I surprised BF with a long weekend in the north of France in June. I finally got around to making a selection of the photos I took. So as I work on the translation of parts 3, 4 etc. of my story, here are some pictures in the meantime:

The Blockhaus of Eperlèques: an enormous bunker built by the Germans for launching V2 missiles and manufacturing rocket fuel:





A water lily, in a natural reserve nearby:



The beach at Gravelines (if you look closely, you can see the sand blowing, there was a lot of wind):



And a place I love, the Nausicaa aquatic center:

I was already late going to my creative writing class yesterday, when I rushed into the living room for my bag. I spotted something underneath the table, from the corner of my eye. And then I went closer and saw that it was... a dead shrew! I felt sorry for the poor little critter, a victim of our all too adventurous cat...

But already being late, I did the only thing I could do: leave BF a note on his breakfast plate "dead mouse under table!" and ran to catch my bus. That way we could both enjoy a surprise first thing in the morning

The weather hasn't been great, but I still have that great summer feeling. I work less hours in the summer, so early this afternoon we went for drinks at Bruxelles-les-Bains: it's a kind of event where lots of little bars and food shacks are set up along the canal in Brussels, and even areas with sand to make it a pretend beach.

I started with a caipirinha and then switched to a non alholic coconut milk. Yum, delicious, and in good company too. Add to that the fact that I have a day off work tomorrow, and you can imagine how relaxing it was

On his bicycle, John carefully threads his way between the parked vehicles and the cars waiting at the traffic lights. Brown Street number 36, as it says on the note in his hand: there it is on the corner, the large red brick building. The left façade is blind, but the blocked up double doors draw his eye, as do the remnants of an old painted advertisement. On the right, the front door is flanked by two large shop windows. The blue sign above the door reads: “The Old Ice Factory”.
John stops for a moment before crossing the street and placing his bicycle next to one of the window displays. A passerby had found the cliché irresistible, writing in a corner of the windowpane “I’m dirty, wash me”. A few feet away, between the initials A and C, an arrow pierces a heart. Anna loves Cedric? Abby loves Celia? Adam loves Christopher? The names don’t matter, a simple sponge could wipe these graffiti of dust into oblivion.

John approaches to look inside, the tip of his nose touching the dusty window. Instead of the work shop he had imagined, with elegant lighting and a multitude of photos of celebrated sculptures, he discovers an austere room. With its rough concrete floor and bare brick walls, the space feels almost skeletal.
But he instantly forgets this barren decor. In the middle of the workshop, a woman with long loose hair is walking around a wooden table, its curved surface revealing more than a century of use. On the table lies a block of ice, surrounded by an arsenal of cruel-looking tools. The women trails the edges of the table, lightly touches the sides of the ice and moves her lips incessantly. Even though John can’t hear her words, it seems to him that she is praying, her manner exuding devotion and worship.

Yes, TGIF, and I am looking forward to getting some much needed beauty sleep. But I feel strangely melancholic too. Something seems seems be missing or lost or without purpose. Strange how these moods seem to come out of nowhere... Anyway, I will try to post the next part of my story soon. Have a good Friday night people.

So I managed to finish my story in French and enter it into the competition. I've decided to (try and) translate it, here's the first part.

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Despite the hustle and bustle around him, the newborn sleeps quietly in his white cradle, his eyelids all but trembling in the daylight and his small fists gripping sleep tightly.
John is standing a few feet from the crib, in contemplation, and is wondering whether the infant is dreaming of his mother’s womb, her rounded breast or, simply, of nothing at all. He can’t help stepping closer and softly caressing the baby’s glowing cheeks. When he withdraws his hand, his fingers are cold and wet. The illusion shatters.
“Ah, Emily, there you are! Congratulations to you and to Vincent on the new baby. Little Jonathan is lucky to have you as parents, I hope he makes you very proud. By the way, this ice sculpture is astonishing, remarkably realistic. Who created it?”

---

Don’t touch me, I don’t belong to you, not yet. I won’t let you take my thoughts, transform my mind into a waiting room for the inevitable end. You used to hide behind the trees, behind the door, behind the mirror. Now you’re here facing me. The tick tock of your silence haunts me. I cry out, throw stones, plead as I fall to my knees, but you never waver.
What good is it fighting the void that gave birth to me and will consume me? I’m lost, I can only envelop myself in oblivion, as a child hides from monsters under the bed sheets.
The sun is black, the sky empty, but it rains inside me. Won’t you let me forget, rebuild that wall protecting me from the flood? Such a struggle to gaze into the emptiness and not falter, I feel myself slipping. Around me, people are running, head down, attempting to escape their inexorable fate, but they’re pushing deeper into the storm. I lift up my eyes and see the thunder clouds reaching beyond the horizon. The heavens will destroy us all.
No one imagines the darkness behind my smile, the shadows that dwell in my eyes. She who makes the ice come alive, will she be the first to see?

... when you can take the hard route?

I've been writing a story for several weeks now, in between the chaos of work and life, and it's not going very smoothly... I'm a slow writer anyway, but the fact that I decided to take part in a competition in French does not help...

I love the way writing in French teaches me so much vocabulary (endless researching of synonyms and translations), but it's quite frustrating that it's twice as slow as writing in English... Especially since the deadline is tomorrow! Crap, as if I don't have enough deadlines at work, I just had to add some to my private life too

Strange observation though: my writing style is different in French. Funny how just switching languages can change moods, interpretations, styles... In fact, I'm not even sure if I'm capable of translating my own texts from French to English, which is quite shameful actually.

Anyway, all this to say that I gave myself quite a challenge, so I'd better stop blogging and get back to my story

Short blog today...

I'm always amused when I come home, take off my shoes and my cat insists on rubbing his head against my feet... At least there's one creature alive that enjoys the smell of my sweaty feet, lol.

I don't know if I've talked much about my boss on here. She's quite a 'special' person... On the one hand, she knows what she wants, she's assertive and dynamic and knows how to get things done. On the other hand, she judges people based on barely a few words, always presumes the worst (of people), inattentively read e-mails, easily believes hear-say etc. and she has no patience or anger management skills whatsoever.

While I appreciate the opportunities she's given me, there are times when I feel like slapping her for her foul temper.

Just today, I heard loud voices in an office nearby (99% likelihood that my boss has blown a fuse). Suddenly the door opens, and I see our HR manager storming away, tears running down her face, clearly very upset. My boss then comes to complain to me about her fight with our HR manager, expecting sympathy from me, when I know full well that she actually did nothing wrong.
It was all my boss's fault for obsessively reading her e-mails on her Blackberry instead of an ordinary computer, therefore not being able to read attachments, and therefore not having read our HR manager's message properly, therefore flying off the handle...

I tried to mention the attachment to my boss, carefully, but she just came up with another lame excuse, so I stopped trying to defend my co-worker... (or risk getting my head bitten off as well...) But seriously, it disgusts me, treating people like crap like that. Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to work so closely with her for 4 years. I'm probably talented at dodging bullets.

As my team did such a good job, and as the past few months have been abnormally stressful for them, I wanted to reward them. And I had an idea on how to reward them, something they wouldn't expect, but I needed my boss's approval. On top of that, I knew my boss had been less than appreciative of their efforts, she has a real talent for being oblivious (understatement) to the amount of work some tasks require, so asking for a reward for them was also my way of pointing out that they had gone 'above and beyond' in their efforts.

And she agreed to my proposal: to give them an extra day off work this year. It's not like we don't have many already (around 33 a year) but I was sure that they would appreciate it. And I was right: huge smiles on their faces, and the team leader actually had a tear in her eye. After being yelled at by my boss, I'm sure a bit of appreciation is nice...