An update...sort of

I've been pretty quiet on the blog-front this week, mainly due to having very little to discuss. Most of my time has been spent either working with Connor at his home-schooling, or keeping up with uni reading. So far I've read Robinson Crusoe and Mansfield Park and now I'm about to start Jane Eyre (literally, as in, as soon as I've posted this and poured myself a glass of wine.)

This week I did manage to catch up with my daughter, Cassandra. I love hanging out with Cass, particularly as she's now matured into a fine young woman and a wonderful mother. There was a time when I despaired of even being able to have a civil conversation with her, but now we manage to sit and talk about all sorts of things and I feel a lot more confident about where her life is going. Cassie has so much promise and I feel she'll come to advanced education rather late (as I did) but I know she can accomplish great things with time, support and a loving hand.

This Thursday I'm off to UWA to see Alexander McCall Smith give a speech. I love McCall Smith with much loving lovingness. His Mma Ramotswe is one of my two favourite novel characters (the other being Henry from The Time Traveller's Wife) and so I really look forward to hearing the creator talk about his product.

As an author I really love watching other authors discuss their work. Mma Ramotswe is the sort of character I like to create myself, as she is quiet, gentle and good. Yes, good. She is a good woman who does good things for other people. Sometimes her clients are not so good, but they always get what's coming to them, one way or the other. When I was a child my dad used to talk about his mother and how she was the last 'true lady'. I always liked this idea of being a 'lady' and I think Mma is the embodiment of the ideal I built up in my mind. I'm not always 'good' and I have done quite a few wrong things in my life, but, like Mma and the lessons she took from her horrendous marriage to Note Makote I have used them to move onwards and upwards.

Because that's always the better than the alternative.

A fine day out

The other thing we did as a family this week, was visit the "Sculpture by the Sea" exhibition. Now, I must say that I enjoyed quite a few of the pieces, but on the whole was rather underwhelmed by the exhibition as a whole. I had, previously, seen two pieces from last year's Castaways exhibition that seemed to have been transplanted from one beach to the other, but what really surprised me was the huge number of recycled works on display. When I last visited (two years ago) I'd say most of the pieces were built from original materials that had not been repurposed. However, this year, a great many of the artworks were built from recycled material. I couldn't help but feel that this was, in a large part, due to the impact of Castaways upon local sculptors.

Below are some photos of my favourite pieces in order. The bottom one is not an artwork, but a piece of natural beauty we found at Cottesloe Beach.

This photo does not do the work justice. The spinning arms caught the sun's rays and threw them off. The effect was nothing short of dazzling.

There is something about this man's work that captivates me over and over. Lee finds him somewhat derivative, but I love the simple beauty of the lovers.

This begged "Please, touch me." I did. 

Standing under this was the ultimate in visual stimulation. No matter where you stood, the effect was unique.

Another view. We stayed with this piece for ages.

A piece of recycling showing the effect our debris is having on our oceans. Apparently, everything in the glass container came from the oceans. Each piece (syringes, bubble wrap, a toy car) was made to look like a marine creature.

Okay, not a firm favourite, but a lovely photo of our whole family.

There were heaps of these walking along the rocks at the jetty. They were truly beautiful to behold.

Yeah, it's a PVC goon bag. No matter where you went on the beach, you could see this. 

Connor obviously loved this piece. He took 25 photos of it.

This artwork is really rather blah, but it seemed to both delight and anger the butcher bird at its base. The bird kept trying to fight it and stroke it at the same time.

I took a few laps with the bird as it tried to work out what was going on.

I loved this. Pure and simple, love.