Last day of 2022. Welcoming the New Year.

2022 felt like a release, a revival and a time to reconnect. And throughout the year it has been just so, an ability to travel and meet with family and friends, a year when we could tentatively explore new parts of Aus and find joy in going to the theatre and concerts and organising many events once more. This amongst the ongoing war in the Ukraine, the terrible travails of the Truss government in the UK, inflation and climate change events, but the hopeful beginnings of the Albanese government here. The year has come to an end with all the boys being here with us to celebrate Christmas. What joy. Sharing good food and fine bottles of wine and many bubbles in between, days on Australia's pristine beaches and bush lands, time at home on an unusually rainy summer, playing Uno and backgammon and reading good books. 

Two head for Sydney today to party the night away. Lucky to have one with us for a few more days. A friend sent me a thank you card for the Xmas party on the 23rd - this is her card. It could not be a more appropriate message so I am sharing it with you all. 

Happy New Year Everyone - BEE HAPPY and healthy and may the year bring you all you wish for. 

Connectivity

Today I went to my local Greek shop to get some jumbo kalamata olives for the Xmas Party. It is staffed by some great women who are very helpful. I wanted something special so I approached a Chinese lady who was stocking the shelf. She could not speak English but that did not deter her, she whipped out her phone and encouraged me to speak into it, which I did and she instantly heard the Chinese translation and directed me correctly to the shelf where I found what I was looking for. I thanked her and smiled. Wow - 

I went to the till and the woman asked where I was from and I said I was Greek Cypriot - she said she was too, mother from Rhodes and father from Cyprus, a little village in the Famagusta area called Milia which is Turkish Occupied. I told her about my family in Famagusta and we bonded in some corner of West End in Oz.  

In Oz you often find big hunky cars decorated with tinsel -Its all about the seafood and the beers now. 

Two tales for today or is that three ?! 

Bookgroup - End of year 2022

 Have we read some good books?

We all agreed we had and were looking forward to reading some more in 2023 - but for the moment, it was silly hats time and some good food to be shared around the table. Aldi provided the best bons bons or Xmas Crackers for this girlie group I have ever come across and the best jokes were : 

 I am tall when I am young and I am short when I am old - what am I ? A candle.

 What do you call a cow that eats your grass ? A lawn moo- wer! 

Standouts from the year Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe, Bodies of Light Jennifer Down, Crossroads Jonathan Franzen, Elena Ferrantes The Lying life of Adults and Freezing Order by Bill Browden. Some rubbish ones along the way but we wont talk about them. Thank you to all the Wondrous Women who come along on this reading journey. More adventures await in 2023.

First day of summer - 1st Dec 2022

Its grey and wet, windy and well not very noiiice out there and there is more rain in the forecast for days to come. So it will either be a month of mulled wine and soup or Aperol spritzes and salads. Either way the Poinciana season is upon us and it screams Christmas and let's start decorating and making this city more beautiful than it already is - we shall ignore the wet - its good for the garden. 

I I took this photo yesterday while there was still a smidgen of blue in the sky... none today 

I love how trees in gardens are decorated, no need to cut any down or transport them somewhere else. Where they are growing they are glowing and that is how it should be. 

Looking back, one of my favourites from the archive, my one and only Tara looking mildly festive - and looking forward, baby Zenonas smiled for the first time for his mummy and daddy yesterday and life could not be sweeter. Boys dribbling in, the World Cup keeping us up, the Messiah, and a Very Naughty Xmas - so much to look forward to. Happy December everyone. 

 

Variety is the spice of life

My day could not be more varied if I tried. A pre Xmas shared haul from the Beehives yielded 12 kilos. I was the photographer. The Beekeeper did all the really hard work on quite a warm day in his bee suit. Of course it is the bees who are the real heroes - they have plenty of honey left for them to enjoy. 

Then onto the new exhibition at QAGOMA - the Gallery of Modern Art with the title of AIR. 

Broken into a number of related subjects, Atmosphere, Shared, Burn, Invisible and Change. Artists from around the world brought their works on the subject of air, how we share it, how we fear it, how it changes for different social groups. "When artists address global issues confronting us today they energise us to change the world by changing the way we look at it".

The works were monumental and tiny, mesmerising and magical and I was able to lose myself in that for a good few hours. The beautiful trees on the way to the Gallery. 

Mona Hatoum's Hot Spot III 2009  her sphere of the earth has the perimeters of all continents burning dangerously red - its not just about the war zones, none of us are too far from hot spots anymore. 

Carlos Amorales Black Cloud focuses on our own relationships and our connection with nature. Something that feels terribly out of balance. This work was conceived after the death of his grandmother but also refers to the perilous migration of monarch butterflies between north America and Mexico. Populations are collapsing, black is the colour of mourning and also decay. 

Tomas Saracenos spectacular spheres. 15 Mirrored spheres create a space for rest and reflection. Where air becomes breath. They are part transparent and part reflective. Here I am reflected in the biggest. 

My favourite of all - seen previously in the gallery was Jonathan Jones monumental work Giran - the winds from 2018 of change and apprehension made with the help of so many volunteers and replete with the Voice of Dr Uncle Stan Grant, the smell of eucalyptus and the murmurations of Birds. 

Here is a detail of the pieces. Made with feathers collected from all over Australia. Bagaay - emu eggshell spoon, bindu ganay, a freshwater mussel scraper, waybarra, a weaving start, bingal a bone awl, a dhola ny a wooden spear and galigal a stone knife. 

And as if this was not enough, an afternoon lecture on Machiavelli's The Prince. Polyglot Arthur Cominos recited it in Italian and then gave us the Greek translation as written by Nikos Kazantzakis. He ended his talk with a a Chinese fable of the Fox and Cockerel spoken in Mandarin - well that was different - and it all turned on the understanding of the term hypochrite which in Greek means to undertake a role. 

So with a delicate crescent moon lying down in the sky, I shall leave you with this quote from Kazantzakis - not part of todays lecture, but one which lends itself to the art work. 

"Since we cannot change reality let us change the eyes which see reality". 

From one Turkey to another

Our first Xmas lunch done and dusted already, the sky was an azure blue with swirls of clouds travelling languorously across it, there was a breeze, but it was a warm and sunny day, a harbinger of summer which is just round the corner. Our gardening group enjoying a lunch in a sumptuous garden. Not a hint really of Xmas in the air other than the festive ham and the turkey salad, talking of which, this is the one I came across today on my walk, more colourful then the ones which are about to be consumed in most US households for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Males are busy courting females and building bigger and better mounds to attract them. The heat emitted by the decaying foliage helps incubate the eggs. Dad even drills holes in the mounds and inserts his bill to check the temperature in the mound. Now that is what I call a well regulated home. Happy Thanksgiving to all - a lot to be grateful for in our lives. 

As the year draws to a close I look back on it and realise how radically life has changed in these two years of the pandemic. There may be a wave round the corner but the sting has hopefully gone out of covid and we can hug and kiss family and friends. It feels unbelievably comforting to be here now, though the pain and suffering of many cannot be forgotten. 

Time to bake a Xmas Cake and think of a few presents for the family. Xmas takes on a different feel in the sub tropics as it is stripped of the conventional, but looking at all the beauty around me I am happy to embrace new and exciting ways of looking at this time of year. 

A pot of dancing orchid Ladies 

Gold tipped decorations wouldn't you say? 

Queens Wreath draping delicately 

Monkeys tails planning their escape 

Matchsticks ready to light up the night 

The colour of Xmas in our trees - the Poincianas ready to burst into colour - coming soon. 

When Insta comes alive, and the very ancient.

Last night I met a man with whom I have been friends on Insta for a couple of years. I am a great fan and he is a great Cretan. He was born in Australia but found his heritage and purpose late in his twenties and he has not looked back. He is the owner of Philhellene a wonderful lively bustling restaurant in Moonee Ponds which serves authentic Cretan food. https://www.philhellene.com.au John Rerakis and his wife Susie have been at the forefront of the best Greek food for some 30 years -Behind every Greek man are several amazing women, his wife and two mothers who produce a lot of the excellent food served there.He however is the soul and party of his guests. We drank Cretan wine and ate artichokes with broad beans and goat with peas. Delicious ! 

john.rerakis_ insta He has an allotment and grows many of his own vegetables. 

Had to walk some of that off this morning so headed to the Hellenic Museum which I have been meaning to visit for a long time.They had an array of interesting exhibitions.

The well behaved women had all taken off behaving badly.

The exhibitions took me through Greek civilisation from its earliest days to the present. 

A Cypriot figurine of the 7th C BCE of a male wearing a high tiara. Perhaps they enjoyed dressing up even in those days!

A Nolan amphora from Nola in Southern Italy 450 BCE with an erotic scene between man bearing a fruit and a woman holding a myrtle branch and the duck in the middle alludes to Aphrodite as one of her familiar attributes. 

A Mycenaean figurine of the Phi type resembling the letter φ of the Greek Alphabet. 14th to 13th C BCE.

A myrtle wreath from the 4th to 3rd c BCE. 

There was a whole exhibition dedicated to Cypriot pottery of which there were some lovely examples. I liked this one. 

Moving to the Byzantine times I have special reason to reproduce a St Anthony and a St George. I looked for a St Nicholas but alas he was busy in Bondi. The wooden chest brought back memories of afternoons at home watching my mother create her own chests which were just as beautiful and the delicate embroidery reminiscent of some of the treasures left from my yiayia in Kozani. 

It was a delightful morning of pride in my heritage and reminiscences of my family. 

In Melbourne

The city came into view above the overpass and greeted us grey with clouds hanging low, heavy in the sky. Its been a while since we have been here so we headed out to explore. A Pizza at Max's set us up for a few hours for finding our way in the city and enjoying the crowds, the diversity of people and the music. 

We stopped outside the old Post office Building now an H&M and I went up to one of the women protesting. She asked me if I wanted to stand with her for a while and my eyes filled with tears. Of course I will and I told her we all should, this was not an acceptable way for people to live. I called hubby to hold one of the signs while I took a photo of them and we stood and talked about the power of protest and how important it was that we should all show solidarity with the women in Iran. They had been standing for ten hours. We can all spare time to stand with them, sign a petition for sanctions against Iran and support their cause in every way we can. 

Onto the Royal arcade and Gog and Magog - my Greek connections all over again. 

Here is Gog - he looks fierce but may mean well. Not sure ...

Walking around, taking in the striking modern architecture juxtaposed with the older heritage buildings.

Through the Cathedral Gardens we come across this couple Pastor Sir Doug and Lady Gladys Nicholls. The first memorial statue in Melbourne dedicated to two Aboriginal community leaders. 

This moving tribute - Peace to the Unconquered further down the road. 

A sign of Peace in our times though right in front of our eyes, generations that no longer speak to one another.