08 February 2015

Robots







My brother, the sole boy with four sisters, did not much like drawing as a kid. He didn't like making things, or cooking. Having so many sisters did not seem to quell his passion for Aussie Rules, backyard cricket, and pounding a tennis ball against the garage wall for hours. He started a paper-round at aged eight, and saved his money to buy a calculator. It did basic addition, subtraction and multiplication, cost $24 (a small fortune circa 1978) and was the pinnacle of technological achievment in our household. He taught us the fine art of the 'chinese burn', the horse bite, the dead leg - mostly through demonstration rather than instruction.

His one creative passion, as I recall, was drawing robots. He would draw endless robots, which were always entirely comprised of squares of different sizes. Pages of robots, drawings of robots for every handmade card he was required to give and even, once, a robot rendered in DAS for Mum's birthday.

Lily, too, likes to draw robots. Robots with robots inside and robots inside the robots inside, a la 'The Cat in the Hat'. Robots with loopy arms a la 'Lost in Space'. Robots on (?)roller blades.

My borhter went on to have four sons, all of whom share his passion for Aussie Rules (different teams though, alas), backyard cricket and balls of any description. They also seem reasonably well-versed in the arts of sibling maiming. I'm not sure whether any are particularly into robots though, so it's kind of nice to see the love continue.

04 February 2015

Dream a Little Dream



Birds singing in the sycamore tree...