A short break

in transmission (laziness) and a short break in Sydney explain my absence from blogging.
I find it awfully dispiriting and engendering of a nasty shade of green around my gills when I open up a blog to be confronted with "the reason I haven't been blogging is..." and  it goes on to describe their journey from the base camp at Everest to the summit or a fabulous holiday in some previously unspoiled corner of the earth (until they arrived with a hoard of other tourists). Well dear folks, I too have been on a fabulous short break! Two glorious days in Sydney sharing a hotel with our overseas based son and taking in the best of dining and sightseeing Sydney offers.
Our hotel was the fabulous Park Hyatt which is situated almost underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge and which gives fabulous views of the harbour and the Opera House across the water.
Australia day on the harbour was wonderful and the crowds of people were well behaved and enjoying the sunshine. We hopped on a ferryboat and for the princely sum of $2.50 each (Seniors discount, the only consolation for growing old) were in the thick of the activity, tall ships, ferryboat races and the enormous flotilla out that day.

 At Rockpool. Happy face!

 Our room at the Park Hyatt (can you tell I was impressed? that is the biggest bed I have ever seen!)

 How I felt about my holiday (the entrance to Luna Park).

 A sentimental response to seeing my old "stamping ground". An etegami of the Opera House.


The high point of the trip was eating at the three hatted Rockpool restaurant, truly beautifully presented  memorable food but being nouvelle cuisine it did leave us space in our tummies for a sneaky ice cream on the way back to the hotel. Yum Cha lunch on Saturday was a world away from the quiet ambience of the Rockpool but we gorged ourselves on chicken's feet and wonton, to some ill effect I must confess but it was simply lovely going down! 
The rains have come since we returned home and our thoughts turn to the disastrous flood we suffered in 2007 so we are wishing hard that the rain eases and we can relax again, life is back to nearly normal!

Ode to a peach.

Well not an ode really, more of a glutton's rant. Of all the peaches that I have eaten in my long life my favourite kind is the white fleshed peach.
Once upon a time in the dark old days it was rare to eat a peach that hadn't been home grown, living as we did in the far arid reaches of the state. To compare a store bought, gassed, stored, transported and probably predigested peach with the glorious ones of memory is to compare a "like" with a passion.
BUT, yesterday the impossible happened, a peach (a white fleshed peach moreover) in all of it's peachy perfection landed in my shopping trolley and more than lived up to my (usually disappointed) expectations.
I brought that beauty home, meaning to paint it before I ate it and this sad etegami is the proof of what happened next.

Back to blogging.

Well, having survived the Christmas/New Year celebrations and the heat wave conditions we are experiencing I decided it was time to burst onto the blogging scene once again.
Life is a bit of a struggle at the moment, drinking lots of water to keep my lousy lungs hydrated.  I used to love summer but find it increasingly difficult to stay well in the heat and humidity.
I have been doing a few constructive things while confined to the cool of the aircon, weeding out cupboards, removing a few of the cobwebs and relocating the spiders that love our high ceilings where they are safely out of reach of my regular but cursory cleaning attempts. I did remember this very relevant Haiku by Issa while I was wielding the broom and apologizing to the spiders, reminding them that they had a had a good run or "a fair suck of the sauce bottle" as we usually say!

Another (the last I promise) Year of the Snake etegami.

Lastly an etegami to thank a neighbour for the wonderful chilli peppers she gave me.

Follow your star.

Happy Christmas everyone.

The postman always rings...oops!,sorry wrong title,

Yep my life is not nearly as exciting as Lana Turner's in the movie of that name and my dear Prof can rest easy as I have no plans to bump him off unless........
When the mail arrives at our house there is not the usual reluctance to take the long walk to the box to collect it, bills are outnumbered by etegami these days. What a joy to open it and see that someone, whom you know only online, somewhere, it could be anywhere, (try Iceland for instance) has thought of you and sent their precious work to you. Doesn't get any better than that!
I try to acknowledge the cards in my other blog, Etegami Inbox but I thought it would be nice to show some of them here.
Quite a few of the cards are still hanging in the exhibition at John Hunter Hospital, they have been there six months, longer than most pictures hang. The curator explained to me that they provide a welcome distraction to patients and visitors who stop to read the captions and enjoy the colourful painting.
Here I am with Buster, (he thought this photo was for Facebook and he doesn't approve of FB. so he covered his  eyes) surrounded by my riches.

Happy (and safe) Christmas everybody.

Life gets in the way of blogging.

Which is as it should be I suppose. Friends often chide me for "wasting time" on the internet but they don't know my secret! The secret is that I have  MORE friends on the internet than in the real "world" and they never, ever chide me for anything, so there!
Second son came from Singapore and went last weekend, all in the space of a few hours as he made his way to see his favourite band (Devo) twice.
Today was my last visit to the hospital to have my porta cath 'tuned' up until the new year, I am very grateful that I have not had to have it accessed for over 8 months, i.e. no hospital admissions. The year got off to a shaky start with three admissions but by following a strict regime of inhaling antibiotics, hypertonic saline and using my various machines, all of which takes up hours of my day, I can be thankful that the inevitable has been delayed!
The garden is riotous, the pests are thriving,  the first few goodies are being harvested and I have been busy sending out etegami to my online friends to wish them a happy holiday season.

This etegami is the last one I will share on the theme of the Year of the Snake which is coming up all too soon.

I know, bad puns, what can I say?

My "Hole in the Bucket" list!

Unaccustomed as I am to thinking, I have been thinking  lately about "the list" that many of my contemporaries speak of, "The Bucket List" which was popularized by the eponymous movie.
I use capitals to emphasize the fact that even to speak of things undone at this stage of life is to somehow express dissatisfaction with what has gone before. I have no such regrets, but it struck me that these lists always seem to include activities that rather than enhance life can seriously endanger it.
Being a risk averse being  my "Hole in the Bucket"list would include many of them; skydiving, bungee jumping, paragliding, eating Krispy Kreme donuts, you get the picture? Happy to let these things drip out of my bucket. Perhaps it is because I manage to live so well in my imagination, a skill I think forced upon me by a wan and listless childhood.
To be surrounded by the people I love, flowers, pets and diversions I can enjoy at home, those are the things on my List.
Which brings me to the most dangerous activity I indulge in, a drive to the garden centre!

How I plan to survive Christmas.

Yes it is that time again! Retailers seem to anticipate Christmas earlier every year, pretty soon we will just have all our "gifting opportunities" rolled into one mega day on January first every year. Come to think of it that isn't a bad idea, perhaps I should take out copyright on it! On second thoughts, local websites linked to a monster online sales event recently had so many hits that the whole thing crashed with such a thud it could be heard in outer space.
 Online shopping is sooo easy now that if it were not for the joys of being part of a mass event, rather like living through the Blitz, (I know, don't be flippant about awful events in history) I would never leave my desk.
This first etegami  is for those overseas folk who must be greeted a little earlier than the locals so I do have a reason for jumping the gun a bit.

Gone "Troppo"!

Yep, that was me in Singapore, the heat and humidity really does bring on a kind of mental fug and general torpor.
What's that? Singapore you say?, well yes, I finally dried out my recalcitrant lungs sufficiently to fly to Singapore to visit our son and his family. Those who know me will breathe a sigh of relief that I have finally achieved my goal as I have been boring them rigid for the last three years rabbiting on about my desperate longing to make the trip "When I am well enough"!
The journey was relatively painless in the lovely big Qantas A380 and it was well worth the money to fly business class, more space and fully reclining seats.
There were minor hiccups both outward and inward bound, cancelled for a day going and put on a different flight coming home. Unfortunately the homeward flight to Sydney was on a 747 and that was not so pleasant but only six and a half hours flying time and we got to get our snouts in the trough in the Qantas lounge while we waited!
Apart from a few forays into the tourist world in Singapore we spent most of our time with the family and that was wonderful. I did manage to do quite a lot of etegami and sketching so be prepared to be bored, not by my holiday photos, but by some of my holiday etegami.

On second thoughts I will bore you with one holiday snap.......

 

The fish did not seem to mind that I was having a bad hair day. 

No comment.

Thank you Andrew, just what I always wanted a rubber chicken handbag, now to 'cluck' up the courage to be seen on the street with her, Poulet, a French name because there just seems something so chic about her!