THE MAN CAVE

For those who may not be aware - A MAN CAVE is the domain of the HUSBAND - a place where a man can enjoy his own company or the company of his species in like minded interests.
A man cave could take the form of various environments and dimensions. It might be a shed, a garage or maybe an attic or cellar.

The Man Cave is in a bit of a state currently - My Man Cave is a three car garage with no cars. Its really just a great big storage area but things are about to change.
The elements are there. The couch, the fridge, and the TV. 

Its a place he can call his own - a place where no woman would feel the need to intrude.
The elements of a man cave can vary depending on its owners interests. Usually there's a fridge, a most important part of a man cave. This is where he can hydrate with his preferred beverage. A TV is not an uncommon element of the man cave - not normally a modern flat screen type, but it could be, depending on the earning capacity of the man cave inhabitant. Usually its the old and unloved TV that's been replaced by the new HD flat screen within the main domain - after all, its mainly used for watching old videos or either footy and/or motor racing with his favorite beverage in hand,
Oh, yes and of course there's the old couch, another toss out by his fellow inhabitant that is quite happy to remain in the confines of the Manor House with the adornments that she is accustomed to.

My Man Cave has been suffering from neglect lately - its my garage. It's been the storage area of the belongings of our two son's belongings while they are on the opposite side of the globe. One is in Canada, the other in the UK.
But I have plans - the garage is to once again become MY Man Cave. - I started this weekend with a spring clean, no mean feat considering we are in the depths of winter.

Books, Magazines, files from past research - its all there in the Man Cave.

My interests lay with my sport of cycling, my interests in cars and music. So!
I have the mandatory fridge but not being a big beer drinker, I may fill it with some white wine and my favorite Guinness. Then there's the old TV, linked with both a DVD and a VHS player.
The home Gym and the spin bike need to positioned in such a way that I can workout while watching old videos of the Tour de France or the odd music concert DVDs I have in the collection.

The home gym has been neglected lately, hence I returned home from our trip 4kgs heavier.

There's the tellie, attache to a DVD and VHS player.

Once I get my Man Cave organised - there's no room for Sally Citroen.

This weekend, I've spent hours organising my Man Cave, a place where I am King, the Boss, my domain where I make the rules.

Hang on, what's that I hear from afar - Oh, Sue is calling me. Sorry, I have to go now. She who must be obeyed has some chores for me to attend to.
Hope your weekend brought you some pleasure.

PS - Tell me about your Man Cave!

Sue's comment...........yawn. Whatever.....

Dijon to Beaune

It's been a whole week at Coco's Dijon apartment but it's time to leave. We've enjoyed our stay. Coco came to say goodbye and brought some culinary delights for our drive to our next destination. Her husband sent a bottle of white wine as he knew we enjoyed our food and wine. We brought the bottle of local wine back home to Australia so we could enjoy it while reminiscing about our time in Dijon.

There's so more we could have told you about our time here but it was time to move on. Where to next?

I just had to stop after leaving Dijon to take this photo.
Isn't this service for your bread delivery?

A little Australia in Burgundy!!

The next leg of our journey took us from Dijon to Bourg-en-Bresse via Beaune and Macon. Sue wanted to go to Bourg-en-Bresse because of the blue legged chickens. Blue legged chickens you say?

We'll leave that for another post soon.

Beaune was such a delight that I found it so hard to select photos for this post and we might just have to  make it a two post subject. Had we known what was in store for us, we would have made it an overnight stay. Its known as the epicentre of Burgundian wines and there is an annual wine auction for charity held there every November - We were much too early being there in May. Bids come from all over the world in an effort to add wine to both personal and commercial cellars.

We also missed out on a festival that several posters around the village promoted as "24 hours in Beaune Australia". I have no idea what this was all about other than the poster had characters depicting Crocodile Dundee on a penny farthing bike, emus, koalas and kangaroos. Maybe it was a good time not to be there!!!!

The Hospices de Beaune or the Hotel Dieu was our main reason for the visit, oh yes, and lunch.

The Hotel Dieu was founded in the mid 1400s during the time of Duke Phillip the Good. It was a place of refuge for the sick, disabled, the poor and the destitute. It was a haven for young women about to give birth and the aged.

Check out the multicoloured and geometrical tiled roof. Just one of those special attractions of Burgundy.

Rows upon rows of beds within curtained cubicles.

As you enter the courtyard of the Hotel Dieu, you are hit with this array of colour. red, yellow, green and brown from the tiled roof which is part of the Burgundian architecture. Entering the buildings you are gobsmacked by the vastness of the "Room of the Poor" with its many curtained small bed chambers.

This looks more comfortable that some of our overnight stays travelling France. 

In a darkened room we witnessed the many panelled painting of the "Last Judgement" by Rogier van der Weyden. If you arrive at the right time you can take in the presentation of a viewing each individual panel while magnified glass panes pass by each painted oak panel, both enlarging and illuminating the images.

Beaune has many interesting features and its history takes in early Gallo Roman times to Medieval architecture but with a sense of now with the locals and the festivals that are organised throughout the year. What a shame we didn't do an overnight stay. It was time to move on after lunch as we were only a third of the way to Boug-en-Bresse.

 Scenes from Beaune

See you next Wednesday as we travel further into Burgundy.

Melbourne Weekends

The Archibald Prize - OK what's that?

I've known about it for years being an art student way, way back - but only taken a mild interest. The Archibald Prize is an Art Competition for Australian portrait artists. I need to tell you that the information that I'm about to relate to you is from research from only yesterday and today. As I said before, I had only a minor knowledge of the competition and the history behind it.

Tarrawarra is an art gallery and also a vineyard.

This year the finalist were all on view at the Tarrawarra Gallery near Healesville in the Yarra Valley, a little less than 60 kms from Melbourne. The Yarra Valley is nestled among rolling hills and mountain ranges. Its a very traditional wine growing district, much the same as Chablis in France and Napa Valley in California. The terrain is similar. I use to cycling many kilometres (miles) of training when I was in my teens and early 20s in the area.

Archibald and Henry Lawson who wrote for the Bulletin.

But back to the Archibald Prize:
The competition was established in 1921 from a bequest by Jules Francois Archibald. In actual fact, Archibald's real name was John Feltham Archibald and he was born in Geelong West, Victoria. During his 20s, he had become a devout Francophile and changed his christian names and later on his marriage certificate, his birthplace was documented as France. Archibald had a passion for journalism and after writing for several regional Victorian newspapers he established with a partner the "Bulletin Magazine". Some very great Australian writers, artists and poets contributed to the Bulletin over the years including Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson.

The first Archibald Prize winner by W,B. McInnes.

Writer, poet, story teller Banjo Patterson by John Longstaff.

William Dobell's 1948 winning portrait.

And in more recent times, Brett Whiteley's self portrait.

As Archibald's health started to fade in his latter years he bequeathed some of his money to a fountain and a portrait painting competition. The fountain was a testament to his love of France as it was decreed that it was to be designed by a French sculpture. The other bequest carries on today as the Archibald prize for the best Portrait by an Australian Artist.
Since 1921, some of those artists include William Dargie, William Dobell, Clifton Pugh, Brett Whiteley and W.B. Mc Innes but these are only the ones that I'm familiar with.

This year's finalists - I have to admit, I don't know much about, but one of the subjects, and also one of the finalists I do know a little of. He was part of my 60s - 70s period. He was an artist with the OZ magazine published by a group of Australians in the UK, probably not unlike Archibald with the Bulletin in many ways.
Martin Sharp illustrated for the OZ, and also designed posters for concerts by Dylan and Hendrix. He did LP covers for Cream. One of the portraits in this Archibald was by him and of him.

The Winning Portrait
What I did find quietly strange was that this year's winning portrait was of a person without a face, slightly Dali in fact. Judge for yourself!

The winner of the 2012 Archibald Prize was by Tim Storrier - a self portrait.

But this was my favorite. Martin Sharp by Garry Shead was part of my 60/70s era.

Jenny Sages: Self Portrait a grieving widow - After Jack

Luke Cornish portrait of Father Bob, a colorful Melbourne priest. Why has the artist then painted him in black and white?
Cornish said about his subject, "What I like about Bob is that there is no bullshit - what you see is what you get".

Marcus Callum - Self Portrait.
To me, it echos a painting in the style of the past masters, almost centuries ago.

Jun Chen - John Yu with artist
The subject, John Yu is the recipient of an MOA and a COA and Australian of the Year not that I was aware of these awards but both the artist and the subject, both Chinese have contributed to Australia.

Angus McDonald's portrait of Tim Maguire.
The artist described his subject as having a huge personality and said he wanted to paint him as looking at the viewers. You certainly get that impression when looking at this painting at the gallery.

Michael Peck - Self Portrait in the image of my son.
"The warm orange glow is the color by which I remember my childhood in the outer suburbs of Melbourne".
When viewing this portrait, Sue said the same thing - our summers were long and hot.

We travel to overseas and take the opportunity to absorb the local culture by visiting as many of the galleries, museums and cathedrals we can but everyday life seems to exclude doing this in our own backyard.

Well it's time to change this. Isn't that right Sue?

Have you been to Dole?

Our time at Dijon was drawing to a close - Dole was our last discovery in the department of the Jura and the region of Franche-Comte. The Doubs River runs by Dole and there were some delightfully peacefully scenes by the river and canals the blend together.
It was one of those pleasant days where lunch with a glass of wine in a side walk cafe was what the doctor ordered. We did this prior to discovering the medieval streets of Dole.
The town of Dole is not large, yet not small with a population of a little over 28,000. It's easy to manage in your car or maybe it was that we were there in the shoulder season.
Why did we go there - I'm not quite sure except we highlighted it in our dog-eared "Eye witness travel guide", but isn't that the way to make new discoveries?

We didn't realise at the the time it was the birthplace of Louis Pasteur and where the term "Pasteurisation" originated. Pasteur was born in Dole during 1822 and we saw the home where he entered the world to make his mark in history.

On the higher slops above the old town were these ladies in their hats - so elegant.

Louis Pasteur - a son of Dole.

A lane way leading down to the river Doubs.

Canals mingle with the river Doubs and you walk among the walkways to admire the serenity of Dole.

Dole was no more than an afternoon visit - not sure why, but a town worth a longer visit. Maybe there will be a next time and if not - we can say we saw a little bit of it.

Australian Census

Only this week, the results from the 2011 Australian Census were released through the media. Although a national census, living in Melbourne, the results of our home state of Victoria were of most interest to us.
However nationally we have reached over 21.5M people and the average age of the population is currently 37. That puts Sue and I in the minority. We were once in our 30s - it was a great time. There was an American TV series at the time called, 30 Something. It was our lives.

Immigration has played a big part in Australia's development. Today one in four Australians were born outside Australia. The UK stand on the top of the podium with NZ, China and India following.
Within the household, the report states that there over 300 non-english languages spoken.
Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese and Greek are some.

The average weekly wage is A$577 per week with rents rising to an average of A$285 per week.
People actually buying their own home are paying an average of $1800 per month.
This brings us to who lives in these homes - same sex couples were included for the first time in this census, yet many described their relationship as de facto. Children are staying at home longer and the aged are being cared for with their adult children.

Back to our home state and city, Victoria and Melbourne. We have grown to over 5.3M but take into account that you can fit the UK into Victoria and while I'm at it, the USA is about the same size as Australia. WE still have a bit of elbow room, don't we?
We pretty much have an even ratio of male/female with the ladies slightly out numbering the blokes by 100, 000, not that is of interest to me. I'm happily married.

Melbourne, our Home is a pretty good place to live generally. We've been placed at the top of the most livable cities of the world over recent years. Maybe our public transport doesn't match the big cities of Europe or Asia, maybe we are not as pretty or historic but in the scheme of things generally, I think how lucky was I to have been born in Melbourne and Australia. I'm sure most of our immigrants feel the same after making the choice, especially those who have come here seeking a new life from the persecution of non democratic, and war torn countries.