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My glamorous aunt MG stepping out in Elizabeth Bay, August 2016
MG in sunglasses with someone else’s Italian scooter, August 2016
Upcoming schedule:
Dear friends, My January schedule is looking very uncertain because of the NSW fires. I will update the schedule every few days as things become clearer. In the meantime I have one scheduled stay in Sydney during the month, availability as follows:
Thursday 23 January – from 3.30pm Friday 24 January – from 1.00pm Saturday 25 January – booked Sunday 26 January – availability to be confirmed
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Saturday 2 November 2019
I went to the Banksy exhibition at the Entertainment Quarter. If you go, it’s better not to buy tickets online – they are a much better price at the door. Also, to avoid walking around looking for the exhibition hall, go straight to the end of the main entrance road off Lang Road (I walked all around the place before I figured it out :-)).
Even though the Banksy images are such well known street art there was nothing “old” about the look of the show – mostly original stencils and various prints. Here are some of the street images from Google:
flower violence
art for the burbs
a trusty Council contractor
The organiser of the exhibition was manager/accomplice to Banksy for many years, Steve Lazarides. Banksy himself is still unidentified.
One of the best things about the exhibition was the use of videos – streaming on loop around the hall between the exhibits. They told the story of the extraordinary rise of the guerilla grafitti artist with his witty, anti-consumerist themes. It was a very well done story and made the exhibition a really coherent experience.
There was film called “Exit Through the Gift Shop” mentioned in some of the commentary of the exhibition, a film I’d never heard of. In the evening when I was home I looked it up and found a copy on youtube to watch.
The film was an extended commentary on the consumerist art market hype that Banksy parodies (and was itself a clever hoax). It started out purporting to be a documentary on Banksy, being made by a dotty French American amateur photographer/film maker. This character had, according to the film, doggedly followed Banksy for years on his secret missions trespassing at night to plaster his distinctive stencil posters and do his grafitti on buildings and signs all round the UK and both sides of the US. When it becomes apparent about half way through the film, that the quality of the documentary is hopeless, Banksy enters stage left (appearing simply as a dark hooded figure – no face – being interviewed) and persuades the film maker to become the subject of the narrative. So he does, and somehow sets about to transform himself into a grafitti and print artist (like Banksy) with a huge output (none of it displaying any talent or skill whatsoever). The reconfigured “documentary” then follows the film maker’s hugely successful first exhibition in Los Angeles (playing to the cynical undiscriminating art market hungry for the next “thing”). It’s done with a light enough touch though, to make it excellent fun to watch.
It reminded me of a documentary (but not a parody “documentary” at all), about Andy Warhol’s protegee, David Basquiat, who perished very young, apparently a victim of his own success. From the wrong side of the tracks, with no training, he suffered trying to cope with the hype of his spectacular conquest of the contemporary art market at a very young age. His tragic fate perhaps an outcome, at least in part, of the social realities that are the focus of Banksy’s work. Here are some images of Basquiat’s pictures – in a heavily worked totemic grafitti style.
And here is a link to the documentary film about Basquiat, which turned up in my internet searches when I was getting these images of his paintings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o I think the film features (the real) Andy Warhol and (the real) David Bowie.
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Monday 28 October 2019
Following on from my earlier post about adventures in the Whitsundays, I wanted to add another image. These are the Norfolk Island pines, with their very distinctive geometry, everywhere on the Whitsunday islands. This is the ridge of the cove at Refuge Bay where we anchored overnight.
I managed to find an internet link which gives the back story to how the pines came to be here. I had some ancient recollection they were not native. https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A7952664
So it was Captain Cook who brought the seeds of the pines to northern Australia wishfully supposing they might provide timber suitable for masts.
I have always found it hard to be on the water in the Pacific and not think of Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and all the great naturalists. For quite a while one of my favourite non fiction books was a book called “Darwin’s Armada” by Iain McCalman. It’s an account of the great sailing voyages of Darwin’s peers. It’s absolutely compelling reading (if that’s your kind of thing). It’s ages since I read it but one of the passages that still stays with me vividly is an account of how the Pacific peoples must have experienced navigating, with only the simplest instruments and no charts – what resources, skills and understanding of the sea they must have had.
But then I am very partial to all things Charles Darwin (and his milieu). The Voyage of the Beagle is so engaging. Here is a favourite passage in which Darwin describes interactions with wild llamas.
Scientific method: “…if a person lies on the ground and plays strange antics, such as throwing up his feet in the air…”
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Saturday 26 October 2019
I am back from lovely holidays sailing with friends in the Whitsundays. I have an excellent tan to show for it. I actually didn’t want to come back. The South African guy at the charter yacht company was no help either, just suggested I read the book with the self explanatory title “Sell up and Sail”.
This was the outlook when anchored overnight in a place called Refuge Bay:
In the evening I could hear a slightly mournful bird call. At first it sounded like a dove but it was too insistent. It turned out to be a couple of pheasant coucals calling to one another. (Don’t ask me how I figured it out, it was intuition confirmed by internet searches.)
Here are some images of the bird itself which I borrowed from Google:
Flying … (this type of feet first flying, good for short distances only)
I put this second image in because it has the fence wire for size. I have actually seen these birds and I can warrant they are concurrently large birds and small dinosaurs.
The “sell up and sail” caper is something I like to enjoy vicariously these days by watching youtube channels. My favourite channel is one called Free Range Sailing. It’s a youtube vlog maintained by an Australian couple who are cruising in a very modest yacht, mostly in tropical waters. Apart from the sailing, they do quite a bit of free diving on the reefs, spearfishing and exploring on shore. Pascal is a very good and resourceful cook. She also seems to be the creative lead in making the vlog – which is high quality well edited video. Her partner Troy is an excellent hand at keeping their 30 foot 50 year old yacht on track and in shape. He seems to handle the inevitable breakdowns of gear in good form and has a droll sense of humour. They are of course, “free range” so it all appeals to my tree hugging temperament. You aren’t going to find them zapping around churning up the peace of the natural world on jet skis any time soon. Highly recommend! And here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbU2ulPD3rJ4OZCNH7-gjjQ
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Monday 19 August 2019
I posted this selfie on Twitter last week. This is my new coat, with that unmistakable discreet hotel lobby look. I had to concede my favourite old pale trench coat was finished. Such a lovely, quality thing I bought in Double Bay ages ago, I had finally worn it out.
All this sentiment reminded me of the improbable scene in La Boheme where the old coat gets serenaded before being pawned to buy medicines for the rapidly declining Mimi, who is flushed with TB. Caruso’s version of the song – The Coat Song:
It’s a little while since I went to the opera. But it’s a much longer while since I bought student rush tickets for $5. In those days the opera theatre was often half empty. The audience always included elegant Hungarian women in mothball furs though. It’s great the opera is so popular now but it’s so sad the days of student rush are over. Those heavily discounted tickets gave impoverished students the incredible privilege of going to the opera several times a week when the season was on – what a life! xx MG
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Tuesday 30 July 2019
I have long had special rates for regular clients. Since most people I see are regular clients I’ve decided to make the special rates my usual ones :-).
I have a few new photos to mark the occasion. The advantage of carrying a little extra weight at the moment, thank you prescription drugs, is that my boobs look excellent :-):
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Monday 29 July 2019
It’s been a very steady July, gorgeous weather. I have a few selfies, which I posted during the month on the Twitter account, so they will be old news to some of you.
#Your next one hour midweek vacation – #TanInWinter Why don’t you let housekeeping look after that #FrenchMaid
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Sunday 23 June 2019
The lovely thing about Sydney, well there are many but this is also one of them, is that even when it is overcast it can be very pretty.
So I had a date last week during the week, at Mosman, bit of an event because I don’t go over the Bridge so much these days. Afterward I dropped down from the steep ridge that Military Road follows, to the pretty harbour beach, Balmoral (surf beach for the under threes). I had a nostalgic and quality fish and chips from the Bottom of the Harbour fish and chip shop, which I think has been there about 20 years, loyally taking cash only and reminding some of us of scandalous tax avoidance schemes from the days of when…
It was an overcast day. A steady number of citizens walked their dogs along the foreshore. I have always liked the somewhat art deco style of the concrete foreshore walkway, complemented by the little bridge across the isthmus which you can just see at the end of the beach here in one of my afternoon snaps.
Bottom of the Harbour – tax schemes from the past
MG xx Sydney escort who does both sides of the Bridge
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Tuesday 18 June 2019
In the course of my recent excursions during May when I was away from work for a couple of weeks, I had the pleasure of going up to the Newcastle Art Gallery for the first time. It was a Saturday early afternoon and the occasion was the opening of a retrospective exhibition of the works of the Australian artist, Virginia Cuppaidge. Virginia was interviewed at the opening, to a very attentive audience. The paintings in the exhibition covered her work over a 40 year career spent in New York. She has recently returned to Australia to live.
Here is a photo of two of her pictures from the 1970’s:
And here is a sculpture made by the Australian Clem Meadmore, with whom she worked for a time in New York. The sculpture is entitled Virginia and lives in the Sculpture Garden at The Australian National Gallery in Canberra.
I became aware of Virginia’s paintings because I was friendly with her mother: author, botanical illustrator, japanophile and horticulturalist, Judy Cuppaidge. Judy and I became friends when Judy was in her 90’s: a more lively and remarkable person you could not hope to meet and, as she said, with her macular degeneration: “blind as welder’s dog.”
I’ve been planning to make a recording of one of Judy’s short stories, so you know what I sound like before we meet.
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Saturday 9 June 2019
It has been a busy time in May with various excursions and some enforced leave. I have been in the country some of the time and it has been exceptionally pretty, though progress with development has been very s l o w.
Even though it has been very dry, I have been there just after rain a couple of times and managed to get some lovely images, when the earth is all shining and luminous.
Letters from America These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a ♦ mature Sydney escort ♦
Saturday 20 April 2019
I went to the Orpheum at Cremorne last night, which was Good Friday, and saw a film about the late life journey of a difficult man, which was funny, agonising and heartfelt in equal parts: Sometimes Always Never.
The context of the film was all very English until, toward the end, there was an extended allusion to the classic Swedish film by Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal – though instead of playing chess with the grim reaper our hero plays Scrabble.
I am not knowledgeable about cinema and really have never have had much interest in a lot of Hollywood offerings (I am not lying, I only saw Top Gun for the first time this year). But even though I have no film background I managed to see three of the great modern film masterpieces probably four times each (I kid you not), before I turned 17. They were: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal. This makes me very good at spotting cinematic allusions to the masterpieces! A couple of my highschool teachers were exceptionally taken with these classic films (and soundtracks) and thus I came to see a lot of them. If you can imagine a post-Whitlam somewhat elite and privileged public high school education with a touch of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s not entirely innocent idealism, then you have a picture of some of my later years’ high school experience.
Quite apart from high school, the film that struck me the most ever I think, was probably Bonnie and Clyde (the original). Chinatown was brilliant too. And Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Any takers among you with favourite films? I forgot The Rocky Horror Show… what a lot of sheer joy that was 🙂 brilliant but not really for cinematic virtue.
My glamorous aunt MG stepping out in Elizabeth Bay, August 2016
MG in sunglasses with someone else’s Italian scooter, August 2016
