Adventures

We are here #blogvember

It’s the first of November. It is not 4 in the morning. Which is just as well as today has been full enough without extending it for another 10 hours. It is the first nice evening for a while and we are sitting outside. It is the start of Blogvember, or as we call it round here, NoNoNaNoWriMo.

I can’t commit to writing 1667 words a day, for every day of November. While I would love to, and I’d love to feel the fantastic sense of achievement of ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo again, I know what is required. I know I am not able to commit the time required. Never mind that I am bursting with story fragments, ideas and characters. I just don’t have the time.

Me? Nerves of steel!

Me? Nerves of steel!

Instead I will blog every day for November. That’s a blog post a day for 30 days. Last year’s blogvember was a whirlwind of working full time and writing every day and the hardest thing was finding and processing images. This year will be no different. I won’t be able to find any more free time.

If you write everyday, you need images for your blog; to promote it. It provides a visual reference for your reader. Something that represents your words. If you’re a writer, you need to conjure those images, but in the minds of your reader, not in the blogosphere. The writing and the blogging I have done, particularly in the last three years has shown me the difference. If you want to write fiction, you need to stop blogging. If you love your blog, it is hard to find the time to write fiction. That is just my experience. This year at least, I have a stock of images ready to go … well sort of. I have taken photos. I have sometimes even processed them into acceptable blog images. I have a few ideas for posts I would like to write. Mostly it will be a ‘pantser’ effort of making it up, just in time, as I go along. My creative processes will be curtailed into snippets of compressed, expedient writing, rushed and hurried, while I should be doing other things. I will spend a bit of time this evening, formulating some ideas and trying to work out how to carve out the hour a day I really need to do Blogvember, or indeed any creative writing process, justice.

While I struggle to find the time, I commit to bringing you insights, small and large into my life and the lives of those around me. The big issues, the tiny and insignificant issues, the issues that matter and the ones that only a tiny handful of people will actually care about. Hope you can join me for the wild ride.

Everything you know about me is wrong

I shared an office once with an extremely clever and truly good person. One day while I was acting rashly and threatening retaliation against a perceived academic slight, she turned her face to mine and said: ‘Don’t lose your credibility. Without that you have nothing.’

What I couldn’t see so close to the moment was that the retaliation I wanted to wreak was going to do me significant damage. Its intended recipient was going to brush it off like a leaf fallen from a tree and it would have has as much impact. To me though, it was going to cruel my chances altogether. Read More

Top ten reasons I am over the 2013 election

I am often moved to shout at the telly these days. I like politics. I consider myself reasonably well informed. I live in Canberra – I am sometimes close to the political action. I usually love elections. This time round I despair. For the first time in my voting life, I am over it before the voting even starts!

I am seriously over what passes for commentary in most quarters. I am tired of the reductive three word slogans. I am totally over the demonising of people seeking asylum to this country.

What to do? I can spend time hiding under a rock. I can turn off the tv. I can block my ears. But none of these are my style. Without further ado, here then are the top ten reasons I am over the 2013 election … before it even happens. Read More

Life on mars

I’m smooching on the couch with my boy and my cat.

This is blasting

We are reading baby books – because no one wants to find the big kid library books and besides I am pinned to the couch by the cat. Benedict is telling me stories about bears and dogs.

Somebody might bring me wine. That’d be rather tops.
Tomorrow I start a new work gig. I am seeking balance and more moderation.
I will paint my nails. Find something nice to wear.
Charge up my phone. Get into a new routine.
I might even wear my ‘NEW’ Remo pin from circa 1997.
Just to remind myself I am starting fresh.
New.

Lincoln Park After Dark

Lincoln Park After Dark

Ultimate book Q&A … on it goes

Lovely Michelle who writes a beautiful blog, Book to The Future has tagged me in a lovely Ultimate Book Q&A.

Here are the Ultimate Book Q&A Rules

1. Post these rules
2. Post a photo of your favourite book cover
3. Answer the questions below
4. Tag a few people to answer them too
5. Go to their blog/twitter and tell them you’ve tagged them
6. Make sure you tell the person who tagged you that you’ve taken part!

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Kindness of strangers

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A woman I don’t know gave me a gift. She thought she was giving me a night’s accommodation and the chance to have a night away. What she actually gave me was the opportunity to briefly be without responsibility, without a role.

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Hottest 100 – 20 years of paths I didn’t take

This weekend there was a return to the good times. The anticipation. The radios blaring all over the suburbs. A return to old times, when radio was a lifeline for lovers of music. A return to a time when waiting and anticipation was all part of the game. No instant anything. No internet, no SMS voting, no Spotify. Just vinyl and tapes. And the radio.

Twenty years of the JJJ Hottest 100. The music of the past twenty years – songs released between 1 January, 1993 and 31 December, 2012. The Hottest 100 poll, which started on JJJ in 1989, has changed a bit. The first time I was able to listen to the countdown was the first year I was in Sydney as an adult, 1991. The next year’s broadcast on Australia Day 1992, I was ready. And I made these.

Hottest 100 precious artifacts from 1992

Hottest 100 precious artifacts from 1992

I have carried them around for twenty one years. Through at least eight moves. That is now more than half my life. The top 15 songs contain 8 of my favourite songs of all time. I don’t have anything to play these tapes on any more. All the tape decks, all the walkmans, none of them are here any more. Lost over the years and broken and abandoned as CDs and then digital everything took over.

Now I wouldn’t need to laboriously record the music and then transcribe the playlists in minute writing, in four different colours. I’d just log on. I know there are golden moments on those tapes. The back announcing of songs, the sleepy (ok, drug addled) voices of artists doing interviews down the phone from the other side of the world. Those fleeting, ephemeral moments are trapped forever on magnetic tapes. Probably now unplayable.

The nostalgia created by the Hottest 100 this weekend lead me to reflect on all the lucky escapes I have had.

The missed opportunities, the chances not taken, the decisions which closed off a certain path. In 1992 I did not transfer into Arts/Law. Nor did I do well enough in first year uni to swap into Mass Comm – then as now, hard to get into and desirable. (I blame History 101 for that – a bastard C grade for that course wrecked that chance.) I didn’t stay in Potts Point. I didn’t do a lot of things. I did decided that I would study philosophy. I did only the minimum of other subjects that year. That set a path which turned into a doctorate, moving to Canberra the first time and a missed opportunity to marry someone with three passports and thanks to his baggage handler father, 10% fares on Qantas forever.

The ten years of songs, 1992 to 2002, reflect thousands of these moments. Heartache, young romance, parties, tragedies, mistakes. This year’s Hottest 100 countdown, is the soundtrack to every decision good and bad I have made for half my life. It is the musical accompaniment to all my joys and fears. All the sorrow and excitements.

The ten years after that from Are You Going Be My Girl to Spectrum (Say My Name) were among the most tumultuous of my whole life. They produced a PhD, another move, new jobs, a man and a baby. Massive changes.

When in the early days it was so difficult to record, archive, save and catalogue, now it is so simple. It’s fast but some of the fun has gone. It took me two minutes to mine the archive for the lists from the past 20 years and beyond to 1991. In 1992 it took me days to finish those tapes and I had to wait until Drum Media published the full list of the tracks as I didn’t know all the song titles and artists. Some of them I had heard for the first time, that Australia Day 1992. These track lists are now filed on Triple J’s website under archive – history. I have a special home in mind for those tapes. They really ought to be displayed as the cultural artifacts they are. They deserve a special place.

Only one question remains? What’s my favourite song from the 1991 list?

That was too hard. So I made a list. It’s here on Spotify – with the cool kids.

And here is the list with one of the most disappointing No 1 tracks ever

Thanks for the memories Triple J and here’s to paths not taken.

Letting it all hang out

Words and pictures

What’s one martini?

It is easy to see where downing several martinis at a birthday party might lead. There are tantalising possibilities in that thought. This story is not about any of them. This story is about how drinking martinis lead me to my first every dance class and how I remembered that the important thing in life is to keep expanding your horizons. Particularly with your partner.

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Deconstructed … taking family dinner apart

We can cook

We can cook

Dinner can be a time consuming drag. I know, even foodies get over the whole workday dinner thing.

I am tiring of making two separate dinners. One for a finicky small person and one for everyone else. I am looking forward to one dinner. Even though I think it will still be a while, I live in hope. While I am still making two meals I am looking for short cuts. Read More

I sold chooks on Twitter

Wyandottes

Silver Laced Wyandottes

There are times when you just need to call your mother.

She’s the only one who will understand and make it right. Straight away. Right now.

And then sometimes, she will laugh so hard she’ll drop the phone.

Like Sunday. I rang my mother, from the front door of the chook palace. The conversation went something like this.

 

I know it’s your birthday tomorrow, and that’s great but I have something funny to tell you. I accidentally bought full sized chooks and the bantams have gone nuts. What do you think will happen?

Cue: Hysterical laughter. Then some more. Then this.

I’m sorry darling, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it just so funny. Read More

The Weekend

Today would be a good day to write and write and write. It’s warm, my head is full of ideas. There are few plans for other things.

But I won’t. I will shop and cook and organise. I will exhaust myself with the dashing to and fro gathering all the supplies to survive another week. I will waste the precious time with talk to myself about how my family needs me and that I be happier if I rearranged the furniture.

This is a waste.

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Happy Easter

Easter. My favourite holiday. The best food. The best weather.

I especially love hot cross buns, but good ones are hard to find. Then I decided, I’d make some. Isn’t this what holidays are all about? Good food and mouching about the kitchen drinking tea. Always up for a challenge, I wanted to try different recipes made with dried yeast and fresh.

I checked my trusty Twitter foodies for recipes. And lovely Liz came up with this.

@: @ There's one here http://t.co/rIO5fXf2bF but I cannot guarantee the recipe - Just finished a batch. Photo soon
@stellaorbit
Stella Orbit

When I finally got to the markets, I could only get fresh yeast. Dried was all sold out. Undeterred, I made this recipe from Skye Gyngell’s Petersham Nurseries days.

Hot cross buns

Hot cross buns

My crosses could use some work, but the results were delicious. The dough was hard to work with and remained very sticky even after resting. For a scary 20 minutes, the dough didn’t move and I thought my kitchen was too cool for the yeast to work – despite my preparations of shutting doors and leaving the oven on low to warm up while I made the dough. But then suddenly, action stations and up it went. The finished product looked great and tasted delicious.

I had to eat another one, so I could take a photo of the inside. Lovely texture. There is not much resting time with this recipe, compared to some of the others, which is an advantage. Fresh yeast supplies available around Canberra from Fyshwick markets and IGAs – any deli worth it’s salt should keep it. Needs to fresh, it has a short shelf life. Enjoy.

one a penny, two a penny

one a penny, two a penny