Local Knowledge (for Beverly Gothe & Margo Snape by Agatha Gothe-Snape)
Tell me you don’t want to snuggle up on this couch?
Neon Safari by Kate Rohde and Backing Cloth #287 by Spacecraft & Stewart Russell
The colours and patterns of these two really jumped out at me when I saw them, they’re both a visual feast, particularly Back Cloth. Every time I looked at it from a different angle I loved it a little bit more.
Mmmm, tasty. Very subtle shiraz with a smoky taste. Can highly recommend.
Life Before Babies
The Friday night tradition calls for a stop at Kemeny’s, a liquor store with a reputation as big and as grand as their selection. My husband could easily spend a minimum of 30 mins browsing the vast range of local micro-brewery and imported beers if I weren’t standing there, tugging his sleeve like a five-year-old saying, “C’mon, let’s go, lets go.”
We didn’t go for the Voyager Estate this time, though we do love that vineyard and have great memories of eating there when we visited Margaret River two years ago. If you do pop into Voyager (and I recommend that you do) try their Flight range with lunch to get an idea of the different types of red they produce. You’ll be glad you did!
Tonight we opted for a Coriole 06 shiraz from McLaren Vale.
I’ll miss this when I can no longer drink. But for now … cheers!
I like to call this “The lusty bride”. It’s one of my favourite photos of my wedding day and it shows, I think, how ridiculously attracted I am to my husband. Let it be known, though, that it is his intellect as well as his ar$e that makes me overjoyed, every single day, to have him as my partner.
Swoon.
“You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.” ~ Dorothy Parker
This witticism never fails to make me smirk. I love pop culture but I’ve stopped thinking about it. Time to fire up the grey matter once more.
I love reading almost everything on the internet and also I love to write. Unfortunately I’ve been doing a lot more of the former than I have of the latter and as such I feel a little unsteady when it comes to penning long pieces. Much like a wobbly, newborn colt discovering what these things called legs do, my writing brain is trying to remember how to command the neurones, synapses and ganglia required to read, comprehend, process and comment on all the information I come across.
To steal from one of my favourite authors, David Sedaris, me write pretty one day. Again.
Part of the process of getting back on the horse (nice continuation of the equine metaphor) will be to post articles and images that inspire or intrigue me; pieces that I think represent good writing and will remind me of all the pedestrian elements of writing – structure, approach, clever turns of phrase – that I’ve forgotten. My challenge is to pick them up and use them again.
And, as this is the perfect blogging platform to create a bit of a scrapbook, Chelsea Writes will also feature the occasional series, Life Before Babies, the aim of which is to remind me to be grateful for the extraordinarily fortunate lifestyle I have – sleep ins, weekend-long reading binges, wine drinking, disposable income – while I still have it. I know there will come a time – possibly while changing a nappy – when I will look back on 2009 as the halcyon days before the life altering event that is parenthood was visited upon me.
It’s also a way to switch my fretful thinking from “Will I get pregnant? Will everything be OK?”, which only serves to create stress, unease and worry, to a more sanguine, “Sure I’ll probably get knocked up at some stage, might as well enjoy what I got now, while I’ve still got it.”
I did a similar switch of thought pattern a few years ago when I was wondering if I’d ever meet a guy I’d want to hang out with for a lifetime. I decided to assume that, yes, I’d eventually get married and have a family and that in the meantime I’d enjoy the wonderful freedom of being a single girl in Sydney. Two weeks later I met my husband. But that’s another, quite interesting, story for another time.
Let’s see where this one goes for now, shall we?
