Coldest of cold fronts

There is always an arctic blast that sweeps up the country about this time of year - makes the ski fields happy, reminds everybody from Sydney that it actually does get cold, and gives a bleak windy rainy few days in Canberra with maximums of about 7 degrees. We had a long weekend for Reconciliation Day - there were events to get reconciled at the Arboretum but outdoors? in the sleet? Nup. We had friends over for curry night on Saturday, then met other friends for lunch on Sunday, then spent Monday by the fire and had pizza for dinner. 

Here is another town view / map that I copied from someone on the internet. I have been doing a lot of buildings with my isometric graph paper that I'll post too, but this is just in the sketchbook without guidelines (as you can probably tell).

I'm realising just how complicated this is - they look simple until you deconstruct the lines down, and then it is very time-consuming and needs attention paid. The sketch above is a tiny fraction - maybe a twentieth - of an old town map. And it is startling how obvious it is when a line goes the wrong way, or joins at a point where it shouldn't really join ... the effect is quite jarring and quite noticeable. This may not be the artistic style for me!! Not so good with perfection.

An election

We finally had our federal election last weekend, which changed the government from centre-right to centre-left and introduced at least 15 MPs who are from minor parties or independents. Fun times ahead, especially for those among us organising a two-day induction seminar for newly appointed parliamentarians. This week has been interesting at work as we avoid the shredding, moving boxes and sad-faced departures. 

Despite the election we decided to go down the beach last weekend so I dragged myself off my sick bed to prepoll the week before - you can vote anywhere any time of course but it is slightly easier for the AEC to count pre-polls than distance votes - and I went to Old Parliament House (the Museum of Australian Democracy) because it gives a very nice voting vibe, among the offices and the exhibits. And you get a show bag with a voting pin, sticker, and your very own voting pencil. There was about a fifteen minute queue but they had set up an entertaining 'know your democracy' quiz (which I failed because Australia only started existing for me from 1994).

The weekend itself was very quiet, other than watching the coverage on Saturday night. I walked to the beach, but then sat on the sand and recovered while Brad walked along to the creek, which shows how puffy and lacking in energy I still am. It looks like he's jogging in the photo but he's actually hunched over looking at his phone. Anyway it has been a very nasty flu. I have been at work all week but I'm feeling it today. So tired, and sick of it, hope to be much better soon.

Adelaide

Before the flu kicked in I had a lovely little holiday in Adelaide - went over on a Sunday afternoon which was my first trip in a plane for nearly three years! Can you believe it. Such a change after spending so much time in airports. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't like the crowds and the public spaces but (a) Canberra airport is not one of the world's busiest hubs and (b) it's like riding a bike, the joys and the horrors just came straight back. More joys than horrors, I am generally happy to stare out the window and have snacks, and it's two one-hour flights, not long-haul.

I went for a long walk Sunday before it got dark to reacquaint myself with the city centre, and then went immediately over the road to the Tasting Australia that was set up in the park opposite; bars, food stalls, fairy lights ... it was rather pleasant. My hotel was nice too, a little apartment in the old Treasury building, so suitably Victorian with high ceilings and creaky floors ... 100% haunted but I still slept well. 

Monday I went to the Art Gallery of South Australia and enjoyed the weirdly random shit of their two rooms of "International Art". I am quite sure it was all very thoughtfully and carefully curated but it means you end up with Van Dyck next to Renoir next to Rosetti next to something made out of plastic straws. It worked, which is why I think someone put a lot of time into it, but not for any logical reason that I could see. 

Loving this red wool stuff. With hands. Each strand is stapled to the walls of the room, and in person it was very eerie. They also had  Free/State which is new Australian art which had some crazy bits. Some of it was absolutely no, that is not art I don't care what word salad you put on the statement on the wall, but a lot of it was kind of cool. Then I went next door to the State Library which had an exhibition on modernist residential architecture in Adelaide in the 1950s and 60s (by way of background Adelaide is considered a very conservative city, old money, looks backward etc) and how it was received. Being so recent there were floor plans and lots of photos and newspaper cuttings and interviews with the people who lived in the houses, and I thought it was fascinating. Love a good floor plan.

After that I took a bus over to North Adelaide (very cute 19th century suburb, not at all like Canberra), had lunch and walked slowly back over the river and past the Oval. It was a beautiful day and a lovely walk. Then I poked around the shops for an hour or two before going back to the hotel ... and starting to think "I feel a bit tired" and "maybe I will just have takeaway for dinner" .... before starting to feel really dreadful, on with the fever, spending the night making ghosts out of the curtains and waking up on Tuesday wondering how on earth I was going to get through the day. 

It wasn't a great day. I ended up slowly checking out, slowly walking to the museum, and spending three hours going from room to room. Slowly. Sitting in a chair looking at an exhibit for half an hour, then moving on. Then to the airport, sitting in the lounge for three hours unable to read just staring, plane (DON'T COUGH), another airport, another plane, and arriving home about 10 pm and cry-telling my husband that I expected to die in the night so perhaps we should say our goodbyes now. Fun times. That was two weeks ago today and I still feel tired and breathless, so a vicious bug. But not covid, unless multiple tests are wrong, which is not impossible.

A mini break ... and the flu

Unusual for me not to post for ten days, but I have a reason - well two reasons really - a nice two-day mini-break in Adelaide, and then the worst flu I have had in a really really long time. Not covid (we all had it, and all had multiple negative tests) but such a bad flu; three days in bed with fevers and breathlessness and no energy even a week later. Apparently there are some very bad bugs going around, enjoying the lack of immunity from two years of shut-in, and we all copped one. I am a bit annoyed because I had my flu shot the week before, but it probably didn't have enough time to kick in. Maybe? Is that how immunisations work? I really have no idea.

So I'm working from home at the moment, they really don't want me hacking up a lung and I just about didn't make it from the car park to my desk yesterday when I tried going in. Pathetic. My husband worked from home all last week for the same reason (which was lovely because I was bed-ridden and he could bring me drugs) and number one - who had it first - has just gotten back to full activity now. Awful. 

Anyway I will post more about Adelaide because luckily I didn't get properly sick until the last night. Dragging yourself home when you're crook is the absolute worst, and Virgin helpfully cancelled my direct flight so I had two one-hour flights with three hours in Melbourne airport in the middle ... aaargh. Anyway enjoy the photos of my husband with the gang gangs, that have came back for their autumn food, and are super loud and super friendly. And isn't our Manchurian pear lovely this year?

Maps

My drawing and painting adventures have gone done an unexpected rabbit hole as I have been sidetracked by maps. I think it began when we went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw the Shakespeare to Winehouse exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery in London ... which I haven't mentioned and which was AMAZING. Not just because of the quality of the art, and the incredible range of subjects, but because it had some of the iconic portraits that I have always known about but never really thought I would get to see in the flesh. 

The Shakespeare one is probably the classic but they also had the Bronte sisters portrait done by Branwell, which is reproduced in every single one of the biographies I have read ... my husband didn't quite get why I stood in front of a pretty bad slightly ripped up portrait for so long, but I was just fascinated. 

And a sunny Saturday afternoon in Canberra meant basically no-one there, so I could visit with the pictures as much as I wanted, and as close as I wanted! Heaven. But we always pick one out to take home, if we could, and decided we would most like the Charles Dickens. No-one offered us our choice of picture to keep, but we like to have our answer ready to hand, just in case. 

Anyway the link to maps is Grayson Perry's A Map of Days which was in the exhibition, and fabulous, and worth the time we spent in front of it looking at all the detail. It made me think of those maps in the front of fantasy novels, which I have always loved, and of course the road maps we used to do as kids, and how much fun it was.

So I turned to the internet which is unsurprisingly STUFFED FULL of people who like to draw maps, and share their maps, and use their maps for games, and scan old maps which is perhaps the biggest rabbit-hole of them all! I figured the best way to start was was just to start scrawling whatever was out there in my sketchbook while watching Netflix. And that is where I am at the moment - although I have started a Domestika course on how to draw isometric buildings, which is awesome, and when my isometric graph paper arrives I will have a go at that. Yes, this is hyper-fixated neurodivergence. Or, as my husband and I like to call it, Having A Hobby. 

It's autumn

Do I post pictures of Canberra's autumn leaves every year? Yes I do, and I will continue to do so, because they are very pretty, and there have to be some upsides to living in one of the world's most boring cities. We have trees. Lots of trees.

I went for a long walk on a beautiful autumnal day on Sunday - admired the leaves, listened to some podcasts, stretched my legs. Saturday was spent turning out a cupboard that hadn't seen the light of day for a while. 

Here is a photo of one shoe - these shoes appeared in a previous blog post back in 2013 and almost the very next time I went to wear them I could only find one shoe. How can a single shoe disappear in my house? I searched, then waited, expecting it to show up. I know I wore two home, I'm not in the habit of leaving them in nightclubs or slung over phone wires. So I have been waiting for this shoe to show up for 9 years and it is time to accept it is never coming back. I threw the single shoe away on the weekend... and I am writing about it here on the blog because we KNOW what is about to happen. Let my prediction be recorded.

Back to something a bit more photogenic, more autumn leaves. Life is a bit quiet at the moment. I tried to see if anyone in my local Buy Nothing group wanted my belly dancing coin belt and no-one did!!!! There must be some middle-aged lady taking up a new pointless hobby. Buy Nothing groups are the circle of life: finally get rid of your baby gear, finally get rid of your lego and k'nex, finally get rid of the stuff you bought for those hobbies you tried for six months ...