Bondi QA

This photo has a soundtrack - girls from southern UK

 blagging about the night before and the temporary week to come.

 I was mesmerised.

sometimes the camera

sometimes the camera is just too slow

but that's ok

Dear heads of medocrity...

Dear heads of mediocrity,

Thank you for following begborosteel.  

You are our first stranger. 

I am so excited that such an urbane, highres blog

 could be a little interested in hillbillies like us.  

I love your experiments in people, place and form. 

Back when I was your age (which I am guessing at) the only experiments I managed where based on body chemistry, boites des nuites and highways. 

The documentation is long lost.

Here's something for you, from the archive.  

500km northeast of Alice Springs, not so very long ago.

xx Charlotte

Mojo Neckpiece

I've been attempting to incorporate this little wonder into the clothing I've been working on, but it completely upstages everything I set it against. 

I found it on an otherwise disastrous trip to the Op Shop at the end of Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, just after being forced to relinquish my bundle of treasures to tend to a three year old who was determined to become, screaming, one with the pavement. For some reason I went back inside and saw this wooden poppet under the glass counter.  Scraped back sides, red soled feet, no arms.  What stories it could tell.  

Somebody said "hot chocolate" at Zappa, next to The Butterfly Club, and the three year old turned back into a perfectly sensible little man.

When I got back to the studio I tried pushing in the wooden dowel, thought it looked wrong, and then found that it refused to be drawn out. So I  felt compelled to continue forcing it through with hits from a meat tenderiser (hammer gone awol again), praying with every hit that the doll wouldn't split in two in the process.  

I wonder what our futures hold?

Auntie Sha Sha's Domestic Wish Box/Mother Creation

Auntie Sha Sha made big money back at the turn of the century, and she threw it around Surrey Hills and Glebe and the City.  She could be often be found window licking at Dimitri's Pizzeria, frittering afternoons away at The Cricketers Arms, diving off patent platforms, slapping her leather skirt around the NSW Rail Infrastructure Corporation, dragging hard garbage through Bondi, and performing for the 6am cleaners at The Pink Pussy Cat.  She made her first forays into mojo manipulative sculpture in the Matron's Flat behind Glebe Library. Now she's back.

From this Friday at 6.00pm, Auntie Sha's Sha's Domestic Wish Box may be visited at The Creator's Gallery, on  The  Lincoln Causeway in beautiful regional borderline Wodonga. Inspired by european and japanese house-hold shrines and god shelves, The Wish Box is a home for the ancestors, a place to stand and call for help, a meditation point, and somewhere to put the physical, spiritual, and mental clutter that all houses attract. Visiting domestic gods and goddesses are invited to record their wishes, hopes and secrets on the tags that surround the box.

The Wish Box is installed as part of the group show Mother Creation, an annual event that is much anticipated by mothers, artists and friends in The Border Region.  Last year's opening   night  attracted 120 folk to the tiny Creator's Gallery. This year, doors will be opened between the gallery and La Maison cafe and the opening event will merge with a contributing artist's birthday party.  Artists will be wearing an apron collection that spans 40 years, crafted over a lifetime by "Nan" Turner and kindly loaned by Ms Hillside.  And did I forget to mention the play corner and the legendary Champagne Sorbet cocktails?....all very over-exciting.

How the Hills

How the hills have been

lifting their skirts

to this gauzy can can

and sunlight blazes

streaks and streams

down through the clouds.

All is blue and gold and rimmed with silver.

Just one pink violent slash

and I go twisting

through the break neck moss

to the place that is

wet sister to our valley.

Fires burn by the side of the road,

creeping like feuds.

Dead gums gather and reach.

A round moon chases me in

up river.

A cattle dog runs me out.

Bread, Culture and Starters

I remember what life was like out here, before Dad hooked up the internet.  American Author Henry Thoreau wrote of the "quiet desparation" in the mass of men, and  that about sums it up. No point ranting and raving about the pressures, because there's no one to listen.  We've all done our fair share of running to the back paddocks for a moonlit sob or a yell, but those essential  outbursts have been, thankfully, rare.

I remember the early days of computers here. At first, according to farming tradition, we bought second hand.  Like horses that bailed up at crucial moments, or  tractors that clapped out at harvest, those computers set us up and let us down.  I remember Dad, under his desk like a mechanic under a chassis, networking his outmoded hard drives to the newer ones.  Never buy new, never throw anything away.

We buy new these days. Through access to all the information flying around the broader world our little world has opened up, and our minds have opened up too.  Which leads me to the gut. Many say that's a kind of brain too.  We've had a rocky relationship with bread over the past few years, and it's taken a while to figure out just where the problem lies.  Current thinking is that commercial quick rise yeasts lead to shocking stomach acidity, when a basic PH is the most desirable. Both Mum and Dad researched the case, via the web.  I just pined and whined for the Sydney sour doughs in Bondi corner stores and the rye loaves from Frank's bakery in Glenhuntly Road in Elsternwick.

About a month ago, Mum ordered sour dough starter cultures on-line and she set up a mini-lab inside the great, black, carved, almost hideous german press in her sitting room.  Open the top door on the right and you are faced with seething grey goo and and an interrogation strength light bulb. The product is pretty gothic too - hard, strong-flavoured, dark loaves best approached slowly with a very sharp knife. Sometimes they come with surprises - I'm having trouble finding words for the way I enjoyed the fig and walnut combination.  Well. Shall we say thinly shaved, lightly toasted, heavily buttered, laid gently on the willow pattern and sluiced with Russian Caravan tea?

Just like a bought one. (Only better).

Order in The House

Some years, my birthdays are tight little fizzers that last as long as a bit of cake.  Other years, I have what I call "birth weeks" - great rolling celebrations with new friends and old, massive shakeups, and sunny daffodil weather.  This year has been a corker.  The latest bout of inspiration has generated some great work, and resulted in complete domestic mayhem.  Living and working in a converted grain shed, with a lot of open plan spaces and not a lot of storage, makes minimalist calm a very distant dream.  One of my many presents to self this year was a fabulous shelf and sorting trays from Toole's Disposals.  Designed to hold 11 rolls of fabric, it will stand me in great stead should I ever learn to sew straight. In the meantime, it has allowed me to shelve my projects in full view and work a lot more efficiently.  We stay-at-home mother creators often battle piles of stuff mixed with kids toys, groceries and laundry - this system has helped me achieve a degree of separation.  A dedicated studio would be impossible for me right now.  The challenge is to work without shutting my little darling right out.

The upshot is, however, that Joseph's wonderful broad floorspace, generally occupied by the massive train set and soccer pre-training sessions, has become inaccessible.  The solution was to change bedrooms.  For a couple of years now, I've been occupying the mezzanine, which was designed as a master bedroom space.  When I mooted the idea of giving the space to Joseph I got a lot of comments about sons of single mothers and the dangers of elevating them to "man of the house" positions. Allowing them to dictate.  Truth be told, the space had never quite worked for me, something to do with the feng shui and neccessary placement of the big bed (first bed and mattress I have ever owned).  I had been thinking that the sense of discomfort was something to do with the fact that I haven't lived in one place for more than 18 months since 1984, but it was probably more to do with windows, roof angles and entry placements.

My dear friend Dawn visited yesterday and played volunteer Domestic (Joe and I both agree that a maid would be a great addition to our family). Thanks to Dawn,  Joseph's now upstairs in a fabulous little fort, with the dresser that belonged to his father and massive cupboards for sweeping the clutter right off the carpet.  The cupboards remind me of Japanese space philosophy - in traditional Japanese house, the cupboards are about a 1/4 of the room space, the beds are tucked away during the day and the living space is far more workable.All the hot air rises up to that room, so I no longer need to check for kicked off-quilts in the middle of the night.  (Joe has a tendency to shed pyjamas and thrash about like a little helicopter .)

To keep us going through the process, I fortified the maid with her favourite cocktail:

The Domestic (fruity, bitter, fizzy, frosty)

Ice frozen flat in a shallow tray and smashed to look like shards of glass

30ml frozen Absolut over ice in large glass

Italian grapefruit soda

20ml Campari plunged into the centre

Squeeze of fresh lime juice and 1/4 lime to garnish

10ml Cointreau dropped on top

swizzle and top up with blood orange juice 

Dawn reckoned pineapple thyme would be a nice touch, but I haven't got to the herb garden yet.

Now I have a neat little bedroom, with a big bed, block out blinds,  a functional wardrobe and the perfect place to hang Katsuya's Tomatoes.  I still haven't decided whether or not to peel the glow in the dark stars off the ceiling.

Just a little more de-cluttering and everything will be perfect.  

We head to South Melbourne on Friday, to house sit for two months. 

forgetting to remember

Joe and I hammered the 60km into town on Saturday night, heading for a very special birthday party.  We'd never met Bec, but she'd been recommended to us by our friend Helen and we were so honoured to have been invited. 

This talk of friends is not casual.  As creatives, out here, away from the city tribes of like minds, fellow freaks are rare as hen's teeth.  There are people we know and see from time to time, but very few whose eyes don't start to glaze over at the first mention of "projects", "writing" and painting anything other than trees and water.  I drive the Murray Valley Highway to town a couple of times a week, if I'm feeling brave. There are always a thousand errands to run, and friends are squeezed in.  My Albury friend Nick once criticised me for always having one foot out the door. And he told me off for drinking in a frenzy when I took him to Prudence (last house I ever shared, now a very fine bar) in West Melbourne.

I read once that our seafaring ancestors, and the landlocked sailors who shore, waltzed and jobbed their way around this continent, have a bit to do with the way we still drink.  For three quarters of the year you get work, isolation, lack of water. Then, when the sheds cut out and you're cashed up, you roll into town, blow the dough as fast as possible, and then drag yourself back out to necessary deprivations. And family. Personally, I feel I spent most of my youth coming down on Greyhounds.

So. Last Saturday I partied like a sailor and Joe did too, fuelled, most of all, by the joy of association with like minds. Singing, dancing, dressing up, flirting, feasting, cocktails, yarns, kids, balloons, fire. Ahh.

But before the party I actually stopped, and pulled over to photograph the landscape that I only ever seem to watch out of the corner of my eyes as we barrel by.  At the time I was frustrated by the lack of zoom (too rough on cameras to risk anything that sticks its neck out too far) and by the time I got the camera sorted the sun had all but set.

Sometimes I forget to remember that I live in this wonderful place.

Looking at the shot now, I see that the annoying red blur below the half sunk sun looks, ever so slightly, like a flame crowned heart. 

PS A short story has emerged in time for The Write Around The Murray literary festival competition. Thanks to Felicity of The Witches Garden for scaring me into doing it!  A little tweak today, and it will be posted.

PPS Wish me happy birthday!

XX Char.

Going Commando

Deep button flies

Cut broad to just above the knee

Pleated and skirty but with legs

Heavy pure white cotton drill

Fully adjustable waist...these are a few of my favourite things about this armload of garments.

Try a pair on and suddenly everything becomes clear.

And I thought the saying "going commando" was something to do with muddy fatigues and saving on laundry.

These shorts are so easy and breezy we may never need to launder again.

Even when the summer to come starts to sweat our way.

Dreaming of sunny skies 

(and sharing a little of the love on Big Cartel)

Soon my darlings, soon.

XX Charlotte