The Maroon Diaries

Hello dear readers, I hope you are enjoying your New Year's Eve celebrations. I am getting back on track with publishing my book list in a timely fashion. I'm afraid it's quite paltry pickings this year. I've had a lot going on. Not to mention the discovery of streaming services and binge-watching... I've linked the title of each book to its page on Goodreads , so you can click through and quickly get an idea of what kind of book it is. 1 Glad No Matter What by SARK 2010 2  The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman 1997 3  Wise Children by Angela Carter 1991 4  The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler 2014 5  The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland 2013 6   The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories by Roald Dahl 1982 7   The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman 2000 8 Gypsy Cante: Deep Song of the Caves selected and translated by Will Kirkland 1999 9  Caught in a Story: Contemporary Fairytales and Fables edited by Christine Park ...

I had plans to spend New Year's Eve the same way I usually do, keeping out of the heat as much as possible, and writing up my Year in Books blog post. But something very dramatic happened that changed not just the day's plans, but an awful lot of my life. Around 4:30 am on December 31st, 2016, I found Mr CJ dead in the garden. This is the story of how that came to be. Followers of this blog will have noticed that I've spent the last several years as a carer for Mr CJ. He had been sick for seven and half years, slowly declining all that time. It started with a headache that wouldn't go away, no matter what. Some months of hospitals and testing later, it was discovered that he had arthritis in his neck, featuring a growth spur that was pressing on the nerves as they exited the spinal column at that point. That meant chronic pain in his head, neck, arms and shoulders, limited mobility in his arms and hands, and reduced sensitivity in fingers that limited his dexterity....

It's not often that I get the opportunity to mark a centenary, but this is such an occasion, so I want to share something special with you. I've had this book for about nine years or so now. A friend of mine found it in a rubbish skip on the street in Five Dock, an inner western suburb of Sydney. He knew it was precious and saved it, but he didn't know what to do with it. It was when I showed him my altered book art that he decided that I loved old books enough to appreciate such a treasure, and he gave it to me. I don't know what to do with it either, either than love it and be amazed by it. One hundred years ago, at Christmas in 1916, this book was presented to Dorothy Wickham Bate for Music. The latest date I can find recorded in the book is 1936. For twenty years, Miss Bate kept this book with her, adding new friends and memories to it regularly. I don't know why she stopped keeping it - there are plenty of blank pages still left - or where it was in all ...

  Oh, dear Reader, it's so exciting - I'm in Sydney, and just thrilled to bits to be here.  It's been several years, and I'd forgotten how much I love this city, which is surprisingly much, given that I can't stand cities generally. Somehow, there's some magical effect here in Sydney that protects me from all the distress of sensory overload and allows me to just delight in the teeming humanity and the heights of human culture.   Maybe it's because this was my first home. At least, the first one I remember. I was born in Melbourne, but my parents moved to Sydney when I was just a year old. I was eight when we left, so that's some pretty formative years that I spent here. So maybe there is some ghost of my childhood spirit, or a guardian angel from my early childhood that still dwells here, and makes this city so marvellous for me. I was actually just feeling really daunted about the trip here, thinking I would be overwhelmed as I usually am by travel...

One of my biggest frustrations in the pursuit of blogging is the failure of a photographic image to match up to reality as I perceive it. I see something, and I want to share it with you. So I take a photo, but when I look at the image I have captured, it doesn’t look at all like what I was seeing. And so I can’t share the experience, and I give up on the fledgling blog post. I have tried a few different devices in my search for verisimilitude, and I don’t know if the better camera is producing a ‘better’ image or not, to me, it’s just another version of the image that’s not the one I saw. I went to start doing the dishes a little while ago, (as one must, repeatedly, apparently) and I was struck with one of those moments that I wanted to share with you. Beauty can always be found in the most unexpected and unappealing places, even in the dirty dishes in the sink. There was a bowl. It had been filled with peaches and cream, and then when it was empty, filled with water and left...

I have begun photographing my collection of vintage crockery before I take most of it off to a collector in town. Of course I wish I could keep them all, because they're so beautiful. But it's time for a Decluttering, so off they go. I found all these pieces in op shops. As you can imagine, there have been countless beautiful treasures I have found since I let my blog lay fallow. Today, let's start catching up with some plates. Johnsons of Australia Midwinter by Stonehenge, England Johnson Brothers, England - there are three different sizes of this one. I love that they are oval rather than round. Two small plates from Japan Tiny dishes. Top two - England, bottom - Japan England Two more from Japan Burgundy Rose by British Anchor, England This pair is unusual for the difference of just one small motif between them. Johnsons of Australia   Classic scenes. Left - Crown Lynn, New Zealand, right - Swan Inn by J Br...

I used to keep journals. I kept them lovingly, faithfully and well. Journalling was an important and cherished part of my life. I discovered so much of myself through my journals. Or at least that’s how I remember it. Because my journals were so important to me, I’d keep them every time I edited my possessions in order to move house. By the time I turned 30 I’d collected a big, heavy pile of journals. It might not look so big to some – I’ve often read writers’ accounts of having piles of old journals stacked from floor to ceiling in their attics or cellars. I’m guessing that these are mostly the kinds of people who have houses with attics and cellars and get to stay put in them for long periods of time. But me, every fucking time I moved house or even re-organised the one I was living in, I’d have to pack the fucking things up, lug them about from here to fucking there, and find somewhere to bloody well store them again. You can tell how frustrated I’ve become by this by all the fu...