Monday, August 02, 2010

YOUR FIRST POSTCARD FROM GHENT - WISH YOU WERE THERE...

We've just had a weekend in Ghent (our compensation tickets for getting stranded in Brussels in the Eurostar pre-Christmas disaster). Nothing better for me than wandering round a new city and getting a creativity fix.

One of the things I love doing is searching out independent artisans, craftsmen and artists, and this time we got lucky when we walked into Els Robberechts's hat shop (I can't seem to link to it, but here's the website - http://www.acesoir.be/ or second time lucky, try this.)



That's my new hat she's got on the counter by the way. She gave me a little lesson in how to be a hat wearer, and although I'm not sure I'm there yet, I'm looking forward to experimenting, especially with such a beautiful one.

And she allowed us to peek into her studio upstairs ...



Just as exciting, we met her husband, the master tailor Aravinda, who showed us some of the secrets he hides in his ties. Love it - these are exactly the women my character, Martin photographs in GETTING THE PICTURE. And I shall look at all tie-wearing businessmen with a new curiosity.



And to reassure Els if she happens to see this, this picture below is definitely not going to be the fate of my hat. He obviously wasn't wearing his right...

3 comments:

Kathryn's Daily Writing Workout said...

Hey, that statue's wearing my new hat. Someone keeps squashing it. Maybe it's the new kitten, I don't know.

By the way, I finished your book and loved it. Poor old Martin. If only Mo could've written back!

Sarah Salway said...

Your kitten is putting his beer glasses on your hat brim?

Thanks for reading GTP - I can't believe you felt sorry for Martin, but secretly, I did too!!!!!!

annell4 said...

That was fun. I like that too.