Festival day one

The first day at the festival was rather quiet, not this much visitors and even less buyers. Nevertheless, I endeded up selling some books and merch. But most above all, it was so pleasant to meet the folks, people I knew before and new ones. It did me a lot of good. So we were mostly cheerful, despite the fact that business could have been better.

Now let's see what will happen tomorrow 

preparing

I have arrived safely at Vitry. My hotel room this year is a little apartment, which is if course pretty comfy. And it's only 3 minutes  away from the festival site. By foot.

Therefore,  after check in, I went to the hall and installed my table.  Usually I set up my table the same morning of the first festival day.

Doing it today in calm without pressure, was very relaxing. 

I really hope we will have a lot of visitors, and buyers of course. 

The only new titles I have tough, is the Rexxi album and basement of doom

 The latter being in English is naturally not the first choice of local people. 

But we will see... 

View from my widow. The apartment is at the third floor 

my table

Vitry le François

 I'm feeling slighly better now, probably because I have to focus on the next project : The Comic Festival of Vitry le François. I start off  tomorrow and will be hom by sunday night.
I guess Vitry will distract me a bit from sadness. Things have to go on.  The Festival "Bulles en Champagne" has allways ben a very pleasant one, lots of visitors and nice meets !

My mom will be alone for "only" 2 complete days, that's not too bad. Of course, bad things can happen any time; yesterday she fell down on the bathroom floor. I am not sure if she would have been able to get up If I wouldn't have been around to help her. Its the second time in a few days she had this sort of accident, so I guess we are entering in the "elderly people who contstantly fall down" era.

I managed to get an appointment for her at the Neurological service on October 10 . Given that most people have to wait up to 6 months or even longer, I guess I was very lucky.

There I can finally have a real neurologue looking at her Brain-scan and making a regular memory test. Because what we need now is something like a real diagnosis. Without that, no help whatsoever can be obtained.

I made tho photo recently from my window: 

 

Aftermath

 I am slowly recovering from the shock, but still like sort of a zombie. I so often feel the urge to dissociate from the person I am, I wish I was somebody else, sombody better.
I more and more understand why we usually don't remember past life incarnations. It would be too much of a burden and keep us from a real new start.

I allways hoped that when time has come, I could bypass the dark river of Lethe and take at least essentials with me. Not any longer.

Heart pain

I have terrible hearth pain, both in physical and metaphoric way. Used the emergency spray twice. Then again, I wish it would  happen.  A heart attack and over. 

But I have to live, because of my mom. She is in mild - advanced stage of dementia and I am the only person that keeps her from being abandoned by a cruel system who has no compassion and no consideration for people of her age and her illness. 

Maybe this is also the reason why I failed to go to Chania. My intentions weren't pure. 

Let's face it: I wouldn't have sold a lot of comics at this festival. I am totally unkonw by the Greek scene and I only had 2 or 3 English books, no one in Greek. So I didn't exactly expect to become a hot table at the artist alley. 

The main reason I looked so much forward for this trip, was the idea of a break out. Away from the daily hell I am trapped in, from the endless working, the overwhelming pain of assisting my mom's decline. 

I wanted to flee, far and away and dive into a totally other world, almost another unverse, where artists unknown o me let me discover their work, while we are under a southern sun, and yes, I wanted to spend 2 days at an emerald beach. 

I wasn't at the height to achieve this breakaway, because my place is here, I don't have any other value than being said help for my mom. The interest for my art and stories is long gone, I am merely working for the drawer now. 

I am so deeply ashamed about this whole failure, I don't have words for. 

No heaven after hell

I don't even know where to start.
I should be on the flight to Chania right now. Instead, I am writing this from home.

I fucking missed the flight this morning. 

I went out of bed as planned, packed real quickly and went to the Basilea  airport parking I booked the evening before. It is right next to the terminal. But there things went wrong. It took me a hell of a time to find an empty spot. Yes, Altough I booked it, there was no fix spot just a "park where you like "-system.
I finally found a spot and now had to find my way to the terminal. It really isn't far, but it was utter dark and absolutely no sign whatever that would guide you to where you should head. So I runned around in the hope to at  least find the right direction. All while carry my heavy bags, filled with comics.

I finally encountered two travelleres who showed me the way. It went upward, I slowed down, also because of my heart problems. When I finally was at the check-in - they said it was too late. Plane was about to take off.

I tried to find me a substitute booking, but they were way too expensive : 800 euros upwards.
So I got my car left and went back home.

A huge amount of money lost and a broken dream.

Well, it was my own fault I should have get up even much earlier than that. So I probably didn't deserve any better. 

Hell yard

I am now at the hotel near the airport. It's an F1 Hotel, pretty cheap but with the worst ratings you could think of. And it's adress is Hoellhof (hell's yard)

As far as I experience it, it is not as bad as the ratings say. Maybe the shit comments made them improve, who knows. 

What is true is that it is difficult to find, because the hoellhof side is a dead end, you have to enter at the other side, on another street. This causes a lot of confusion, especially for foreign travellers. 

Anyway. It's just for the night. 

Tomorrow, at 5am I'll get up to catch the 6 am flight.

Fun fact : while this night I have to spend it in hell, tomorrow's adress in Greece will be "Paradisou" 

Caddie Vs Car

Oh my...

Before departing for Greece, I went on my final shopping tour this morning. You know getting the last things so neither my mom, nor the cats will be out of anything.

After shopping I pushed the full cart to my car. The parking area is completely new and practical, except for the fact that it is not flat but slightly skewed. Not really hard, but enough to make the caddies heading back to the shopping center all by themselves. 

Since it is not easy to hold both the caddie and the car doors, well, I opened the car and left the cart where it was, thinking it would stay at least for that minute. Wrong thought.

It run down  toward the shopping center at full speed me behind it, trying to catch it back. And well. ... A car came and the caddie hit it.

The car got dented pretty obvious.

The elderly lady from the car stayed pretty calm and kind. I handed her off my visit card and said that I will see with my civil responsibility insurance. 

When she saw the visit card she said "Oh, you are Diana Kennedy?"   "Thing is, I wanted to get  in Touch with you anyway, because I organize a Christams market and wanted to ask you if you'd like to exhibit there".
I replied that would be wonderful. She said she'd call me later so we can see how to proceed with the damage and the exhibition plans.
She really called later and then said that she and her husband came to the conclusion that the dent is not worth the hassle with the insurance. They will leave it and live with it. I thanked her insisting that I owe them any illustration or other design  job they'd like, for their flyers for example.

All things taken into account I was pretty lucky. Because honestly, I am pretty unaware *which* insurance  I really could reach in such a case? Car insurance? It was not a car accident, although the damage was done to another car. My house insurance's attached civil responsibility? As far as I know that one works when people get hit by something from my propriety, a roof ceiling for example. So which contract?

I really need to look into this deeper, because the whole thing may have been a warning. Next person  is probably  not that kind as this friendly  lady.

Looking forward to go to her Xmas event.

A new start

As I reflect on my previous blogs, particularly the once beloved 'Sun over Stonehenge', I felt compelled to give it all a new beginning.

It's true that blogging seems to be a bit out of fashion: None of the blogs in my long list of "Blogs of friends" are still active. Some got stuck somewhere around 2013, others were simply deleted. I had to delete the whole widget
I'm unsure if this revival really makes sense. Hell, I don't even know if I will truly keep this one alive. Who knows.

My other struggle was the language question: Should I make a French blog? A German one or in the universal English? I ended up by choosing English, but I might post in French or German if I feel like. Use the translation tool then.
Regardless, this blog will be highly subjective and diary-like. So every view is my own and I don't discuss them.