Day 21: 13 march 2010 Salamanca Market

Hampden Road, Battery Point where we stayed - note clear sky over Mt Wellington (rare sight!)

Rosie Eastley has too many ghastly stories in her head. She used to work in Child Protection, and she would come home late, exhausted, unable to speak to her children or husband, and go straight for the wine. Then, she lived in a family, in a suburb and in an unhappy fog. Now, she lives happily solo in a pristine mountain farmlet, grows her food, and makes natural wool beanies for a living. I saw all the colours of her beanies when I saw the sheep that grew the wool, at “Ringrove” near Orford. I bought one. It fits like a dream, her original design.

Salamanca Markets has hundreds of stalls, and a good few of them are run by people like Rosie. I chatted with Kevin Rayner , a.k.a. “Kevin the Bowl Man”. Did he sell on line, I asked. Don't go much on computers, he said. He supposed he should, because every so often a bowl would come out just beautiful and he should ask more for it, but he just sold to the local galleries and at Salamanca. I bought one of Kevin's bowls. It is made of sassafras wood, smells faintly of cinnamon and is delicately figured, grey/fawn with threadings of deep coloured heartwood. One of those good ones, he said.

Actually, we spent far too much at Salamanca, and should keep things for birthdays coming up, but I can't wait. Huon pine doll furniture for Sharloe, a handmade signed book for Keliyah. I was there all day, David lasted quite a while, but eventually had to go.

After all that strenuous marketing, we just wanted to sit around, listening to some gentle music and drinking a glass. So when I saw “Roil”, piano, bass and drums, advertised as playing jazz that evening at “The Peacock” it seemed just the thing. The performance space is backed by the sandstone on which Battery Point was built, it is a dramatic setting. We got our wine and settled down. Then for the next two hours, endured experimental clink plunk music from earnest, indisputably expert musicians, who had apparently dispensed with silly notions such as harmony, melody and rhythm. They all individually explored the limits of whatever sounds their instruments could be bludgeoned into producing, and occasionally these disparate sounds combined to a sort of ensemble. None of it was pleasant, I'm afraid. But on the other hand, on the way home, the music we heard from an open pub door sounded formulaic, boring. Our cages had been rattled, our minds expanded.