One good thing of being a portrait is that I become 37 every year.
The date to celebrate my birthday (November 30) is always a battle with our Dutch Sinterklaas on December 5. He and I both want the closest Saturday evening to see our family and friends. Usually HE is the winner. I presume because he is supposed to hand out gifts and I grab gifts …
Sometimes I don’t even try to make arrangements and wait what will happen.
And as usual; if you don’t expect anything, everybody is popping up. So I had a wonderful evening last Saturday with a lot of thoughtful gifts.

One of the gifts I want to write about here, is a book called ‘the Drawing Lab’. It’s a guide to dig up your creativity. For some reason I never could find the time, reason or inspiration to draw. I always got inspiration at the wrong moments. For example; like in the stationery store if I see the covers of all those crazy cool notebooks. Once at home my inspiration is gone, because of the laundry, the cooking or the drumming neighbour.

The drawing Lab has 52 weird and funny exercises. The first exercise was to spend 10 minutes drawing as many cats in as many positions as you can think of, while laying in bed! Then pick a favorite and redraw it again using several other materials. There were some more steps, but this is the tone setting.
It worked. How easy was that?! Soon I didn’t follow the directions anymore and I was playing with white acrylic and ink on some decorated paper. And I was quite proud on my humble results. I even found some old frames to properly display them.

I’m not sure if I will write a blog about it every week, but I certainly keep you up to date.

It’s a sour fact that me and my parents don’t have a firm bond. As long as I remember I’m secretly convinced that I’m not their biological child, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who is thinking so.
Of course when I was younger I made some insinuations, wrapped in a joke or shouted out in an argument, but I never got a clue in return.
Just because of that vague distance between me and my parents I have never seriously tried to find out if my thoughts were true. For some reason it feels a bit ridiculous to do, if you are 37 years old already. What can you do more than what you did as a kid? Force your parents down and stick a cotton bud in their mouth, to swab some dna???

Another suspicious fact is that there are no baby photos of me. The story is that during the messy period after my parent’s divorce, some photo albums were lost. So, I don’t know what I looked like as a baby.
Those days my mother had stored up her stuff on the attic of grandmother’s. Several times I have asked them to get the albums off for me, but there was always a reason to postpone.

Granny died when I was 18 and my mother and me had to clean out the house. That was my chance! But after thoroughly inspecting mum’s stuff, no albums were found! I was totally upset and mad at my mum at that time.
But to my surprise it turns out that it is possible to live your life without baby photo’s. It would have been nice, but it’s no drama.
I didn’t think about it anymore.

Until yesterday.
On the internet I bumped on a picture that made me stare at it for a 5 full minutes. I gasped … and I knew THAT’S ME!!!
Well, of course in reality it is not me. I mean … duh, Afghanistan?!
I could not find a source, so I don’t know the name of the photographer, but I guess this snapshot was taken not so long ago. At least not 37 years ago.

Anyhow, I printed this beautiful photo, framed it, put it on my shelf and embraced the baby as being me.
Click on it to compare!

The visit of Errol was an absolutely joy. I don’t know any other person with the same mix of humour, innate refinement and such a wide interest.
Oh, wait … Yes.
I know another one; Me!
If we hadn’t our weird personal issues, we would be a perfect couple. For now we decided we are a perfect couple -let’s say- twice a year, for a perfect couple of days.

The first idea was that Errol left the next morning, but I didn’t look forward to a lonely Sunday. So I asked him to stay another day. If you can get a finger, why not grab the whole hand? Luckily he can’t say no.

Because initially his visit was intended to taste my pepper tea, he surprised me with a gorgeous teapot. I was stunned. And now I’m greedy for more of this awesome brand of crockery.