going bananas

good morning.

It's Monday. In Canberra, it's a public holiday. Here's testament to the weirdness that is Canberra. The powers that be decided that every second Monday of March should be a holiday, to celebrate our great city (whose official anniversary is 12 March). And so it is.

But... the actual Canberra Day celebrations (street stuff, concerts, fireworks, etc) are held on the weekend after the long weekend (as in next weekend), because whenever Canberrans get a long weekend, they piss off down to the coast and no-one comes to the celebrations. So essentially there are two weekends of fun to celebrate one day for a city that no-one besides those who live here actually likes. Sigh.

I'm sitting in the loungeroom in my jim-jams with my laptop on my -- gasp -- lap, watching the sun come up through the window. It's up now, I assume, because I can actually see the outline of Mr Pooter on the other couch. An hour and a half ago, when I sat here, I couldn't see anything but the keyboard and a faint grey glow out of the window. There's no actual sun -- it's raining really hard outside, but the light has increased, so therefore it must be day.

I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed for an hour trying to slow my brain down by listening to the rain, but it kept whizzing merrily along with all sorts of things: the fact that I missed my nana's birthday yesterday, what I was going to say in my talk at Mackay next month, how I was going to move the cabinets of type I bought from Braidwood to here, is my neck pain caused by too much work or have I actually got disc damage (I had x-rays last week)... you know the whizziness I mean.

I'm waiting for the boys to wake up -- we'd all agreed to sleep in today -- so that I can make banana pancakes for us. This is something Best Beloved discovered at a street stall in India and has become a firm family favourite. You make nice thick pancake mix -- more like flapjack mix, I guess (I make them with self-raising flour, yogurt and 2 eggs) -- and start to cook them as usual. While the first side is frying, you scatter thin slices of ripe banana on to the raw side (they sink into the batter slightly), and then turn the pancake over. As the second side cooks, the slices of banana caramelise. Serve with plain yogurt, or cream if you're that way inclined. Or even icecream. Come on boys, WAKE UP.

Today is going to be the final day of clearing out my study, I hope. I did the big clean-up weeks ago, but today is taking apart the furniture & putting it on the front verandah (under cover, under wraps -- darn rain), ready to sell or give away. And de-fleaing the cats. The poor buggers are as itchy as anything.

It's not all excitement and drama around here. I spent the weekend in the studio, binding books and making new pieces for a show I'm in through Easter called 'Three Chords & the Truth: Art Inspired by Music' (timed to be in conjunction with the National Folk Festival). One of the pieces was a collage made from bits of sticky-taped pages from an old hymn book I'd found at Lifeline. The tape had turned a golden translucent amber colour over time, and made the bits of page translucent too. I made the collage look like a church, and it looks quite lovely, I hope. I also made a Michael Jackson bangle out of sheet music for 'Thriller' that I'm calling 'Secret Thrill'. Sorry, my digicam is stuffed, and I forgot to use my iPhone to take shots, so I'll have to show you when the exhibition opens in April.

Damn. Mr Pooter just knocked over a whole stack of CDs in a gentle attempt to persuade me to let. him. out. I guess that woke up BB at least. On with the show...