I took this photo on the phone just now Sunday 18th December 2016. My friends will know this is taken from the balcony here in Potts Point looking across to the City. I am not a great fireworks person myself but these ones were lovely. And so we are bringing the year to a close. I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year and thank you for being such good company. xx MG
Just so you know I am keeping you in touch with popular consumer culture, I saw these thongs at the gym the other day in the shelves for people’s gear.
Google investigation reveals they are Keep on the Grass Thongs – designed to make every day a walk in the park.
Don’t ask me why but for some reason I think they must have been created by a New Zealander (in which case would they be called jandles?).
Oh I figured out the Kiwi connection and its obvious: the grass is green :-).
In the early days of my glamorous aunt I thought I should do a search to see whether anyone else had used that phrase before.
There really wasn’t much in the search results: one or two desultory 1950s photos of a well turned out woman meeting the queen. Right.
There was not much else – except this old photo, which an American woman had posted on the death of her aunt at age 82. Her post described the young woman in this photo as “my glamorous aunt”. You can decide for yourselves.
For me it seemed this woman was totally my glamorous aunt.
She may only have been 19 or 20 but she had the drill.
She smoked that Cuban cigar with style, hamming it up to the delight of her 8 year old nephews (?)
She was wearing a satin outfit in the middle of the day and it worked perfectly well.
Or was it a swim suit? Was she just doing her thing with the cigar and the children in the hot weather for the sake of it – and the water and the swimming were entirely optional?
The scene in the photo feels to me like a joyful slice of West Side story.
There is a Latin expressiveness about this image – the lips, the weight on one hip, the theatricality of shoulders, and the boys lean along a diagonal line just like a Hollywood male chorus from an another era. It’s feels like a moment in a dance musical. It feels like it could be Miami or Cuba or New York – it just feels alive. I really like it.
Which reminds me that I like the Symphonic Dances of West Side Story.
If you are interested, in this clip the great man himself conducts – it’s probably too theatrical conducting for some tastes (but I say so what? if you are the genius who composed it you can do as you choose): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srb2EyvTSGw&list=RDsrb2EyvTSGw#t=303
It may just be the Romeo and Juliet connection (West side Story _is_ Romeo and Juliet), but it’s the dance theme too. So I can’t help connecting Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights (the Montagues and Capulets). It is popular dance music I really adore.
Here is a link:
Well I already reported on the excellent Jacaranda season we seem to have had in Sydney this summer. So at the risk of turning into a complete _b_o_r_e_ about flowering trees I’d like to ask you to notice, if you come across it, another beautiful flowering tree that is just coming into full bloom now. It is not as noticeable or as well known as the Jacaranda – it’s the Cape Chestnut.
Here is a Cape Chestnut tree in Rushcutters Bay Park, down near the tennis courts – it’s overloaded with bunches of blossoms. This one may not be the best shaped tree of its kind, but it is still putting on a spectacular display.
This is an individual blossom fallen from the tree – delicate as an orchid.
So it’s over an out from me in the Potts Point botanical studio here this evening.
xx MG