Viva Cuba! Viva la revolucion!

Being the travels of the Auty-Ford clan through the US via Mexico with a brief stop off in Panama. 18 days in the heart of Fidel's 'village'. Convertible cars and methane farms, spanish colonial and british imperial. We are taking  clothes, shoes, sunglasses and colouring pencils for give aways. Excited and anticipation mounts.

Paris and Beyond December 2015 - January 2016

Pre-emptive statement about our travel arrangements for Paris Climate Change Conference known as COP21; attending the social justice components of the conference and concomitant public demonstrations;

departure dates Sunday 6th December, not Saturday like I'd thought which had not turned out to be the sixth of december at all!

In anticipation, lists and last minute stuff. toothbrush and toilet things. the cabs booked because there is no train to the airport. good on you Victoria. emptying things filling things up again, hoping the people I scheduled to get my blogs get my blogs and the disgraceful state of my track pants which will lower the standard of our usually impeccable travelling style

and then ....?

so there's more of course.

here's the flower photoshops - gum series.

and so ...

and so as near to update of my blog as i can ever be, time to write about the new project! Public Art @ RMIT.


as a lot of art speak appears to be about talking about yourself i can see i'm gonna be pretty bad at it. i hate talking about me! so i may need to explore the option of talking about others!


here though are some unintelligible art bits of me.


the art of glove -


love glove











slovenly glove

greek glove

houblon glove

Lainie glove

paradise road glove

i could just rabbit on for days with all this but i gotta go and do something important! don't know what yet, i will when i get there

engelberg-lausanne-paris-london sept08

have been so incredibly lazy and now have to return to study, research, reading and writing must update and then practice again the blogging!

meanwhile last september Mad Jack and I went off to engelberg for a conference, world veterinary history. enthralling. i swear if i heard another veterinary historian talk about the evolution of the museum curatorial process in late seventeenth century austria or the history of the horseshoe i would go mad! and i did!

a funny place engelberg, all year ski resort walled in by the Alps on three sides,

it is the end of the line, with all signs and information in swiss, and lots of angels. here's one of about thirteen found whilst walking around the town.

here's another.

lausanne is the Liardet home town so we organised a drive through one nighter at the Palace D'Ouchy [not pronounced owchy]and heres more pitchas, one is actually of a playground, a giant boat frame structure, timber, ropes and wires that rocks as you move across it, its along the docks at Quai D'Ouchy, presumably once the personal wharf of a prince or other.

the border crossing was a snap as the control booth was closed! we passed gracefully into the french country side around dijon, arriving in paris middle of the afternoon located our apartment in the gare du nord district and then the moon came up. and here's a picture.

our task was the Mur de Federales in Pere Lachaise cemetaire. and here's another one.

then ..... london by train with a Muslim family travelling to madame tussauds for the day! MAD!

london was london, bought a couple of rare books, went to dinner with the in laws in richmond.

no photos please, oh except this one

look familiar

roman foto

apparently the best pizza in rome! a nice Korean couple sat opposite and we exchanged camera shots!

greece the peloponnese and kythera october 07

athens was overcrowded and noisy

we were only there overnight before driving off to corinth, kalavryta and the old capital, nauplia.

here are the darlings dancing on our verandah

and one of only a stunning selection of views from the 14th century venetian castle, the palamidi.

mycenae's famous lion gate.

driving around the peninsula to crazy little towns, with churches and castles and squares full of the townspeople all having wierd festivals to deities and saints.

methoni, pylos, kalamata, mystra, sparti, gythio, then the ferry to kythera, ah, kapsali, beautiful, no tourists, the season finished on october 15, we arrived on 17th to be virtually the only anglos on the island apart from some american millionaires island hopping on their ocean going yacht before they trip back to jamaica!

we had the beaches and the remnant sun to ourselves and here's fotos to prove it.

backwards to october 07 - Rome, with out the chillen.

Ah, Roma. What a hoot! Food and history by moped! A tiny upsy downy flat and the Pope wouldn't see us, being too busy and all!
except now the whole upload download foto thing is not working! so back to square one and i have to go off and entertain the four year old before she dresses the cat!
next time.

waiting to be updated

umm... sorry for those waiting for more on where we went next, i have been lazy, no excuse. am now more or less ready [psychologically and physically] to enter our trips from october and november 07 [greece and rome] and our trek back to mellifluous melbourne.

meanwhile heres a picture of our kitten, she is six months old and has scoliosis in her spine, which is not painful but makes her walk sideways, which is actually really cute!

'ziggie zaggie zozie zeggstar'