Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 14th October, 2012

 

Dear Friends, we finally have a perfect Spring day again here and we are hoping to make the most of it by spending some time in the garden. I need to stake my broad beans & thin out the spinach, and Wes wants to do a little planting, mowing & pruning. It has rained nearly every day this week and the good news is that none of it has fallen into the kitchen through the big hole that Al cut! It looks as though he & his mate traced the leak in the roof to the satellite dish, re-adjusted its position and solved the problem. Now we just need Al to come back & replaster the ceiling before the possums fall through the gap!

We’ve enjoyed a very busy week with the Art Show in full swing as entries come in…finally. Every year we panic that we won’t have enough paintings & each year the artists leave it until the last minute to send in their entries. We have 76 paintings from 21 artists to date, so I think we will reach our goal of 250 paintings.

Also, we have a well-known Australian artist, Ross Paterson, doing workshops on the Friday and Saturday of the Show. We decided to let all the local & Ballarat schools know, and already Trentham Primary School want to bring all 70 of their students over on the Friday – Ross is delighted with this response, and so are we.

 

We’ve managed to fit in a couple of enjoyable social occasions, starting with an early dinner on Friday night with Penny & David Reilly, Daylesford friends that we have drifted away from in recent times. We shared a totally vegetarian meal at A Taste of Spice, the best of our three Indian restaurants, and enjoyed catching up.

As well, last night, we drove to Burwood for a wonderful reunion with the Borgs, Terry, Victor, Georgina & Laura & Ben. We were very close with them all for a long time, then drifted apart, as sometimes happens. However, we reconnected with Terry on Facebook earlier this year, and we discovered that Laura has spent the last 12 years in Thailand running an orphanage for HIV & suspected-HIV babies and children, mostly on the smell of an oily rag. Laura was back in Australia for a visit and Terry threw a barbecue in honour of Laura’s visit & birthday. We were quite emotional catching up with everybody – Victor is not in good health, but still has his beautiful smile and lovely Maltese humour; Terry has retired and is enjoying life in her spacious unit; Georgie and her friend, Richard, have jointly bought a home in Richmond which they love; Laura is as alive and fulfilled as we have ever seen her, and we had to be introduced to Ben as he was a young child when we last saw him. The girls are especially fond of Wes because he took them to Carlton games and they forsook their father’s team, Hawthorn, for the Navy Blues as a result. We saw friends of Victor & Terry’s that we had not seen since the early 90s and amazingly we all recognised each other. 

Laura & some of her current family in Thailand

 Once again it has been too wet for early morning golf, and sometimes too wet to walk the boys, so we will be pleased when we can start having regular exercise again. I decided not to re-enrol for Strong classes this term as I need to conserve all my energy for the Art Show, and it would then become an extra pressure I didn’t need. Wes has put Hepburn Voices interviews on hold until after the Art Show, so he and Barbara spend some time doing administrative tasks every week, and will get back in harness after Cup weekend.

Today our breakfast was the last in the old Ice Cream Parlour as it will be converted to a Health Food Store, starting from tomorrow. There were eight of us and we had a lovely time chatting around a small square of tables. Michelle is planning to reorganise Harvest Café next Sunday morning to give us similar seating. When we play Mah Jong on Wednesday, we will have to choose a new spot as well.

I’ve just spoken with Viva and she sounds better each day. Her GP put her on industrial strength antibiotics to help eliminate her cough, and she hopes it will have disappeared by the time she finishes the course. I am still forbidden from making her laugh, as that always brings on a coughing fit, and as making her laugh is a natural part of ringing up, it is quite difficult to keep conversation interesting, but not too amusing! 

 Fast Finishing ‘All Too Hard’ beating previously unbeaten ‘Pierro’ yesterday in the Caulfield Guineas – Black Caviar’s little brother finally hits his straps…