Scarecrows in Chester

How good is this, here we are bustling around packing and generally sorting things out to go down to the Snowy Mountains, and we receive the following photos from our friends Lois and Glenn of their trip this weekend to Chester, New Hampshire.

The Brig and I lived there from May 1976, for 5 plus super years and we loved this tiny New England village, our good friends Paula and Romy and daughter Wendy were our neighbours are still there. We were living in Chester when the Village celebrated their 250th Anniversary, and we still have the little souvenir jugs and those plates - just haven't been able to move them on for all kinds of sentimental reasons.

Anyway apparently Chester now has its own Scarecrow Festival just in time for Halloween this coming weekend.

Ye olde Post Office below

The married scarecrows in front of the Chester Church!

Someone's "headless" horseman!

An attractive figure below - maybe moi these days!

Humpty Dumpty with his sign - "Pride Goeth Before a Fall"

************* And photos of Chester College - Arts now. Thanks Lois and Glenn - just love revisiting Chester in any way.

Frank has just told me that while we are in Sydney (en route to the Snowy) the "Sculpture by the Sea" starts at Bondi on October 28th - so we will walk around it again like we did with you guys last time - camera at the ready - how great is that.

Last minute preparations

After a weekend of monitoring and sorting out the garden and mucho other things in readiness for our trip, it was lovely to meet up with a few of the residents from Paradise Springs at the Colonial Golf Club for snacks and a barbeque this afternoon. Great food as usual, the "blue" Jacarandas are peeping out, and by the time we get back in a months time, the red and orange Poincianas should be in full bloom.

Relaxing on the Club's deck

A great Flick and two cakes!

Yesterday, the skies opened up again - changed all our outdoor plans, so a decision had to be made to not only get a walk in, but also to occupy some of this day. I googled the Cinema at the Robina Town Centre, most of the movies were for kids, but I found one, which we had seen the shorts on a couple of weeks ago, 10.30 am start, sounded great. Got to the mall, walked and walked with an occasional wander into a few of the stores, then up to the Cinema, found that this was a special showing for the Cinema Club (Seniors) which we are members of, and we "oldies" were treated to complimentary tea, coffee, scones and chocolate covered strawberries. This movie doesn't really start in Oz till 28th October. "Made in Dagenham" tells the story of a protest which snowballed and led to a revolution in equal pay for women. The female staff who worked long hours in poor conditions at the Ford Motor Company plant in Dagenham were outraged at being reclassified as "unskilled" in 1968. The group of 187 sewing machinists (they made the leather seat covers for zephyrs and cortinas) went on strike for equal pay with men and took on not only the company, but their Union and the government to highlight this injustice. This event was instrumental in the lead up to the 1970 Equal Pay act in the UK.

We thoroughly enjoyed this movie - certainly not everyone's cuppa, but we did like it - for all kinds of different reasons!

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Above - On route to Westminster and their meeting with Senior Labour Politician, - in Harold Wilson's days - Barbara Castle

The Machinist Leader, Rita, (in her borrowed Biba Dress) with Barbara Castle.

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The referral to BIBA fashions took me right back in time. just a little bit of my work history here. Biba commenced in London in May 1964, via the creative founders Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon . Below is their first shop in September '64 in Abingdon Road, Kensington, with its painted black windows, not allowing the store's interior to receive any sunlight, which was vital for the Biba's art nouveau atmosphere..

The BIBA logo played a crucial part in Biba's success, the logo was gold and black which reflected the growing taste in youth for art deco, it was designed by Antony Little.

The BIBA logo was customized in various ways to be appropriate for all the different products. BIBA was the first to set a standard for brand marketing and the first high street store to create a look for itself, its interior layout was always innovative and was set to enhance the clothes rather than just to hold them.

BIBA never exhibited anything in shop windows, believing instead that people would be intrigued and seduced to enter the shop by their captivating store "interior" which could be seen from the outside.

They opened at other addresses with the largest (and final) in 1974 being the 7 story Derry and Toms Department Store, which immediately attracted up to one million customers weekly, making it one of the most visited tourist attractions in London. The creative interior of this store was quite unbelievable - it was a huge responsibility in terms of expense and organisation. No one was aware of how serious the financial difficulties were going to be, and they indeed proved too much for the new entrepreneurs; as a result Dorothy Perkins Fashion Stores and Dennis Day bought 75% of BIBA.

My interest is that during this period (late '74 and '75) I was the Admin Assistant to the Managing Director of Dorothy Perkins, and it was pretty obvious, though most confidential that things were not going to work - there were disagreements with the Board over creative control, Barbara Hulanicki left the company and shortly afterwards BIBA was closed. The Dorothy Perkins shareholder decided that the Derry and Toms building that housed BIBA was worth more than the ailing business itself. I lasted in this highly political and quite disturbing secretive atmosphere for all of the 9 months it took, couldn't wait to get out of that situation, it was very sad to see such creativity lose its way and be gobbled up by the uncreative big boys!

The legacy is that a musical play called "Biba: the Musical" based on the story of Hulanicki and the original company is currently in the works! Wouldn't I love to see that.

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MANY MORE CANDLES

On Monday eve, Ash celebrated with 2 sparkling birthday cakes - another very nice evening.

Birthday and Beach!

Today is the 14th Birthday of our sponsor child/teenager in Rio De Janeiro - Jessica. We always get nice letters from her - translated from portugese of course. Here is the latest photo of Jessica.

This morning we delivered the Patrol for its big service at 7 a.m. then drove to Burleigh again for our walk - it was a glorious day already, it was great to see the flags are out and swimming is allowed again. The photo above was taken from the large deck along the boardwalk, where a week ago the waves were lashing up and over it.

Above - the deck minus those menacing seas The only sign of last weeks awful storms were neat piles of driftwood along the beach

Think the group above have borrowed some of that driftwood for the game they were playing early morning.

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The 8 a.m. (free) Tha Chi was really crowded in front of the beach this morning I am going to have a go at it one morning - not getting a lot of enthusiasm from the Brig though!!

The Sun is shining

And the flowers are smiling, actually we are as well - a lot!!. The weather down the whole east coast of Australia has been quite revolting, actually snowed in a few places yesterday in NSW and Victoria - floods, terrible winds and freezing temperatures including up here on the Gold Coast. This morning it was only 8 deg. with top temp today being 18 deg. (should be around 15 deg. to start the day off and reach about 28 deg. at this time of year), but the sky was clear, so we had a long walk, then off to the Farmers Markets at the Turf Club - stocked up on our fresh pasta, vegies, and the Brig's marinated fetta - then home for some gardening and to wander around under that clear blue sky!!!

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The gardenias and jasmin survived the heavy rain and high winds

Many flowers, though a bit hard to detect here - white flowers against a nearly white wall!! Frank stretching wire along the fence to attach the Camelia Sasanquas to - as they grow - eventually a full hedge we hope.

Demolishing the "scarps"!

Yesterday morning the sun actually sneaked out early, so we decided to drive to Burleigh for a long walk along the boardwalk. before hitting the hardware store, yet again!. We are just amazed at how quickly they move the equipment onto the beaches and start work to demolish the "scarps" and attempting to safeguard and rebuild the beaches.

We started walking at 7 a.m., but the men and their machines were well into it by then.

These 2 little guys below were spellbound with the equipment.

and some just sat back and watched! Took this one from the Heads looking back to Burleigh

Board riders were back out!

And some were sitting on top of the "scarp", of course they will have to relocate soon, so the equipment can be moved to work on this section of the beach.

Beaches were closed for swimming, but this little one and her Dad just enjoyed playing in the froth and foam.

Beach erosion

Our beaches are really getting a hammering - this is one of the boardwalk's decks along Burleigh Heads Beach - normally the sea is a lot further down than this. In fact the large photo above of the Surf Boarders was taken about 30 meters in front of this deck on one beautiful winter's morning 3 months ago.

Burleigh Beach again - the sand erosion from the high rough seas along the coast is quite horrific, the vertical cliff left after beach erosion is called a "scarp", one of the reasons why all the beaches are closed, and being guarded closely. Some scarps are over 3 meters high - most dangerous at night! A lot of our beaches have table and bench settings, carved out of wonderful local wood in similar shape to surfboards - they haven't been in high demand for the last few days!!

An aerial shot of Surfers Paradise beach (or lack of) taken yesterday!

Age goes with the flow!!

This weekend Frank had planned some different celebrations for my big birthday, starting with a 20 minute walk on Friday through some parks to a little hole in the wall, a French restaurant - La Porte Verte (the Green Door), menu and reports look wonderful, very unflash, but very french. Well that idea came to a halt - after a few days of heavy rain, even to drive up and get soaking was not what we were looking forward to - HOWEVER that plan is still to occur on the next sunny Friday - I have reminded him on probably more than one occasion!!!! On Sunday morning a group of us were to meet at the great Currumbin Surf Club for brekky, well by Saturday we heard that the next few days were also going to be "tres ordinaire" so the Brig changed from the Club to our place, we glazed and roasted a leg ham, he fried the eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes on the barbeque and of course added the old baked beans, and we had a delightful breakfast- for the first time "indoors" .

I did manage to find some Waratahs to put on the table with Jasmin from our garden.

Auntie Beryl made my birthday cake, Auntie Nal made it for me last year.

Mouth open as usual - too many candles to blow out - of course there would've been a lot more if Gail had her way - I managed to call off her efforts earlier !!!!

And today was also very wet - we have had 10 inches in 10 days, roads are flooded and now beaches are closed. So again we canned any ideas of hitting the roads and just as well as I would've missed all the delightful calls I have had today from N.Z.(some singing kids) the USA and piles from Oz. My day started with a call from young Isabella at 7 a.m. ( she is 7 years old in 24 days).

A most interesting present arrived in the mail today - a letter from the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (Work and Income Department) to advise me that I was now - as of this big birthday today - entitled to a pension of $NZ 10.60 per week (gross before tax) in lieu of my contributions for 2 years work some 42 years ago. How's that - they found me - I worked there under my maiden name, I do worry about the cost of tracking the likes of me down - at no request of my own - after so many years though.

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"le temps tres ordinaire"!!

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Above - Kurrawa beach is so lonely, and this evening I saw photos on TV of the Currumbin Surf Club - not lookin' good!

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I guess some of it looks a little mystic!

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I liked this photo - sort've flows well!!

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I guess this one does to.

Grand God Kids at Cape Cod

Ah Ha, some photos of Frank's and my Godkids's children (our grand godchildren really) have arrived today from the USA - a very pleasant surprise.

Above is the newest member - babe Sean Martin, with his father, our Godson, Scott and one of our God Daughter - Lynne's - identical twins

Lynne and her husband Brian's twins - Owen and Dylan, playing on a Cape Cod Beach

Lynne and Scott's parents, Anne and Henry, have a house at the Cape.

Just love the Cape, and its house designs! Back at the house with Grandpa Henry.