It’s been a while since I’ve written an update here, hence this post covers a month rather than a week. Thank goodness for Midweek Moments, which have kept this blog ticking over whilst I’ve been otherwise occupied.
I have a reason for my absence: Over the past six weeks, we’ve lived amongst sawdust and debris, and the searing noise of drills and banging of hammers, while half of our house was stripped and gutted and replaced. The worst is over, only the painting of walls and sanding of floors to go. We no longer have to cook, eat, and sleep in our bedroom, wash up in the bathroom, and wash our clothes outside in a machine hooked up to a garden tap. I have a kitchen with a sink, bench, and oven, and a laundry with hot water, and even though I’m not a domestic goddess by any stretch of the imagination, I can’t tell you how nice that is.
I can now cross ‘Renovation’ off my list of life experiences. At this stage, it’s ‘Been there, done that’, and I doubt that I’ll ever be tempted to do it again,.
Apart from a new kitchen, bathroom and laundry, another good thing that’s come from all of this is that we’ve tossed so much ‘stuff’, or ‘shit’ as this booklet calls it. It was about time I went through everything, deciding what should go and what could stay. It had been over five years since the last time I’d done it—at the end of 2010, when we house-swapped with an English family. Knowing someone was coming to live in our home for a month made me give away anything that made it look uglier!
This time, I was even more ruthless, having learnt from past experience that I don’t miss something once it’s gone. I kept things that I use, or that mean something to me, or that look nice, but everything else went …
Writing News
My essay, Am I A Writer?, has been accepted into the anthology, ‘Writing the Dream’, for Serenity Press, which will be released in November this year. I’m chuffed to be included alongside accomplished writers such as Natasha Lester, Tess Woods, Jenn J McLeod, Felicity Young, Melinda Tognini, Sara Foster, Guy Salvidge, Monique Mulligan, Karen McDermott, Teena Raffa-Mulligan, Deborah Disney, Kylie Kaden, and more.
I’ve barely written a word for the past six weeks, but I hope to rectify that, starting with this blog post! I was lucky in that a week before the renovation started, I finished rewriting my novel. It took me nine gruelling months to rewrite, and I felt every moment of it!
I sent my manuscript off to a few beta readers, who gave me more feedback—a few tweaks here and there—and then it went back to the agent. Stay tuned for an update on that front soon …
Photos
A couple of weeks’ ago, my husband and I returned to Tassie for a family wedding. As we left Perth, the clouds looked like this:
By the time we arrived in Melbourne, they looked like this:
And it was raining:
We stayed in Melbourne overnight to see our daughter. We were only there long enough to spend time with her and sleep, before taking off the next morning, so we booked a hotel at the airport. Who’d have thought an airport would provide so many photo opportunities?
I know where I’m going for my next holiday—bring on Tullamarine!
We arrived in Tasmania on the morning of the wedding, with barely enough time to get ready and take photos beforehand:
The wedding was held in the grounds of a beautiful old estate, Brickendon, at Longford, a rural town in the north of state. Again, Autumn was abundant:
The next morning, my husband and I went walking. Because Tasmania is cooler and wetter than Perth, the English trees don’t look out of place, and walking around the city, you can’t fail to notice the season:
Or the decorative architecture:
Sometimes when looking up, I caught the rain:
Sometimes, I can’t believe I grew up in this city and didn’t notice, let alone appreciate, the beauty of these old buildings, and the work that went into designing and building them. They’re not just functional—they’re works of art.
Walking around Launceston’s city centre is like stepping back in time—yes, there are chain stores and modern shops, but the architecture has been preserved, and I hope it stays that way.
We flew home again that night. (Note, the planes across Bass Strait are little and have propellers.)
So, I’m back to blogging again. I must admit, I’ve missed writing here (and elsewhere), and hope to be catching up with you all more often again.
Louise x