Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!
How has your week been? I hope it’s been good!
Well, today I can actually offer you some balmy, invigorating sunshine after months, and months of miserable, very heavy rain accompanied by serious flooding in many places around NSW. Indeed, I was almost in shock when Geoff told it it was 22 degrees Celsius today, although I must confess that I was still wearing a light jumper which sounds a bit odd. Although we probably should’ve spent the day outdoors especially as the rain is seemingly returning on Tuesday for another cold and miserable five day stint. However, we did get down to the beach, which was still covered in debris from the floods and there were also a few impressive structures which had been made out of sticks along the beach. The creek doing it’s best to impersonate rapids although it didn’t come close. It’s also gained a few handmade bridges which intrepid children were happy to cross and they didn’t care if they fell in.
Last Thursday was Bastille Day. Did you do anything to celebrate? Well, my friend, Lisa, and I celebrated in style at Sous le Soleil French Restaurant in Sydney’s Roseville. We were marking 30 years since we were in Paris together for Bastille Day. It’s hard to believe now that we were ever actually there: watching the military parade along the Champs Elysee and by night sitting in the shadows of la Tour Eiffel marvelling as it glowed in the dark. Of course, there was the piece de resistence…the incredibly fire works display. I watched it on YouTube and it was magnificent, and you can see it here. One day, I will return!
Meanwhile, I’ve temporarily returned to life as a student. I’ve just completed week four of Freelance Journalism – Part One with the Australian Writers’ Centre. This week, we had to develop a story concept focusing on research and who we’re going to interview. We had a session on interviewing techniques which was rather helpful. However, I really enjoyed writing the profiles last week and it was interesting to read everyone’s efforts more from a point of view of getting to know the people in the course better and I found I had a few things in common. There was even someone doing adult jazz and ballet classes. I was doing an adult ballet class about a year before covid hit and absolutely loved it, but the studio doesn’t run them regularly.
Doing the course has been exciting, interesting, challenging and terrifying. I’ve been writing seriously for about 35 years and after ten years of regular writing on my blog, I thought I’d have it covered. However, writing feature articles is quite different to blogging. It’s in the third person and your opinion doesn’t matter at all. Indeed, unless you’re writing something like a travel story or you’re very famous or interesting, your opinion counts for naught. Humbling. So, instead of writing about what I know, I’m looking for other people who know stuff and statistics and it’s how I weave all of that together which makes a good feature article. I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to make a living out of it, but at least I’m not short of ideas.
It’s been school holidays here, which for Miss involves dance and more competitions, exams and photographs. However, there were also challenges off stage. I have mentioned the rain many times over. Well, she was performing her Jazz solo at around 8.00pm and a massive deluge hit while we were there and our poor car was parked on the grass a good walk away and it was not an unrealistic concern that the car might get bogged. Indeed, the wheels were spinning and I tried to think like Geoff to get out of there and we got out. Saw the spot the next day and it was a mud bath. Oh golly. The things we contend with as parents for our little darlings! I felt like quite the survivor!!
it comes to this last competition, I also have a confession. For the first time ever, I didn’t stay for the duration and I left her behind to head off to my Bastille Day lunch. I admit I felt guilty and wondered whether I should reschedule the lunch and go the next day. Did it really matter if it wasn’t quite Bastille Day? Not really, although the restaurant and some of the diners did make it special. However, with Miss’s dance commitments being so intense, I’ve just had to accept I can’t be there all the time and she’ll need to accept that too. I can’t keep up.
Anyway, this brings me to the end of another weekend. School goes back on Tuesday and a friend of mine from Sydney is catching the ferry from Palm Beach to Wagstaff and I’ll drive round and meet her there. So, that’ll be good.
I hope you and yours have a great week ahead!
This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.
Best wishes,
Rowena
Beyond the Flow 
Hi Rowena,
Oh – but if only there were a way to take some of your flooding and send it to California.
Our leadership has mismanaged us into another drought by tearing down perfectly good dams to make sure we can never store enough water to get through a non-wet summer.
I’m the dad in our family and had to get used to missing many of our kids events – because someone has to pay the bills. They know I love them anyway and your miss will forgive your missing part of her last event.
But speaking of work, I need to get some sleep or work will be a misery tomorrow.
Blessings.
Sorry Ro, but all I saw in the post were those puddings. The rest washed over me….
Those sweets look mighty inviting! While fireworks offer many a lot of ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s, put me in the ‘hate them’ category. They’re far too noisy for my sensitive soul and they make the dogs terribly upset. I wish more places like Collecchio, Italy would require fireworks to be quiet.
P.S. We’d be happy to accept any and all excess rain. Yet another triple digit day with nary a drop all month. Sigh.
Rowena, Thank you for your weekend coffee share. I hope the nice weather stays so you can get more beach time and social outings.
I’ve always wanted to do an adult dance class…but maybe one day when my kid is a little older and can watch herself or if my husband stops working weekends I would go.