A Sydney Christmas

By Vita Forest

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  This is how I spent the day…

• Woke to a chorus of brightly coloured lorrikeets outside my window.
• Polished and tinkered and tested new synonyms for my novel’s logline and synopsis (the hardest 300 words I have written).
• Swam my first kilometre of the summer at Balmoral Beach.
• Enjoyed the coolness of the water as the weather heated up.
• Watched children testing out their new Christmas presents – surfboards, balls, blow-up rings under a clear blue summer sky.
• Cut up fragrant mint and parsley leaves for a salad.
• Spoke to my children, off in Tasmania with their father.
• Drove my parents to my sister Molly’s house for a family Christmas where I was
• Greeted by a young Jedi brandishing his new light sabre.
• Drank champagne and lashings of cold water to stay cool.
• Sat under a ceiling fan and ate cold meats, cheese, dips, bruschetta, crackers, crusty bread, olives and lots of different salads (a fab cold Christmas lunch on such a hot day).
• Wore silly hats after pulling Christmas crackers.
• Watched my niece and nephew squealing and hurling themselves down their new blow-up waterslide and paddling pool that just fits into their little inner-city backyard.
• Read books about dinosaurs with the young Jedi.
• Promised my niece some holiday sketching outings.
• Discussed possible names for the new bubbas about to arrive in the family.
• Chatted to my sister as we cleaned up the kitchen.
• Opened presents brought to us by the Christmas elves (my niece and nephew).
• Arrived home feeling pooped.
• Lay on the couch and binged on Das Boot on SBS On Demand (recommended).

I like to look at beautiful things

By Vita Forest

Yesterday I saw

• From the train – mauve jacaranda blossoms rubbing shoulders with swathes of magenta bouganvillea blooms.  The sight of it momentarily silenced the woman behind me on the train in mid-sentence.
• The headland of Barangaroo on the approach from Wynyard.  Noticing how the lush terraces of Sydney trees are now obscuring the paths along the hillside.
• The splendid sight of all those beautiful clay vessels at the Clay Canoe stall at the Finders Keepers Market at Barangaroo.  All those layers and lines of vases and sculptures, as if a bunch of drawings from Shaun Tan’s books had come to life and were congregating together.  I mentioned this to one of the owners – apparently I was not the first to make such a comparison.  They did not know Shaun Tan’s work and were going to have to look it up…
• A gorgeous gal from my class who noticed me as I stood lounging in the shade of the entrance of The Cutaway sketching the Stoop Bros’homemade, steam punk airstream trailer.  Kids are always amazed to discover I don’t actually live at school…
• Sketchers perched in shadowy spaces under trees on the terraced steps on the hills of Barangaroo.  After a week of crazy, unpredictable weather, it was hot and sunny.
• A family paddling barefoot in the water lapping over the sandstone slabs at Nawi Cove, Barangaroo.
• A nifty paint palette made by one of the sketching gang from a tiny fishing tackle case.
• The smiles on the faces of the Stroop brothers as we surprised them by holding up our sketches of their stall.

I chatted to one of the potter-extraordinaires from Clay Canoe as I stood admiring their wares.  I explained that I was not in the market for another of their vases just at that current moment (having already bought one very recently).  ‘So you just like looking at beautiful things?’ she remarked.

Indeed.  Indeed I do like to look at beautiful things.