the great escape

it's not actually the queen's birthday today - it's not even the old queen's birthday today, for that matter - but everybody, and everything, is celebrating early, and anyway: frivolous, and festive, and overwhelmingly orange.
not me.
i'm far, far from the crush, and happy to be there.
*
happy koninginnedag, all.

a distant beckoning

norfolk was grey and cold, and suffolk was cold and grey, and i'm sure that some of my full-colour images will turn out perfectly monochrome, given the mist and the mood.
there, there on the imperceptible horizon: could that be the month of may?

calling the world home

my daughter unfurls her wings tomorrow, and flies - tentatively and temporarily - across the channel to norfolk, where she will alight in a pretty little village by the sea and start her "new" life.
i hope that the branch she settles upon will be supple and supportive, and that her nest will be warm, that the wide blue sky will give her room to reel and soar, and that her songs will be as sweet and joyous as spring-going-on-summer.
but i will miss her, even if it is for just a month.

mary, mary

funny: as contrary as i am - and i AM - i am also intrinsically obedient, in the civil
sense, at least.
i don't walk on the grass.
i don't cycle on the sidewalk.
i don't feed the llamas musty bread.
*
i do, however, always "engage the driver of the bus in unnecessary conversation".
and the driver?
he - or she - doesn't seem to mind at all.

early, with the sun

"start every day off with a smile and get it over with."
- w.c.fields (american comic and actor, 1880-1946)

there is simply no time, mornings early, to sit at windows and sip; in the minimal minutes between bus and train, i am into the station café and out again - before you
can say "één-koffie-verkeerd-meenemen-alsjeblieft".
my daily detour, it must be said, has more to do with the sweet boy frothing the capuccinos than it does with the cafeine itself: he cheerfully chats half working
alkmaar into positivity.
he always gets out of bed on the right side.
unlike me.

colour me pleased

the camera - a gift from the exceptional dave and his lovely wife sue - is as old as i am, and we bonded - contemporaries, after all, it and i - at first sight.
but, although all i had to do was point, and shoot, and puzzle through the parallax, and disregard the stares of passers-by, i was unsure what - apart from huge negatives - to expect.
this, and a few more i like just as well, is what i got.