... easing into semi-retirement, having lots of creative adventures and enjoying being a (relatively) new Granny.

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Morning Page

Today's word is CANNON.

I can think of nothing to write about cannon, at least, nothing that comes readily to mind.
However, I have seen one of the cannon from Captain Cook's ship the Endeavour. Apparently the ship ran aground on a coral reef in Northern Queensland and several cannon were thrown overboard in an attempt to refloat it. These cannon were retrieved from the seabed some 200 years later and were restored.In the early 1970's at least one of these cannon was donated to the National Library and ultimately housed there. I imagine that this is still there but maybe such artefacts have now been donated to the National Museum of Australia. When I saw this cannon as a young 20 year old I'm sure I was not impressed by the history I was seeing; it is only now that I value that experience.

I am distracted this morning, planning in my head what time I will have to leave here on Thursday morning to have plenty of time before my flight from Canberra, what clothes I need to pack, must check the weather forecast for Hobart etc. etc.I am also aware of noisy vehicles starting up outside - as the weather gets cooler I think some vehicles need warming up before they can be driven so I hear the monotonous drone of engines seemingly for hours as I try to concentrate on my writing.


STONES
Renewed interest in blog
Fuels creative urges
As a mini Artist Date
Promises more to come.

SWS (On Tuesday)
Forgotten skills remembered
As blog is resurrected. 

Forgotten skills flood back to blog resurrection.

    

Monday 16 March 2015

Apricots




Taste of a ripe apricot,
warm and sweet,
reminds me of the day
we buried my grandmother Ella
in 1989.

Aunty Lorraine picked these luscious fruits
in the early morning
before she left home for the funeral -
they were still warm from sitting in the car.

Standing up
in the kitchen of Aunty Joy’s house
I bit into one apricot -
juice ran down my chin.

The taste was exquisite
- so sweet,  ripe and tasty -
just how an apricot should always be.

The memory of those apricots
has set me on a quest
to find again the perfect apricot.

After 24 years
I have yet to find it.

6.10.13
 

Still chasing spiders







Bus stop


The timid school girl waits anxiously for the bus to arrive, dreading the moment of having to say goodbye to Dad or Mum and get on the bus packed with noisy kids who would almost always jeer or make fun of her.
Every day it was something different – the colour of her jumper, the shoes she wore, the size of her school bag, how her hair was parted – so she could never know what she could have done that day to try and avoid criticism.

Somehow she made it through the day at school and as usual got top marks for her reading and spelling; but of course this also drew attention to her and gave her enemies more fodder for tomorrow’s teasing.
And then it was time to go home on the bus, another harrowing experience to be endured.
If she had had a successful day at school there would certainly be comments made about how ‘brainy’ she was, how she must read encyclopaedias for bedtime reading, how she was just being too smart to show everyone else up.
Again, she endured the bus trip to her stop and then the next hurdle.
Would someone be waiting to meet the bus or would they be running late?
If there was no one there to meet her she knew the ritual – get off the bus, and walk down the dusty road to the first house where Mr & Mrs Byrnes lived.
They were old people about her grandmother’s age who had never had children but loved everybody else’s as their own.
Once she got to the house it was fun waiting for Mum or Dad to pick her up but it seemed a long walk, alone in the heat anxiously scouring the roadside for suspicious creatures and jumping at every rustle in the grass.

22.11.13