Sunday, July 29, 2007

Special Beings

I've been overseas for a few weeks, and I'll probably blog about that soon... but for now I'm thinking about celebrities, stars, and what makes certain beings special. There have been two particular living beings calling for my time, energy and organisational skills lately - one horse and one human.

Ruby & Stryker this morning

Ruby's horse, Stryker, has lived in Queensland with friends of ours for ages. But we decided recently to bring him closer to home so Ruby can see more of him. He's a 17 year old Quarterhorse cross Arab (actually I must admit I know nothing about horses and have no idea what that means, but doesn't it sound nice?). He is a very gentle creature. We found a lovely ajistment for him in Dapto, just an hour's drive away. He's got 60 lush acres to munch upon and about 15 other horses of various shapes and sizes to share the space with. Stryker is always bottom of the horsie pecking order and is sometimes a bit bullied by the others. He was really happy this morning to get some feed and a few pats and half a big jar of golden syrup. Ruby decided not to groom him as the wind was quite biting and she was worried he'd get cold if we took his rug off.

The human is Orlan, who is giving her public lecture tomorrow evening (don't miss it!). Although we've been having lots of email and phone contact to sort out accommodation, travel, translators etc. I only met her in the flesh for the first time today. She is deeply serious and very much the star. Her latest project will be for many her most controversial ever - I'm not going to write about it until I understand it better. The lunch, at Aqua, high above the North Sydney pool, was lovely - I had pink champagne and stuffed zucchini flowers.

Susan Cohn, Raphael Cuir, Meredith Jones, Orlan & Judy Annear at lunchtime

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm fairly fascinated by Orlan (long distance, that is). You have to give us some kind of update on the public lectutre.

Matthew da Silva said...

I'll be there tonight. Cheers.

R.H. said...

Good grief!

The Addams family!


(Nice glasses, how was the plonk?)

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Thank you for organising Orlan's visit. I was so excited when I saw your post about her lecture and I thoroughly enjoyed her presentation. :)

Meredith Jones said...

Well, phew, the event was a huge success... although Matthew missed out with about 300 others we couldn't fit in.

Pen has a nice precis of it here http://penelly.net/blog/?p=26

I think I'll spend the rest of the week sleeping... oh no, I forgot I have to teach! Drats.

RH, I hope I'm not included in that description. The plonk was very nice indeed, yes indeed.

R.H. said...

You're good looking.

I thought you were the producer at first, then I thought you were Grace Kelly.

Matthew da Silva said...

Standing on the gallery steps for an hour in a summer jacket means I'm spending two days at home.

Nice opportunity to escape work...

As I said earlier, it was sort of fun to mingle with a crowd of 'alternatives' come out of the depths of this teeming metropolis to see something 'a little bit different'.

genevieve said...

The pic of Ruby and Stryker is lovely - refresh my memory, there's a famous horse called Stryker in a book, isn't there?
Glad to hear you had a successful evening.