I was reading the interview with Kate De Goldi in the Dom Post Weekend magazine and she was saying how she spent her time deliciously reading and lazing about as a child. Then I picked up the paper this morning and there was an article about the value (or not) of having our children race about doing after school activities. I wasn’t a child who had ballet, music and sport to attend. Our mother was simply too busy and too constrained by lack of a drivers licence in our early years and no money for extras like these. But she and our father did supply us three girls with the essentials; play time, books and paper.
I recall of my childhood, endless role playing (“It’s my turn to be the Queen of the World!”) and reading (Little Women- oh how I identified with Amy, the artist sister) and above all drawing. I drew everything; pretty girls with long hair (mine was short), witches in cottages (overcoming my fear of Hansel and Gretel), mermaids (see post below), hands and feet (to get practice), horses (but hiding their tricky- to- draw- hooves in long grass), my father watching the news, our dog, sunsets with herons, Micky Mouse replicas, Holly Hobbie rip offs…and my favourite thing of all. My piggy bank- drawn here age 10. Into this cheap china receptacle, I would squirrel away 5c coins found on the footpath (and 5 cents could buy you a whole Eskimo Pie icecream back then) and save for a rainy day. Or more paints. My favourites were ‘Maries watercolours’; enticing little tubes of alizarin crimson and ultra marine.
Nothing much has changed. I’m off on holiday to somewhere warm (not rainy) with money saved in a more secure place than my old piggy bank, which sits on a shelf in my kitchen presiding over the crumbs on the bench. I have packed, along with my laptop, many books to luxuriate with, high heels and dresses to be a dancing queen in and my faithful water colour box and sketch diary. Because a holiday isn’t a holiday without them.
I’ll be back blogging on the 22nd June...with more pictures.
1 comment:
Happy Holiday Fi - hope you're going somewhere warm. Love the accounts of your childhood btw. X
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