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Tuesday 19 March 2013

In Search of Harmony


As you may or may not know from previous blogs, when I’m not writing or renovating, I’m an actress. I do theatre, TV, film whatever – which currently translates as ‘I go to a lot of auditions for television commercials’.

In fact last week I was ‘on hold’ for a commercial that was shooting today. However for some extraordinary reason, they decided to go a different way and I didn’t get the job. (Sigh) Which translates as ‘the credit card won’t get paid off this month’.

Also I finally heard back from a couple of builders, which was exciting. Until the first quote came in and we realised we can’t afford it. Not unless we want to be paying off a loan well into our 90s. (Sigh again) The combination of an actress/writer and an actor/lawyer trying to pay the mortgage and renovate a house doesn’t seem to add up in Sydney. Still we’re currently scaling back our plans so I still might get my kitchen. Unfortunately there will probably be a hole in the cabinetry until we can afford the dishwasher. (Sigh once more with a heavy heart).

So because I wasn’t shooting a milk commercial today, I had to make a cake and go to Harmony Day/ Grandparents Day at my daughter’s school. Which was lovely. It won’t pay off the credit card but it was worth it. Four of the five grandparents were there and my daughter was thrilled.

Everyone had to wear ‘a touch of orange’, the colour of harmony so my daughter put on a fluorescent orange hoody and I found a bit of orange ribbon for her hair. The theme was ‘Many Stories – One Australia’ and to celebrate there was a concert with singing, dancing, stories and a parade of national costumes from the 40 different countries represented at the school.

Then we watched my daughter in class. Where I had to physically prevent my mother from demanding why my daughter didn’t get asked to complete an activity, when she had her hand up. Forget about pushy mothers, it’s the grandmothers you have to look out for. Then we all stood behind my daughter and watched while she carefully cut out the letters of Harmony Day and stuck them in her writing book. And we all agreed the standard of her cutting and colouring was extremely high. This was followed by an amazing morning tea, which was demolished with great enthusiasm. Including the cake I contributed, which was positively inhaled. We may have had some harmony at school today but there was certainly no world hunger.

It was a very enjoyable morning. And it felt good to celebrate harmony and the cultural diversity of our country.

And it was probably the first of many Harmony Day/Grandparents Days to come.

I just wish I could say the same for the television commercials.