More level 4

I'm still continuing with the good lessons - intermediate - with mixed results. This is a pen and wash, which is OK but not great - my proportions are all wrong. The watercolour effect in the wet street is OK but otherwise it's lacking depth and interest. In my opinion.

I am more pleased with my peaches. This is the third version, the first one wasn't good at all, the second one was better but I hadn't got the colour quite right. I think this is peach colour.

One of his birthday presents was a fancy schmancy loaf tin - made in France, weighs a ton  and has a lid for humidity and extra crunch. This is the absolute first experiment and it was delicious! I expect many tasty delights ahead.

Back in the air

We had another flying visit last week, but not for as pleasant a reason, as we went up to Brisbane for a couple of days for my husband's uncle's funeral. It was unexpected, and very sad, because he has always been a person who put family and friends at the centre of his life. So the service was both incredibly upsetting and also quite lovely because of the people who came, and chatted and caught up, knowing that the person who was missing would have absolutely loved it...

After the service my husband and I took a breath and went for fish and chips on the bay - Brisbane is a big city but has all these nooks and crannies that feel almost remote, especially anything by the water. It's a big shallow swampy bay but nice to feel a bit of a sea breeze. It was also really nice to catch up with his family, and he got a birthday cake made by his mum! Even when you're a big grown-up 60 year old that is a very special thing (and the cake was extremely delicious).

We got back late Friday night then had a couple of dozen people over for drinks on Saturday afternoon for the birthday boy. Very chill and very fun to see people again ... many of whom hadn't been to our house since covid, which is a bit shameful. We got out of the habit of socialising and never really picked it up again. 

He didn't want presents or cards so suggested that birthday wishes should be written on a packet of seeds that we can plant in the retirement house! So people brought along their favourite, and he now has a wild collection of all sorts to experiment with in the greenhouse.

A different perspective

As part of my husbands birthday extravaganza we went down to the beach for the weekend ... and took a scenic flight! I booked it ages ago as a surprise but we don't really like surprises in our house so I told him the day before :) It is nice to have time to adjust to things. 

We went out from the airfield about ten minutes down the road and had a wonderful half hour low slow cruise in a tiny little plane! The pilot took us over our house at about 500 feet (which is not very high at all) then we went up the coast a bit further, saw all the little beaches we know and love. The one above is the river with the stingrays, and below is the headland where I go for walks and take photos of the ferocious ocean. It didn't look very ferocious from a height.

I have been complaining about how built up and urbanised the area is becoming ... except it is very clearly not. It is mostly bush, with a few little settlements, and lots of trees. 

It was such a lovely day, the water was a beautiful colour and everything was crystal clear. There was a bit of a wind coming from the hills but relatively calm. However 'relatively calm' is enough for me to start to feel decidedly queasy after about 20 minutes. I have had such terrible motion sickness since the chemo, but I always say I can do anything for half an hour ... which is nearly true. I was very pleased to land.

And then I had to stay very horizontal and very still for ten minutes (my husband was outwardly sympathetic but he took this photo which is a bit rude) before we moved on to a delicious long lunch at a fancy restaurant. No photos of that but it was very yum, and all in all a lovely day.

Grubby money

Part of the fascination of the documents in the tubs is that my children are at that exact same life stage - at university, partly supported by parents and partly from their own endeavours. We talk about the oppressive cost of living at the moment but actually, compared to earnings, it is almost identical to 30-something years ago. Except for house prices of course, and that didn't get even close to my radar at age 20, and same for my kids.

The summer of 1990-91 I was delighted to be a filing clerk for National Mutual Bank for the princely rate of $10.00 an hour. I spent a couple of happy weeks literally in the basement filing room, filing away, then they realised I was fairly literate and could be trusted with basic documentation so I spent the rest of the summer at a desk next to a window compiling car finance applications. This was a fantastic job - clean, regular, proper lunch breaks and infinitely better than the bar and restaurant work I'd been doing up to then. Although from memory I also did Friday and Saturday nights working the bar, then I'd go out partying afterwards! Good god. 

This was my university fee invoice for 1991. A total of $1517 for the year, that I paid in two instalments. So about 150 times my hourly wage. My kids earn about $30 in hospo/retail, and their uni fees average about $7000 a year - so 233 times their hourly wage. A bit more, but not insane. I can however confirm that my conversations with my kids about this deeply channel my  mother's conversations with me ... I dropped the following letter from Mum to me in our group chat to give the children a chuckle ...

I find myself using that exact combination of 'don't expect anything because we're not rich' with 'I can't help myself here's some money' and 'well done for being independent and working hard' and 'get a good education' and 'what is your rent again? are you budgeting' ... and then ending it with 'enough of grubby money' :) That is something I actually say to them, in those words, because life is more than money. 

Filing was just a summer job, I didn't do much in 1991 then I started work at the public library which was Best Job Ever because BOOKS. All the books.

And a pay rise of 20 cents an hour! My rent for a room in a share house was $80 a week, about ten times my hourly pay - my kids' is about $200, so a bit less. A decent but not fancy pair of leather shoes from a chain store in 1990 was $100 - and it's still that now. A pair of Levis was $70 - it's now $120. A main meal in a cheap and cheerful restaurant was $12, it's now $25. The cheapest bottle of wine was $5 and it still is! My tastes have moved on but prices haven't. So I don't think my kids have it too tough, comparatively.

Urban sketchers again

I went along to the September meet-up of the Canberra Urban Sketchers yesterday - this time we trotted along to the Canberra Museum and Gallery. There were about thirty people there all doing wildly different things. I went around the exhibitions and was taken by a corner of one of them that showed landscapes of Canberra and some black and white footage of the city being built. You can't use wet media in the exhibition spaces so I did a quick sketch then spent a very happy two hours at a table in the foyer drawing and painting this masterpiece.

Clearly not a masterpiece, but I had fun doing it, including the little paintings. Feels like cheating to do a painting of a painting! It was a lovely sunny afternoon so many people stayed outside and did the courtyard that leads onto the gallery, and the Legislative Assembly, with umbrellas and a cool statue. This is the throw-down.

Some very talented sketchers ... astonishing how you can give people exactly the same scene and they see such very different things. I enjoyed it - it's not really togetherness because everyone is doing their own thing but there is a sense of common endeavour. 

And other than that we have been continuing to through boxes and tubs of random stuff. I have thrown out lots of things but there are treasures that must be kept, including all the letters I got when I was at uni. Look at this congratulations card! My older sister cross-stitched it for me (at least I think she did, she has always been a lovely cross-stitcher).

Speaking of sisters, this photo also showed up - it is me and my sisters at my cousin's wedding in 1985, so I must be 15, my older sister 20 and my younger sister 12 or maybe 13. Look at our glorious pastel ensembles. My mum sewed mine, I think my older sister made hers and if I remember rightly my youngest sister got hers from a shop!!! How fancy!!!! Probably doesn't quite make up for the entire lifetime of hand-me-downs that she had lived at that point ... 

I'm not reading through all the letters but this one just leapt off the page. This post is for you Dad.

Here there and everywhere part 2

After a long lovely lunch on Saturday, and a long lovely walk on Sunday, I headed off to Melbourne on Monday for various other work things. This me in front of a pallet full of 20 kg blocks of parmesan cheese!!! Yum, cheese. 

I met up with number two for dinner both nights which was absolutely lovely. Here we are having cocktails in a rooftop bar.

So Melbourne, so cool.

I stayed at the Windsor which continues to be old-fashioned verging on run-down but with a DEEP commitment to orchids. 

And I looked out the window just as we were leaving the Parliament of Victoria and there was a wedding party on the front steps. Awwwww......

Here there and everywhere part 1

Work has been keeping me busy traipsing around the countryside ... literally traipsing last week when we went to look at a proposed fire trail in the hilly bush about an hour south-west of Brisbane. You have to walk it to get an idea of the lay of the land apparently! The land lay very steep, let me tell you.

I am an OK walker but not so much with hills, so I had been practising going up the trig point behind my house, which is a decent enough climb. But I failed on this one ... we went up an equivalent of one trig point, which I managed fine, then another, which I struggled through, then another ... after which I gave up. There were a couple of people who were quite happy to wait with me (for 'health and safety reasons') while the others persevered to the end then came back. It was steep! But you can never tell in photos.

Very pretty countryside though. We had one bit without a trail at all so trudged through long grass and over boulders while they talked about the endemic fauna that seems to mostly be death adder variants and a rare frog. 

I over-nighted in Brisbane (i.e. collapsed with room service) then worked the next day with this amazing view! The 36th floor, and it was one of those beautiful clear Brisbane winter's days. 

Level 4

I am white-knuckling my way through Level 4 of the good lessons with Jenny. She still gives you plenty of guidance but there's no warm up exercises or taking it slow - every lesson is a painting that you have to plan and then paint your way through, somehow. The first one was flowers on a soft background - there are a couple of dodgy bits that I'm not happy with but generally it turned out OK. I painted this twice but prefer the first one for all its flaws.

The second one was 'old boots' which I struggled with from beginning to end - drawing, getting the colour right, getting the 'crumpled' look ... it looked like an absolute pile of crap until the very end and I nearly threw it away and started again about five times. But you have to paint through the well-known 'ugly stage', and so I did, and I really like the result. Still some issues but it actually looks like boots. Most surprising.