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Painting class
“Let’s paint!” he says, flexing fingers that know paintbrushes I can tell, as his shirt knows paint (Are we going to get dirty?) the class leaps up – limber bare-bellied girls and a trio of tatty superior blokes – my friend and I too organise easels, brushes, squeeze out small neat turds of thick glistening gloop onto ice-cream lids – red yellow blue white black (Are they the only colours we get?) crisp new white paper covers last term’s spilt…
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Fiddlin’ about
All my life (it seems) I have filled in time spent waiting – which is a LOT of time, as all women know – by imagining myself playing the violin. I have played symphonies in parked cars, concertos in dentists’ waiting rooms, the ‘Four Seasons’ in cafes (of course) and etudes lying on the beach. In my imagination I have tucked a fiddle under my chin and set feet tapping in all sorts of unlikely places. I have loved the…
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Garden blossoms into rich new life
A couple of years ago I thought I may have to give up gardening. An old back injury was giving me constant grief and people were saying things like “Well, at your age, maybe you should stop doing…” The list included almost everything I enjoy doing except sleeping. I remembered times when my garden had, due to where I was living or what I was doing, consisted of a few plants in pots – and they hadn’t been my best…
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Linda
Author’s note: For several years I worked as the weekend cook at a hostel for independent adults with disabilities in Perth. I used to wonder about the stories of the people who lived there. Not many were able to share them – some couldn’t remember, some couldn’t tell and some couldn’t speak. One woman in particular fascinated me as she seemed to have two very different stories – one she expressed in stock phrases and the other she expressed with…
