Enormous useless speakers made useful and pretty

Allow me to introduce you to a pair of speakers.

Aren't they lovely?  Of course anyone who is under 30 probably won't know this, but this is the way we used to listen to music.  I believe they date from that decade when we wore scrunchies, baggy jeans and ruffled white shirts. 

These speakers have sat quietly in our front sitting room, weighing about 50 kg each and taking up rather a lot of space but otherwise minding their own business for about 9 years now.  Because of course, we have other, much, much, much smaller speakers.  In fact I am not even sure where the connecting leads for these speakers are.  

But do you think I can send them off to speaker heaven? No, I can't.   The following comments have been made about these speakers by a certain person (the owner):

• you would never be able to buy speakers of this quality today.
• there is no way we are getting rid of these.
• you never know -  we might use them at some point.
• they are hardly taking up any space - you can't even notice them.
• maybe the children can have them when they are a bit older.
• maybe one of the neighbour's kids might want them.

You may gather from the above that if I put these speakers out for the hard rubbish collection, it may just break his heart.  But still.  He said he wouldn't mind if I tricked them up a bit. 

So, after thinking a bit, I found a way to hide them and use them.

I have now turned his speakers into two plinth side tables.

First I bought some plywood.  Oh, and a saw, because we don't have one. 

Then I made a cage frame template thing to sit over the speakers.  I got the pieces sawn into the correct shape and stuck it together using ducting tape to make sure they all fitted. 

Then after some lengthy wallpaper sample experimentation, discussed here, I chose a colour, a goldeny Chinese print from GP&J Baker.  And then I waited, and waited, and waited, for it to arrive from the UK (by barge presumably). 

Once it arrived, I wallpapered the wood. 

I then stuck them together with more ducting tape.   This was the hardest bit, as I had to kind of squirm inside the cage to make the bits stick together.  

And then I put the frame over the speaker and slid it into place.  I think you can see from the photos that some of the edges may need a bit more work to make them completely square and neat.    Especially that pesky one on the left.   

And here they are: useless speakers made useful.

My new tables have a number of benefits.  First they are high enough to reach as most side tables are two low for the couches in this room.   Second they take the place of a coffee table, which I am not allowed to have in this or any room.   Third, they just look pretty.   And finally, my husband gets to keep his speakers.   In a sense.

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Rock cakes and smuggler's coves

We all know that if there is one thing you should not do to your children it is to impose your embarassing ambitions, tastes and foibles upon them.

If you want them to become a neurosurgeon, don't force it.  If you love sailor suits and think they look charming, don't make your child wear them.   And if you want them to have the same obssessive childhood hobbies, be a subtle directionist, and do not push it on to them.

This has been hard for me.   What I want my children to be is bookoholics.   To me, there is nothing more important than a love of books. Books are my stalwart companions, and I learned that early on, as a child, when my happiest times were lying in the sunshine in my bedroom reading an Enid Blyton book.

(this is what my shelves looked like, photo from here)

So for my daughter, I have started a little collection of all the books I read over and over when I was young.   Predictably, and perversely, as yet she shows no interest at all in them.

Here is my list.  I haven't collected them all yet, but I figure I still have a bit of time.
And in case you are wondering, they are all quite readable by adults too.  

1. Joan Aiken 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' (1963).  

(image by Superflygirl on Flickr)

These books are set in early 1800s during the reign of James III, positing an alternate history of England in which James II has not been deposed, but instead Hanoverian insurgents agitate against the monarchy.  To add to the excitement, wolves have invaded England from Russia via the channel tunnel.

This books tells the story of cousins Bonnie and Sylvia who are left by Bonnie's parents in their house Willoughby Chase under the care of the sinister and villainous Mrs Slighcarp.  

This book is part of a series which included Nightbirds on Nantucket and Black Hearts in Battersea, which also feature Simon and a new character, the wonderful and feisty Dido Twite. 

These books are so imaginative, and scary, they thrilled me to bits when I was a little girl. 

2. The 'R' Mysteries and the Adventure Series by Enid Blyton

A little confession - I recently looked at the Enid Blyton Society website and I couldn't find a single Enid Blyton book I hadn't read. 

Now, we all know about Mallory Towers, St Clares, the Faraway Tree, Noddy, the so called racism, the so called sexism, the library ban and other things. But, in spite of all that, what Enid Blyton does so well (the same point has been made about JK Rowling) is engender a love of reading whcih endures for a lifetime.

I loved all the school stories of course and desparately wanted to go to a boarding school in Cornwall and be naughty in a prim way, but I most of all loved the adventure stories.  The above is the Barney series, and below, one of the Adventure series.

Both series consisted of groups of siblings and friends (there is always one outcast eccentric friend who is especially clever at getting out of sticky situations) who have wonderful adventures in sinister castles, villages, islands, etc. 

(all Enid covers from the Enid Blyton Society)

3. Lucy M Boston's Green Knowe Stories, starting with the Children of Green Knowe

This is a ghostly story set in an evocative house.   Part of a series of 5 books (I think).

4. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden



Rumer Godden has written some fabulous books including The River.  Having spent much of her childhood in India, she often explores themes of belonging and homesickness.

In this book Nona is sent from steamy India to live with cousins in cold rainy England.  Life is utterly miserable until she is given two Japanese dolls, and instructions to build them an authentic Japanese home, which she proceeds to do.  This was my first introduction to tatami mats, rice paper walls and kimonos.   The book also comes with instructions for the house. 

5.  Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards


Yes, this is the Julie Andrews of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music fame.  She is a rather good writer.  This book tells the story of Mandy, a girl in an orphanage who discovers an abandoned cottage in the forest behind the orphanage.  She cleans it out, 'does it up' and all ends happily when the man who owns it ends up adopting her.

A magical story for girls who want to live in their own home separate from their family (as I did.  Nothing personal, it was just what I wanted). 

6. The Chalet School Books by Elinor M Brent Dyer



As a little girl my Chalet School addiction knew no bounds.   Elinor M Brent Dyer wrote 59 of these books, over 45 years (between 1925 and 1970), so it was pretty much impossible to collect them all.   But wonderful to obsess over. 

The Chalet School was set up by an English women, Madge Bettany, in the Austrian Tyrol in the 1930s.  The stories cover the many and varied adventures of the girls and their teachers over decades.   

They had more substance and drama than the Enid Blyton boarding school books, and were truly exotic, being set in Austria.    Following the rise of the Nazis in Germany the school moved to Guernsey, then to England, and island off Wales and finally to peaceful Switzerland. 

Yes these books feature feisty heroines too, and some wonderful character names - Mary Lou Trelawney, Daisy Venables, Prunella Davies, Eustacia (can't remember surname) and Verity-Ann Carey. 

7. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

We all know about the Secret Garden.  This is about a little girl, Sara Crewe, who is sent to Miss Minchin's boarding school in London.  Instead of being treated kindly, a per her father's instructions, she is treated with cruelty and once her father dies, matters deteriorate.   

This story does have a happy ending, and Burnett's story of a clever, imaginative little girl who manages to make the best of an appalling situation, is quite enthralling. 

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A nautical Sunday

On Sunday I made a little cushion cover for my son.

I hear you saying, enough already with the cushion covers. The truth is I can't control it.  I haven't actually bought a cushion for about 10 years because (a) I rarely like the ones I see in shops and (b) the ones I did like were $150 plus. 

But now, I control the fabric, the cost, the timing and the cushion cover itself.  And so all that pent up cushion buying is exploding out of me in no uncertain terms.

Zips now hold no fear for me.  The zipper footer has been conquered. I can do zips on the edge and zips under a flap. I can do long zips and short zips. Ugly zips and pretty zips.  

I can do plain cushions and flowery cushions. 

And home made cushions are such great value.  Although it has been pointed out to me that if I costed my cushion making activities by reference to my hourly charge out rate as a lawyer, then my cushions would be far from good value.   They might in fact actually cost upwards of $600 per cushion including materials and labour.   Like me, you should choose to ignore that uncomfortable fact as it takes a little bit of the fun out of the exercise. 

On Sunday I thought - what about a collage cushion?  This would enable me to use up all those old jeans and overalls and tops which little P keeps growing out of rather than giving them all to the Salvos. 


So here is a boat cushion.

The base cover is navy cotton, the boat hull is from a pair of Gant jeans, the left side sail is from a pair of Boden overalls, the mast is some brown linen I found, the flag is a Gap T Shirt and the right hand side (or should that be aft?) is from a linen bag I had lying around.

I cut out a paper template first, and then used that as a base for the pieces.  I found it helped immeasurably to iron the pieces with the hem folded in first  so that the edges would not play up during sewing.  

And then, feeling a metaphorical salty breeze in my hair, I had a lovely lunch for a friend's birthday here:

This is the kiosk at the end of St Kilda Pier, which was originally built between 1900 and 1914 and then completely destroyed by an arsonist in 2004.  It was then rebuilt to the original 1904 plans.    I don't usually like new things built to look old but this resurrection is respectful and appropriate and I can't think of anything better to go here. 

The kiosk was run by a series of long term tenants, including a Mr Francis Parer, who lived in the kiosk for 30 years until 1930 and served 'fish and fruit luncheons without any intoxicating liquors of any sort'  and the Kerbys (Colin Kerby retired in 1987 having worked in the kiosk since 1934 from a young age). 

It was one of those perfect, windless 25 degree days in Melbourne.  Little cotton clouds appeared then moved on south.   The beach was crowded but not overly so.  Rollerbladers, grungy locals, plump tourists and fishermen mingled on the pier.    Little children splashed in the shallows and sunbakers (yes they still exist) slathered on sunscreen and settled down for an afternoon's tanning.   

This is the view facing south-east from the pier on Sunday.   

(Image of Kiosk and history from skhs.org.au)

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Book of the month - The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville

Daniel Rooke, astronomer, mathematician and marine,  a boy who showed promise growing up in Portsmouth in the 1760s, grew into a man who believed that 'God was just a way for a man to interrogate his own heart'.

Sickened by the violent death of fellow soldiers witnessed in the West Indies, he seeks an escape to gentler climes.  And what better than accompanying the First Fleet to settle the great land discovered by Captain Cook?  There was even an astronomical excuse, as Halley's Comet was due to pass over Australia in 1789.

The Lieutenant, by Kate Grenville (2008) has been sitting on my bedside table for a long time. I started reading it and was upset by its intensity and stopped.  I could almost sense the tragedy to unfold over hundreds of years, triggered by the settlement of Sydney by the English.  

It is a wonderful book, sparsely written but so evocative of its environment and the two peoples who found themselves living together, suddenly, in an unforgiving land.   I wish I had read it sooner, and now will have to go and read everything Kate Grenville has ever written.

Daniel Rooke sensibly decamps across an inlet, to set up a little home for viewing the night skies. 

He quickly befriends the local aboriginals, in particular a girl of 13 or 14, wise perhaps beyond her years, named Tagaran.  He learns her language, and develops feelings for her which are a combination of paternal love and perhaps something more.

Acutely aware of his pale and soft shortcomings, he thinks:

What was it like to be Tagaran?  To walk about the wood barefoot and naked, as easy as he had been on Church Street? ....

The urge was irresistible, like hunger or thirst, to unbuckle his shoes, peel off the worn stockings and stand barefoot on Tagaran's eath.  His feet were as white as those fat caterpillars that were found among the rotting wood: vulnerable, weak looking.  He took a few wary steps along the track, then he was jabbed in the heel by something sharp enough to make him gasp. When he looked he saw it was only a piece of twig half the size of a toothpick.  Was that how little it took to prevent him from walking in Tagaran's feet?'.

(Richard Browne 1813) (courtesy State Library of New South Wales)

Eventually and inevitably, tragedy triggers a violent response from the settlers and he must choose between Tagaran's tribe and his own troops. 

I have not read a better distillation of the fascinating aboriginal culture and in particular language.  

(sketches by William Govett 1830)

A wonderful moment includes Daniel's discovery that the Aboriginals have a word for 'heating one's hands in front of the fire and then rubbing one's warmed fingers slowly over someone else's hands to warm those hands in turn' (putuwa).

A book to treasure and read over and over.

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Eight happy grass trees and a mirror for the garden

There were five things in the front garden when we bought our house.   An enormous liquid amber, thirsty for the water in our sewerage pipes, a hyacinth tree which made me think of Elvis Presley films, a magnolia tree which was magnificent in bloom but otherwise twiggy and sticky, an expanse of lawn and some brownish deadish azalea plants.

Nine years later, nothing remains.  The tree went, removed following speedy Star Chamber style trial and conviction by a jury of two on the charge of trying to pull down our front fence with its pushy roots.

The lawn died, also murdered by the tree (and truth be known, by the drought we have had for years).

The azaleas had to go.  I don't care what anyone says. I am not having them in my garden until I am over 60.

And the hyacinth and magnolia were at the end of their lives, so they went off to sunny plant heaven.

This is our attempt at a drought resistent desert garden.   We are no longer fighting nature and our environment, but working with it.  A lot of these ideas we actually got from travelling in New Zealand, where they seem to have a lot of grassy gardens.  

We planted blueberry ash around the border of the garden and also lots of grassy  plants and little bumpy plants (called Hebe), craned in two huge rocks, one for pointing to the sky (see shot above) and one for sitting on with a glass of wine in the evening (out of shot) and built a low stone wall for small children to run along over and over again.    We then put down a pale browney yellow gravel to replace the lawn, which needs ocassional zen raking.

And most importantly, we planted 8 rather large grass trees.

They are also known as black boys, but I believe one is no longer allowed to use that term.

These plants grow native in many parts of Australia.   I have noticed them on the drive from Melbourne to Adelaide and also at my mother's farm.

They are sensitive souls.  They suffer replanting badly.  To address this we planted them, still in their little bags, in a raised pile of soil.  That way they don't need to suffer the indignity of immersion in Someone Else's Ground.

They are so happy in this garden, we cannot believe our luck.

I secretly thought they would die within 6 months and yet here they are, growing away (2 millimetres a year - they live forever, like turtles or Californian redwoods), flowering with their pointy bit, and generally enjoying life in Melbourne. 

Now I need to work on the verandah which looks over the garden. It is an austere space, and really needs work.  ('Austere' here being an elegant way of saying hard, plain and not very attractive).  No photos, it would be a bit too depressing.

But one thing I am thinking about is to hang a mirror on the blank end wall, and maybe grow some ficus around it.  

It would create all kinds of exciting optical light and space illusions. 

A bit like these (but less cottagey):

 

(Images: (1) - (3) Jane (4) Holly Christian.com (5) Brownstoner.com (6) Cedric Bryant.com)

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February 2010 beach house round up

We Australians are reknowned for our love of the beach. 

I may just possibly be the only exception in this wide brown land to that rule. 

I loathe the sand sticking to me, the stinging bright sun, the blistering burn which I obtain from just half an hour in the sun and the salty wind.  This loathing may derive from the fact that my father got skin cancer when I was 20 but even before that, I had learned the hard way that I couldn't get a tan. In those days, the only fake tan available was something in a tin called Sudden Tan.  It produced an almost fluorescent yellow/orange glow a bit like a mango and stained your hands, zombie-like for days on end.  It is hard to remember now, with so many warnings about the dangers of the sun, but when I grew up people were teased for having pale skin.

Anyway, to look at, and to walk on in the evening or very early morning, there is nothing better than a beach.   And to see my daughter playing in the surf with such uninhibited delight a few weekends back did make me reevaluate my grumpy approach. 

January and February is the time when all the beach houses go on sale.

Perhaps the market is not as bouyant as people may have hoped given that the GFC has not been as severe in Australia as other places.  These places may prove the naysayers wrong.

Especially because in Victoria, with a shorter coastline, there is not such a great abundance of coastal beach homes as there is further north.

Here is my round up of the best I have seen.

A boathouse at Shelley Beach, Portsea (this sold for $455,000 over the weekend, to two families who 'wanted somewhere to store their beach gear').

And this is what you see from inside:

A Cape Cod style house in Wattle Grove, Portsea.


A house in Stonecutters Way, Portsea:

and with a pool - call me old fashioned but there is something wrong about pools at beach houses.  Isn't that what the ocean is for?



A house at Lorne, on the west coast of Victoria:




and the view from that house:




A cliff top eyrie, in the same family for many years, at Shelley Beach, Portsea, known as Inverary:



This has something of the Cote D'Azur (nice not gold plated ) about it.   And it was sold for $8.71 million on the weekend.  




(All Images: from RT Edgar and Kay & Burton)

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Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dogs' tails

Many months after first realising that I needed to turn my son's lilac nursery into something more appropriate for his needs, I am still ploughing through metres of fabric for the curtains, and thinking about how best to fix the room.  

There are many rooms out there which look like this:

But to me these rooms lack a little personality.  Of course, children need lots of storage, which is partly why these rooms always have so much joinery.  Oh and need I mention that it makes things very very expensive?

Whilst my son's possessions in no way amount to this:

He does have quite a lot of blue and brown cars and building blocks left on the floor at the end of the day.

It is also a small room, and I am thinking about how to maximise the floor space, rather than shoving a whole lot of cupboards and drawers onto that space.

Anyway, I am finding myself less attracted to the matchy-matchy style, and much more to a hodge podge of things thrown together in an oh so casual way:

And my dream room (if I lived in a warehouse) is this one, complete with around the wall train:

It is always an issue to change a plan half way through, and I have already done curtains and chair cover in slightly matching colours.  I will now have to work on the rest of the room, including managing the challenge of storage without joinery.  

(Images (1)(4)(5)(6) Cookie, (2)(3) Designing (7) Oh Dee Doh (8) (9) Jan Eleni)

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