The Open House for the visual artists among us will be in two days. They were all busied; Kris and Corinna had been several times in town since last week. Today, they had gone out twice in order to get their photographs printed and framed. Heather ran helter-shelter as she was firing her clay-huts at the ceramic centre behind the blocks of studios. Katherine had chosen to stay indoors as she must finish with her textile design and patterns that day. As for Leoni, she disappeared for the past few days with the excuses of arranging her photographs for the exhibition.
We, the writers watched and contributed when we can. We met at lunch. Heather could not make it. She must stay and monitor the gas firing. Jane offered to take her meal to her at the centre.
Apart from this, there were some people that came for their private conference. One of them was sitting with Jane and was chatting. Some of his colleagues were there too but he seemed to be the one doing the talking. When I came to the table, he tried to address me but I sensed a note of rudeness in his speech so I refused to respond. They all noticed but none of them dare say a word. They knew their colleague was getting too far, at least by addressing someone you have never met before as if both of you were age-mates.
After lunch, I went back to my studio. It was decided after dinner that we should spend some times with Heather since she will be doing the wood firing throughout the night. We went to meet her at the ceramic centre. Kris and Corina brought a bottle of wine. Heather rushed to her room and fetched her Smirnoff bottle. I went to my room and brought the remaining wine. We drank to Heather’s success and ours too. I did not realise how strong the Smirnoff is until I tasted it.
Katherine went to bed earlier. We stayed back and finished the two bottles of wine. We had mixed the Smirnoff in-between with water. Corina began to make jest of me. She said she wonder how I will manage to get to my studio. They were used to staying up and drinking. To them, I’m a novice so it was funny. She was right anyway.
