Sunday Blog 208 – 9th November 2025
My mother was a diarist.
‘I’ve just got to write up the exciting story of my life,’ she would quip at night. At the beginning of each year, she bought a week to a page diary. At the end of the day she sat at the kitchen table or or comfortable armchair with her meal tray as a knee desk. She wrote of the intricate doings of each day – what letters had arrived, phone calls given and received, trips to the shop, items of note purchased, sewing and craft projects undertaken, progressed or finished. There are some missing years, when the flood of we children first arrived, but she steadied once I was born and wrote. Perhaps not every day, but she would go back and fill in the gaps meticulously to create an unbroken narrative.
The joke was that her diaries were never meant to be exciting. In fact, when a drama did occur it too would be folded into the minutiae of the day, its sting or power suffocated in the anodyne every day events.
Mum died last year and has left us this treasure of everyday happenings. Like many women of her generation, she sewed and knitted many of our clothes to save money, before clothing became pitiably cheap. In honour of her November birthday, one of my sisters Gay Taylor has put together an exhibition called Family Threads.
It is an exhibition of handmade garments, household linens and heirloom textiles crafted by women across generations but with a particular focus on our beautiful Mum.
The work that women like our Mum did is so often overlooked and forgotten. The purpose of this exhibition is to honour her life and work, the exciting story of her life which wrapped so many of us up with kindness and stability.
For those of you in Perth, the exhibition will be open from Monday 10th-Saturday 15th November from 10 until 4pm at Osborne Park Uniting Church, 164 Edward Street Osborne Park. Just drop in during those hours.