Designer Paul Kelly says that before creating the new interiors for the Oxford Hotel on Oxford Street he visited between 400 and 500 bars, including a week-long crawl though 97 venues in Manhattan, “in search of inspiration”. Yeah, Paul, I’ve searched the bars “in search of inspiration” too, but perhaps I can’t make mine tax-deductible.
Dive right in!
Like all sensible and rational people, I base my entire life on mass-market Astrology:
So you feel like you’re in over your head? Good! Believe it or not, this is how you’ll learn to swim — longer, faster and farther than you’ve ever done before — metaphorically speaking, that is. Dive in.
Today’s advice seems, in the clear light of a Tuesday morning, strangely compelling. My desk is piled with work, but there’s a certain clarity of focus about what’s important and what’s not. I’m diving in… I’ll report back at day’s end.
Nice art, shame about the winner
On Saturday ’Pong and I popped past the inaugural Pyrmont Art Festival. With the theme “Small is Beautiful”, some 200 paintings and other images were entered, all about a foot square.
Sadly we didn’t get a good look, and we didn’t taste any of the wine or beer. We arrived at 3.45pm and the organizers were already packing things away. Note for next time: on a sunny autumn afternoon, people might not be prompt. 10am to 4pm community events? How quaint! Not everyone’s a soccer mum.
However from what was still hanging, there seemed to be a good range of interesting pieces — plus the usual dross you get in community art competitions. Unfortunately I think one of the dross pieces won — that bland streetscape with the blue ribbon in the photo above. Yes, the dun-coloured walls do say Pyrmont, but it’s hardly unique and it’s hardly Jeffrey Smart.
If we’d had time, I’d have checked out the runners-up and the People Choice awards and named names. But I figure someone official will have done that.
Iron Anniversary, but not Improved Real Estate
Yesterday, 6 May 2007, ’Pong and I celebrated our 6th anniversary — though this is a family publication so I can’t explain how we celebrated, exactly. Just congratulate us, people, and leave the details be!
Six years makes it our Iron Anniversary — but no, Snarky Platypus, I did not buy ’Pong an iron!
As an aside, check out this list of wedding anniversaries. [Update 7 March 2015: This link seems to have been broken for years, so you’ll have to take my word for it.]
Sure, the traditional ones are there, like paper for the first anniversary, cotton for 2 years, through iron for 6 to the familiar silver for 25 and gold for 50 and so on. But whoever wrote the “modern” gift suggestions is clearly on weirder drugs than I am…
“Desk sets” for the 7th anniversary? “Musical instruments” for 24th? “Conveyances (e.g. automobiles)” for 32nd? “Original poetry tribute” for 46th? And the one which takes the biscuit for me: can you actually imagine someone celebrating 42 years of wedded bliss with their “Improved Real Estate Anniversary”?
Current reading: On The Wealth of Nations
I’ve also added a sidebar widget showing what I’m currently reading — in this case P J O’Rourke’s On The Wealth of Nations. I’d been intending to read Adam Smith’s classic economic text The Wealth of Nations at some point — but when I found O’Rourke’s commentry on it for today, I figured that might be a better introduction.
Slight redesign with photo
This website’s page header has changed. The main image is a slice out of the original photo of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, one pixel deep but stretched out vertically. The little photo of me was taken at a recent event by Roger Bishop. There’s a bigger version on the About Stilgherrian page now too.