1. I like finding, when buying second hand books, birthday or Christmas messages inside the cover. I like to wonder who chose the book and what meaning they ascribed to the gifting of that particular book. I like it when they've written the year too.
2. I worked in a jewellery store in Athens and could see the Acropolis from the step of the building. I had taken to wearing Greek sandles, embroidered skirts and my hair, long and black, hanging down past my shoulders. Tourists and locals alike mistook me for being a local and would speak to me in Greek. I only ever understood a few words. They laughed or looked a little shocked when I confessed my Australian birthplace and my Scottish heritage.
3. I like to collect quotes and record them in the pages in my journals. Especially quotes from distant times. That the words of those who lived so long ago can still speak to us and remain relevant is fascinating.
'The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.' - Rene Descartes
4. During my childhood, my Grandmother's house was endlessly fascinating. She grew strawberries along the fence in the sandy soil. Each room smelt of the sea, which was separated from the house only by the street and the sand. There were walls of black and white photos in ornate frames of ancestors I'd never met. Plush royal red carpet in the formal lounge. And a little sewing room, with curtained covered closets reaching all the way to the ceiling. Full of wonderful looking jars with eclectic contents and big silver scissors hanging from hooks.
5. When I moved out of home to go to Uni, my first flat was across the road from a cemetery. I would cut through it to get to Uni most days. I could walk a hundred different ways through it's maze to get where I was going. It was of course quiet and beautiful. There were carved angels standing atop tombs. Elegant poems on shining marble. Simple white wooden crosses. At night we often saw someone walking through the cemetery with a torch.
'The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.' - Rene Descartes
4. During my childhood, my Grandmother's house was endlessly fascinating. She grew strawberries along the fence in the sandy soil. Each room smelt of the sea, which was separated from the house only by the street and the sand. There were walls of black and white photos in ornate frames of ancestors I'd never met. Plush royal red carpet in the formal lounge. And a little sewing room, with curtained covered closets reaching all the way to the ceiling. Full of wonderful looking jars with eclectic contents and big silver scissors hanging from hooks.
5. When I moved out of home to go to Uni, my first flat was across the road from a cemetery. I would cut through it to get to Uni most days. I could walk a hundred different ways through it's maze to get where I was going. It was of course quiet and beautiful. There were carved angels standing atop tombs. Elegant poems on shining marble. Simple white wooden crosses. At night we often saw someone walking through the cemetery with a torch.
