the Beguinage.

The grass is littered with white flowers, a fitting background for the photogenic swans. Noble beasts, guardians of the waters around the Minnewater.

Horses and drivers are working already, the Minnewater is their spot of departure for a tour. I am not totally sure if I like the fact that horses run through traffic all day, getting in all the fumes of the cars. For that matter, I think the Bruges horses are far better off then the ones in Vienna or Rome.
Rome is horror when it comes to traffic, and accidents with horses do happen.

I go a bit closer to the main entrance of the Beguinage, and take some more shots from the gate itself. I do have a better lens now, sharper, so I can get better images.

Saint Elisabeth still holding strong, with a man at her feet, a child with a grownup body. What is the deal here? I am not sure if the figure at her side has a wooden leg... Is Elisabeth the keeper of the wounded? Could be, the beguinage had a population of unmarried women, and doing good deeds was a part of their life plan.

My nun is also still there. In one of the windows of the Maximiliaan, a fancy restaurant. I can get a clear and sharp shot of her too now...
And yes, my friend pops op, have not seen her in ten years, a time too long. One of the down sides of living abroad. When visiting the Mother country, it is always a drag to get as many people in as possible, and it’s preferable to meet up with people you want to meet up with. Forget courtesy visits, time is limited, and I have since long given up visiting people that I in fact do not really want to see. My time is limited and I spend it with friends and family that I want to meet.

C. has a big smile, hiding pain. Her husband of 20 years passed away totally unforseen and sudden, and she is trying to get a grip on life around her.
Her world changed in a moment, now she has to shape and reshape her days. They had been married for 20 years, which is a long time.
We combine the beautiful and the sad... We meet up in Bruges, where history tells us of people gone. For C., it’s even a more bitter sweet visit, when she goes back home, her husband will still be gone. Life can suck big time!

We both have our camera’s, and I tell her that her camera and/or her painting skills could be of importance. Mourning people can find solace in creativity.
I tell her to be on the look out for things that make her feel better about herself. Time for her to reopen her studio, and freshen up her brushes and paints.

I know it works for me. If I am feeling a low, I know for sure that grabbing my camera and go out and shoot helps. I wonder if painting would help C.
I hope so, I truly believe that being creative helps against bruises on our souls.

The bend over trees in the Beguinage are being played with sunrays. What a marvellous day, a nice day to talk to old friends. Even if the subject is difficult.
At times I don’t know what to say to people who are mourning a loss. I do not always find the right words. Silence can be golden.

We are not the only ones in the Beguinage. More tourists, all having camera’s. Digital has brought photography to everyone.
People who did not bother with film now have a small snappie, and happily take shots of their life. A good thing...

Snap, snap... and I discover a pinguin in the far corner of the green in the Beguinage. I have a special hate-love relationship with pinguins.
They ruined my childhood, with their vicious attacks, but they also made me into the person I am today. I do realise that not all nuns are bad, for some reason, the only kind I met in my childhood were of the bad kind.

C. and me go in closer, and the sister tells me she is stocking up for the other sisters in the convent. There still is a convent in the Beguinage, with a 20-some head count on normal days. On days that they have retreats she often has to cook and stock up for 50 people.
For once I meet up with a good sister. Sigh... Relief!

After our short chat she continues unloading the car, yes, nowadays, every self loving nun has a car. And we go on a hunt for a cup of tea.

It’s peaceful on our summery day. People dim their voices in this place of worship, as it should be...

In the middle of the bustling town of Bruges, the beguinage is a place of silence and comfort. Looking for silence? Come here, sit down on the grass and take it in...

Surrounded with muffled sounds and souls of the past, it’s possible to find your inner peace here.

Don’t fail to look up here and there, as above eye level, you can find small treasures. Another little Mary statue with again a tiny figure at her side.

A quick acrobatic trick for me: I want to lay on the floor to look the ducks right in the eyes, hoping nobody will step on me.
Anything for art... well, art with a question mark. I doubt it that a bunch of Belgian Ducks are art.

And for once, I am in the picture. Something I try to avoid like the bubonic plague. I feel a lot better behind then in front of the camera.
Time for a Belgian pancake with chocolate and a tea... Woohzee, my Belgian trip has officially started!

More later! Bags needing to be unpacked...
And we have a lovely sun out today in England. Yay, summer is here! I brought it back from Belgium.

Float on a boat

Back home... I left last week, and now am back in my office, as if it only had been a dream. We look forward for something to happen, and one flick and it has happened and we look back on it. I left England with rain and more rain to come. Huge grey stacked clouds, over yellow fields. The White Horse on Sutton Bank barely visible. For us people living in North Yorkshire, we know what it is, the little white spot on the hill.

By the time I reached the harbor, the clouds had start to split, and the sun broke through. My holiday feeling was set, I was ready for the trip, another float to go on. By now, I know the layout of the ferries, start to recognize people.

Cars queueing to show papers and booking tickets. Normal procedures, there are 3 lines open now. In winter, I am usually the only one to go through check out. Once through to the quay, England Nanny state gets me as I am declared to not be allowed to take photographs. Shit, one can’t even snap some snaps anymore of the people waiting to board. Makes me peeved. They obviously forget that once you are on the ship, and on deck, you can photograph the whole harbor...

Photographing in England is becoming more of a problem by the day. All sorts of uniformed people think they have the right to stand on stripes and forbid an innocent trip photographer to snap some. Sjeesh... They’d better keep their eyes on the MP’s who are now in a huge scandal because they declared personal feel good things in the column to deduct for taxes. It’s an unfair world.

Soon enough I am on deck, scouting the views, Hull spread out in front of us, more ships docked, seagulls screaming, and the ferry to Rotterdam nicely along the outer quay. It will leave half an hour after the one to Zeebrugge, where I am on.

Huge yellow cranes are loading containers onto a freight ship. Wonder where in the world it will take its cargo. Some of those cargo ships are monsters.
They look hard to navigate, and I would not like to be on them when in a storm. They seem to be sitting ducks.

I love the sea, I love harbors, love all the things going on. Strange sounds, horns, clanging of metal. A harbor is always busy. Never a dull moment.
People look small seen from the ship. We are on the sixth floor of a building if you compare heights...

We leave the dock, and I see the Humber Bridge. Looks tiny from where I stand, but is in fact a huge tall structure. I do not want to drive over it, afraid of heights, put me on a ferry please. That wiggling thing spanning the river is not my style.

The water is calm, a brown muddy color, and the sun is slowly setting, we are coming into the golden hour. Where all things get a golden glow, the perfect moment of the day to shoot.

I’m not the only one on deck, lots of people hanging over the rails, we are all waiting on the ship to get out of the dock, and on to the Continent, as Brits often call the land over the channel. Only happy people around me, funny how taking a boat gives that instant feel good emotion. Travel, new horizons, new adventures...

Humans are tiny, a guy is working inbetween storage silo’s, if it were not for his orange suit, we would not see him.

We have left the dock, are in open sea now, and Hull is getting smaller and smaller. A nice evening, with a quiet salmon colored sky.

I look down along the side of the ship, and see nice crinkles in the water, it must be the movement of our ferry. I love summer evenings when travelling.
There is this unlimited feel of being free, able to go where I want, and I enjoy it all double because I can do it now. I don’t have to work anymore, my days are my own, no editors and advertisement managers to mess up my days. They are probably still stuck to the newspaper, while I can explore our world and meet people, on travels long and short.

I wake up in the morning, with Zeebrugge on the horizon, hazy. But a blue sky, this will be a nice day. I am ready. Belgium, your lost soul is coming back for a couple of days. Right now, I long to go in, see the people I love, feel the feel of the Belgian cities again, but it is no longer my home.
I am a true tourist now, looking to things Belgian as a stranger in a strange land. With some inside knowledge of course...

We approach Zeebrugge Harbor, busy here too, all sorts of boats going in or out. Big cranes on the sides, a harbor like any harbor, a port of call.
The Jade River ploughs her way through the water, giving a little hoot with her fog horn when passing us. It’s Ok little one, we saw you!

Zeebrugge seems to be doing well. Thousands of stacked containers, waiting to be taken all over the planet. I wonder who knows what container has what and where does it go. Must be a database of some importance. A good thing that I am not working for the harbor authorities... I would let anyone snap all the photographs they want, and I would now and then forget a couple of containers...

My iphone has a pin on Brugge, that is my first stop on this trip. Meeting with a friend. More about that one tomorrow!
It’s good to be back home, I could have stayed a couple of days more, but I reckon that my sister is happy to have her house back, uncluttered.
I do have a tendency to make my presence seen and heard, not a light traveller at all...

More tomorrow!

Officially crazy...

It’s a fact. My brain has something going on. I am slowly getting crazy, as crazy as a back door. (Belgian saying!).
I am ready for the stage coach with the white horses (ready to be taken involuntary to the mental institution, Belgian saying again)

I was in the BX yesterday on base, and while I normally never look at the clothes they have there, this time I was fatally attracted to some of the girls dresses.
Americans have that thing of dressing up girls for mass or for special days, they look like small princesses.
I had 3 boys, so I am kind of ready for a female grand baby...
I am dreaming of dresses, pink shoes, little plumes on top of the head...
It’s official: my marbles have been lost.

To my defence, they were in sale, so I got some. If it is a boy, I will have some presents to give away to another girlie newborn, or I can give them to the thrift store on base, to make a girl on base happy.

The dresses will stay home, I am not taking them to Belgium. After all, how do I explain to siblings and friends that I am buying clothes for a baby that has not even been born yet, and how do I explain that a girl would be nice...
The house is filling up with boxes and things to take. The normal procedure before the yearly Exodus to Belgium.

Telephones and mails, texts to let people know to be prepared: I am on my way...

Blog time will be depending on wifi... if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days, all will still be well. I am just trying to figure out kids, siblings, changed streets and quarters in my old home town.

Need to go and pack the car now, I am READY!!!!

A one eared rabbit

And a grey one... They live in my garden. I do have real wild life in my garden. Pretty cool I find. If I lie on the floor of my living room, and keep still, I can see hopping bunnies passing by the fence. Nothing special, well, we have two strange cases.
First, we have a one eared rabbit. Mind you all, I will never get an oscar for my movies. Don’t think the subject would do well in Los Angeles, secondly, I think I need a movie class to learn what and how to do it.
I digress.

We saw the one eared one last year too. He lived through the winter, cosy in his underground hiding place, snuggled in with some books and hot chocolate. Waiting for snow and ice to go away, so they can pop above ground again, and do some rabbit meadow stuff.

As spring is moving forward, the baby bunnies come out too. Tiny little creatures, skiddish, one move too many from humans around and off they go.
Back to the nest. Where mom is cooking dinner, and wants them to go back out:
“ go play kids, I am busy, still need to vacuum too. Why did you bring in all that grass yesterday?”

“Well, Pete from next door also took grass in, he wanted to make a playfield in his room“

”Kids, kids... if Pete is going to jump in the river, will you do so too?“

Even rabbit moms have hard times with unruly roosts. No different then the human world.
Back to the one eared one, he seems to be in perfect health otherwise, and the missing of an ear does not seem to bother him. After all, animals have no hinsight, they live in the moment. He or she does not know he is missing an ear, it’s only us humans who see him that notice and feel sorry for him.
He is happy like two clams in a bit of seawater.

And we have a grey baby too. Normal baby rabbits are brown. We do have a grey one. Beautiful grey. I wonder if he is partly coming from a pet rabbit.

Usually he is on his own, no siblings. Yet he must have been born around the meadow, as they stick pretty close to the nest untill they are rabbit teens.
A bold one he is too, loving the outside. He often lies down for a nap against the fence. Tiny beastie, precious to watch.
Who would ever have guessed that I was going to watch baby bunnies from my living room window? And I know that some people do not like them, they eat. Well hec yeah, we eat too. We eat them if I may say so. They only eat harmless grass. Living in peace with their surroundings.
The population has boomed over the last years, even with the farmer coming in in september, to shoot them. I need to tell him to leave the grey one alone.

Bun has seen something, and slowly stretches before going on to the next thing to do. One can only do so much sun basking before it gets boring.
It’s funny, when you take the time to look at the animals, and when they are regular guests in the garden, you start to see a pattern. They are getting a personality. They are still wildlife, but I now ”know“ them. They are no longer anonymus. It’s not just a baby rabbit anymore, it is my grey one.
I talk to Mr Wonderful about my grey one. He warns me when he sees my grey one along the fence. We both know what rabbit we are talking about.
We must have a good marriage indeed, if we can talk one eared and grey...

Oops, Grey one spotted somethign and scoots off. Bye little one, see you in a bit!
It will be clear now, never a boring moment! Besides watching wild life, I am also continuing my quest for the perfect linseed photograph...

Far from perfect, the quest is long but finished, but it keeps me out of mischief, keeps me on the right path.
And to stay in yellow spheres, I finished a small baby vest and one sock... Today I must finish the second sock.

I take nanadom very seriously... If I would run out of baby things to nit, I can always apply to the shredded wheat factory, where nana’s knit wheat...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRuiQrpXpG0

Talk later!

Grocery and computer shopping

In the area I live in is just like another holiday trip. I arrived here in 1999, never thinking that one day I would live on the spot. And up to this day, I still enjoy the drive through the hills, towns and cities. The latter at times problematic, the big cities around here are BIG. With lots of round-a-bouts. It’s a good life, living in a rural area, with a couple of cities within reasonable driving distance.
Mr Wonderful his computer gave up on sunday, and all my reviving techniques were of no use, the processor gave up. A new machine was in order.
On tuesday, I drove to Leeds, and took the back roads.

A weird day, blustery all over, angry clouds jump in front of the sun, one minute you are sweating carrots, the minute after that, the sun is hidden and you shiver. I stop the car a couple of times, because I find the landscape overwhelmingly beautiful. Photographs never do it justice. The skies are hard to photograph as there is so much hard contrast. The wind pulls my camera.

I enter the suburbs of Leeds, and signs of recession all over. This is not the flashy center of the city, the amount of grafitti tells me that there are lots of youth here with nothing to do.

Down the street we have roadworks going on. And this is England. It means that they simply block off the road half where the works need to be done, all traffic is guided over one lane, with red lights in place. A system that I have never seen in any other country I visited.

I finally find the office block where I need to be, after being honked at by two busses and four vans, as I am slowly driving and looking where to turn off.
They don’t know that I am unfamiliar with the area, so I am in their way. City mentality for sure.
The building inside is a bit of a surprise.

A big middle hall, with offices on the side around the middle emptyness. Weird system. They loose in fact more then half the building with empty space.
It has been build to last, and so far it is still lasting. The side entrance takes me up stairs made of concrete.

Lethal... Amazing that in the current Nanny State that Brittain has become, there are no signs to warn for the concrete stairs.

I think the building dates from around the 1850’s, they have those incredibly difficult opening systems. The perfect tools to get fingers clamped.
If it aint broken, the brits prefer to not touch it. Which is why medieval systems still are systems today.

And lucky enough I don’t have to fiddle with those latches. Three flags down and I am on my way back home.

Still not a nice day outside, with haunting clouds. White dottie sheep in all the pastures. Lambs galore. Summer is slowly approaching.
Let’s point to very slowly. I still have winter clothes on.

The Queen Anne’s lace is bending back and forth in the strong winds. They border the roads, and are a welcome sight. A weed really, but with a nice summery bloom.

Another stop at Rawden Hill, the hedges neatly clipped. Every farmer keeps up his own hedges, no wonder they work day and night in summer.
The work never ends. It’s animals, planting, harvesting, clipping hedges, reeking up silage for the next winter to come.

The small villageof Arthington around the corner. The perfect road to become seasick on. Curving and winding in gentle slopes, a beautiful scenic road.
And this is my normal road to go and pick up a computer. How lucky am I?
I take another quick break at the church, not open.

Too close to Leeds probably. With big groups of unruly youngsters who like to vandalise things.

A wonderful deanery, next to the cemetary. I am not sure if I would want to live in that deanery. I’m not really the person to check out if dead people are really dead. It always puzzles me why people do want to live with a view over a cemetary. Sure, there is a certain peace in the air, I read too many sci fi stories as a kid. Cemetaries scare me. After dark. Not during the day. In fact, I love walking around in small British cemetaries. Reading toombstones and read about people that are long gone. Who were they, what made them tick?

I bet that if you would come back in another hundred years, the houses will still be here, in silence, along the busy road. Looking just as they looked today.
When I am on my way to Poole, to then end up in Hampstwaithe, straight on the A61 back to Ripon.

A change of plans, I decide to go through Otley and go to base for some more grocery shopping.
We do need food for dinner, crock pot time, drop it all in and it will cook while I play with Mr wonderful his new computer.

If we would want to, we can now chat via our computers when I am in the living room and he is in the office. Funny...

Our happy gadgetty relationship... it takes a computer geek to love another computer geek. Our office is shrinking. Before we move to the States, I will end up with a skip on the driveway, to toss what we did not toss over the last ten years.

Woohzee, one new computer in the house, and everybody is happy... Queen Anne’s lace, hills, sheep, Leeds and Otley, a good day.
It’s all good!

Slowly summer...

Slowly we go to summer. The calendar tells us. The weather is telling us that it’s cold, sniping wind, with rain and more rain.
Yesterday evening, we had a thunder storm and it must have struck really close as we fell without electricity. Computers down too, and one of my external hard disks seemed dead. Of course the one with my photographs on. My latest ones I should say. Which made me think that one copy of photo’s is not enough, but I can’t make it to tell Mr Wonderful that I need another external, with another terra of room, so I can back up my 2009 photographs another time.
The never ending story for room on filling disks...
I finally got it back to work, after my stomach came back to normal, as the sound the of the thunder made me jump a meter high. I thought it was something coming down on top of the house. All is well that ended well though, and I still have my pics to blog about...

I still have playing calves...

I still have calves doing tricks with tongues...

And the drive with the linseed as back drop. Phew...

I went to Markenfield on wednesday, the only day this week that the weather was a bit better, we had patches of sun, I wanted to go and visit the orchard on Markenfield.

Hugh the farmer was working on vehicles, that man is surely multi tasking. He builds walls, plants crops, looks after the cows, welds broken machinery...
I tell him that for once he has to stand still for a second, so I can snap him. Like all Yorkie farmers, he does not really like his picture taken. Shy...
Afraid for their souls...

After my short chat with Hugh, I go to the back of Markenfield Hall, to the orchard that I normally can’t reach. It is only open for visits when the Hall is open. It’s that time of year, fourteen days in May and fourteen days in June the Hall opens the doors, and we can roam through rooms and orchard.

Astonishing that there is so much bloom, it feels like we only had 3 warm days this year so far. I guess flowers listen to their build in calendar.
It’s the 15th of May, time to bloom. Sesame open!

I love orchard bloom. They are a promise. We can be more or less sure that if there is bloom, there will be fruit. Good things to come.
It’s a taster for the approaching summer.

Apple trees have the most beautiful off white pink blooms. It’s a bit of a hard day to shoot blossoms, as the wind is not giving up.
The trees are trying to hold on to their blossoms, not an easy task over the last days in Yorkshire. It seems that the wind is angry at us.
It comes down from the North, on to the West, and rips through clothes layers and whatever protective gear you might wear.

I meet up with a visiting couple, their first time on Markenfield, and they are talking to Lottie. Who as we all know by now loves the attention.
The gentleman grew up with horses, and he is able to tell me that a male duck is a drake. One to remember. A family of ducks consists of a drake, a duck and ducklings. I know the female and kiddie words, had never heard of drake before. Now I know. I bet that if you grow up on a farm or a horse stable you know all the names people give to animals. In local slang.
I wish them a good day after our short chat, and go on to the Hall. It’s so cold that a fire is burning in the kitchen part.

I like it... Fires have special charms. Sadly enough I do not have pounds in my pocket, and they don’t accept cards, so can not go further then the kitchen.
I decide to come back later on the week. Maybe on a warmer day, to reshoot the orchard.

A closer look at the key hole. An old fashioned one, with a big key. Not those tiny flimsy metal sheets they now call keys, in medieval times, keyholes were big enough to look through. I can’t help it, whenever I see a keyhole like this, I want to try it out and see if it gives me some information of what is behind the door. More promises...

They sure had fine craftsmen in earlier centuries in England. I love the feel of the orange rust on the wooden surface. It asks to be touched. And if you do so, you almost feel the tremble of historic acts that this old building has seen and lived.
Again I think if buildings or doors could talk. It is so taken for granted in England to have the joys of old buildings still up and strong standing, so modern day people can make time jumps for a couple of hours.

Lady Deirdre’s lab is taking a slow stroll. Not a young animal, very human friendly. She knows the court yard of course, it’s her home, nothing that has not been sniffed. She is on her way to explore the mole who is wrecking the grass.

I think it is brave of that mole to have a house under the courtyard of Markenfield hall, knowing there are two dogs around, always ready to snap a mole.
The gardener must be very unpleased with the sight. Brits have the habit to coomb their lawn, and mole heaps are a big no no. This mole will soon be in front of a dead squad. Farmers don’t like them either. The cows sometimes get stuck or break legs in the pipes.

I am off home bound. Need to cook for Mr Wonderful, and the weather is bad anyway. Blue skies but fierce and nasty shivvers because the wind is so cold.
I can always come back... What a nice thing to think. I only live five minutes away from this remnant out of old England’s history. It makes me happy to know that! I know that I will miss Markenfield terribly if we ever move to the States. My personal happy hour place...

Because I am the mom...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX6flpUweIQ

Hilarious. A friend send it to me on mothersday last sunday. It’s funny, we all want to be better moms then we had, yet we mostly end up in just a slight altered version, hanging on to the sayings that drove us mad when we were kids.

I am a firm believer of “Because I say so, I am the mom”. I think nowadays, most kids grow up with way too much deciding power.
A two year old can decide what she wants to wear today... Paleese, pick something out of the closet and never ask the question what she wants to wear.
I’m the mom, and you wear what I give you to wear.

I am a firm believer in deciding what your kid can watch on tele, of what to eat, and be at home after dark. Here in UK, at ten o’clock at night, you see 12 year olds roam around on the market place. Can’t help but thinking where are the parents? Why are those kids not in bed? What about homework and being ready for school in the morning at seven AM?

Can’t help but thinking about parenting as I read Heather Spohr write about Maddie. Madeline was born at 26 weeks, way premature, and died on the 7th of April 2009 because her tiny little body could not cope any longer. Both her mother and father have blogs, and it is gutwrenching to read, to see Maddie, to almost feel the pain they feel as the little one is no longer there.

Here is a link to Heather’s blog.

I don’t know why I watched 3500 pics of Maddie on Flickr... And 1000 movies. There is something special about her, she draws me in. I want to see more of Maddie.

I guess it’s all adding up. Knowing that I will have a grand child in a couple of months, having raised my 3 boys alone, mothers becoming grandmothers and every generation of moms having almost the same lines to try to guide the kids.

I often said that I needed a tape with certain sayings, like: put your shoes away, get your feet of the table, close your mouth when chewing, close the door.

How much energy do we spend on repeating the same things over and over. And it keeps going. My oldest son is now 33, and when he is burping at the dinner table, I still say something. I still tell them to take elbows of the table, sit still, stop wiggling, don’t crack your fingers...

At least I was lucky, I had my sons growing up, Maddies parents will never see her grow up. She will always be a tiny big eyed smiling girlie, put into the world way too early, and taken away too early. I hate it when babies die. With a passion. That guy up there is supposed to love us unconditionally, but what a way of showing it. Taking babies away who barely had a chance to grow and bloom.
Although, Madeline sure bloomed in the short time she was alive and kicking... Very much alive and kicking!

I take it as a fact now that I did not tell my boys that I loved them in as many words, yet I told them a thousand times to not throw the wet towels on the floor next to the bath... An off balance... I have some more thinking to do...

And along the comments on Heather’s blog, there is one that bugs me to death... I wonder if you can ask for votes for your baby to be the most beautiful baby of 2009 on a website from a mom who just lost her baby... It feels wrong to me... I will give this lady the benefit of the doubt that she means well, and it is a good thing to raise awareness for the March of Dimes, I just think she does not have to do it on Maddie’s mom’s blog...

Tell me if I am wrong...

Memories are made of...

Time passing by. The first time I came to North Yorkshire was in 1999, or was it 98? Darn it, my mind is sabotaging me. It was before I met Mr Wonderful on one of the next holidays, and after I miraculously recovered from being on the edge of dying. Looking back at that photograph now, which was a couple of months after I left hospital, more dead then alive really, it’s amazing that I now need size over twenty browsing for british clothes.

The girls were still small, the tiny one now had her prom, they both have grown up to be beauties. Smart and beautiful, they have it all, looks and brains.
What more can one want? That they would come back to England I suppose, but they have outgrown the UK.

It never stops to amaze me that time can have such a crazy thing going on. When unhappy, a person drags himself from morning to evening.
And when happy, time just zips by. It really should be the other way around. It will soon be ten years that I met Mr Wonderful, and those ten years are in no way to relate to the previous 45 years without him.

In 1999, the Bermudez family was my safe haven, I had just enough money to book the boat, and could stay at their house, the only way for me to travel.
And it’s being sick that made me see that a girl needs a break now and then, and a bit of travel is a good way to go for it.

We can now officially state that the Bermudezzes set us up, with all the good results. Both Mr Wonderful and myself have by now aged almost ten years, and gained some body mass, but hey, happiness is NOT in bodymass. So those pics are all sweet to me. Reminding me of good and exiting days, next to the fact that my dad got sick. I got through the pain of losing my dad thanks to Mr Wonderful and friends like the Bermudez family. Don’t know what I would have done without them.

It is rather funny. At the moment that I had regained health and decided to not embark on another broken heart relationship in any form, Mr Wonderful comes in, and with a silent force made me see that it was time for a good guy. A nerd. There are nerds and dancers. The dancers are all about exitement and burning love patches, promises that are not kept, dancing through time. I think we need a couple of dancers before we are ready to go for the Nerd.
You definitely want to be married to the nerd kind of man. In a good way nerd... They are reliable, don’t lie, take care of people they love, dancers only care for shiny shoes and ducking commitment...

It is even more funny that Mr Wonderful was the kind of guy that I in my destructive years would have seen as not fitting my list of things a man needs.
Being sick brought all those crazy wrong thoughts in a good perspective, so I could see the value of the nerds. And let me repeat it: you want a nerd to be married to, as they are the good ones that will love you for ever, for better and for worse.

I often feel guilty because that same Mr Wonderful does a lot more for me then I do for him. Or so it seems often. I always have enough air in my car tires now, the oil is up to date, the presents that are given are always spot on, he vacuums because he knows vacuuming upsets me. And when I tell him that it is OK to be upset about vacuuming, that I still can do it, even if I hate it with a passion, he says that it makes him happy. There is a lot that he can cope with, but he can’t cope with me being upset. It upsets him if I am in that state of mind. So I try to mask it. To no avail. He reads me like an open book.

All nice memories. Me packing up to leave the country. Countless trips to the tip, to get rid of stuff gathered over years.
Cleansing before to begin a new life. Leaving old things and bad luggage behind. Too bad that I can’t take family with me to the new country.
The only sad thing about living abroad.

And I still have days that I miss my house in Heule. It had proven to be a good nest, with good and bad things happening, yet it was a safe place to be.

And I hated to leave my cats behind. In good new families, as Brittains Pet Scheme turned out to be one big pain in the butt.
It costed a lot of money to get them ready for the cross over, but they refused us in Calais because the paper that got sent to us by the Belgian agricultural ministery did not have the right header. (I know, I nearly fainted over this, as how is a normal citizen to know what header is needed for official papers, they give you things and you accept it as you don’t know any better). So my cats had to be rehomed after we left them in Calais for a week, to come back to Belgium to find a good home for the animals. Extremely traumatic. For humans and animals. Neeko does not have a computer anymore to lie on, but is happy in his new family. So are Ceasar, Soevan, Max and Billy. The whole cat family got in out placement. The computer died shortly after moving to England because of all the cat hair inside. Duh...

And wow, what a trip in Memory lane... All the pics must have been taken by Mollie or Peter, as I am actually IN them.
Life is good! It was good in Belgium, but it got better in England.

Off to Leeds now, to pick up a new computer for hubby. As his beast died on sunday. I tried to revive it to no avail, processor gave up.
I do have a desktop and laptop, but over the long haul, both hubby and myself are pretty computer addicted, so we need our own stuff.
No computer sharing in this house.. grin. Well, we do share a network, but that is as far as the sharing goes.

Allrightie, Leeds, here I come... And lets hope I don’t get lost this time!

Monkey blues...

Yes, I do have the monkey blues... Finished monkey nr two, and he looks better then monkey one. Guess the first one was the learning one...
Both will go to good homes. Can’t tell more, but yes, both are spoken for. I do take orders... grin

Apart from knitting like crazy, I have been zooming around North Yorkshire a lot, taking pics, and trying to improve on photography.
A never ending quest. April has gone, May came in, it is time for the linseed fields. Yellow. The bio calendar stays pretty much the same in North Yorkshire. March has the first calves and lambs, end of march has the winter barley, and end of april beginning May we are ready for the yellow stuff.

I love it, year after year I do my rounds, trying to find the nicest yellow patches, with a bit of a view beyond, so yes, every year I do snap linseed.
Or as some farmers call it Rape. Oil for animals and possibly bio fuel. Don’t know where that discussion will take us. We do hear the comments already that farmers switch to linseed instead of potatoes, as the government pays them, I am afraid though for a repitition of what happened in the thirties, when Stalin decided that farmers were to work in industrial plants instead of on their land. Millions starved a starvation death. It caused a big divide between Stalin and his wife, and she finally committed suicide because she could not live with his ideas anymore.

All it takes to cause such disasters as the famine in Oekraine is one stupid thinking head with a bit of power. Hmmm. How in godsname do I end up at Stalin’s famine starting off with linseed... I am always so optimistic...
Let it be clear, I think the yellow fields are off the most vivid and lively sights in the agricultural year in Brittain. Only to be topped by poppie fields in high summer, we are still far off. We have to be happy with yellow for now.

And while I am at Markenfield for the linseed, I can’t leave without checking out on my cows. They are in the first meadow, the one with trees and shadow. Not that they need shadow, as the sun is not really out. She keep showing a bit to then retreat back behind clouds. One minute we have some sun, the next minute I open my umbrella to shelter. Although the first task of the umbrella is to have a pointy thing should the cows decide to come too close.

The calves are growing fast, they do venture a bit further away from mom now, it takes a human to come closer to make them run, straight back to mom.

And mom has her eyes on me. That much is sure... It’s Robbie. Not as bad as Polly, but I’d rather take no risks in provoking her.
1500 Kg is a lot of kilo’s to run after me...

Penny seems to say to me ; don’t shoot me while I am chewing, it does not look nice. I love them, they have such different personalities.
And yes, dynamics here too.
We think animals are dumb, we are wrong. For now they have arranged daycare with one or two moms, most of the calves are in a close group around the day care moms.

And if daycare mom stands up, all the calves will stand up and follow her wherever she goes. It is all very organised, and runs smoothly.
I dare think that they do recognize me, but hey, not worth asking that question. I stay on a safe distance, and am ready to run should they charge.
They did last year, and I screamed my lungs out. That scared them away. Since that day, I do approach them with a bit more care, and always in the company of a stick like thing, does not matter if it is an umbrella or a mono-pod.

Two groups of calves today, the bigger group next to the fence, a smaller group with four calves closer to the road.

They finally move towards the back of the meadow, as it has started to rain heavily. Darn it, I wanted to be under that tree when the heaven gates opened. As I had foreseen it. The cow beat me to it.

I walk back to my car, as snapping is of no more use for now, and Miss Polly is blocking the road. I slowly drive up to her, and she moves away even slower. How neat of her to let me pass.
I see that Markenfield Hall is open till the end of next week for visitors. I want a blue sky day so I can go snap the orchard.
It’s time to go home and fix some dinner for Mr Wonderful.

Polly says goodbye to me too, till next time! Mooh...