Y, our 8yr old, started drum lessons last week. This weekend we put together her new drum kit at home.


Y’s new drum kit. Both E and I may sneak up to the attic ourselves at times too.

Six years ago she was already at it.


Y when she was 2 would by herself switch on our friend P’s drum kit and enjoy herself, while visiting them in Switzerland. Six years on she has her own kit.


And a year later when she was 3.

This year our apple tree had a good year. The summer was a good mix of sun and rain, and we didn’t have as many wasps, snails or birds taking the apples for themselves as in some previous years.

We gave neighbours and the parents of Y’s best friend each 1-2kgs of apples, ate some, and filled the fridge. There’s still some on the tree to be picked too.


Y standing on a small ladder, disappearing into the apple tree with only her legs visible


Part of the harvest laid out on the garden table.

This more than person sized print (260x188cm) of a part of the starry sky by Thomas Ruff from 1992 I found beautiful and impressive. Deep glossy black, which you don’t see in the photo. Several were on display at the Centre Pompidou in Metz, where I saw them early this week. The image shows me in a self portrait, and other visitors to the museum against the backdrop of stars.

A gift from my colleagues. ‘Tegeltjeswijsheid’ means ’tile-wisdom’ or the often somewhat cliché phrases that are printed on tiles as an old fashioned type of decoration. We moved into new offices this January (in the same building), and since then everyone of us is getting their own tile with some characteristic phrase etc. about them. Yesterday I received mine. It reads “In my notes of 20 years ago I see that…”. A (exaggerated! really!) reference to my personal knowledge management (pkm) system. I indeed regularly inject things into conversations, when some question or topic is discussed along the lines of “last time we discussed this in 201x, we thought this or that, and concluded somesuch”.