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.

flown by

"well," says my daughter, "just so you know: i would be very hurt and totally insulted if you didn't post something special on my birthday."
i sigh. i've had a very long day. after rummaging through box after box of family
photos, i climb the stairs and knock on his door.
"how would you feel if i didn't put a birthday piece up on the site today?" i ask.
"relieved," he answers.
*
but i'm a mother. i couldn't not.
happy 25th, thijs..
may this year be filled with fineness!

that's all it took

the tin-toy-store appeared here a while back, and the butterfly houses over at rachel's.
some subjects are so simple and so sweet that a revisit is inevitable.

crimson and clover

my life's sentimental journey has unfolded, gracefully, to its own eclectic soundtrack:
the songs i wasn't asked to dance to in high school, the songs that crackled into my darkened bedroom when i should have been sleeping, the chips-and-gravy
songs on the individual jukeboxes in the cosy grill, the first-time-tipsy songs and the first-time-high songs, the only-living-girl-in-vancouver songs, the songs interrupted by numbing news - kennedy, kennedy, martin luther king, john lennon: a collection of recollections, so to speak.
i would so like these strains - my personal symphony - sidling through my little white earhones, but alas: i may be canadian, but i don't live in canada, and i am only permitted downloads from the dutch iTunes store.
i did try. tommy james & the shondells: huh? leslie west, thunderclap newman: wha?
the ronettes: some numbers, okay, but not "be my baby", and "be my baby" is, as far as i can see, the whole point.
i am dodging the potholes pitting my particular memory lane, and i am mystified by iTunes' refusal - paid, nota bene - to fill them.
this is the internet, the world-wide web.
we should be able to sing, and dance, and reminisce, together.

hit the lights

every saga harbours a worst-case scenario, and ours involved an unsellable home: months on the market (imagine!) but - endless washed windows and walloped doormats later - not a single prospective buyer among the cast of characters.
happily, our screenwriter opted for a happier ending, at least for this episode...
the first viewers were smitten, it seems, and our house was sold the very next day.
we can sit back, and nibble popcorn, and anticipate june.