Wheatlands News

We had a compulsory careers evening at my school when I was in Std 9 (Grade 11) but because I was only interested in becoming a journalist, I refused to go to hear what any of the other professions were all about. It was a very conservative school, and a very long time ago, so the choice of professions deemed suitable for a woman was not very large. It was suggested that we could become nurses (not doctors) and secretaries (not CEOs). I seem to remember that being a legal secretary was ok too. Or a veterinary assistant. (Apropros of that, I saw a wonderful billboard in San Francisco last year: Be the CEO your parents hoped you would marry. Sadly the pic I took of it at night was a blurry mess and I didn't go back down that street before we left.) My singlemindedness, coupled with the lack of choice and a conviction that I couldn't draw, meant that I never considered architecture as a possibility. Maybe it is because I have been a journalist and writer for so long that I a...

Three years ago I decided to make a doll's house for Taylor. I insisted on going to buy the wood and get it cut the morning that I made the decision, and then, rather typically, it was packed away and no more was done. This Christmas, Greg challenged me to get it finished, which transformed it into the 'Great 2018 Dollhouse Project', and in a second transformation, I decided that Taylor might be too old for it but that I probably am not. One of the great things about creating a world in miniature, is that it makes you look at the things around you with completely different eyes. I am assessing everything that I see to determine its convertibility into furniture and fittings. Greg helped me to cut out the windows yesterday, so now I am planning paint colours, wall and floor finishes and which rooms should be what. I'm planning a laboratory in the attic, and thinking of a shop as part of the ground floor. It is 1:12 scale, so the adult people will be betw...