Sunday, January 11, 2009

A Good Day out on Flanders Fields ...


Helen Clark, originally uploaded by - di.

Yesterday was a special day.

I love travelling to Flanders Fields, some of my favourite Belgians live there and so I had been delighted to receive an invitation to the presentation of the Passchendaele: The Belgians have not forgotten Project

It is a project commemorating New Zealand's contribution to the first world war and it will travel from Belgium to Wellington to begin a tour of New Zealand in March 2009.

Gert and I wandered along, cameras in hand as always, expecting some speeches from the guest speakers and a luncheon however ...we got far more than we expected.

After the event we were invited along on the small bus carrying Helen Clark, the just ex-prime minister of New Zealand and her husband, Peter. Tim Barnett, a New Zealand member of parliament and his lovely partner, Ramon and Austin Mitchell, the British member of parliament and author, and his wife, Linda McDougall, journalist and tv producer were the passengers.

Freddy Declerck was our Passchendaele guide. He's both a world war one expert and a lovely man, so he made sure that our freezing cold tour was filled with laughter.

I always prefer to be the invisible photographer, observing without making too much noise but there was no chance of that with this lovely group of people.

Gert and I left smiling and hope to head back to the Fields soon, there were so many stories that came up along the way, they are surely deserving of a hearing ...

4 comments:

Inge said...

Waw, what an experience; I'd love to hear more about it...

Di Mackey said...

The problem for me is always about the balance between telling the story and respecting peoples privacy :) I tend to veer wildly into private and probably too far.

I'll come back to that day on the new website maybe. It's almost done now. How's summer? I imagine you've heard all about our serious cold snap ... the 12 yearly one I believe?

Anonymous said...

So, you've just entered the uppercircles of modern day power, how does it feel? :P

Di Mackey said...

Oh, just call me Alice in Wonderland, Manic. It was a lovely day out.