/karen/

Eight: Tuesday 19/07/2005

Sunday, 24 July, 2005

We get up in time for breakfast and we've even been organised enough to pre-order our lunch. I check my email and delete all the spam.

Kathleen and I catch the tram to Federation Square where we ask for directions to Balaclava at the information desk. We then catch the tram over the Yarra to the National Gallery of Victoria (excuse me, how can it be a national gallery if it's of Victoria??)

The front entrance has this fantastic wall of water that pours down night and day. We checked in our bags with the cloakroom and I spotted these gorgeous tulips in the foyer.

The Dutch Masters exhibition was too expensive and I wasn't really into Dutch artwork anyway (not since visiting the Getty in LA—the building and grounds were far more interesting than the actual art work). So we wandered around the floors. I got told off for trying to take a picture of a book of relics (apparently the NGV allows NO photography whatsoever which I thought was grossly unfair). We wandered through the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, Hunters and Collectors (collections of clothing from people who loved wearing Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren), but we were starting to flag by the 18th/19th centuries. The NGV has got a stunning collection though—a bit of all the great masters: Rembrandt, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Edward Burne-Jones, William Waterhouse, even William Morris. We never made it to the third floor—we were getting hungry—but we did stop to see the Japanese woodblock prints on Level 2 (made me start reminiscing about my lessons in Visual Art history in Year 12 and the enormous influence the Ukiyo-e had on the Impressionists). I buy a postcard of “In the Hollow of a Wave off the Coast at Kanagawa” from the gallery shop.

We ate lunch sitting by the fountains just outside the gallery. Then we caught the tram to Carlisle St, Balaclava, to see Loobylu's Midnight Picnic exhibition at Hudson Clothes. I wondered what the shop girl must have thought—us two coming all that way to see Claire's work. I asked if I could take pictures of the window. At first she said, “Why?” but then she said yes.

Unsurprisingly, everything in the window had already been sold. Which was rather a pity because I would have liked one of her pears!

We wandered around on Carlisle St for a bit but then got bored so caught the tram to Bridge Road. We walked back along it and stopped to have hot chocolate and nougat/cake at Olmecs. Kathleen and I talk books and things. (We think that it's at this point that Kathleen lost her Australia Post canvas bag with all her NGV postcards. But it never turned up.)

Bridge Road has stacks of factory outlets for clothing shops. Not very interesting unless you're into clothes. But we did find a Body Shop/Accessorize factory outlet where I bought a feathered hat pin, some flower brooches, a bag and a gift box. They were just about to close. So was everything else. So we caught the tram back to Flinders St. Station. Clegs was still open so I bought circular knitting needles for my next big project and some black felt because Kathleen was going to tell me how to make a case in which to store all my knitting needles (incidentally, for some reason I cannot locate my 10mm circulars. I have no idea where they have gone ...)

We got on a tram to go back to University College but it was chockers with rush hour folk and we missed out stop and had to walk back. After dinner, we checked Neil's blog to see if he had said anything about Australia and the con (he had: here, here and here. He was also interviewed for The Age. My favourite part is this:

Gaiman was born in Portchester, England, in 1960 and says he was “a much weirder kid than I ever thought I was”. At seven he begged his parents for his own bookcase and carefully covered each book in clear plastic and put them in alphabetical order. He throws his hands up and says “Now that's f—ing weird! No seven-year-old does that.”

and I keep trying to imagine Neil as a seven-year-old. Oh look, I just found a picture of Neil and Poppy Z. Brite from her LiveJournal July 15th. If she has permalinks, I can't find them).

I leave Kathleen checking her email to go have a shower. Ben is watching The Simpsons. There are two hours of Simpsons for some reason. Ben is also excited about the fact that Bloc Party are on Rove Live so we leave him to it and retreat to the bedroom to read more of the American Gods weblog. While Kathleen reads, I manage to unpick and re-sew all the buttons I'd attached to my cardigan the previous evening as well as re-do the button loops. We call it a night at 11:30.

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