Daily Post weekly writing challenge: through the door

The door to your house/flat/apartment/abode has come unstuck in time. The next time you walk through it, you find yourself in the same place, but a different time entirely. Where are you, and what happens next?

I left my parents’ house early that morning, carefully locking the door behind me as they are elderly and I do not like to leave the front door unlocked. I was off to try and find the Café des rêves (the Dream Café or Café of Dreams), a very special café my sister had told me about. When I eventually found it, it was all that it promised with its shabby chic décor and vintage clothing. I was transported into another world. I enjoyed drinking a decent cup of coffee from a one-off antique cup and saucer. I was so contented, sitting in the corner by the window watching the world go by, that I didn’t realise how fast my self-allotted time had passed and I had to hurry to get back home in time for lunch.

As I went through the front gate and up the path to the front door I thought that the garden had changed, there were plants and trees in it that weren’t there when I left. Even the colour of the front door was different and the door knocker wasn’t the brass dolphin I was accustomed to seeing. On each side of the door was a door bell. Under one, on an embossed brass plate was inscribed ‘night bell’ and over the other ‘day bell’. Paint was peeling on the frame round the door; which surprised me because usually my father was meticulous about the upkeep of the house.

I opened the door with the key I’d borrowed from my mother and stepped into the hall. Gone was the Venetian pendant glass lamp, the prints depicting the city of my birth a century ago, and the vase of daffodils on a small occasional table. Instead there was an old brown carpet with an indistinct pattern on it. The house was quiet but then the house was always quiet so that didn’t bother me but at least the house usually felt lived in.

I went down the short flight of stairs to the living room and almost bumped into the door, which no longer had glass panels in it. Inside the room was bare. A yellowish floor covering marked out in cracked and lifting tiles greeted my eyes. The large glass-fronted dresser containing my parents’ prized collection of Spode china was empty and was painted in a dull red paint. My father had spent hours with a blow torch and a paint scraper painstakingly scraping off the accumulated layers of paint and grime to reveal the surface of the plain wood underneath.

The adjoining kitchen was bereft of life and furniture too. I climbed the back stairs to what I knew as the guest bathroom only to find another bare room. It was the same in the other rooms in the house the higher I climbed until at last I reached the top floor where my parents slept. In the middle bedroom there was a bed, a chest of drawers and a chair. Next to the window there dangled a long tube made of fabric-covered metal mesh with a sort of funnel at the end. The house had formerly belonged to a doctor and she had used the speaking tube, for this is what it was, to communicate with patients who might pitch up late at night, hence the night bell for there was a funnel above that too.
On the floor was a large Moses basket. I knew where and when I was then. I was in the house when we moved in. I was only 6 months old and still small enough to sleep in one of the drawers from the chest. I would sleep in the Moses basket in a couple of month’s time.

It was strange to be in the house with almost no furniture in it. In the present day my parents were slowly divesting themselves of unnecessary clutter with a view to having to downsize at some point in the future if their state of health so dictated. The circle could soon be completed.

Read what other people discovered through the door

A splash of colour

Some years ago we spent a couple of months in Thailand. However, since we had arrived on tourist visas which were only valid for 30 days we needed to leave Thailand on “a visa run” to enable us to get a new visa on return. We decided to go to Penang for a few days as it was convenient to get to and we’d never been to Malaysia.

Penang proved to be a very colourful place especially as we were visiting during the month of the Hungry Ghost festival during which shows and Chinese opera/theatre performances are staged during a whole month. The Chinese believe that the prayers, offerings of food and prayers, shows and operas will appease the spirits who are allowed into our world to roam for a month. Joss papers and fake money are also burned and we saw several such fires burning in the streets.

paper kimonos on display for the Hungry Ghost festival

dragon joss sticks produced especially for this festival, they are about 6ft high and for environmental reasons it is forbidden to burn them within the temple grounds

I particularly wanted to visit the blue Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion which was used in the French film Indochina starring Catherine Deneuve.

The building was constructed according to Feng Shui principles with a chi stone at the centre of the house which possesses a sophisticated system of water pipes which helps keep the house cool. ‘Chien Nien’ (a sort of cut and paste using porcelain fragments) is used throughout the house for decoration since Cheong Fatt Tze had a source of artisans in Penang who brought the craft from their native homes in Fujian and Teochew, China. This style of decoration can also be seen in many of the temples in Bangkok, especially Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn).

both the doors in this photo are double which means that the inner door can be opened, leaving the outer one closed but allowing conversation to take place

The room just inside the front entrance. This was–and still is–the reception area for visitors. To impress them, Cheong Fatt Tze had a large multi-paneled screen (centre installed with numerous scenes from Chinese history carved in wood finished with gold leaf. The lower panels are covered with an orange-tinted protective coating to prevent further wear and tear on the screens which visitors used to lean against.

The name of the street where this building is – Leith Street – is still referred to as Lotus Lake. Curiously enough the servants quarters were on the opposite side of the road. They were later used as a wine bar but were now up for sale or rent.

A few more splashes of colour we saw on that trip:

a tattoo shop advertises itself on a concrete column at the edge of the covered walkway

a shop in the area called Little India

prayer articles for sale

inside Hainan temple

a colourful batik for sale

Saint Ours

Destination: Italy. En route we stopped for a few days in the south of France to visit friends whom we hadn’t seen for ages. Then our adventure began. Firstly we passed through landscapes we’ve traveled for years and then into the great unknown as we headed for the Haute Provence Alpes. The journey through Haute Provence and Haute Durance would probably have been quite spectacular if we could have seen it but it was raining too heavily and the cloud cover was low. The orchards were protected by some sort of fleece which looked like spiders webs, presumably protection against marauding birds. We drove along the itinéraire de villages perches (hilltop villages route) of which we saw little, the route des fruits et des vins (the fruit and wine route) and finally up into the Alpes de Haute Provence.

We were heading for Saint Ours, high up in the mountains (1,800m) about 30km past the town of Barcelonnette. What we didn’t realize at the time was that Barcelonnette has links to Mexico and holds a week-long Mexican festival in the middle of August. In the late 19th century enterprising trading folk from the Ubaye valley went to Mexico and founded drapers stores which would later evolve into department stores based on the French model. Many returned and firm links were established between the two places.

We turned off the main road past Meyronnes and drove on for another couple of kilometres to the hamlet of Saint Ours, which was tiny. Some of its families too had emigrated to Mexico. Because of its proximity to the Italian border, in times of economic crisis there had been a thriving smuggling trade between the hamlet and its counterparts over the border of chocolate and salt, largely ignored by the authorities as this exchange was beneficial to all. At the end of the second world war the Germans mined the hamlet before leaving and when the Mexican contingent returned it was to find their hamlet mostly destroyed. Saint Ours has become a place of pilgrimage following some “miraculous” cures and hundreds flock to the church and tiny chapel on 17 June each year. Above St Ours and across the valley are fortifications left over from the Maginot line although we did not have time to visit these.

We were hoping to meet up with a friend of ours who was working here as a shepherd during the summer months but he was unable to come down and join us as planned. The scenery was really stunning and I found it hard to imagine what life must be like for a shepherd. He was staying in one of the mountain refuges and it would have taken him over an hour to get down to the hamlet. Each year he takes part in the time-honoured tradition of “transhumance”, the seasonal movement of flocks in the summer from lower pastures to high mountain pastures and then back down again in the autumn. As the shepherds tending the flocks are often a long way from the nearest village they have to transport everything they will need on the backs of horses or mules. Our friend, along with other shepherds, took along a cat packed in a basket on a previous occasion and all the dogs ran along beside them.

We discovered that there was an artist living in this remote hamlet – Christine Serain aka Suting, in a small cottage at the entrance to the village. In answer to my question of “do you live here all year round?” she replied that yes, she does live there all year round and that it is necessary to have heating for 9 months of the year. She had gone to China to study calligraphy and to learn Mandarin as she wanted to incorporate Chinese calligraphy into her artwork. Many of her recent calligraphic work incorporates Chinese letters to illustrate the concept of ‘couple’. Her website is http://www.serain-suting.com.

We walked through the hamlet and up to the chapel, surrounded by masses of wild flowers.

We stayed that night in the gite/auberge de St Ours where had a very comfortable room under the roof. The evening meal was cooked by the owners of the gite and very good it was too, as was breakfast. We chatted to some of the other people staying in the gite. One of them, a mountain guide, had just come up from Genoa on his motorbike to spend some time in the mountains. In a mixture of English, French and Italian we learned something of his life as a mountain guide – fascinating.

Next morning I watched sunlight creep over the mountains before we left.

where bloggers create 2012

WELCOME to my sanctum and to the “Where Bloggers Create” blog party hosted by Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage.

This is the first time I have participated in this event so I would like to explain a bit about my blog.:

My blog has evolved over the years into a travel blog although it started with journeys of all sorts and experiments with writing. Lately, because I never seem to be in one place for more than a couple of months at a time, it has become a documentary of my real life journeys and my journeys into the world of digital photography and the editing of many of my photographs into new versions of their original selves. I have moved into the digital age more out of necessity than anything else as it is not practical to lug around my stash of mixed media bits and pieces. For my digital work all I need is my laptop and my two cameras.

When we are not on the move we return to south western Turkey, to my studio, my place of preference, where I can pick up again on my mixed media creations.

It is the place to which I can retreat when I need some me time, where I am surrounded by art – mine

and other people’s,

my books,

some treasured pieces of furniture

and souvenirs brought back from our travels.

Here are some more photos my domain:

what’s on my bookshelves

storage solutions

some of my early jewellry pieces. The piece in the bottom left corner is a wall hanging made for a friend out of some bits of broken jewellry she gave me.

introducing Scampi, a street cat we feed when she deigns to visit us and a constant source of inspiration

there’s a wealth of flowers for inspiration

this was the view, with Greek islands in the distance, after a couple of days of heavy rain. Usually it is nothing like as clear as this

the winter sunsets are fabulous.

Thank you for visiting my little corner of the world. I hope you have enjoyed it and I hope you will return, I am always adding new posts.

Beyond Layers – day 50 – a tall order

This week Kim challenged us to view our world in a different way – so often when we take photos of scenery we tend to opt for a horizontal or landscape shot. However, if you use the vertical option (portrait) you get quite a different perspective.

Luxembourg is a beautiful country but in the summer it excels – serried ranks of vines climb the hillsides along the slopes bordering the river Moselle which forms a natural border between Luxembourg and Germany.

Spires of black mullein reach for the skies on this rocky, wooded outcrop

Up on the plateaus the sky seems to stretch into infinity and the landscape lies like a patchwork quilt before you with nothing but the song of the skylarks breaking the silence

and a river of blue cornflowers flows through a cornfield

And finally, sunsets, when you can capture the path of the setting sun on the sea, lend themselves particularly well to being shot vertically

This one was photographed in Turkey.

Lynmouth 2012

In August 1952 the small coastal town of Lynmouth was devastated by floods after days of continuous rain. The West Lyn and the East Lyn rivers burst their banks and flowed through the town destroying property and lives.

My family has now been visiting Lynmouth for 46 years, always staying the same place, a place which holds memories galore for me as I first visited it when I was 9 years old. In my adult years I have not had much opportunity to return but this April I took my aged parents back for a weeks holiday. We went in the second week of April. It was bitterly cold and we only had warmth and sunshine for 3 days, the rest of the time it was grey but at least it was mainly dry. Most days we huddled in the car with a good book and a thermos of hot coffee enjoying the views over Exmoor.

the cottage we always stayed in

view from the living room window towards the manor house

view from the back bedroom

the water cannon in action in the Glen Lyn Manor estate. They have harnessed the power of the water in the river and produce enough electricty for themselves as well as the national grid.

Lynmouth has changed little over the years. When we first went in 1963 it was the first year that the Glen Lyn estate had really been open for visitors after Lynmouth suffered appalling loss and damage during the floods of 1952. The Rising Sun was the first pub in the village although it now offers accommodation and rather more upmarket food. There is still a fudge shop and tea gardens. However, the appeal of the place is its beautiful location and easy access to the moors and surrounding countryside.

the harbour

another view of the harbour at high tide

the Rhenish tower and Mars Hill, location of the Rising Sun

During the week we managed a couple of riverside walks and I spent a couple of hours each day beachcombing on the beach and trying to avoid the incoming tide – unsuccessfully – while trying to photograph the waves.

Lynmouth beach looking towards Foreland point

view towards the cliffs on the other side of Lynmouth

high tide and rough weather

several times we saw surfers clad in wetsuits enjoying the long swell

As this was probably the last visit we re-visited all our favourite haunts:

the valley of the rocks

Robbers Bridge

Oare valley

views of Oare valley from above

the ford at Malmsead

This is Lorna Doone country and the action in the book is supposed to have taken place here. Many years ago we walked up the “Doone Valley” but it is beyond my parents’ abilities now.

We re-visited Arlington Court, home of the Chichester Family. Sir Francis, the lone yachtsman lived here and the family’s love of the sea and ships of all sorts is immediately obvious from the vast collection of model ships.

The house and grounds of Arlington Court

ancient ceramic tile found in the grounds of the manor

stained glass window in the chapel

Chambercombe Manor, reputedly the most haunted house in the UK

One day I took the woodland walk from Watersmeet to Lynmouth

through the hanging woods

full of primroses,

wood anemones,

arum lilies

and the buds of new ferns

I snapped this pheasant on our last day as we were driving over the moors

Porlock bay lay open below us

one of the cottages in the very picturesque hamlet of Selworthy, maintained by the National Trust

more picturesque cottages in the town of Dunster

If you are interested in reading more about the flood disaster go here and here

Beyond Layers Day 28 being brave

Kim pointed out that “This may be challenging… But, let’s try to create a photo that is symbolic of brave. Anything… it may be a photo of the bravest person you know, perhaps a self-portrait, maybe a symbol that means brave to only you.” We could write about the experience and share it if we felt able to.

Brave = Ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.

Bravery = The condition or quality of being brave; courage.

In August 1984 we left the UK in search of a new life (act of bravery number 1) to start a new job in a foreign country (act of bravery number 2). We decided to try for a family (act of bravery number 3). But nothing happened.

In the autumn of 1986 I was due to work away from home for a week. On Monday my boss gave me a lift to work and during the journey I told him that I thought I might be pregnant but was afraid that it might be an ectopic pregnancy because I knew something was wrong. Tuesday I spent the lunch hour break in a friend’s apartment battling the pain. I had a sleepless night that night and decided I would have to return home early. I asked if I could return in an official car but didn’t explain why I needed to get back. We left at lunchtime on Wednesday but I didn’t tell the driver that I was in pain and really wanted to get home. On the way back, as we left the motorway we spotted a motorist in trouble. We stopped to help her out and then missed our way back on to the motorway with the result that it took us another couple of hours to get back. By this time the pain had increased.

I got into a hot bath when I got home in the vain hope of alleviating the pain.  I phoned a friend of mine who was a nurse at the local maternity hospital and told her something was wrong.  She told me to get to the hospital as soon as I could and that she would alert the staff that I was on my way. My husband was playing in a darts match that evening so I had to phone the pub where he was playing to ask him to come home to take me to hospital. Eventually we got there about 11pm. By this time I was hyperventilating with the pain. The medical staff had no idea what was wrong with me and decided to conduct an exploratory operation. They told my husband to wait in the waiting room. 4 hours later the doctor emerged bearing a tray on which were the infected bits he’d removed from my body – both fallopian tubes, swollen to the size of grapefruit, the result of a un-diagnosed PID. Next day, once I was no longer in the recovery room, when the  doctor came to see me he announced that I wouldn’t be able to have children. Or at least not in the normal way and that the only possibility would be IVF.

We tried twice in the UK without success. We then tried a further 3 times in Brussels. In those days the success rate of IVF was less than 10%. Now it’s better. Each time I went through the hormone injections followed by egg extraction and then replacement of a number of fertilised eggs. My husband was treated as an also-ran. Facilities provided for him to produce the required sperm were less than attractive – a grubby toilet with dog-eared porn magazines. Then the nail-biting wait to see if the eggs had implanted or not. After 5 attempts it was obvious that we were not destined to be natural parents.

Adoption wasn’t an option either – we were already considered too old by the UK adoption authorities and not enough babies were given up for adoption where we were now living. If we really wanted to adopt we would have to go to a third world country and pay for a baby. The Romanian orphan crisis came at this point. Friends of ours tried to adopt a Romanian baby but were not prepared to buy a child either. In the end we resigned ourselves to childlessness. We had cats as fur babies. We threw ourselves into amateur dramatics. We travelled. When my sister fell pregnant, as easily as falling off a log both times, and gave birth to 2 healthy boys, it was hard for me as I had wanted 2 boys too.

This account may sound very detached but that’s partly due to the fact that I’m writing this nearly 30 years on and with distance comes a certain amount of detachment in. At the time it was pretty awful and pretty painful but I don’t think about that now. As far as my husband was concerned he was just happy to have me alive. We have adapted to not having children and are thankful that we still have each other.

 

Luang Prabang – introduction

Luang Prabang is encircled by mountains and set 700m above sea level at the confluence of the Nam Khan and Mekong Rivers. It now welcomes visitors with a degree of sophistication that was probably un-dreamed of, in terms of the quality of accommodation and restaurants that is now available, when it first opened up to tourists in 1989. The city is UNESCO heritage listed which means that it’s mercifully empty of buses and trucks and most people get around on foot, by bicycle or in tuk-tuks.

don’t you just love her slippers

transport on a bicyle “made for two” or more …

more local transport

We took a taxi from the airport to our guesthouse and our guesthouse was a pleasant surprise as it was at the far end of the peninsula, almost at the confluence of the rivers, and therefore quiet. It was sandwiched between a temple complex and the very exclusive Viceroy villa, the former residence of Prince Chao Lansa Samphan, the brother of the Lao King, and which is now one of the few privately owned mansions available for rent.

Our (first) room had polished dark wooden floors and a high ceiling.

The Viceroy Villa

beautiful tree in the garden of the guesthouse

A covered balcony ran the length of the building  overlooking the Viceroy Villa’s garden with its palm trees, bananas, and large lily pond complete with fountain – a very pleasant place to sit.  Breakfasts were somewhat erratic as you didn’t always get what you thought you had ordered, eg. when I wanted some marmalade for my toast I got an omelette.

hibiscus photographed in the garden in the morning

same hibiscus in the evening

Next morning, a gong at 4am in the temple, followed by chanting, woke me but to me that was part of the charm of being there.

We spent the first morning discussing what we were going to do and soon realised that there wasn’t much to do except chilling out and temple visiting. Both sounded OK to me.

In the afternoon we walked into town looking for the tourist office.

Dragon decoration from the recent Chinese New Year celebrations

slices of meat laid out on trays to dry in the sun

That Makmo – known as the watermelon stupa, because of its rounded dome. The dome stylistically reflects a Sinhalese influence and is the only stupa of such a shape in Laos.

first encounter with Lao temple architecture at Vat Visounnarath (in Thailand they are called wats), one of the oldest temples here

While I was off looking for the tourist office, vainly it transpired, for it no longer seemed to exist, DH had found and ensconced himself in the Aussie sports bar where he got talking to one of the guys who helps out there. We decided to eat dinner there and it was very good too. By the end of the evening we had been introduced to a number of denizens. From them we got some recommendations on where to eat and where not to eat – definitely not at the night market if you wished to avoid getting sick! – as well as other useful information such as where I could get a name stamp carved. They also told us a bit about life in Luang Prabang.  Casual fraternising with the locals is forbidden. One of the guys had an arranged marriage and another had courted his wife for 2 years with a chaperone in attendance. There were apparently no prostitutes there and only 2 or 3 known lady boys. This was the big difference between there and Thailand where you see a never-ending stream of  (generally ageing) Causcasian males with young Thai girls on their arms.

Luang Prabang – wat vat is that

A short guide to temple (vat  or wat) architecture:  The uposatha (Lao sim; ordination hall) is always the most important structure in any Buddhist wat. The high-peaked roofs are layered to represent several levels (usually three, five, seven or occasionally nine), which correspond to the various Buddhist doctrines. The edges of the roofs almost always feature a repeated flame motif, with long, fingerlike hooks at the corners called chaw faa (sky clusters). Umbrella-like spires along the central roof-ridge of a sim, called nyawt chaw faa or ‘topmost chaw faa, sometimes bear small pavilions (nagas – mythical water serpents) in a double-stepped arrangement representation of Mt Meru, the mythical centre of the Hindu-Buddhist cosmos (LPG).

I started walking into town, stopping to take photos at every temple on the way.  First stop was the temple complex immediately next to our guesthouse,  which comprised Vat Si Boun Heuang, Wat Sirimungkhun, Wat Sop and Wat Sensoukarahm making it difficult to work out which was which.

Wat Si Boun Heuang

These next ones are of Wat Siri Mungkhun


interior

golden stencilwork

stupa in Vat Sop Sickharam

young monks

the huge drum at Vat Sensoukharam

pagoda at the same wat housing a statue of Budhha in the ‘calling for rain’ posture, with hands held rigidly at his sides. This posture is peculiar to Laos.

Buddha ‘calling for rain’

the main building at Wat Sensoukharam

side view

detail of the stencilled portico

beautiful stencilled interior

Wat Sensoukarahm, “temple of a thousand treasures” has a rich red facade decorated with stencilling

this is a good example of the roof ridge architecture

richly gilded gable

another beautiful gable

the following photos are of Wat Siphoutthabat Thippharam, where there is a school for monks*

I guess what most photographers want when they go to Luang Prabang is photos of the monks in their glorious orange robes but women especially should never approach or talk to a monk unless the monk speaks first and you should only take photos from afar. So I was quite surprised to be greeted by a softly spoken “sabaidee” (hello) as I came out of one of the  buildings in a small and somewhat dilapidated wat on the corner of the block near the temporary bridge across the Nam Khan river. I turned round and there were 2 young monks sitting there. I returned the greeting and the one in the mustard-coloured robe, whose name turned out to be very long – Inthoneouthomphone, asked where I was from. This is nearly always the first question we are asked wherever we go. Replying that I am from Luxembourg usually elicits more interest because most people have never heard of it. After chatting for a while I eventually asked if I could take a photo of him and his friend and he replied yes and asked if I would e-mail him the photo as well as some photos of my country.

I gave him my e-mail address and told him about Skype and how he could use that to chat to people and to see them while talking to them. Every monk has a mobile phone and many of them have computers. Whatever happened to “no earthly possessions”?

*with thanks to Lao Miao for help in identifying this wat and for much other useful information about the wats/vats in Luang Prabang.

stranger

A while ago Tee Thompson posted an art journal prompt on Facebook called “stranger”. The idea was to draw or paint a stranger or use a photo from a magazine or newspaper and then journal a bit about the life of your stranger.

La Principessa Befania hails from a far-distant land of high peaked mountains and a people known for their fiery dispositions. She is no exception and the expression on her face indicates that she might have mischief on her mind.

La Diva was a regular visitor to the elegant salons of Edwardian England. Known for her saucy outfits and biting wit she was a hit wherever she went.

a slightly different take on Eve where the snake has become a jewelled salamander