Saturday, April 26, 2008

Out on Flanders Fields Again ...


Wendy Quinlan, originally uploaded by - di.

Yesterday was an extraordinarily excellent day.

It was my first time back on Flanders Fields since November last year and it felt like coming out of hibernation, catching up with Steven over in Mesen and Freddy and Franky - who were both jubiliant over their museum's first place prize in the public vote for best museum in Belgium.

Another highlight was new people met.

Heather Charlton is a friend who always comes to our parties here in the city. At last night's exhibition opening she was in a role I hadn't yet seen her in - I had a glimpse of her in her life as a musician.

She has an impressive resume and if we can just convince her about building a website, you will know all very soon.

And then I met Wendy, an Australian flautist who was pure delight to work with. You can hear her music here. I was free to experiment in the photographic capture of a flautist and that's always going to make me happy.

After rehearsals, we had a World War One soldier's dinner at the Volksbond restaurant across the road - soup, bully beef pie and a slice of Tommy cake.

It was interesting and didn't quite satisfy my need for a Jimmy's Pie.

Exhibition opening over, wine and food circulated, as did the people. Our New Zealand Ambassador to Belgium and his wife were there and it was good to spend some time talking. They are lovely people - New Zealanders are of course (she writes modestly and completely without anything resembling bias.)

It was a good night and I was ready to tell Gert all about it when I wandered in the door around 2am ...


Oh, and I met these guys again, met and interviewed a couple of years ago. They were sitting at an outdoor table at our dinner restaurant in this tiny little village in Belgium.

A small world ...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

And all of that with gorgeous weather. Lucky you.

Guess you'll be doing a lot of Flanders Fields in the near future, since it's almost 100 years since, and you've positioned yourself very well in that area.

Di Mackey said...

It was gorgeous weather, wasn't it. The first day I've been out in that felt like summer.

We'll see about work out there on the field. I'm around but a lot of what I do there is free. It's nice being out where the kiwis and aussies were and the people there are just lovely :)

furiousBall said...

that flautist hair is gorgeous, the background and the chrome of her flute really balance that shock of color so well

Di Mackey said...

You know Van, I look for it all unconsciously. I really enjoyed reading your take on the photograph. Thanks :)