Most people know of Charleroi as the Brussels “Ryanair airport” (ie – an expensive 45min Ryanair-owned coach ride into town) … in fact, Charleroi is the largest Walloon and third largest Belgian city (just over 200,000 inhabitants) but struggles economically (27% of the population earn less than €10 000 a year compared to 17% nationally). The infrastructure desperately needs updating, and the mix of empty rundown buildings and flashy neon lights is pretty grim. It was once a busy mining town which goes some way to explaining all of the above and which also accounts for the hordes of second and third generation Italian families that pepper this area of the country. I headed there last Sunday with Emilie & Ari for a little shooting session… a few more on this flickr set
Daytripping in Charleroi
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Up early to catch some of the rugby semi final but ended up listening to most of it on the radio on the way to Paris (a tight, tense game + negotiating Paris traffic = not a very good combo). I headed to Noemi & Eliot’s for a brief hello as they had stuff on in the pm and then off to lunch at Alex & Vanessa’s, with Lisa. Spent the remainder of the afternoon in Parc Monceau with them, little Liorah and Mirna who joined us. Paris is still beautiful. Drove home in the dark; tired and solo, not much fun.
10 years since… etc etc. Happily ensconced in rural paradise, it didn’t even occur to me until I had to pull my boarding pass out. Those ‘where were you when…’ events do set a bit of a timeline though – I can’t believe how quickly 10 years have passed whilst at the same time, life is quite different! At the time I had just moved to Montreal and was about to begin studying photography. I hadn’t met a lot of the people that are very important to me now and many of the key people in my life then have disappeared from my daily reality (not entirely thanks to facebook which, incidentally, didn’t exist back then!), I’ve had a number of jobs, lived in three countries, seen three new continents, lived in an insane amount of flats… It would be quite interesting to take stock every decade. Back in the Trièves, the festival was over so we cruised to the site to help take down a few things and find Laurie who finally let us see her digs. She lives year round in a yurt with Max! Quite a different life and presumably hard work but under the blazing sun, looking out over their massive vegetable garden, it has an air of paradise about it. Goodbye to the crew and back to rainy Brussels.
Woke up in a teepee! Laurie’s parents in law have a couple of yurts and a teepee which they let to holidaymakers in the summer and kindly let us crash in them for the weekend. Amazing – I discovered that dry toilets are really quite handy and that sleeping on camping mats works wonders for my back. Had coffee in the nearest ‘big’ village where we found Daniel & Sandrine who had picked up a lavish breakfast. Headed over to the festival where we lay in the shade sipping on fresh juices. Zafir needed a snore so we headed back to the yurts, made a fire in the pit, grilled some pig, potatoes and courgettes and didn’t leave. It’s amazing how rare the simpler pleasures are in a city – sitting round a fire, under the stars and chatting. Medecine for the soul.
It seemed like the 9th of September would be a good place to regroup and restart the daily blogging. It so happens I was saying a final goodbye to the summer in the Trièves, a rural/mountainous region of France, not too far from Grenoble. it’s an incredible place – people move there from across France to make the most of the chilled out, creative, eco friendly vibe. My friend Laurie lives there and is part of 
This is actually shot in Cologne when I visited Laura there a few months ago. I’ve been tagging stuff and decided I quite liked it. I now have a ‘public bathroom’ tag – I’m sure I have a few kicking around. Watched ‘Ricky’ tonight – a François Ozon film, slightly odd, mildly depressing in parts – altogether sweet.
Last piece of day in Corsica… and quite a day! Beautiful weather so we headed out to a rocky beach a half hour drive out of Calvi. Some swimming, scrambling over rocks and chilling and very suddenly a crazy mountain storm hit – lightning followed much too closely by roaring thunder. Rushed back to Calvi and onto the airport, where there were a number of conflicting reports as to whether the plane would take off at all, whether we’d be rerouted to Bastia and so on. Turned out it didn’t matter so much for Angie and me as our plane had left happily at 11am…note to self: check plane dates AND times. Had to buy new tickets (I’m still debating whether those few stolen hours at the beach were worth 250 euros!) and sat on standby until we were allowed to fly around 7pm – drive back to Brussels under pouring rain and dense fog – hit bed exhausted, sad to leave Corsica but happy to see Marley again 
Wedding day… Mairie de Calvi – I was a proud witness, which, honour aside, meant I had a seat and could rest my heel-toting-feet. Drinks at Notre Dâme de la Serra, bright sunshine, champagne, pretty people… and then on to the villa, looking out on the mountains and valley below. Small storm drama – the electricity went out briefly, the dinner tent dripped, pool side cocktail was moved inside but the atmosphere didn’t suffer and the weather cleared up for dinner and a long night of dancing (swapped the heels for havaians asap!). Too many shots to edit ruthlessly and it’s my blog so I’ll post lots if I want to!