Post 423 Bats and Ballots

Continuing my theme of 'March in recent years', this is 21 March three years ago with my cousin Pen and Mark in Lynton, Exmoor. Again, I am so pleased I was able to visit them when I did. We created so many memories to hang on to. 

In contrast, "abundance of caution" has made this a very quiet week. In line with SA Health Guidelines for close contacts (7 days isolation 7 days caution), I have avoided all those crowds I usually mix with(!). On Wednesday I had a problem-solving session with a Guild member - at an outside table in a coffee shop. Seemed to work. Although my Pilates class is never more than 4 people, it is indoors and I cancelled to be safe. I did a bit of food shopping and visited Create in Stitch to replenish my supplies of DMC Etoile thread, used up on the Bush Sentinelles.

The big event of the week was our State election on Saturday. I had mailed my postal vote last week. I spent election night having dinner and watching the count at friends' place - an old tradition. Pre-polls suggested a tight result with a probable change of government. It turned out to be a landslide change. Once I might have been excited by this. Now I have very mixed feelings. I am really over the tribalism. I can no longer see the two Party system (indeed the Party system itself) as efficient, effective - or decent and honest. I don't believe the promises and claims. I want cooperation and collaboration. At least this result is clear-cut. That makes a bit of a change in SA. I'm hopeful we will all now get on with doing the very best possible for our community. Today at the hairdresser I overheard several conversations from the adjoining barber - middle-aged men born in Eastern Europe, sharing their fears, knowledge and hope in the face of the Ukraine crisis -geographically removed, but utterly connected.. It strikes me we need to draw on the depths of experience and understanding in our diverse community to find workable solutions to both local and global issues - we are in this world, this State, together.

On Thursday night I had an idea that sent me back to Create in Stitch again the next day for a large wooden hoop. 5 members of my Adelaide family were still in lockdown. Because they had isolated as a family, rather than make the infected member isolate in their room alone, they had 14, rather than 7, days of isolation. The infected member, on the other hand, was free to leave the house once negative. It was hard to be missing school, work and sporting finals. So I designed and worked a little tribute for their release from quarantine today.  

That took up most of Saturday and Sunday along with making a couple of moussaka and an eggplant parmigiana (bought too many eggplant!). I delivered them to the lockdown house in the hour that our water was off due to the installation of new taps in the basement carpark. 

My neighbour called me late in the afternoon because she had a leak in her bathroom roof - I'm not sure how plumbers in the basement results in leaks in the roof, but hopefully it will be solved soon. The same neighbour had called in last Friday to talk to me about her experiences growing up in Adelaide in the 1950s - triggered by reading Conversations with Baby Boomer Teachers. 

After she left on Monday, I was enticed again by the bats - the dots high in the sky,

 

then a discernible shape 

and my favourite - curved shape  on an almost impressionist landscape.

Today's hairdressing visit took a while but I'm happy with the result. My hair is thinning and the grey is increasing, but I will pass with a push, as my mother would have said.   

I'm now finishing off the Mosaic Carpet Bag, and setting up the Aesop Frame which I will be working on for weeks to come. It's time.