inner pickle

pictures of you

Once upon a time when I was a suit, (the marketing kind), I was flicking through photos trying to select one for a banking brochure. They were "aspirational" photos designed, in our case, to inspire people to invest for a lifestyle.

 

There I was, expensive hair, nice suit, nice office, excellent city life. Holding a photo in my hand of some woman with vegetables in a basket she'd evidently just pulled out of the ground, and a russet coloured hand knitted beanie. 

I could not put it down.

 

We did not use that photo for our brochures, even though it was in our portfolio. We used a shot of a man and a child sitting on the end of a pier, legs dangling in the sun.

And I never, ever forgot how I felt, looking at that photo of that woman. 

That was in 2001, exactly ten years ago.

From then until now I gradually and almost unconsciously strove to become her. She didn't represent a bank to me (for heaven's sake), but she was standing right in the place I desperately wanted to be rather than that lovely office. 

 

Hello. My name is Fiona and I adore my chooks. I cannot seem to leave the house in clean clothes. This morning I actually went out wearing jeans that the pigs had splashed sour milk all over. In fact, I still appear to be wearing them this afternoon, in this photo. Every jumper or cardigan I have has a snag in the same place on the shoulder from the bad gate I never get around to fixing. There are many days I dread visitors coming to the door because my house is such a state. (And I don't mean that jovially and just that I haven't wiped down the bathroom. I mean capital S state.) But I no longer flick through photos wondering when my real life is going to start. This is it. Snags and all. 

And for that I am speechlessly grateful.

What about you? Is there a photo of you in your element? 

xxx

men's sheds

The men in my life love a shed. 

I get the whole retreat thing. I get it. Farmers though, they're not really retreating. They're storing. Stockpiling. Saving. Salvaging. 

Ever looked in a farm shed?

Mostly they have a lot of fence posts. Some conductor thingos for electric fences. Old bedheads. I'll be honest, I don't know what most of the stuff is. It looks old and rusty and useless to me, but then I'll be wanting a gate to stop the dogs hanging out on the verandah (Ivy's playpen) and Dad and Adam between them will Macgyver up the most fantastic gate built from stuff out of a shed.

In one of the sheds on Dad's place there has been a very old totally dead car. In my mind it had been there for a hundred years although it's an automobile not a cart so obviously it hadn't. 

It has had fenceposts and stuff on it for as long as I can remember. 

Then a mate of Dad's decided he might resurrect it. And so Dad cleared it off. 

Here it is.

It's an old Jalopy. It was originally a taxi in Kiama, I think. 

My grandfather, Dad and my Uncle Doug used it to deliver the cans of milk to the co-op. (How crazy's that. No refrigerated milk tanker twice a day. You loaded up the cans and took them to the co-op where they got put on a train.)

The Japoly has been out at some point, on a float in a parade from memory. Down the sideboard it reads 'save us: drink milk'. Funny man.

I thought this, below, was the Jalopy but I don't think it can have been unless they took off the roof and replaced the tray sometime. 

While I was looking for this photo above, I found this one below, also loading cans for transport to the co-op. There's no date on the back, it just says "Buena Vista Dairy."

It looks like Dad but I'm suspecting it's my grandfather. 

Cool hey. That cart is probably around here somewhere. 

 

One more:

Ivy, 14 months, in her element. A total Grandpa's girl. That kid is going to love a shed.

xxx

 

in their element

Adam's mother, who overturns every stereotype of mother-in-law by being completely awesome, has a thing about finding photos of people she loves in their element. 

We take so many photos these days, right? 

On our phones, we email them, keep them, forget to file them.

Among all the snaps, do you have any of you doing exactly the thing you love the most?

I have one, somewhere, don't know where, on a backup somewhere I think, that Adam took of me years and years ago, wearing some long dark green velvet dress, in my kitchen, reading a medieval recipe book in translation. 

That kinda qualifies.

I have one of Adam which I took on Paros in the Greek Islands when we were travelling (about a hundred years and two lifetimes ago). He's riding a vespa, suntanned and squinting into the sun, parked on a hill with the Aegean sea behind him. I love that photo. 

So I have a new project. Taking photos of people in their element. 

Please join in. If you have an elemental photo, I'd love to see it.

 

Tilly (4), sixth generation farmer.

 

xxx