a sick Harriet
and two sick children
I felt a compulsion to further load my shelves with op shop ephemera.
I had been meaning to investigate some op shops since the big soccer final when I had to drive past a lot of them with Grandad and the kids in the car. Flossy and I hit the 'Northern Beaches' leaving the Big fella with assorted pick up instructions. What joy to have a free day unhampered with schedules to be places by! 
Beach booty included Scooby Doo thongs,
a pretty plate for Broadhurst England (the designer was Kathie Winkle and I believe I may have bought it more for her pretty name than her pretty design), a great cache of colourful knitting needles (mine have been modded into the weapons of mess destruction),
and a flashback hand recorder. My engineer Dad used to have one of these for talking into as he drove around inspecting bridges, etc. There is still an 30 year old recording of my little sister talking into it when she was Flossy's age. This one has a variable speed button so you can make yourself sound like a chipmunk or a zombie. Your I- pod touch can't do that now, can it. For $2 I think they'll get some fun out of it.
There was an abundance of pyrex including a set with roses on it but I resisted and just got this little aqua gratin one and some glasses for the children to break at dinner. I already broke one on the way home to get them started.
There was this shadow box which is a bit too rustic and will have to be painted. More aqua? Clean white? Suggestions welcome here.
Then as we took a short cut through the back of one shop to another I spied this little Christmassy thang.
I love those back straps- so Enid Blyton. Floss hates it so I will have to hide it till she forgets.
After a few hours of sweaty op shopping we needed to cool down
and blow off the cobwebs from the op shops and last week's chaos by chasing birds,
grey shadows,
and purple shadows,
trying to stand up in the waves
and running away from them. This all sounds like a metaphor for why we went to the beach in the first place!
There were also the dear old beachy weatherboards along the waterfront, some the colour of kitchen stools
and old survivor beach houses with 50's triangular bits and picture windows and names like 'Keeloway'.
Then I was taken aback to see this big, bolshy blight on the landscape.
This mirrored sphincter of bad taste is either a gateway to a wormhole in the fabric of space and time or the lamp room of an unfortunate lighthouse! What dear old weatherboard died that this may live?!
Ah, progress!
