Ring the bells #blogvember

18 Nov 2013

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Near the childcare centre is a church. It is quite famous in Canberra. Often it is in the news. It has a bell tower. With trained musicians ringing the bells. On Mondays around 5pm you can hear the bell ringers practising. Benedict and I often hear them as we head to the car. Occasionally, we have parked the car and listened. Sitting quietly listening for a few minutes.

Today, we heard the bells as we walked back to the car. We drove around the corner. We sat and listened. Then a little voice. Mama can we go and see? It is such a pretty sound, he said. I hesitated. It was home time. It was time for the mad whirl of dinner, bath, stories and bed. And then I caught myself. Why not? It is a special, special sound. We got out of the car. Excitedly Benedict sought the entrance through the archway. He followed the path, through the churchyard which winds past graves of the people who lived here before Canberra was a city.

Bell tower

Bell tower

The bellringers were rehearsing. When we made it to the front door, we stood in the vestibule. To our right are the extremely steep stone steps leading up to the bell tower. We could hear the bellringers conversing, discussing the pattern of bells and the order of how they are to be rung. Benedict asked me to open the main door. The beautiful stained glass window amazed him. He’d never been inside a church before. It was interesting, he knew it was a place not to shout and be noisy. We looked in, then we walked all the way round the church yard. Many, many questions were invoked. What’s a church? What’s god? How is he everywhere? Why can’t I walk on the dead people?

What I loved most is that there are many places we have yet to go. The wonder is only just beginning

 

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Sunday Confessional Three #blogvember

17 Nov 2013

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Someone please make me a cup of tea?

Someone please make me a cup of tea?

Last night I dreamt that I was walking around with my camera. I saw a man coming towards me. He bumped into me, hard, and later I noticed he had stolen my camera lens. I gave chase all over somewhere that reminded me of Sydney University. Soon into the chase I realised there were more sinister forces at play. While I pursued the camera lens through the underground parts of the university buildings, I noticed that I was being cornered. Entering rooms with no exits, blind alleys and rooms without windows, I was getting panicked in the dream. There were a series of utility rooms with enameled equipment coloured mint green, the same colour as a Metters Canberra fuel stove. The tension of this dream narrative was clearly building, and it woke me up. At 4am. This was not optimal. Shortly thereafter, Benedict woke up needing to wee, and then Robert got up and started watching rugby. I confess now to not being especially gruntled by any of this. Really? Rugby at 5am? Eventually I went back to sleep and so did Benedict. Which was a relief.

I checked my camera. Lens is still on.

 

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Tomatoes before Christmas #blogvember

16 Nov 2013

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There is a story in Canberra about how you can, if you are boxing clever, sow seed and eat tomatoes before Christmas. About three people a year manage it. In a town where there is frost until November, often, and this year in particular, there was a frost in October where the temperature plummeted to minus 3.9, it is a challenge to get tomatoes into the ground and ripening fruit by December 25. Read More

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Why I love being 40 – perfume #blogvember

15 Nov 2013

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The best thing about being 40 is knowing my own mind. More precisely, the best thing is knowing what I like. It was very plain today, while chatting with a charming and yet extremely young assistant in Mecca Cosmetica. In the first two minutes it was obvious that she was learning about perfume from chatting with me rather than selling me anything.  She did know her product range, but she couldn’t have made a suggestion for me based on any description of what I liked. As it turned out, I told her. I also told her that this was one of the good things about having worn perfume for 20 years, you learn a thing or two. Read More

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Kids and reading #blogvember

14 Nov 2013

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Never too soon to start long form books

Never too soon to start long form books

My son can’t read … yet. He can recognise letters and his own name. He knows when you *cough* skip over sections or pages of familiar books. He has been read to since the day he was born. His bedroom hosts the philosophy, poetry and reference sections of our library. When he was tiny, he did delight in making me furious by pulling the ones on the bottom shelf off, one at a time. Mostly he understands that books need to be treated with respect. I have never told him he can’t read a book. I will read him any book, any time. I have made myself a rule, which is often exploited, that I would never refuse him a book or reading time. Read More

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I’m at war with myself and I have just worked out why

13 Nov 2013

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10 December 2009

December 2009

For a long time, I have been suffering a general malaise. For the first two years of Benedict’s attendance at childcare, we suffered through weeks of sickness from Easter till August. We were all sick for months at a time. And we recovered eventually and 2013 has been better. Except I didn’t really recover. This feeling is not just a simple virus or head ache or pain in the leg. It is a deep seated unspecific feeling. I am not at all at peace within my own skin.

This feeling, right now is part of a life long feeling of dissatisfaction with my physical body. It’s a fine body in many ways. It contains me. It mostly works. It also has some deep limitations. Rubenesque and short waisted. Fair and freckly. Not especially tall. For a long time I had, at best an ambivalent relationship to it. At worst, I really hated it. I am not now at that worst. I have been doing more Pilates, yoga and the odd bit of other stuff. My opinion of myself has been much improved with effort on my part and the reformer which lives up to its name. Yet the malaise persists and is worse right now because I have been sick in bed for two days. Read More

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My achievements today #blogvember

12 Nov 2013

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IMG_3109My achievements today including getting out of bed. I do get out of bed every day, eventually. Usually when I get out of bed, my throat does not feel like I have been gargling razor blades and gravel with a fine sandpaper jus. Today it did. Aches and pains do not come close to describing the feeling. Getting out of bed, that was a big achievement.

My next big achievement was getting dressed. Arguably more difficult than setting my feet on the floor, getting dressed involved lifting my arms. There is lymph in there you know. Nodes. Swollen nodes. Pains and suffering. But I did it.

After all this, a load of dirt is delivered. Vegie mix, I believe it is called. The truck driver helpfully delivered it across the footpath and half our driveway. My achievement was that I didn’t say a word. Not one.

My next achievement was almost, but not quite the ultimate achievement for today. I listened to bad, really bad commercial radio for just over an hour while at the doctors. By the third hit from 1982 I couldn’t see straight anymore. The second ad for tiles I was in a stupor. When they played What About Me, I almost lost the will to live. Luckily, the nice man next to me didn’t mind that I rested my head on his shoulder. He didn’t even mind when I drooled on him. Maybe that was the nice fantasy dream I was having at the time while I willed myself to just collapse to the floor.

My real achievement, the crowning glory of my day, was sitting impassively while I received the lecture entitled “when you turn 40 you have to stop taking the pill” from my extremely thorough and well intentioned GP. Really? We are having this conversation today? Really? I want to die and you want to talk about my reproductive health? At this minute I am never having sex again, so I am not sure why we need to continue with this. In fact, I am just going to go home, go to bed and stay there for the foreseeable future. Do we really need to talk about this now? I calmly outlined the previous issues and solutions that didn’t work, hence still being on the pill and yes, I do know about the increased risks. Can we just talk about time off work and codeine now please?

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Three good blog reads

11 Nov 2013

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IMG_0800 - Version 2My throat hurts. My ears hurt. My family stayed home today. Not me. I went in to fight the good fight. I worry about tomorrow. Maybe we will all be home. Lying around moaning.

There is no more fight now. My eyelids are closing regularly. I read three great blog posts instead of writing one.

I reaffirmed the affinity I have with Naomi – she not really into mornings either. I could have written that post. Except that she already did and wrote it better and more wittily than I would have. Pass the travel cup of earl grey!

I was lured by photos of beautiful peonies to Tiny Savages’s piece about Mondays. And the photos of gin she posts. And clean sheets. I want to move in to her blog. Immediately. It’s beautiful. I could easily live there.

And finally, I read this Who is Kayte Murphy? I was amazed it had taken this long, but she’s out now! I still vividly remember meeting this force of nature Mrs Woog. I was and still am amazed. Sometimes other people’s blogs are the best blogs. There are all so pretty. The words are all in the right order. And I don’t have to moderate over 80 comments tonight. Cheers all three. I love your work.

 

 

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Sunday Confessional Two #blogvember

10 Nov 2013

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This Sunday I confess that I am in two minds about writing.

In my writing mind I am, at once, a much better writer and a much worse writer than I actually am. I’m better because in my writing mind I don’t make typos, I can spell, and I never use poor grammar or clumsy construction. I’m worse because what I write isn’t very interesting, it never lives up to my own high standards for prose style and it reveals the wrong things or not even close to enough of the truth.

This battle is played out, and if you’ve been reading for a while, you will have noticed it, across the posts on this blog. It appears when I am under pressure to write. Oh I can’t write that, I tell myself, or if I write that I’ll need to do ten hours of research to make it credible. The variations are endless as the two minds argue and bicker. The discipline and rigour of process should keep me on track. Practice and repetitions, like training, should be making the writing better, faster, easier. When the noise in my head gets too loud, I read about the practice of other writers. Discipline, routine and focus are constant themes.

I wonder sometime about whimsy. About putting ideas together in new ways. Kicking over the rocks. Debunking myths. Lately I’ve been wondering how I can make my plans for the study renovation to give myself a proper solo writing space. It needs to be a priority. The writing at the dining room table while homey and central to what’s important at our house, allows insufficient space for the two minds to argue, agree and disagree. Space is needed to keep the minds apart and let the truth out.

Maybe what I need is a new chair

Maybe what I need is a new chair

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Short and sweet #blogvember

9 Nov 2013

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Buffalo mozzarella and tomato and basil salad

Buffalo mozzarella and tomato and basil salad

This is probably the most beautiful salad I know how to make.

This photo speaks to the best of my Saturday. Gathering provisions to make a beautiful dinner. Markets and foraging and assembling the best ingredients.

My only regret lately is that there is far too little focus on la dolce vita and far too much on graft and on unimportant but necessary things like money and paying bills. I so enjoyed my Campari Pomegranate Fizz, while watching what constitutes peak hour in Canberra on Friday afternoon, with an excellent companion who knows about conversation. It was a shame to leave to attend to my responsibilities. Where is the nanny when you need her?

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Campari and pomegranate fizz

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Pleasures lost #blogvember

8 Nov 2013

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I am one of the biggest fans of the interwebs. I love everything about them. I love blogs, online shopping, being able to search archives, twitter and the power of information at my fingertips. I love the instant solving of problems, weather forecasts, taxi bookings, holiday browsing and the settling of arguments. Exactly how old is anyone who has any kind of public profile? This information is usually available, right now. My favourite thing about the internet is that I never have to go into the library ever again for myself. The library is on the internet, straight to my e-book. Read More

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Art and Me #blogvember

7 Nov 2013

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NGA Fountain ~ so much joy ~ so little time

NGA Fountain ~ so much joy ~ so little time

Tomorrow I will take Benedict to Art and Me for the last time.
It is the last one for the year and next year he will be too old.

Art and Me is an interactive program for two and three year olds run by the National Gallery of Australia. For the past two years, as often as possible, Benedict and I have made our way, one Friday a month, to the front door of the NGA. The excitement in the small boy as we wait for the doors to open is palpable. He races around, weaving in and out of the assembled queue of mostly 60 plus visitors who are waiting to enter the latest blockbuster. I try to help him understand how many minutes we will have to wait. I try to make sure the number of minutes is not too many. I take his photo with the pears. I measure his progress by how tall he is compared to them. He is now too tall. Too almost four. Much bigger and with more understanding than the mostly tiny two and three year olds, with whom he attends this magical monthly wonder, that is one of the best experiences I can imagine.

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The tours involve learning, drawing, expressing, appreciating and accreting knowledge about what is important and about our wondrous cultural institutions that are so much of a part of the nation’s capital. Benedict has looked at modern art, classical art, sculpture, pop art, and installations in the children’s gallery about play. He has drawn with white pencil on black paper, made cut outs like Kentridge, he has stared at Monet, pressed all the lift buttons, paraded his ‘gallery arms’, straight and neatly by his side. He has sung and wriggled and we have both stretched out on the floor gazing up at the mobile in the modern art gallery.

Here is a short photo essay. Small boy grows and learns about art.

It has been the most wonderful experience of the month, in the past two years and I have looked forward intensely to the joy of it, and so has he. Now, we will do other things and just visit the gallery, but this precious time will stay with me forever. Whenever Benedict doesn’t feel like going to childcare, he asks me if we can go the Gallery instead. A fantastic place which is now knows his way around.

 

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