I am still writing from Hamme in Belgium, where I am visiting with my kids, and enjoying it very much. I love all the festivals and the bustling life all around, as at home, specially the small towns and villages just go into a kind of hibernation when the sun goes down, everybody locking themselves into their iron and steel fortified forts, too scared to go anywhere in case their houses get broken into, or being hurt or murdered by a gang waiting in the darkness for them to come back! We all have at least one murdered friend or family member, and as long as our government members keep on pocketing state money instead of investing in the country's future by creating jobs, and  build better houses for folks, not the cheap two room things that do not last for more than about two years, things will not improve.
Anyway, after many years I have been coerced onto a bicycle by the kids, but oh boy, riding on the wrong side of the narrow cobbled roads of Hamme, with cars coming at you from all sides, I get so nervous that I sommer jump off and wait till the danger is over, trembling a wee bit, as the old nervous system is not used to this kind of excitement! But, with Irma riding in front, I have made it to the little road running along the Duhrme river, where we picked a lot of bramble berries, and also 'flierbesse', this being small berries that grow on bunches on a tree.
Back home Irma cooked jams and also made syrups, and that she uses in a yoghart smoothy every morning. Delicious!
We have also done a lot of sightseeing, and drove to the Dardenne, where I found a small village called le Roux, the name of my mother's family, and that must be where her forbears came from. This part of Belgium belonged to France in the past. In a week's time we will go to a place called Staden, where my father's family came from, my family name being van Staden. This people of course went to South Africa because of their being Protestant and therefor much discriminated against, and helped to build up the country, where most of their descendants still live, still fighting for their place in the sun. It does bother me sometimes, when I walk through the towns here, that I might have much purer Flemish blood than many around me, but I am not alowed to even come for a visit without a lot of botheration.
I love all the festivals that are on all over the place, and on Sunday we went to st Niklaas to watch the balloons go up from the square, but we missed the first lot, and the second lot couldn't go up because the weather deteriorated. Very disappointing, as there would, I think, have been forty balloons going up together, and it would have been wonderful to see.
Saturday evening we went to Oostende, where Irma had to be for a photographic display by a woman called Yel Ratajczak, who published a book about artists from other countries now living in Belgium, of which Irma is one. I loved Oostende, where we went for dinner at one of the seaside resaurants, then had a long strole in the cool air, all along the quay with all the beautiful yachts softly swaying in the semi darkness.
The bottom picture was taken in from some old ruins in Dinant.