Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I'm getting excited!













I'm off to Melbourne on Saturday! Two years ago my last visit to the UK was carefully timed to coincide with Impact 6 in Bristol... and this year I've been lucky enough to get a grant from Regional Arts New South Wales to enable me to go to Melbourne for the conference's first visit to the Southern Hemisphere.

I'm excited for all sorts of reasons: I've never been to Melbourne before; I get to meet up with Ronnie, Caren, Amanda from BookArtObject (two of whom I haven't previously met); I will be able to catch up with Sarah Bodman from UWE in Bristol AND Tim Mosely from Southern Cross University; I'm staying with my mate Willis and his family in an apartment at "Hotel Alto on Bourke" which I now discover is a swanky carbon-neutral hotel (v. posh) AND the programme looks really exciting! I can hardly take it all in... And did I also mention that BookArtObject are exhibiting AND that I'll get to see some fabulous art AND for once in my life I don't have to worry about the cost of getting there and back again? That has been such a relief... thank you, thank you to the wonderful people at RANSW who had some faith in me and were kind enough to give me a Quicks grant. Phew.

The past few months have just flashed by: first the intense effort of getting the show at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery off the ground, then adjusting to the fact that dearest husband is now away A LOT (probably won't see much of him between now and February, *sniff*), then straight into a full-on recruitment process at darling daughter's school to recruit a Principal while at the same time applying for my TAFE job... and then on into the school holidays and Impact 7 in Melbourne... and so on. It has at times been a bit hairy, and I wonder whether that's the reason why I came down with a stomach bug on Monday and feel as if I've been run over by a bus. I NEVER get stomach bugs: the occasional bit of feeling off-colour, yes, and I do have IBS (not a lot of fun when that hits), but this is something else - completely debilitating and energy sapping. I've spent the last two days somewhat disconnected from reality and feeling rather sorry for myself, but I'm pleased to say I ate something this evening and feel heaps better!

Tomorrow I'm having my hair cut and have one last, big meeting at school and then... I can relax a bit and move on in my head. There's a bit of packing to do, some printing out of tickets and programmes etc., and I'd like to buy myself a little Melbourne map of some kind since I don't have a clue where I'm going (or how), but then dearest husband is catching an earlier plane home than usual on Friday and we're going to enjoy a nice dinner here with friends coming over before I hop on a plane on Saturday.

2 comments:

Abigail Thomas said...

woo yay!!! it sounds very exciting; wish I was going! but then again I am going to the London Art Book Fair this weekend so that will sort of balance it out a bit I hope! enjoy yourself and say hello to all the BAO folks you meet up with; im going to be listening in on all the action over at BAO blog with everyones mobile blogging capabilities now up and ready.... yay to technology!

ronnie said...

SNAP!!!!!!! to almost everything you've said!

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