Daylesford Dispatch, Sunday, 6th November 2011

Dear Friends,

Wes and I are just rejoining the world after spending two weeks eating, sleeping and breathing Art Show. And what a Show it was! We are delighted – we had 400 more visitors than last year; sold 4 more paintings; made almost double the income ($11,000 up from $6,000); had more participating artists and more paintings, and had just enough screens to show them all. A week before the Show I was panicking as we hadn’t reached 150 entries, but Artists are notoriously slow with paperwork, and by the time we opened we had 219 paintings on display. Our Opening Night was a huge success with 186 attendees, including about 50 who didn’t reply to the Invitation, about 20 who weren’t invited, and 35 who accepted and didn’t show!

It was a great example of everyone getting involved – out of 32 Club Members, only 2 didn’t get involved in any way, and one of those was on holidays for most of the time. We were nearly in tears on Cup Morning as heaps of volunteers turned up and in a wonderful display of teamwork, disassembled the 84 screens that had been put up a week before. We were able to get home around 12.30pm with three paintings that had been sold & not collected, and two that had been displayed and not picked up! Wes cooked scrambled eggs on toast and I went straight to bed and watched the Cup on the big screen in the bedroom. Such an exciting race – I am delighted that we have become a ‘must’ destination to so many European and Asian racing countries at Cup time.

 Guess who as MC on Opening Night!

We had hoped to visit Viva on Wednesday, but I was still very tired, so after a relaxing morning of Mah Jong at Cafe 3460 with Carol & Dot, I went back to bed and caught up on old episodes of ‘Letters & Numbers’ that I had missed. Meanwhile Wes went to Rotary to deliver the Art Show report and was greeted by a standing ovation, which was very touching to us both. The next morning we rose early, got the Bulletin out, and then drove to Melbourne to deliver two paintings in Coburg and to see Viva. She isn’t looking wonderful, but, apart from a recurrence of the dreaded hallucinations, she is on the ball, and knew exactly how many weeks it was since either of us had seen her! She is in lots of pain with her broken tooth, the shingles and now mouth ulcers, so Leanne has arranged for her food to be pureed, to make it easier to eat.

We spent quite a long time with her, telling her stories, explaining how some of her dreams weren’t logical, and helping her with lunch. This gave Leanne a very welcome morning off, as she has been on duty visiting every morning and sometimes twice in the day.

Would you like to buy something?

Friday was a big work day – we needed to write all the cheques to the Artists that had sold paintings, refund an Artist who couldn’t get her works to us, let every participating Artist know how the Show had gone and send letters of thanks with a report to all our sponsors (53 this year, last year we had 10). We finally got all that done and I took it all to the Hepburn Post Office to be sent out. By 6pm we were sitting on our veranda looking out at the Lake sipping sparkling Shiraz!

This afternoon between 4 & 6pm we have invited all our Committee members and their partners to a ‘soirée’, as a thank you. Bronnie & Lee are doing the catering and everyone will bring a bottle. So we spent yesterday taking control of the garden and house again. We did the early shift on the Farmers Market, had breakfast at ‘Gracenotes Café’, bought some plants and got going. Wes cleaned the barbecue and hosed down the decking & outside furniture, then mowed the lawns and watered everywhere from our overflowing tanks. I planted tomatoes and punnets of pleasure in the front, weeded a section of the garden, skimmed the pond & washed the cars. In between, we watched the Stakes Day races where we won absolutely nothing, but saw ‘Black Caviar’ win her 16^th race straight in easy fashion.

We had dinner with Glenn Mack at Jasmine Thai in Hepburn last night. We have neglected our friends for quite a while with our focus on the Art Show, and it was a delight to spend a couple of hours in his company again. Without his assistance last year, we would have been struggling to get the Art Show going, and he was very impressed with the strides we had taken this year.

This morning Kim outdid himself at breakfast – so much food, so many different things and all of them delightful. I sat next to Michael and chatted about the week away that he and Judi had enjoyed in Mildura, where the highlight was dinner at Stefano’s on the Murray. John & Jan Smith had some funny stories to tell about their first trip using their new motor home, and they left today for Echuca again, knowing what they know now. Gillie looks wonderful and is back to delivering fresh-laid eggs; Terry & Gail are still in the Blue Mountains celebrating the safe arrival of their 4^th grand-child, and Barbara was busy taking photos of the plates of food so that those who missed out will be envious! We had a serious discussion at the end of breakfast sorting out Rotary’s role with helping groups in the community, and John went away to rethink an idea he was developing to assist the Men’s Shed. Both Wes and Judi had some very helpful advice.

So there you are – we are nearly over the Art Show – the suitcase has been packed away for another year, and after the debriefing this afternoon, we will try and empty our minds to make room for all the other things there are to do here in retirement.

Wes is getting back to doing his Family History; I want to sit quietly solving Cryptics and reading new Scandinavian Crime writers; the boys don’t want to be left for whole days at a time anymore; our friends would like to see us again (& us them), and even the house and garden would like more regular attention. As for my Chronic Fatigue, it would really appreciate it if I went back to managing it again, so I will.....relaxed lifestyle, here we come.

P.S. Special thanks to Danny & Kim, who came & stayed with us for 2 nights & attended the Opening, then took us to dinner at the Farmers Arms on the Friday night; and to David, Helen, Jessica, Maya & Daniel, who visited from Geelong on Sunday to show support. Jessica’s reward was meeting Artist, Brian Nash & all three kids were given cards by him. Thank you all!