A note from Skye

The view from Govetts Leap, Blackheath, NSW

Hello friends,

I’m writing this as the UK is about to head into a long weekend — a weekend that always feels like it marks the end of summer. We’ve just gotten back from our month in Australia, and my kids will shortly be heading back at school. (And yes, I’m already looking forward to a child-free celebratory coffee after I drop them off on that first day!)

While we were in Australia we spent some time visiting the places of my childhood. One of those was Forster on the mid-north coast of NSW. It’s not much of a town, in many ways; there is nothing special about its architecture or its history — there are hundreds of coastal towns in Australia just like it. But there is something about how a place is tied to your own history that imbues it with meaning and resonance. There is something almost unbearably poignant in watching your own children play on the beaches you played on as a child and visit the shops that are (unbelievably) the same as they were 30 years ago. And the natural beauty of the coastline remains as striking as it always was.

The Tanks, Forster, NSW

Fieldfare update

Mendy and I are currently working our way through the submissions we received for Issue 3 of Fieldfare, which will publish towards the end of October (you can buy Issue 2 here, if you haven’t already!). We’ve been blown away by the quality of the submissions we’ve reviewed so far, and our aim is to make a final selection by the end of the month and begin production in earnest shortly afterwards.

We can’t wait for you to see what’s in store, and we’ll keep you posted about how to order once we are a little further down the track. As a fledgling indie publication, pre-orders are our lifeblood: we simply can’t complete production without them.

Reading

While I was in Australia I re-read The Harp in the South by Ruth Park, an Australian classic that tells the story of the Darcy family in Surry Hills in Sydney in the 1940s, which at that time was an inner-city slum (it’s now almost completely gentrified). Ruth Park had worked as a journalist and her writing is so immediate and vivid — she manages to convey the carnival of life on Sydney’s streets and the poverty endured by the Darcy family, but also the strong family loyalty that binds them. A must-read if you’re ever visiting Sydney.

On a completely different note, I’m halfway through A Modern Way to Live by Matt Gibberd, founder of The Modern House real estate agency in London. The aim of the book is to convince people of the power of good design and its ability to affect our lives via five transformative principles: space, light, materials, nature and curation. My family and I are currently in the process of buying a new home and it’s been interesting to think about what makes a space feel “right” and how we can ensure our new home fosters a sense of wellbeing and harmony. More on our house buying journey once we are a little further along in the process!

Skye x