smoke billowing from the reeds

This might be a moment to hold forth on any number of topical things like elections or Milosevic or the state of New Labour in England, but so much energy is channelled into the keeping Rosalind on the rails that I need a means of escape when work is done. So, even when there is little time between acts, camera in hand, I seek out places to please the eye and feed the soul (well, whatever) when the going gets tough but I can’t get going. The light wasn’t good enough for really good shots of the city walls in Zwolle and even the burning reeds near Giethoorn do not make for really memorable images but, still, they show what it was like there today.

lime kilns in drenthe

Glorious weather!
And a rare free day in the diary.
Escaping the toils and torments we took off in the afternoon and somewhere deep in Drenthe we came upon these lime kilns. Restored, now, they serve as a restaurant but not for us today as we'd already had a rare English treat: steak and kidney pie in a tea-house in the woods! No walking for Nelis in the next few months, but still the land is invigorating.

scheveningen

While glancing at Rosalind’s weblog, I stumbled upon the breaking news that Milosevic has been found dead in his cell in Scheveningen. International reports still say the cause of death is unknown and officially that is indeed the case, though Bot, the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs, said at an EU meeting in Salzburg that he died of natural causes. Nonetheless, the UN will carry out an autopsy including a toxicological investigation. Milosovic’s wife claims the Tribunal killed her husband, but Bot also said that it would have been better for the victims of the war crimes if the Tribunal had been able to round off his trial and there is something to be said for that but, surely, a cell death in isolation is no easy end. Will that give them any vestige of peace of mind, I wonder?

Strange how Scheveningen has played such varied roles: fishing village, language test for spies in the Second World War, home to the war crimes tribunal in recent years and yet maybe its main claim to fame is as a sunshine boulevard for millions every year. The irony. Here is Scheveningen carefree in the sun. May have trouble uploading the photos with a cat asleep on my wrists.

blowin' in the wind

Photo shoot – windswept trees

Ok so the moral to that story is: always draft your post on your word-processor first, so you don’t lose it if the server fails. Let’s start over: back to square one. This is a third attempt to upload a photo to a blog post. First time it worked but I got the wrong photo. Second time, the photo was ok and I added a whole load of text to wrap round it but then when I tried to publish the post, the server was down and I lost it all.

Here goes again: so this is a tryout photo shoot, simply to see if it really works and I can upload an image into a blog without storing it in cyberspace first. If it goes according to plan, there will be a picture of two windswept trees beside this text. So where are these trees? Well, the photo was taken on the Downs on the south coast of England, near Beachy Head, around this time last year. I may need to produce some more text, if I want to see if it wraps around the photo the way I had in mind. Meantime technical hitch, still no go on blogger – a serious problem. Looks like I’m not the only one logging on. No surprise for a Saturday I suppose. Suppose I’ll have to log on again at 3 am or some such unearthly hour. Wonder how long it’ll be before they’ve sorted it out. The error report says a technician is on the job. Meantime I’m cooking up some text like a storm. All the more to wrap round my image.

snow falling on willows

Saturday morning, 11th March 2006.

Outside, there's snow falling on the willows, laurel, currant shrubs and all the other stuff in the yard that's yearning for a little sun. No cedars in these climes, needless to say. Inside, I'm reeling from another run-in with my darling daughter. Not much this time: just too much music early morning. Due to drive the 'taxi' at 7.30 sharp, I was nursing a mug of hot tea at 7 a.m, which is not bad for a snowy Saturday in March but, no surprise, the passenger only emerged from her bed at 07.55 hours. She would take a train later... Imagine what would have happened if I had suggested that ;-)

Muttering warnings about needing to leave on time and drive slowly in the snow, I turned my attention to the harp. Now I know she prefers me not to play it while she's around but, after all, she should have been on the train by then. A simple melody - not even a few scales - and Rosalind began to fume. I did not stop instantly and she got worse, threatening not to go at all. :-) No skin off my nose, I thought, but I did not go on as I knew she would spiral out of control. The code is this: the behaviour is unacceptable, but we'll address that later, when all is calm, NOT now.

Sometimes it's hard to contain yourself in a situation like that; after all, no way is she going to dictate what we do. However, in the long run, giving her space now and talking about it later is the wiser option. Costs fewer broken plates, broken nerves and hurt feelings causing her to sink into a dark morass from which she cannot accept a helping hand. Calm again, she knows she was out of order and accepts the lines we set out.

Now the train has left and she is on her way to Amsterdam and the Amnesty International Film Festival, where she's a volunteer to help make things run smoothly. No mean task for someone in her situation, but the hardest part of all may have been catching that train on time.

More later on; for now, where's that harp?