I know – it’s been  a couple of months since I posted – sorry dear reader, but I will only plead a heap of excuses which can be summed up by saying time, opportunity and inclination did not come together these past few weeks – but here I am, back and communicating again. 

This past week I have been working on a new piece which I hope I will feel OK about as a QN entry, closing date looming fast.  While I work I have been listening to Jane Austen’s “Emma” for the umpteenth time.  Now I know it almost by heart, and to hear it read by the late Prunella Scales makes it especially good listening.  On one level at least it’s really all about communication.  What a vital role communications play in human life, this case C18 England –  the coming and going of letters and notes, observations, personal comments, gossip, scheming, interpretation, being mistaken….  Letters were shared with family and close friends, and everyone knew who had received letters from whom, if not their actual contents – but no matter there – fuel for speculation and gossip anyway.  Everything was discussed endlessly in minute detail.  The deliciously slowly unfolding events in the lives of inhabitants of a small typical C18 English village were moulded daily by communication of all kinds, expecially ‘letters’.  From so far forward in time, looking back many of the communiques seem trivial to us, but it struck me how little has changed, really.  I realised this as we sat around the fire the other evening over a glass of wine, catching up with an old friend – no friend like an old friend, the comfortable experience of being with someone almost as familiar as a family member.  DH showed us something amazing on his laptop, and our friend was occasionally checking his FB messages, commenting on mutual friends’ recent posts, mostly trivial – and as my desktop was just an arm’s reach away, I too logged in to my email to quote something I received from a mutual acquaintance earlier in the week.  We shared family news face to face,  since I had seen several offsprings our visitor knows.  If our old friend had known the distant long-lost cousin I just heard from (much to my delight) then I’d also have brought that into the conversation too.   You’re right !!! that all sounds sooooo Jane Austenish – you can never have too much of her imho, but perhaps when “Emma” finishes I might move onto something more modern – a Jodi Picoult or Henning Mannkell maybe. 

Then this morning on the beach I noticed this bit of communication – 

Lost house keys on display

Hung on a stick wedged into the sand presumably where they were found, I thought this was a useful form of communcation, and I hope the person who lost them comes back to the beach for another look.  The tag on them looked nearly new so they haven’t been lost long.  As one was a gate and the other a door key, the owner may not have realised they were lost until he got home…. 

And finally, I think this cap has a story to tell – it’s been in the water quite a while !! 

Barnacle encrusted baseball cap

It may have initially been lost on a beach, or blown off a passenger’s head on a cruise boat coming down the river – or blown off a yachtsman’s head out in the bay – perhaps last summer or maybe longer ago – but the colour hasn’t dulled much, I looked in the seams – was it beloved or just something handy clapped on to shade a bald head? or a nose? or to go with an outfit? – worn by a guy or a gal?  Ah well, we’ll never know for that line of communication is broken. 

So now, back to the next masterpiece ….. spurred on a bit by someone buying two of my works a few days ago, and an invitation to exhibit along the coast in a few months’ time.

I am so glad I took my camera – in fact I’m rarely without it these days when I walk on the beach.  The past week has produced some unusual beach offerings – these have quite elaborate and individually styled, not just a mere plonking down of a dead something some flowers and food.  About 10 days ago there was a group of two small goat heads and one severed partial leg in the sand.  Gruesome, and I have no idea why. 

Two young goat's heads and one partial leg - no signs of any other parts.

A few days later this interesting arrangement was down near the incoming tide, right where I usually access the beach – there was no one in sight,  but it cannot have been there long. 

In the early morning light, the orientation, which always feels to me to be the same, is clearly to the south east more or less… towards the Atlantic a couple of hundred miles away from this Montevideo beach at Carrasco. Here it is technically the River Plate, but very wide even at this point and behaves like ocean.

This poignant one above speaks to me of babies, one male and the other female, and very young I’d judge by the feeding bottles and the dummies/comfortors/chupas in pink and blue. Among the flowers are pink and blue ribbons. Are these babies on the way, have they been born and this is a thakyou gesture? Have they been lost? Pulled at my heartstrings, anyway.

And then today, this one, again as in all the pics the heads of the sacrificed birds are all nearest the sea with the bodies arranged in a general SE direction. What was different was the 7 or 8 bags of food (corn in one, beans another, something unidentifiable that looked like stew, and so on) arranged in a circle around them, and a sandy hollow near every bag with the remains of a candle sitting in the sand.   Near the white hen’s head was a jar of something that looked like candied honey – but forgive me – I did not stoop to smell it even, let alone dip my finger in …..

Now that I have been paying serious attention for a while, you can imagine my photo files are expanding and include striking differences in among common themes.  Later this week I will be travelling for a while but will resume my coastal walks when I return – hope I don’t miss something amazing.  I feel like begging one of my friends to take a camera to the beach each day while I’m away ….

I had never arranged or observed a chimney being swept before – I guess when we were kids Mum had it done while we kids were at school, for obvious reasons- there were three of us.  So although we had once or twice lived in a house with a chimney it was never long enough to need to have it done, but I could have been pushing our luck there, though.  Still, with the onset of winter here, I decided although I’d procrastinated last year, it really had to be done this year. A friend gave the number of someone she used, and quite late saturday afternoon last week along came Washington and Mario on their motor bike with a neat little trailer behind containing the brooms, extension poles and gear, including respiratory masks I was pleased to see.  A few years ago no one would have bothered with such safety gear in this country – it is heartening to see hard hats, steel toe boots, back supporting belts, safety goggles and so on provided and know that their use is mandatory and monitored. 

I had to move the clutter off the mantlepiece, cover the computer with dust cloth and provide some logs of wood to anchor the huge plastic sheet in place along the shelf.  The floor rug was moved back and newspaper put down – as you can see in the photo that moved around during the process! but at the end it was all bundled up into a large plastic bag and they swept the floor of what little powdery soot was still there.  Mario climbed right into the fireplace, and even if my spanish was brilliant there is no way I could have worked out what on earth he was saying, but clearly these two are a well practised team and even understand jokes delivered with  masks over mouths and noses and a wall of plastic between them.  They came with a variety of brooms some of which they used and others no, I guess they’re prepared for all sizes and shapes of chimneys.  As they swept and moved the brushes higher and higher in the chimney one by one additional steel extenders were screwed on and pushed up the chimney, soot raining down on the newspaper on the floor of the fireplace behind the plastic.  

The whole process was reversed when the brushes come back down.   The verdict was it wasn’t very sooty considering we hadn’t swept it in the 6 years we’ve been here ( I had been a bit nervous about how much stuff was up there – we have wood fires all winter long, and chimney fires are dangerous)    Prep time and cleanup took around an hour – they were very particular – and it all cost a fraction of what I imagine it would cost in Aus or US – 800 pesos or around $40.  It was all fascinating and I remembered to take a couple of pics – oh, and yes, remembered to touch Washington on the sleeve for good luck  🙂  – yes, I am a bit superstitious, and who, knows, it can’t hurt, right?