My new toy

I admit it. I like new toys to play with. Several weeks ago I bought a crepe make, a pie maker and an omelete make. Aside from the obvious storage issues, they're great to play with.

Canon G12


My newest toy is a new camera. I wanted something that had a lot of similar features to a SLR but without the bulk or the weight. I've ended up with a Canon G12 (pic from this site) and have spent every spare minute today (not many with work in the middle) playing with it to learn what to do.

It's been ages since I've had a camera to use. The last one I used regularly, a lovely compact Nikon I gave David for his birthday one year, I lost. I've been feeling guilty about that ever since.

David got a new camera a little while ago and is very happy with it and, as I'm going to Singapore soon, I thought I needed one. No way am I borrowing his camera again! If I'm going to lose another camera, it'll be my own.

A world of contrasts

A friend of mine is currently touring Ireland and is posting gorgeous photos on her blog. The country-side in the photos is nothing at all like I'm used to seeing here in Australia and I've started making comparisons.

I spent my very early years, and some time during my teenage years, in sheep country out west (way out west: 12 hours' drive west of Brisbane; about 1100km). It's the beginnings of desert out there with a few lonely Marino sheep - until shearing time and they're all rounded up and you realise there're thousands of them. The desert changes just as dramatically too when the floods come. There's no or little rain out there - just drought and then flood from the Channel Country up north. Then the country becomes a carpet of colourful wildflowers, the colours so strong that when the sun rises, your eyes hurt.

I have a photo taken in 1989 of a paddock full of golden daisies. If you're not sure how large a paddock is, just imagine those thousands of sheep and how much space they need in dry country that offers little food or water. There's no such thing as a half-acre plot out there; most stations are thousands of square kilometres. Usually the bright red soil is mostly covered by coarse grey-green grass and pock-marked with scraggly eucalyptus trees, but when there's rain or a flood the flowers come out and suddenly you begin to wonder if you're really as far west as you thought.

The photo is from so long ago partially because I don't go out there any more and partially because the area rarely gets enough water for the flowers to bloom. Those sorts of floods happen once a decade.

What a difference a decade makes

Ten years ago, getting passport photos done meant I walked into the Post Office and asked for them. I stood against the wall, stared at the camera, paid my money, collected the photos and I was done.

I tried that two days ago. The process was the same but the results weren't.

Getting passport photos today means I need to have my eyebrows and eyelashes tinted and wear a foundation to even my skin tone. I even have to brush my hair - something I usually only do at night before bed.

I don't usually pay into the vanity shit for women, but then I've always been a reasonably good looking woman (and it's amazing what a difference smiling makes to your face). Now I'm seeing signs of aging. There's some grey coming in: not enough to colour my hair but enough to notice. My eyebrows were hit first, oddly enough. I also have sagging skin under my eyes that's a different colour to the rest of my face - hence the need for foundation. It's disheartening.

I don't mind getting older. I really like the person I am now and know I wouldn't be that person without all my life experiences. But I don't want to LOOK it.

Father's Day

I always get a Father's Day present. I know it seems strange because I also get a Mother's Day present. Yes, it's double-dipping, but I've done both jobs for so long I think I deserve the recognition for it.

Tomorrow is Father's Day here and Lauren gave me my present tonight.

F111 during afterburn

Tonight was the annual Riverfire celebration. Basically it's an hour of fireworks along the river that bisects the city. Before and after we have an F111 fly over and afterburn. It's a spectacular sight and this year was the last year for the F111s before they're retired from active service. Lauren rang at 5pm to see what my plans for the evening were.

The fireworks.

"Want to come up to Mt Gravatt and watch the fireworks from there?"

"Sure, sounds fun. What time?"

"I'll meet you at the bottom of the mountain at 6."

That's right. The bottom of the mountain. The road was closed off for the night as Mt Gravatt is a popular place to go to view the fireworks over the city. It's far enough away from the city so we can see the whole show without the interference of the bends in the river or the crowds. We can't hear the music either but that's not such a big problem. We get the birds' eye view. But it's nearly 2km from the road closure up to the top, and with the road closed we had to walk.

It took us nearly half an hour to walk up to the top. We were more interested in chatting so we just took our time and enjoyed the evening. The view from the top is spectacular with the city laid out all around us. Spring has just begun so the breeze was cool with a promise of rain later. Cool here in Queensland means that about half the people up there with us needed long sleeved shirts but mostly short sleeves were fine, even at night.

Afterwards we started the walk down again. Someone in the crowd called out 'shortcut' and, like sheep, we all followed a narrow, barely visible path down the mountain in the pitch black. The path was so steep it was like walking down a very steep flight of steps, only there weren't any steps, just slippery grass and gravel. And did I mention it was night time and dark?

Of course I can't ever suffer in silence.

Me: "We'll never find our way out. We'll still be wandering around the bush in three days."

Lauren: "You didn't bring any water with you, did you?"

Me: "No, but I know how to gather the dew from leaves in the morning."

Lauren: "Oh good. We'll be fine then."

Me: "They'll probably find our bodies next week."

Lauren: "No. With so many of us going missing at the same time, they'll find us before then."

You can't argue with that logic. It took less than 15 minutes to reach the road again.

Just to put it in perspective Mt Gravatt is a popular destination for walkers, runners and cyclists, and it's surrounded by suburbia. I've walked up there fairly often myself and have used the shortcut - in the daylight. It feels different at night because there's no perspective on distance or direction. And there were kids in the group I could scare. Couldn't miss that opportunity!

To dragon or not

I have a pet dragon. Not a tangible one, one in my book. She's based on a little pewter dragon a friend gave me years ago. She's portly and naive and unaware of her own strength, but totally aware of her appeal. She eats amber and grows exponentially. Her interactions with my characters provide humour in dire situations. I want to keep her.

The problem is she doesn't seem to have a role to play. In my head she's important and the four main characters can't achieve their goal without her but it's not coming through one way or the other. At the moment she's a little light relief, popping up at unusual moments and then disappearing just as suddenly, only to come back again when all the people seem to be doing is travelling on a long journey. She nearly drowns a couple of them - by accident, of course - and deafens and kills a whole heap of bad guys but mostly she's used to get my characters out of situations they can't get out of themselves and, therefore, probably weakening them. At the end of the book she has a major role to play but none of that is clear until right at the end (which I haven't written yet because I haven't worked it out).

Judging on the feedback, she's not working the way I wanted her to at all. All the critiques so far have said 'get rid of her' and 'she's detracting from the story', 'has no purpose'. So now I have a dilemma. Do I go back and write her out of the story completely so my characters can find their own way forward and save themselves, or do I go back and change her character so she ups the ante, so she makes life just that bit more difficult for everyone and no one knows if she's a good guy or a bad guy until right at the end?

I'll have to spend some time on the weekend plotting out both scenarios to see which one will travel the best.

The way writing works

I've always known my mind works differently when I'm writing but I had a graphic reminder of that today.

Last night I was working on my story - the one I've been trying to finish since Christmas. I'm so close I don't know why I don't just write it and be done with it - until the editing starts, of course. Anyway I had all my characters in a huge cavern, just finished a battle and killed lots of people. Then in an off-hand way, one of the characters says something to the others. Another character spins around and says, "You know the second verse of the Pledge!"

Nothing unusual in that. My response though was to throw my hands in the air and exclaim, "Oh no, there's another verse to the Pledge? I didn't know that. Now I have to write it and find out what it says."

That didn't surprise me - I often have similar sorts of things happen when I'm writing. I don't plan ahead very well; I'm more of a reactor than a proactor, if that makes sense.

The graphic reminder I mentioned before came when I was relating this to a couple of people at work. If the looks on their faces could be translated into actions I would be languishing in a 19th Century mental asylum by now. :)

I've written the second verse of the poem. It's second draft at the moment. I need to do some more work on it but it's good enough for me to continue with the story the way it is. I won't post it here - I have no illusions as to my talent as a poet no matter how much I enjoy playing with rhyming patterns and syllabic rhythms. I write really BAD poetry.

Retreat

A couple of weeks ago I went on a retreat with one of my writers' groups. It was brilliant. Half of us arrived during the day and the rest in the evening of Friday. When we entered the apartment, it became 2015 and we were in character.

I don't expect a lot to change in my life in just five years. I'll have finished my Grad Cert, hopefully finished my PhD as well and, with a bit of luck and more persistence than I've shown so far, have a book accepted for publication. That's it. I was absolutely fascinated to hear the five year plans of the other writers in the group. They ranged from having two books on the NY Times bestseller list simultaneously, to making a success of a new small business to having multiple books published with local (ie Australian) publishers to becoming totally self-sustaining as far as providing food and energy for the household. Brilliant.

One of the activities we did was a creative collage exercise. A few weeks before we spent a day at a cemetary and chose some people as a focus for a short story. The collage was to help us flesh out those characters and put them in situations that could build into story. It's been a long time since I've spent a couple of hours cutting out pictures and sticking them on cardboard. It's very soothing.

This is the result of my efforts. I didn't use all the pictures I cut out but I've kept them and will use them for other stories.

When I came home, I put the collage on the dining table and left it there for a few days. Every one who came to visit stopped at the table and examined the board. Every one of them came up with their own explanation of who the people were and how they related to each other. The only thing these stories had in commone was the fact that every one of them picked the same person as the villian!