Funk it up

A few months ago we bought an old caravan from a friend so we wouldn’t have to keep putting guests up in tents when they came to stay. It’s a classic old 1974 Viscount, with a gaudy gold DIY paint job. Inside and out. The cracked skylights had leaked water into the ceiling, rotting the plywood and fostering some fine moulds in the mattress and cushions. Rather than redo the roof we saved money by building a new roof over the top to stop the leaks before ripping out the ceiling, the bed and half the cupboards. It now has a new ceiling, two single beds and a new paint job. Emma is planning to give it another coat of paint to help funk it up and she’s enlisted the help of our friend to re-upholster the cushions.


For a long time the caravan was owned by an aerialist, a trapeze artist who would travel up and down the eastern seaboard going to festivals, towing her caravan behind her. Fortunately for us some of her stuff got left behind, tucked away in little drawers and cupboards – treasure waiting to be found. Feathers, jewellery, costumes, lights, underwear, glasses, belts, stickers and even tiny mirror balls. The kids now have one hell of a dress up box.


Today I had my first performance with the Bella Bago choir at the Choral Kaleidoscope in Port Macquarie. For the performance we had to wear black and purple with a splash of yellow. I have a favourite pair of old, black dress pants with suspenders which are not long for this world so I dug them out so they could shine once more. They have holes in them but I improvised and coloured in my leg with black texta where the holes were. I was having a lot of trouble finding a black or purple shirt until, minutes before I had to go Em fished a tight, shiny purple top from the dress up box. Perfect. The performance went well although I think everyone was upstaged by the all-male choir Blokes Notes who did some fun stuff including a Steve Taberner song that involved pulling out nose hairs with multigrips.


“I’m grateful that I went to Bryony’s and had a nice day, and played with Morrow.”
(Confused? Look)