Lately ...

More than a few people have talked of my book ... the one that I'm writing soon, so they tell me.

I've started books in the past; a half-finished manuscript of interviews with New Zealand climbers that made it through two publishing meetings, only to be rejected based on the predicted lack of a huge audience.

A few years later and mountain stuff began to enter the public sphere, I was simply too early and by then I had signed up as a 'mature' student at university, my mother had died, my marriage was ending ... I had stuff going on.

I have at least 11,000 words in a fictional piece, something I rework as my life and experience of life changes. I'm not sure what that's about but it's there and I play with it.

These days, if I wrote, I think it would be more about my strange and unpredictable life. I have been a daughter, a wife, a mother and grandmother, I've worked for photographers, lawyers, a jeweler and in the office of a New Zealand government corporation. I've been a really bad waitress, a teacher and of course, all the way through there was always photography as my passion.

I've lived around New Zealand in 4 very different locations, been the wife of a teacher and an airforce officer (same man, his midlife crisis), the wife of a Belgian civil servant who works two very different jobs at the same time.

I've lived in Turkey and here in Belgium, traveled to America, been stranded in Fiji, stayed in Australia, fallen in love with Italy, wandered through France, Germany, Holland, adored Spain too.

There was the woman who fell past my balcony, the motorbike crash at more than 100kms. There was me shaking over the opportunity to photograph the Queen of England located across a small stretch of empty grass, being tasked to spend the day following a famous Canadian actor, being asked to photograph New Zealand's prime minister, a Victoria Cross winner and so many other interesting people.

Now there's this part-time job in communications in Brussels and I'm loving it and the worlds it's exposing me too.

My business is launched and that's okay too.

But there was never a plan ... school reports always said 'Diane could do better', even while I was sailing along in the top class groups.

I've been a swimmer, a badminton and hockey player, I've ridden horses and sped across a winter lake ice-skating with friends, racing towards the final somersaulting moment into deep snow because I have this weird mix of risk-manager and adrenalin junkie (if really pushed).

I've read by the light of the moon until the book was finished ... regularly, fallen in love and out of love with Cadburys chocolate because of Belgian chocolate. I'm still waiting for that moment when I stop loving red wine.

I love coffee but it doesn't like me, although I persevere with the relationship, oftentimes wishing I hadn't.

Materially, I adore my camera, my laptop and little plastic mp3 player.

Hmmmm, no need for that book ... tis done.