Fragmentation ...

I came here to write after a speedy re-evaluation of the theme of my photography exhibition in September.

The organisers want photographs now for posters and brochures and my gardening tale was a work-in-progress, capturing the growing season and the relationships between gardeners on Antwerpen's allotments so ... a fast rethink and the obvious slapped me in the face, gently. I have folders full of hours and days spent out on Flanders Field.

The morning has been spent working on image selection in the lounge around an excitable Miss Three who was noisily delighting in the fact that Gert's kids are here; around Gert, housework, requests for information from others and all that stuff but here I am, almost 3pm and the mail with attachments has been sent back to the organisers.

Brussels with Ms V was truly fabulous. We spent 2 nights and most of 2 days talking and laughing, wandering and laughing some more.

She earned my undying gratitude by metro-ing me over to Waterstones, an English bookshop with a branch in Brussels. I almost died when I discovered Christina Lamb's Small Wars Permitting - Dispatches from Foreign Lands on their 3 books for the price of 2 table. I've had that book on my 'must have' list for so long and it is as good as I expected it to be.

Jessie begins both social orientation in Flanders, and studying Dutch language next week. Life will kick up a gear for her, with all of us needing to fill out some kind of appointments book so that we know where we are when. I've got a big job coming up mid-March, with a European-wide audience to satisfy and Gert is busy with work too.

Our first guest flies in in April and we head up to Paris to meet Jessie's friend. It looks like I'll be in London that same month, taking a few photographs for a book.

May is Berlin and the wedding, July we're hoping to head into France. September we already have rumours of friends flying in and I've put Rome, Istanbul and New Zealand on my 2008 to-do list.

The days are getting longer and the chill is slowly leaving. It feels like 2008 is finally arriving, even if we're already 3 months into it.

A Reading Bender and Some New Zealand Lamb

I'm about to resurrect the reading part of my life and picked up a delicious pile of travel-type books today.

Christina Lamb is an author I'm in pursuit of these days. I wrote of her recently, having discovered her during that first attempt on Benazir Bhutto's life back in October.

The city library here in Antwerpen has a rather decent English literature section but I found The Sewing Circles of Herat hidden amongst the travel books that are mainly in Dutch.

I caught me a bear on the way home ...

In the supermarket, wondering what to cook for dinner when I found a big chunk of New Zealand lamb with 50% off because it had to be cooked today. I was the cook who could do that, and found 2 big kumara to go with the rest.

Life is good ... frustrating sometimes but good.

By now, most of the world will know that an attempt was made on Benazir Bhutto's life last night, as she made a triumphant return to Pakistan after 8 years of exile.

As I watched events after the two explosions unfold last night, I heard foreign correspondent Christina Lamb reporting in. She had been on the bus, traveling as Bhutto's biographer. Curious I researched Christina this morning, a search made easy due to her having her own website.

I discovered that she has written some truly interesting books and was the muse for Paulo Coelho's book 'The Zahir'.

She seems like a remarkably interesting woman.