Another week that was

So. This week I taught a winter school of typography and general inkiness, 9.30 to 4.30 every day, with a lovely group of keen women who worked their butts off and produced nice things. That, combined with a couple of social events and a very surprising overnight adrenalin rush when our national leader changed gender, has resulted in my general puddleness this weekend. I am lying in bed writing this, after eating a nice Eggs Florentine made by a happy-to-be-home BB.



My type school ladies, setting type whilst listening to Kevin blub.


On Friday, after meeting my pupils at my studio for a quick tour and then wishing them safe trips home (one of them VERY kindly gave Bumblebee a lift to meet his father for the weekend, saving me a wet and tiring drive), I managed to scrape together enough energy to stumble through Woollies and buy a large amount of comfort food and (luckily) cat food (otherwise I think they would have eaten me up in the night) then get home and collapse on the couch, only rising to open another packet of something.

Best Beloved has been in Fremantle all week. I think I've mentioned before that he's studying to be a Superdooper Public Servant; he's been stuck in classes inside a windowless seminar room inside a hotel all week, and missed most of the political excitement, which seems very weird. If I were teaching a course like his, I'd have stopped class for the morning and made them analyse the situation as a group. Or at least celebrate or something... anyhoo, this has meant that Bumblebee and I have been batching it, living without routine or plan.

Bumblebee, because of my course, has had to be a latch-key kid all week, and had asked me what reward I would give him for getting mostly As this term. (He did get one B, but that was for the class where he made fresh profiteroles, so we now believe him when he says his French teacher dislikes him.) After giving him a talk about how proud I was but that doesn't translate into monetary value, I hit upon a fun thing that would slake his thirst for reward and solve the afternoon problem: we went to the local video shop and rented a week's worth of really cheesy movies. He was so happy.

We also shared the cooking, and ate fantastically. He's learned to make stirfry and burgers and we made minestrone together and I whipped up a lovely red beetroot risotto to celebrate a ginger PM.

So Friday night I forgave myself for eating two-minute spicy Thai noodles with a bag of marshmallows and a bottle of cider.



Did I mention... [whips back to the blog to check] no! Gosh, it's been a busy week. Last Saturday I took Bumblebee to the Craft ACT Bingo Night. He's never played bingo before, and I'd been introduced to it by Nana Annie when I was about his age: sitting in a hall with masses of people much older than me, the smell of handcream and excitement in the air, the sound of lightly thumping bingo markers and the tension-filled tight sucking of air through false teeth as the cards fill... it gets in your blood, it does.

This was a bit different... much younger crowd, for one thing. I regretted not bringing my bingo stamper, which is like a flat-ended texta perfectly designed to mark a dot on the card in one motion so that you can play multiple cards swiftly. I didn't regret bringing the boy, because he;s a lucky type, wins lots of things, and while I may be a cheery soul, I am not a commercially lucky person. I don't win things. When I am away on trips, Best Beloved and Bumblebee have a history of winning things (they've won a breadmaker and an icecream maker!) so I thought I'd test the theory that it's due to the lad. And it is. Sitting next to him, I won some fab jewellery and he won a handbag! Mine was a line bingo and his was a door prize. yay!

Snaps to Nana Bingo, played by the wonderful Barb McConchey, for making the evening amusing and urging us all on to greatness.



Then on Wednesday night we had a small but lovely launch for Those Who Travel, the book I helped produce over summer with Patsy Payne and Sarah Rice. Helen Maxwell, who closed her gallery earlier this year, has developed a lovely working relationship with her ex-next door neighbours, a funky furniture store, and they allowed her to have the launch in the store, which was fantastic. Lots of lovely things to sit on, precarious moments with red wine, and a launch speech by artist and writer Kim Mahood, who said lots of beautiful things about the book. We have adjusted the price a tad, and sold 4 books on the night, one to the National Gallery (w00t!). Bumblebee came along, wearing his new (vintage) brown leather bomber jacket, looking very cool, and spent the night pretending not to stare at the gorgeous daughter of a friend of mine, and she spent the night pretending not to stare at him, even though they quite happily Facebook regularly... ahh, I wouldn't be a teenager again if you paid me.

What else? Well, as you can see somewhere on the right there, I managed a bout of Twittering on wed and thursday, because that's where the action was re. the political scene. I had Bernice Balconey staying with me on Wed night, so she was jumping around in excitement and explaining things to me between brow furrows and squeals. The next day my whole class wanted the radio on, so we set type and listened to everything, blow by blow. My goodness, interesting times. Even if Julia ends up to be more more Margaret Thatcher than Helen Clarke, at least we can say we've had a female PM for a while... at the same time as a female GG. W00T again!

Also -- it's Zoe's birthday today. If you haven't already, send her a twit/FB poke/blog comment to send her your salutations. She just got her dream job, working for Stephanie Alexander, so while she hasn't been blogging, she's at least been floating.

Enough for now. I only have a day or so to go at the Book Stud before I have 6 months away from it... and I'm going to spend the next month finishing little jobs, cleaning the studio furiously (my friend Nicci is going to sublet it) and preparing for New Zealand, which looms close!

Postscript: here's a laugh. Here's something serious to think about. Or you can read the original.

Post-postscript: oh! Oh! oh! Big snaps to Penthe, you can now laugh even harder, LOLcatting at the change of leadership...