The Life and Times ...

Saturday night finds me relaxing with one of my favourite Australian red wines after a crazy few days ... favourite because it was one of the first that I loved, favourite because the first time I tasted it I was with old friends up in Bannockburn back in New Zealand ... a place where you can see a million stars on a clear night and air itself is stupendous.

My best memory of the wine is of Jude and I dragging the armchairs outside at their holiday home in the country, eating one of her superb and much-missed pasta dishes and opening the red wine while we waited for the boys to come back from their wanderings.

Her husband is the fabulous New Zealand photographer ... David Wall and he was out wandering with Paul, an old friend and school friend of Dave and I.

As I write this, Paul is actually ice-breaking his way down to the South Pole, towards 6 months on the ice. I'm hoping he'll lose his conservative politics somewhere along the way ... still waiting for him to come back from the dark side ;)

But back to my crazy days ...

Brussels was a disaster. I wrote of it this morning because it was disasterously amusing but staying in theme it was lost as I posted it.

I had a Plan A and a Plan B for my yesterday ...
After the demise of Plan A, I moved to Plan B and found the right tram ... choosing the wrong direction, too busy being triumphant about remembering to click my ticket before boarding this time I guess. I have to get used to this two platforms going in different directions thing ...

After running through my challenging Ms Bean repertoire I realised, 2 stops down the track from Montgomery, that I was on the right tram going in the wrong direction. (I'll leave out the details of what happened in between because it's crazy-making.)

I disembarked that wrong 24 and looked for a new 24. I stepped over to the next set of tram lines, the only ones I could see ... another 24 came along but travelling in the same direction as the previous one.

Giving into the inevitable and unsolvable, I decided to see the city - how bad could it be?

47,000 stops later and even I, the lost one, had to smile as the Atomium came into view.

On the bright side, at least I can present my guests with an Atomium tour if Gert and his car are at work. That kind of mistake indelibly etches itself and associated tram numbers on ones memory.

So many things happened, then so many more ... I can't summon the energy to write it all up again.

And Plan B ... well I walked away when I received new directions on how to reach Shannon's place. I had been riding the trams and the metro for some time by then.
I went home.

Today I was feeling like I was being saturated by so many new experiences, adventures and exciting opportunities and being assisted by so many kind and generous people that I just couldn't find my balance to think and then a wise friend wrote and advised me. She said, Just put your damn skates on and let's go!! Never fallen before? It bruises, but heals...says the former ice skater

Thank you wise friend and everyone else - I guess it's time to go skating (and you will undoubtably hear of the falls).