I hope everyone is coping as Christmas approaches. Personally we don’t celebrate it anymore. Yes, we do a couple of Christmas activities with friends but no cards or decorations or gifts. I feel now, at an advanced age, it is more catching up with a few friends who elude us during busy times of the year. It is also a time to sit back, have some quiet times and relax from other activities. That includes a pile of unread books. Of course if one has children in their life, it is much different, but with only dogs and cats it is easy to have quieter times.
I also feel the loneliness of times gone by, childhood memories when our loved ones were living. I think of all those people whose families have gone and it isn’t the happy, gleeful time for those left, that the media portrays.
Enough of my holiday thoughts.
This week has been a fairly smooth and productive week. I have begun the book group’s February read by Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy. I am doing a read/listen version of it. I am enjoying the narration by Jacqui Katona, an Indigenous woman from Western Australia. She is better known as as a woman who along with Yvonne Margarula, another Aboriginal woman, who stopped a damaging uranium mine at Jabiluka, land traditionally owned by the Mirrar people and at the heart of Australia’s largest national park.
She has a perfect voice for this amazing book. I will admit it can be a difficult book to follow at times. There is so much in the 700+ pages. I love the writing and the characters are really interesting but I admit there are many parts of the story I can’t get my head around. The story is complex but I think once our book group really dives into it I will understand much more of it. So I persevere and find the read/listen method really helps.
The blurb-
Last night I went to St David’s cathedral with a couple of friends and listened to Christmas Carols. I’m not a huge fan of carols I have listened to for 7 decades but there were some I was not familiar with that I enjoyed. The orchestra was lovely. There were a few soloists including a young boy who was brilliant and I can never go past a good pipe organ with the acoustics of a cathedral. It was a pleasant evening.
Earlier in the week I was contacted by some photography friends who invited me to join them for an early morning shoot at the dog beach. We spent two hours with dogs and their owners getting action shots. We then posted them on google photos so the owners could access them. It was a beautiful summer morning and the dogs were bursting with energy. I will share a few photos below. A few of you may have seen them already on Instagram. I will be posting more as I edit them out of camera.
That is the week that was….so to speak. I hope all of you enjoy the holidays, no matter how you celebrate and here’s looking ahead to 2025!
Travellin' Penguin 