October 31. Day 305. Spooky

 

Jack-o-'lanterns are, apparently, a way of protecting your home against the undead. Phooey. 

I know children are typically not fond of vegetables but really a pumpkin is not exactly terrifying. Get your act together, Undead.

Having said that, however, the decaying mouldy flesh of a fruit-fly-infested pumpkin is a huge gross out.

Like this one. The people a few doors up had what looked like a completely awesome Halloween Party on Saturday night (my invitation obviously got lost in the letterbox).

Clearly someone had got their carving knife out and a series of  jack-o-'lanterns lined the entrance.

Cobwebs, bats and other spooky paraphernalia also abound.

Five days later it is still there obviously waiting for the real Halloween today.

I haven't seen any undead around the place (with the possible exception of my own face in the mirror at 5am) so I assume the carved pumpkins have done their job.

They have been far less successful is keeping away the types of vermin that like to feast on rotting vegetable matter. Trick or treat all right.

It's very popular to be dismissive of Halloween and poo poo it as an another infiltration of American culture into Australia.

I say any excuse to dress up and to get to know the neighbours a bit better should be embraced.

But I stick to my assertion of a few years back that we should make a local adaptation to the old tradition.

If Aussie kids are going to demand lollies with the threat of menace, they should dress up as Ned Kelly.

Boo!

October 30. Day 304. Mother duck said "quack, quack" come back

You feed them. You nurture them and then the little loves spread their wings and fly away.
Today the annual QUT Journalism Student Awards are on, a ceremony that recognises our best and brightest and farewells another clutch of journalism students.
This ceremony and the graduation which will soon follow are bitter sweet occasions.
It really gives you a great sense of pride and satisfaction to see those fresh faced and idealistic new students develop to accomplished young people ready to take on the world.
You like to think that you have played a role in honing and focusing natural talent by taking them under your wing and feeding them on a diet combining nurturing and tough love. But in the end it's what they choose to do with that which matters most. You can take a horse to water and all that.
So today I feel a bit like this Mother Duck I photographed at South Bank this morning. The charges are still right by in the calm water but you know they are about to take off.
I know they will go far and I sincerely hope they enjoy the ride.

October 29. Day 303. Happy Anniversary

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.  ~Hoosier Farmer
I'm sorry, what?! 
Today I have been married for 18 years and I can honestly say I have never sung while I've mopped the floor and the noise that would come from my mouth should muddy boots belonging to my dearly beloved have created the mess, the noise coming from my mouth would in no way resemble a song.
Seriously, who writes these quotes? Let's try another one.
 A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.  The order varies for any given year.  ~Paul Sweeney
Actually the order doesn't just vary for any given year, the order is very much a day to day prospect, sometimes hour by hour.
Time is a weird thing. In a way, 18 years doesn't seem that long at all. In another way I can't remember a time when I wasn't married to Charles.
I think marriage is a but like Still Life with Landscape by Robert Parr which I photographed in the sculpture park on Wickham Terrace today.
Sometimes it's flowers. Sometimes it's a long road. Sometimes there are clouds and sometimes it's just hanging around the house.
Marriage isn't my whole life but it's very much the framework for how I do everything.
So Happy Anniversary, Sweetness. According to the index of modern anniversary gifts for 18 years I can expect porcelain. Perhaps just cleaning the porcelain thrones we have... I wouldn't even insist you sing while you do it!

October 28. Day 302. The F Word

Today's post is brought to you by the letter F.
When my son was in about Year 2 another boy in his grade came up to me and whispered conspiratorially: "I know an F word."
"Goodness," I replied. "At your age you should know quite a few words starting with F."
Of course he didn't mean an F word but THE F word and as we all know not all F words are created equal.
Fat is not a nice F word when referring to flab on your body but bloody fantastic in food.
Which brings me to families where finding fun so often involves finding funds.
The best things in life may be free but an awful lot of the other things we volunteer to do or get talked into are anything but.
It's not fair (or is that fare).
Anyway when there is free fun on offer, families will come flocking.
So it was at the Carindale Recreation Reserve today where the Green Heart Fair saw large happy crowds under grey skies.
One of the favourite activities was the giant slide which Peter Maddock and daughters Mya, 3, and Grace, 5, were totally getting into.
Fabulous. Frivolous. Focused.
I have no idea how many F words that is. Too many. But does show that sometimes the best things in life ARE free and that is fair or perhaps fayre.
Finished.

October 27. Day 301. The school reunion

 

The school days were not the best of my life (those were the party years of university and the early working career). I remember school as being characterised teenage angst, hours and hours of study and a whole lot of pressure (mainly from myself) to perform and succeed.

Having said that though I really liked school, have many happy memories and I made lifelong friends.
Which makes my school reunion avoidance hard to understand or explain.
I know why I didn't want to go to the first one. I worried that I would be judged and would not meet the grade (see what I did there?). This said a whole lot more about me than any of my school colleagues but that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Later though I'd got over all that (or perhaps I had just lost weight, got married, had a good house and a successful career; all those things I thought were "lacking" the first time around).
But I still didn't go. I just wasn't interested. Largely I had kept in touch with the people I wanted to keep in touch with and figured there was a reason I had lost touch with the others.
It's hard to believe that it's 30 years since school (much easier to believe first thing in the morning before the application of make-up). I can't say that the school reunion idea actually filled me with joyous anticipation and the format of Mass and a morning tea I actually received with much scorn but I decided to go.
Thanks to Facebook and Twitter I spend hours a day communicating with people I hardly know so why not some face-to-face with those I spent six hours a day with for six years?
So back through those daunting gates of All Hallows and ....

• I survived
• Someone needs to develop a phone app that scans an older face and compares it against school records to give you a name and important details such as "sat next to me in English for five years"
• Having a phone with photos of your children is essential 
• Discussion will go to your occupation and offspring. No-one seems to want to know about any significant other
• There is no right thing to wear. Wear what you feel comfortable in
• A room full of grown women can make as much noise as a room full of teenage girls
• Some people really don't change in 30 years
• I didn't end up under the table but I did climb up on one to get a better photo angle

And ....
There will be another reunion in five years and I think I will go (the word that there will be no Mass increases the odds).

October 26. Day 300. Tweeting

If your shorts were to fall down in the middle of the street due to a clothing malfunction you would desperately hope no-one had noticed. Right?
It would be like that episode of Fawlty Towers: "Don't mention the elastic. I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it."
And yet ...earlier today I told twitter: "A day that starts with your shorts falling down in public because the elastic goes may turn out to be a challenging day".
Well that's only telling the 1581 people who follow me on Twitter and  my 319 "friends" on Facebook
Yep, that's really crowing about it.
I've been on Twitter since September 4, 2008,  and since then have shared 15,144 gems from my disjointed brain with the world.
I've tweeted while my house was being robbed. I've tweeted in a funeral chapel waiting for the service to begin and from my kitchen as the fire brigade doused the flames.
Why? I have no idea. As best I can explain it I find it liberating to get things off my chest and to gain instant feedback, support or comment.
It also means I don't have to hope my husband notices I've had a haircut or doesn't notice I've bought a new frock. I've already 'fessed up.
Critics might ask "why would anyone care if you got caught with my pants down?".
Truth is, most people probably don't. See this willie wagtail? This morning he was tweeting away in the mangroves by the path along the river in front of GOMA.
Hundreds of people ran, walked, rode and skated past. Not one of them seemed to notice or care what Willie was tweeting about.
Twitter's just like that. People make noise. It's there. Mostly it wafts by you and doesn't even register in your consciousness.
But sometimes it strikes the right chord and you listen for a bit and perhaps join in the conversation. Willie was music to my ears this morning. I choose to believe he wasn't squawking about the safety pins holding up my pants. I mean that's something you'd choose to keep to yourself, right?

October 25. Day 299. Where there's smoke

What is it about sleeping?
If you have to get up early, instead of making the most of every delicious minute bonding with your pillow, you seem to wake up every half an hour haunted by the read out on the digital alarm clock.
This morning I got bored with that stupid game and decided the evil forces of "should I be awake yet?" had won and I would just get up and go walking.
There was a pay off.
All those hideous bush fires circling the city in recent days had left a very obvious smell of smoke in the air and where there's smoke there's often awesome sunrises and sunsets.
So for those of you who did manage to sleep in, the photo just above is what you missed.
Yes, a very attractive sunrise from Highgate Hill this morning but to tell you the truth the view of the inside of my eyelids would have suited me better.
And for sleepy heads, the good news is the sunset photographed at the top also from Highgate Hill, was even better