Losing the coffeepot

Japanese garden at University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba

It starts with a text from my son: 'please mum, can we take the coffee pot on holiday next week...' I reply 'yes, sure' So I get the old espresso coffee pot down from its' high shelf, and tuck it under my arm, fully intending to bring it with me when we meet up a short time later for brunch.

Only thing is, that was 2 days ago, and I still can't find the coffee pot.  I 'must have' put it down somewhere.  So clearly, there is the suggestion of rhyming slang in the title of this post.

In the meantime, I turned sixty. Surely, a coincidence?

 Bank Lane - with an actual bank

We were in Toowoomba last week for the Carnival of Flowers, which was awesome as ever, but it turns out there are also many great examples of street art in Toowoomba, from the First Coat Project, now running for several years. There is even an app., for finding the murals, although finding murals is a lot easier than finding coffee pots.

Apart from that, I'm now basking in the joy of having received Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, and Neighbourhood, by Hetty McKinnon, for said birthday. And also the Angry Chef, by Anthony Warner, who writes about pseudoscience and fads around food. And how it makes him feel.

I am still following (Annabel) Crabb and (Leigh) Sales' hilarious Chat10 Looks3 podcasts, which have now expanded into a Facebook page/cult of the same name. Its actually a delightful, if full on, private but huge FB group, from which I have gained recipes, book recommendations and various other life hacks. Many participants have observed how different it is from other social media groups, as everyone is so NICE.

In July I went to Adelaide to learn the art of Slow Journalling with Ro Bruhn at the annual Quilt Encounter.  This is actually a 3 day fabric journal-making workshop, which I loved so much I have signed up for two more workshops with Ro when she comes to Queensland this November. 

I also learned how to make cheese of various kinds from the Gourmet Cheesemaker, Graham Redhead, in July. I note there is a Slow Food logo on his website. These creative pursuits take TIME, which is pertinent, I think, to turning sixty. My psychologist friend, who is 4 days older than me, and who invited me to the cheesemaking workshop, is apparently planning to give up psychology soon. 

I have no such plans, but doing a bit less sounds good. 

Teapots are also a thing in Toowoomba

Its good to be back. 

More later.

Two sides of the same cloud: Happy New Year 2017

Two sides of the same cloud - rainbow and grey

Last year was an almost total write off for blogging, But I did make a cloud cushion or two...

Its now been 8 years since I launched this blog, and life has often got in the way of maintaining my blogging habit, as it does with many good intentions and other resolutions. However, I will start this new year on a positive note, and try to return to more regular posts - I'm sure I've said this many times before, but I do enjoy the process, once I sit down and start...it seems to be a pattern, this tailing off thing, and not just with me...

I also wonder if blogging is now just too reflective a process, in the current 'instant' social media era? Twitter is so much faster...not to mention Snapchat, (which is also ephemeral, I hear, but I know very little about it - I heard it is intentionally difficult to use for 'older than millennials' - so I'm clearly of the wrong generation!).

In the meantime, for much of last year, I had three jobs (this has become a bad habit), with significant changes to adjust to in all three, some good and some not so good. I am now back down to only two jobs, and I am planning on keeping it that way for the foreseeable future. (If you know me well you will be saying 'good luck with that' right now!).

holiday reading mostly

Something I am prouder of is reading a lot during the spring and summer holidays, which somehow makes up for the lack of writing:  if I'm reading,  at least I am feeding my imaginative brain with lots of nourishing words and ideas. I am using my local library a lot, and have had many books on hold at various times.

This is a Select List:

• Just Kids by Patti Smith - a compelling and fascinating memoir of artists in New York in 1960's and 70's
• This House of Grief by Helen Garner - about the murder trial of Robert Farquharson, written  in Garner's unique and wonderful voice
• Dying: a memoir by Cory Taylor - a Brisbane author, who really was dying when she wrote this
• Wasted by Elspeth Muir - tragic true story of Elspeth's brother, who died after drinking to excess and then jumping off the Storey Bridge in Brisbane, but this is also an examination of the Australian drinking culture more generally
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, see below
• The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church - fiction set in 1940's and beyond, about a marriage between two academics, and the development of the atomic bomb, in New Mexico
• Everywhere I look by Helen Garner - more Garner musings in this collection
• A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt - still to read this, but its a collection of writing by Siri (no, not that Siri...)
• The Birdman's wife by Melissa Ashley - fiction based on the real life character of Elizabeth Gould, bird illustrator, and her marriage to John Gould, bird collector and ornithologist extraordinaire in the early 1800's, set in both UK and Australia.

Most of these books are non-fiction, which is also surprising to me, but my reading last year was heavily influenced, if not totally hijacked, by the Chat 10 Looks 3 recommendations from (Annabelle) Crabbe and (Leigh) Sales...which given they are both ABC journalists, have an understandable bias towards non-fiction...

Most astonishing story (all the more so for being true) is the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, about the continuing survival of a group of cervical cancer cells, taken from an impoverished, black American woman in the 1950's, which have been and are still being used world wide in cancer research, and many other medical research programs. Meanwhile, her surviving family didn't know much about her story or her legacy...until the writer of this book came along and started investigating. The story within a story, about how Skloot slowly gained the trust of some members of the Lacks family, is also quite amazing and shows how important this process is in telling the stories of others, especially those who have good reason to be mistrustful.

The Church and the Ashley novels in this list are reviewed here, It is interesting and weird that both the main female characters are ornithologists.

In addition to the above list, I also read a Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, which was a tragic and compelling story about childhood trauma and the consequences, (I know, who needs to invent this stuff, right?), whilst on the lovely North Stradbroke Island in September...and the beautiful Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, about ageing, love, families, and expectations, which I finished in transit from Canberra this weekend.

bamboo pots from air b'n'b Point Lookout, North Stradbroke Island, September 2016

In Canberra, I saw the History of the World in One Hundred Objects exhibition at NMA from the British Museum, and the Versailles, Treasures from Palace, from well, the Palace of Versailles, at NGA. The 100 objects has finished, but the Versailles exhibition continues until April. So good to see them both and to appreciate the richness and diversity of human invention, in this amazing world.

Well, looks like I just got this out in January, more later.