Winging It - Christmas Decs

For several years I've made a Christmas installation, this one, which is two wings ( see below) is fixed to the front door (yellow ain't it?) and is an anti-wreath of sorts, a signal that we are taking off to summer holidays. The wing is modeled on the wing of the Beach Kingfisher, and frankly does it no justice at all, the Kingfisher having cornered intensity on a completely different level.

Each visitor will be encouraged to pose, as if they are the owners of the blue wings. Flight of fantasy? Yes.

Tickled Pink - The Roseate Lane

Walking down to Gas Town, downtown Vancouver has its quirks, this pink and lemon lane, like a left over film set, or field in a pollen powder pinkness - here I am imaging how a  bee might see it, it intrigues.   Advantage Vancouver, play on.

Rock Legs - Seat Yourself by the Bow River

Walking alongside the fast-talking Bow River, near Lake Louise, there are plenty of invitations to contemplation, this bench, collegiately long, though shy on legs, being one. There are others too, demonstrating, Alberta's fine sense of make-do, their outdoor hospitality and feel for place. Bravo Bow River.

Canada-ing: Maple de Jour

 

This water colour sketch is at best a palimpest, a pale imposter of the leaf itself.  A fall from grace, one might say, a ghost of form. 

The Larder Spruce or Squirrelling Away

The first found, neatly placed mushroom is a puzzle, the second, slightly higher up is a clue.  The answer is squirrels, their thoughtful and perfectly poised provisions seem seem to be both a food guide to wild mushrooms and a map of their territory, an insight to how  squirrels think.  How do they navigate back to find their fungi? When do they plan to to cash in their caches?  Are their mushroom thieves about?

Afternoon's Reversal of Morning's Clouds

Lake Louise, Alberta, the snow capped peaks, the kind of scenery  that gives grandstands, start off the day a little coy, cloud-hidden, perhaps ascending forever. Late afternoon the cloud chapeau drops to show off the mountains' considerable decolletage.

A Fish-ancy - Best Manhole Cover in Vancouver

I keep an optimistic  eye out for stylish manhole covers, though well designed ones are rare finds outside of Japan.  But then I saw three of these wonderfully fishy-man ones on the corner of Jervis and  West  Georgia Street, Vancouver. Perhaps there are more, somewhere else. I hope so, I am in complete agreement with the evolutionary aptness of the fish-ancestor and the seethy sea and river feeling of abundance. Bravo.

East meets West - Orienteering at Stanley Park

Why a rock looks photogenic is anybody's business, though I suspect it is the tenacity of the tuft of tree on top that clinches it for this orphan by the sea wall at Stanley Park. Then there is the curious business of why it seems Eastern, and really why has this antiquated reference endured Post-Copernicus, and why do I  use this lazy language short-cut, the whole conundrum only exacerbated by being on the West Coast of Canada and east of the East.

Pre-Pixelated in a Whalish Way

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Douglas Coupland's pre-pixelated Orca takes the worry out of focus, or I should say the focus out of worry? Vancouver's sea-wall walk with its aerial boat shed, or is it a grey gantry for a tall stevedore, is similarly loaded with the ambiguous.   Some may say it is a leap of faith but I'm saying pull the other Lego.

Granville Bridge's Curlicues and Berries

Arriving to rain in Vancouver, not unheard of here I'm told, the lovely bookends of Granville Bridge are best seen from the ferry wharf. The charm of these small and sturdy ferries, plying the river, is in best seen as they pull into the jetty.  Granville Island's Food Market is a robust collection of mongeries, though  I doubt the locals would enjoy getting a basket and themselves through the crowd of tourist. Though perhaps it was the rain. Best in show? Berries.

Casaurina -Upscale and Down

As if fallen from some improbably large Casuarina, this radiate metal casuariana  pod, has evidently released all its cargo of seeds, no doubt with metallic wings.The possibility of further, less vicarious, travels, abides in those charming dolly wheel feet. Not, of course, that the wheels are botanically accurate but they do give it a certain faunal charm.

The location is the Artists Studios on Middle Head Road Mosman, NSW

Take Two Cymbidiums, A Cup of Water and A Conical Flask

August is the month for orchids, and the pale extravagance of this stem of white cymbidiums, suggests both waywardness and a certain self-assurance. Like a stop-motion on an Olympic gymnast, the stem demonstrates a series of poses very like a somersault with a half-pike. The single bloom, detached, in a minor fall from grace is winsome in a vintage Worcester cup, with its perfectly mended handle -  reattached with metal solder, suggests the virtue of endurance. 

Where there's Smoke - Or Why I Need a Dyson Hair Dryer

I’m drying my hair, and actually doing that rolly thing with a brush to make it go into a smooth not quite replica of how it gets done at the hairdresser’s.  This may not seem much of an event, and d it isn’t, but as my practice until six months ago was to blast my hair into a fluffy tangle of variable waywardness, holding the hairdryer in one hand while reading a book in the other hand and thereby getting in another five minutes of reading , the do-ness of the double handed dry, is, for me, a big step up the ladder of grooming.

Of course without the distraction and comfort of literature, the act of hair drying is a little dull and gives me time to wonder. Specifically about the hairdryer. Is it good enough, and though I’ve repositioned the nozzle, if my head was a boat, and my hair the sails (yes, I know a stupid metaphor), and the hairdryer was the wind (corny song warning), it would be a blustery sirocco, and my boat would be going nowhere much. As I pondered all this,  I was wondering how I might justify a new Dyson hairdryer, not for me of course, but for my poor beleaguered hair. I’m thinking I could ask Ceri if there was any Friends of Dyson Discount Scheme, and at this point I superimposed an image of a new hairdryer, hovering over my perfectly coiffed hair, but then the instinctive part of my brain, which apparently is based in my nose, bypassing the daydreaming part, tells my arms to QUICKLY turn off the hairdryer, which is smoking, also known as burning. I do.  The hairdryer continues to give off an acrid smoke that seems to be a precursor to flagrant combustion. In my undies I take it downstairs, place it in an open space on the slate tiles, where if it does ignite, it will not burn other things.  Dressed I come back and pick it up by the cord, like a dead rat, and deposit it in the outdoor bin.  Now I really do need a Dyson hairdryer – for my own safety.

Select Episodes from The Mr Farmhand Series - A Real Collectors Item

OK, it's here and you can all rush over to the Puncher and Wattmann website to buy your very own, limited edition, hard copy of the book Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series.- click on the title for the link, or  go to  https://puncherandwattmann.com/books/book/select-episodes-from-the-mr-farmhand-series/.

Too easy hey? 

A Gulf Containing Carpentaria

Though technically a dock, this gulf, in the Maritime Museum of Brisbane, does contain the whole of the lighthouse boat Carpentaria.  Given that language must be allowed some latitude, I think one might as well pick Carpentaria as shining example of the benefits of illumination.  A fine tropic for conversation.

Shovel Trove - Sturm and Strang at Balmoral

Beach combing isn't what it used to be, this salvage of plastics spades and rakes, little castles and moulds, a minion, a fake fish, an endearing wheel, tea-cup, two pegs, a play time oto-scope, a float, foam cricket ball, one airplane, and a lone barnacle to represent the natural world, a decent trove, that must be balanced with the bags and bags, hand-fulls, milk-crates, weird parcels of wretched plastic trash that were picked up along the beach, to save them getting washed back into the harbour with the night's high tide.  To misquote Wilde, we are all of us in the gutter. We need to lift our game.

In Good Company - or Ned's your Uncle

 

Appropriately bailed up by road art on Apple Tree Flat Road, out of Jerry's Plains, it is feels like I am in good company, notwithstanding how shot up Ned's hat is, the blue sky and those lines overhead all seem to suggest a poem might be lurking.  And indeed, they are, point in case being the latest Cordite where I find myself in excellent company, between Sam Wagan Watson and Judith Beveridge. Shazam. .

Gashapon Conference

Two birds, one sea pig and the Easter Sonny Angel meet. It could be a set up, the Cockatiel seems wise, or at least leery of the set-up.  Wisely so.

Gingko and Cockatiel Fabrications

The gingko nut, a dense and finely texture treat,  might appeal to a cockatiel, even one made of micro-bricks. Certainly the charming gingko leaves in jelly and hard sugar paste pivot on the axis of too sweet -too charming to eat. And just behind it all I see the sleeve of construction - my old red sweatshirt which seems to have flown the coop.

Carrot Umbrellas and Sonny Angel Bunny Boy

Post Easter here and there are still these faux carrot chocolates left in their vase hangout with the strange boy sonny angel with those rabbit ears. It seemed right to\add  a dab of Orton-ish filter to make the thing just that sillier. 

The Bedside Table - or Damaclese's Reading Stack

Vertical bookshelf or current must-reads?  Here is a teetering mix of things finished and unfiled in proper shelfs, books in progress, books that are not quite being read and not ready to be abandoned, things to read or re-read, a box with a few bits and pieces, including a watch and a boxed set of Vietnamese porcelain dolls. And yes, that phone ready to dial for library help.

Subsidence in Suds

In an episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants, he gets the Suds, which is strange in a sponge which is already made of  3-D contiguously tightly packed heterogeneously assorted thin walled spheres, albeit more stable than suds but very like it.  Unlike Sponge Bob I like suds, its airy mallow, baroque exuberance and ephemerality are fine qualities for baths and here, where the humble act of washing a large vase produced a satisfying surfeit of suds, followed by an intriguing subsidence, as if one part of the suds is thinking of leaving but doesn't quite have the wherewithal.

A Knit Bomb of Rodin's The Thinker?

The pensive model is probably pondering how the wavy, perhaps reverse cable, was executed, I know I am.  The finial to her angora cap looks like it might be a transmitter. I suggest you double click to enlarge and appreciate the details of double-knits.

A Bug's Life o La Vida de La Cucuracha

While there are obviously views of epic proportion laid out in the Blue Mountains  it is worth while keeping an eye out for street life, or street art, such as the discreet and ubiquitous wheat paste bug.  No need to squash even as it's already simply two-dimensional.

Radiating Style

The original French radiators still in situ in the Hydro Majestic come in two types and two colours -black and white. This white warmer is curlicue cosy, and the new carpet accordingly takes its cue.

Examples of Foreverness

Like that rare quality of forgiveness, for-everness is sought but not quite ever attainable.Still, setting aside its true geological rigour, and not even contemplating galactic time frames, the Megalong ( no coincidence in this name) Valley's  superb approximation is not be underestimated.

Whiter Shades of Classic Moves

Seemingly in a slow motion calisthenics class, the powdery quality of the light filling the air like suspended talc, the installation of classical and be-plinthed figures of antiquity catalogues gesture. The White Rabbit Gallery's ground floor installation by Zu-Zhen pivots between reproduction and homage to Buddhist multi-armed statutes, and just maybe the chaos of indicators in art work.

Mrs Woo's Adverse Possession of Brass Acres

While it has now been years since  Bart Brassica mysteriously disappeared, Mrs Woo - the great aunt of Eight Feet Pete has got a foot in the door, or perhaps three or four, into the farm, utilitarianly referred to as 'Brassica's' and now morphed by either wit or  linguistic laziness into  Brass Acres, and on the axiom of fields belonging to those who plough them, and by extending this to concept to crops, Mrs Woo now openly surveys her windfall of peppers et al. The question is will she try to sell the excess to her neighbours or put up a peck of pickled ratatouille?

A Sign of Persistently Good Manners

Hirafu in Niseko does lunch on the ski slopes very well, and as we see from this sign at Boyo - a great place for ramen, or seared salmon, salmon roe and nori on rice, they stay polite,.

Bus Stop Self -Playing Piano

Heading towards the loo's on bus trip pit stop between Hirafu and Chitose Airport, a great racket not so much as wafted but barged up the stairs. Wondering how anyone could actually play that badly,  the answer, like its version of a Strauss waltz, come like a punch in the musical nose. No One was playing, the brash belting of keys, the complete lack of finesse, tonality and feel, the mechanical delivery, the way the tune was bossed out of any residual musicality  was No One's fault. I believe the piano stool would have run off it could. I certainly did.

Mount Yohtei - Volcano with Ice

Mount  Yohtei delivers an abject lesson in the deceptive nature of appearances by being entirely imperceptible for six days, and on the seventh, reconfiguring the scale of what I thought was the lay of the land.Who was it that said about the scales on the eyes? It does say there is a lot to learn.

Wearing Winter Whites

Snow on branches, a single leaf, those strange yet promising bud points offered up to the milky winter sun, nothing is as elegant, or effortlessly well dressed, as the tree in winter.

Man Under Board -Voila Another Cover

Ah, nearly e sense of relief to find a manhole cover in snow bound Niseko, or to be more precise the main street of Hirafu  Here the council has kindly heated the footpaths to keep the snow at bay. If on  a winter's day a traveler was looking for the sun in Hirafu this is the most likely spot to find it.  The sun man is wonderfully leoline, and the date gives it a provenance not often seen in man hole covers.

Cosplay Beau Peeps

In the wine department of  Daimaru in Sapporo, I pestered these two Cos Players for a pic. The two rabbit ear fingers still seems to me an ambiguous sign, but the speed in which they downed their shopping and assumed their pose, the instant agreement to be subjects is laudable. We need more Cos Players everywhere.

Play Sydney for Me

Sydney Habour has that habit of flirting, darkly, brightly, the complete coquette, here in just past sunset's monochrome, the architecture of clouds wins out, or does it, over the Bridge and Opera House.

Winging It - Ray-son de etre

A group of manta rays, winging through the aquamarine water of Heron Island.  The elegant take-away ray message here is clear: No to Dirty Coal being trucked through the Reef.

Salt Crust Sunset

The ferry trip  to the Quay, has a constant once-upon-a-time-ness, a feeling that at any minute, you might suddenly shift into a novel.Like Elizabeth Harrower's The Watch Tower, which I have just finished reading.  It as just been reprinted in the excellent Text Classics series, and while I might rightly chastise myself for not reading it before, I could better spend my time reading more Harrower.  Despite the gulf of time between the novels' characters and this ferry trip, they both share in that out of kilter, sense of near claustrophobia.  Harrower's portrait of middle class misogyny is acute, and sadly, still completely relevant.

Museum Pieces -The Man on the Bus

I'd seen a cavalcade of vintage buses on Australia Day, precarious double deckers and these single decks,  museum pieces, leaving the leaving the Leichhardt Bus Depot, and then in the city, this one trundling down Philip Street. That it seems to be flying under the banner of the Museum  of Sydney is apt. That lone, illuminated passenger pure nostalgia.

Manifestations at the Studio Ghibli Museum

My agent abroad, asked to snap up any interesting manhole covers, sent back this one-off gem, a pure Ghblii-ism, the functional ears and riveting smile say it all. 

Goldilocks Planets -An Egg Sample

Somethings make such passionately good visual metaphors, are so illustrative of something profound yet ineffable ( and yes, I admit that so far this post is entirely content free) that you feel honour bound to construct some half-poached back story to so the visual hyperbole gets an outing. Here my tenet is that for every dark ( though passionate) and in hospitable planet, there is a goodly globe, where Czechoslovakia figures largely. OK?

Starfish Dance Moves

Albeit that it moves a little slowly, the starfish shows a lithe fluency, an elegant twist to its moves.  Party time in the star fish pool.  Flex!