Category: Family

THE FOXES AT HOME – CHAPTER X.


HIM – (after watching Maeve O’Mara’ food programme on SBS) – “I want wine”
HER – “It’s supposed to be another alcohol free day”
HIM – “Bugger!”
HER – “If we say we’re gunna do it, we should do it – no wine”
HIM – “Ohhhh”
HER – “I know, let’s have white”
HIM – “OK – I suppose that will do”

And it does …

Advertisement

UNWASHED

Diary Memory – March 2015

The old man wakes way before dawn.
He reads for a while.
He researches Tang Band full range speaker drivers, but only briefly.
The galahs awake in the trees outside.
The skies pinken.
He watches a bit of the news on ABC 24 using his iPad.
He allows his daughter to have first access to the shower so she can spend all the time she needs to get ready to set off for a day at university.
While she’s showering he tidies the kitchen a bit whilst looking forward to the warm trickling waters from the shower-head.
She finishes in the shower.
The sleeping wife springs from the mattress and enters the shower while his back is briefly turned.
Oh the cruel irony of it all.
Another week starts.
Unwashed.

Morning Ramble

The remarkable activity that is blogging allows us to share the wonders of our wisdom with all those people out there, wherever they may be – wonders that they may have spent their whole lives not knowing they had missed.

For instance, just this morning I got into the shower with my spectacles on.
Oh, those first few moments of panic, when you think “have I gone blind?”– “is this the way the world ends?”
Like Lou Reed would say, “O, O, O, O, O, O, O, what a feeling!”

Now here we are at 7am. It’s February – the hottest month (except it’s not – that was December and January this season). Yes, the hottest month was two months.
Sweating on top of hot sheets in the gentle breezes of the quietly humming fan. I sweat and twitch, too well bred to exercise weakness of character by turning on the air-conditioner.

Besides, with the air-conditioner working, the windows would be closed, and who can sleep with the windows closed? – with the walls pressing in in the darkness – with the night taking on a threatening solidity, unknown ghosts of midnight invading and whispering and chuckling in the closed oppressive gloom – who could sleep in such darkness?

The galahs were disturbed all night last night – quarrelling sleepily in the trees. Even the birds are tired of Summer changes.
It’s the changing climate you know.

I might pop out soon for coffee and breakfast. Even in times of uncertainty there are cafes.
“O, O, O, O, O, O, O, what a feeling!”

Even Bo Derek Only Scored 10! (me waiting for coffee photographed by my Joy)

THE EXHIBITION THAT WAS

Opening Day – The A.Fox Collective – Amelia, Joy, and Ant.

You know, it takes a lot less time to take down an art exhibition than it does to hang one.

The Slow Hanging


We sold a few pieces, more than enough to cover our direct expenses.
But was there an overall profit?
No, nothing like it.
Of course the experience could be classed as a “profit” even though no money changed hands.
The knowledge that I have sold more paintings in my lifetime than Van Gogh managed has to be priceless!

Gone

We took our time over the deconstruction.
We could have driven there in the morning, taken it down, and driven back that evening, but somehow the overnight stay seemed the better option.

Really Gone

Mind you, it was a fairly expensive option.
The hotel room was comfortable and fairly well appointed, but the price was a bit steep for a room in a small country town.
Yes, the room tariff was less than we paid on our last stay in Sydney, but not all that much less.
In Sydney we stayed on the top floor of a tall hotel in the centre of the city, where we had stunning views of high-rises, sunsets, and the road heading to the harbour.
In our small country town hotel, we were up one flight of stairs with a walkway balcony outside our window and a view of the drive through bottle department.
Still, the bed was comfortable, the food in the dining room was OK (if not wonderful), and the wine was great.

The start-of-winter journey there and back was picturesque, through country we love, tinged the faintest of greens by the breaking of the drought.
The wrapped paintings in the back of the wagon muted road noise and any rattles, and the roads were quiet.

The Skies of Winter
Way Home Tree

It was a good exhibition we are told.
It was fun to set up.
It was a buzz to listen to the praise at the opening.

5 paintings – 3 (centre ones) sold

But … I think I have come to the conclusion that my paintings might be a bit – well … boring.
I’ll work on a new direction for inspiration … perhaps I’ll look back to the 1980s when it almost (almost) felt like I had something.

Me and Two of My Works


But for now now, two months after the hanging,
the A.Fox Collective “Abstracted Landscapes” has left the building. 

The Exhibition That Was

Not A Dirty Story.

Currently on Australian TV (and probably on non-Australian TV) there is an advertisement for a popular brand hand sanitiser where two small boys are refused service at the icecream van until they have sanitised their hands.

Am I the only person uncomfortable with this?

In the coffee shops and supermarkets I see young mothers cleansing the kids with these chemicals. I see people wiping their cafe tabletops with impregnated sterilising cloths before they sit down and order. Homes stock up on anti-bacterial fluids and sprays.

It’s a dangerous thing, y’know.

I am certainly not an anti-vaccination person – exactly the opposite in fact …please VACCINATE YOUR KIDS! – it is important for them.
But please think before you stop them playing in the mud, playing with the dogs, and getting dirty.
That play and dirt is a kind of natural vaccination, it’s a resistance builder.
Hand sanitisers over-used do the opposite.

Before I became a Flâneur, Artist, Photoist, and retired idler, I worked not only in the church, but in science too – for more than 20 years.
I have studied biology and microbiology – I know stuff (OK – not as much as I did, but enough).

If you manage to knock out 99.5% of harmful bacteria from your cooking surfaces, what do you have left?
0.5% of the population of those harmful bacteria, that’s what.
The thing is, that 0.5% of bacteria are the ones that are strong enough to resist the killing agent with which you’ve hit them.

By doing this continually, as the manufacturers suggest, you are weeding out the weak bugs, who form the majority, and selecting the strong ones – the resistant ones
… you are line breeding a population of strong pathogens
– you are aiding the evolution of strong bugs!

Remember – 0.5% of 1,000,000 bacteria is still a big crowd of 5000 bacteria whose population may double every 20 minutes or so
… that means that in less than 3 hours you’ve got more than you started with
– but they are the strong ones.

I’m not saying “Don’t use cleaning products”.
I’m suggesting that none of us over-use cleaning products.

Don’t be scared.
Look after yourselves, your children, and your homes
– but please don’t get carried away.