The storyteller: My 2010 and a few pictures

BYE-BYE, 2010...

January

The New Year started with abundant snow falls, so strange and so beautiful at Les Tertres.

The Montparnasse Tower was lost in a very heavy fog when I left Paris to go back to Brittany for a very sad day. Yvonne was to be buried in Pléneuf. I had to be there.

February

This is the way our house in Brussels was looking... and would be looking for quite a few long months. More than 9 months actually. Oh well! Life went on quite smoothly anyway from Paris to Brittany! At least as far as I was concerned.

Speaking about Brittany, we went there in February for a much happier and special occasion. Our friend V.'s 50th birthday party. It was a lot a fun and quite a surprise for her.

March

A few dispirited trips to Brussels trying to find stuff we needed... Books and clothes! It was a very interesting experience.

I was asked to take pictures at a Kenzo fashion show. It was fun but I felt awfully old considering the fact that the models were mere teenagers. But I was the photographer. So what!

April

We kept on travelling back and forth to Brussels. By then, our house looked like it had been bombed out. Some walls and ceilings had collapsed due to dampness. Funny to think that we had been living in a slum all those years! A luxurious slum of course. But a slum anyway. It was hard to fight cancer and to convince your landlady the house was in dire need of refurbishment at the same time. Hard to move too.

May

Our first time at sea since 2009. It was gorgeous and freezing. Little did we know that the weather wouldn't get much better during the summer... 'Fort Lalatte' facing 'Altariel' (our boat) is very famous because Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh came there in 1957 to shoot 'The Vikings'. Hollywood in Brittany, just imagine!

Our friend Niruj came all the way to Les Tertres from Leiden, Netherlands to say good-bye before he flew away back to India. I still miss him a lot. We all do.

June

I spent most of June in Brittany. Popeye loved it. He came over every week-end and felt like a commuter!

I came back to spend a few days in Paris though because Swee' Pea was there. One night, we had a wonderful chinese meal with his friends at his apartment! Well, it is kind of hard to cook a decent meal in a student apartment, you know.

July

This picture was taken on Popeye's first day in Brittany as a vacationer! As usual, it was cold and windy. But everything looked so beautiful.

Our old Byerly surprised us by drinking from the kitchen tap. He hadn't done it for quite a while (ten years) and we did think for a while that he was getting younger. Do cats get younger?

August

Our astronomer came to Brittany to spend a few days with us. Of course we all went boating with him... quite a crowd. Some friends even tried their luck at wakeboarding. Some were good at it, some weren't. That's life.

One of the best moments though was the day when Swee' Pea and his friend Vincent started clowning around. The way they've been, summer after summer for the past 25 years. Except that now, they clown around on wakeboards. They are so much fun to watch. Both are excellent wakeboarders. Hard to believe but Vincent is taking a picture of Swee' Pea while the boat is going full speed.

September

This was my September, all by myself at Les Tertres. Watching Le Verdelet from morning till sunset.

October

Back to Brussels with men still working to fix the house... We needed warm clothes and... books.

Back to Paris and back to Brussels and back to Paris. Back to Brussels, etc. Rain and Thalys. Thalys and rain.

November

Back to Brussels for a few weeks to a house more or less fit to live in. We did try. So did Byerly but it soon became obvious that he was starting to feel really sick. Cats are not getting younger after all.

And back to Paris, on time for my yearly exhibit at Le Grand Palais, with the 'Artistes Français'. This year, I chose pictures from a trip to Morocco, a few years ago. They looked great at home, I assure you.

December

Snow in Paris from mid-November, at its peak in December. We should get used to the idea that we're back to having real winters. Even if Paris is not a very friendly place when it gets this snowy and this cold.