A Room of One's Own (and a minute to one's self)

Oh my God. School holidays. Lord knows I love my children, and they are excellent company; but I am not a sociable person, and my daughters have now reached an age when they count as People. They don't need bums wiped any more, but they do need conversation.

I need my time alone. I am someone who has always largely lived inside my own head, and it's a hard habit to break. Even in crowded share houses, there was always my own bedroom to retreat to, my own door to shut. It's not so easy for a mum to be unavailable. Michael is very good at disappearing to the gym or the shops if he needs some space; for some reason, I find it difficult to just vanish like that. I'm not sure if it's a mother thing, or if it's just me.

I find myself relishing the minutes spent hanging up the washing at the bottom of the garden, or guiltily extending my time in the shower (not that abluting is any guarantee of privacy). Or now, these precious moments snatched in front of the screen while everyone's busy elsewhere. No time to think, no space to write, no time to string a coherent thought together.

And here comes Evie to ask for lunch, and the solitude dissolves almost before it's begun.

Things I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging*

building toy railways
building replicas of Hogwarts castle to stand picturesquely beside railways
rescuing runaway trains from under beds
swimming at the pool
cooking sweet potato and roasted corn soup
watching season 4 of Dr Who
supervising playdates
visiting grandparents
picking Littlest Pet Shop pets out of the bath
helping to make a papier mache volcano
attempting to answer the question "can humans fly?" for the upcoming school science fair**

** the answer is, sadly, no -- not with wings made from old shirts and balsa wood, anyway

Things I Haven't Been Doing
writing


* with apologies to Poppy from Dear Swoosie, who loves a list

Muddlehead

Last night, Alice and Evie and Jeremy-from-next-door took themselves off to play the Muddle-headed Wombat. Alice was Wombat, in a battered straw hat and an old green cardigan with a pillow shoved up it. Jeremy was Tabby, "because he's a boy, and he's taller than Wombat." Evie put on my gold-rimmed spectacles and a squeaky voice (no difficulty there) and became the Mouse. "Tabbeee, dear! Oh, you dear old Muddlehead!"

It warms my heart to know that it's not all Bratz and Ben 10 and training bras for pre-schoolers; that it's still possible for children to play Muddleheaded Wombat. Yay.

The Last Chance

I'm in a flurry of nerves all week. Which is ridiculous. It's only a game of football, after all. And pointless, because there's absolutely nothing I can do to influence the outcome. But the days drag, waiting for Friday -- our last chance at the Grand Final.

Yesterday I go to get my hair cut. My hairdresser asks, "So, do you follow football?" I admit that I do. "Which team?"
"Bulldogs," I say sheepishly.
She pauses, scissors in hand. "Me, too!"
So for the rest of the haircut we earnestly discuss football (does this happen anywhere in the western world apart from Melbourne?) She thinks we need Big Bad Barry Hall; I'm not so sure. She's not impressed by Will Minson; I think he's improved a lot this year. It seems that every Doggies supporter except me had a Nana who lived round the corner from the Western Oval; my husband did, and so does my hairdresser.
We agree that we don't stand much of a chance against St Kilda tonight. They've thumped us twice this year; in fact they've comfortably thumped just about everyone and are hot favourites to win the flag. No one gives the Dogs a prayer tonight. "But there's always that little crumb of hope," groans my hairdresser. She wishes the day would last forever, to keep that hope from fading; I want it to all be over. I can't stand the agony of suspense.

The day passes; the hours count down. I'm busy with copy-editing, and school pick up, and creche pick up, and fish and chip pick up, and dinner with the next-doors. Michael's coming home late, so while the kids watch TV, I turn on the radio and pace up and down the darkened kitchen.

And the Bulldogs come out snarling. They are on fire! They have seven shots at goal and the Saints have nothing on the scoreboard but a measly point! They completely dominate the quarter; the are playing out of their skins.
I pace and I gnaw my nails. The second quarter starts; we're still way in front. My god, we're winning.

Michael comes home and I hastily switch the radio off. He eats dinner, we bundle the girls off to bed. When we switch on the TV, he shouts, "It's 15-1! Dogs in front!" I try to look surprised. The Dogs are in front, and we stay in front. It's a ridiculously low-scoring game, tight-fought and tough. Every possession is contested, nothing comes easy.
Just after half-time the Saints snatch the lead. Painfully the Dogs claw it back. I can't look; I'm playing patience on the living-room floor, muttering, "Come on Doggies, come on Dogs." We're behind, but not by much; it's goal for goal.
With six minutes to go, we're in front. I feel sick. I say to Mikey, "The boys have played so well, they've got nothing to be ashamed of," as if we're losing, not winning.
Then St Kilda kicks a goal to nose in front by a single point. All those fluffed shots in the first quarter have come back to haunt us now. I'm pacing. Come on, boys! They scrabble over the ball; all the players look exhausted. The Dogs have the ball, but it's hard work, inching it up the ground, and there's no result.
Then St Kilda grab possession and just like that, bam, they have another goal. Why don't we ever get easy goals like that? There's only a minute to go. Bob Murphy bombs it long but it's no use. The siren sounds. It's over.
Ryan Griffen covers his face with his hands. Callan Ward collapses to the ground. The Saints are ecstatic; the Dogs are gutted. They go through the motions, patting each other, mouthing congratulations. Later, in the rooms, one player covers his head with a towel. Is he weeping? Griffen blinks away tears. No one moves. They slump, motionless, against the walls. In the end, it was seven points. So close. So close.

I haven't even looked at the papers yet, I don't know what they'll say. The boys played well; they've got nothing to be ashamed of. They came closer than anyone expected.
But close is not the same as winning.
It's over.

The Sea, The Sea

This weekend I sat with my back to the dunes and watched my little family jumping the waves. My parents and sister were looking down from the holiday unit behind us; we'd all gone away to the beach together to celebrate my sister's birthday. The Lark and the Owl were in heaven, building dams, playing trains, digging in the sand, cooing at baby lambs.

Perhaps it's the sheer vastness of the sea, its impersonal beauty, that gives us a glimpse of eternity. The waves roll in, the waves wash out. But as I sat there, with my birth family sheltered behind me, and my husband and children standing between me and forever, I couldn't help but feel a profound gratitude: that we're all safe, all healthy, all more or less happy, so blessed to have each other and the glory of the sea.

We asked the Owl to rate her holiday out of ten. "Two million, three hundred," was the emphatic reply.

Yeah.

Geelong 14.12.96 d. Western Bulldogs 12.10.82

Remember what I said about the mock? I TAKE IT ALL BACK.

Well done, Cats. You are a very, very fine football side, and if anyone but the Doggies has to win this year, I hope it's you. Congratulations, Onion ladies. I hope we'll be seeing you (again) in the preliminary final... but I'm not counting on it...

Workplace Matters

The perils of using a laptop...

For the last few months, I haven't been using my study much. Mostly because it's a bungalow in the back garden, and it's freaking cold out there. And when I've only got a couple of hours to work before I have to race out and pick up Evie from kinder, it just seems so much easier to settle in on the couch by the heater, or prop up on my bed in the sun with my lappy on my knees, where it's already warm.

But... lately I've had a couple of Whole Days at my disposal (praise be to Michael and ATO flex-time!) and I've started coming out to my study again. And whaddaya know, I've been a heap more productive. I don't think it's just because I've had Whole Days to reflect and ponder, though that certainly helps. It's also the physical fact of sitting at my desk, with my research books spread round me, sitting in an office chair. It says "I am at work. I am serious now. This is Writing Time."

I've never been a writer who could get much done scribbling in a cafe or even in a library. I like silence while I work, and no distractions. I can't even work when the children are home. And now I remember why I prize my room so highly (it's one of the main reasons we bought this house), and why I never want to give it up. Forget hot-desking (is that still happening??) Give me my cold room any day.

Putting The Mock On

Another grand old Aussie expression, meaning to jinx something or someone. It seems to be a variation on the slightly more common "put the mozz on" which derives from the Hebrew mazel (pronounced mozzle), meaning luck. But we always talk about "the mock" in our house. (Also, "the false mock," to deliberately tempt the gods by pretending loudly not to care about an outcome while secretly caring very much indeed, in a kind of elaborate double bluff. Yeah, I'm not sure how it works, either.)

A belief in "the mock" goes hand in hand with its opposite: warding off disaster by purposefully imagining everything that could possibly go wrong, in the belief that by articulating the worst, one somehow prevents it from actually happening, perhaps on the grounds that catastrophe is, by definition, unexpected. Western Bulldogs supporters, like my mother-in-law, are expert at this, as previously discussed.

On these grounds, I tipped against the Dogs two weeks in a row, and thus guaranteed that they actually won. But this week I threw caution to the wind and tipped them and they won anyway.

I've always been a firm believer in the power of the mock. But to hell with it! The day of the mock is over; the era of positive visualisation has arrived. I'm going to say it loud and say it proud, even if my words come back to bite me:

WE CAN WIN THIS THING!!!

(Maybe. Possibly. If Brian Lake doesn't do a hammy. If Nick Riewoldt does do a hammy. If the Cats haven't been just toying with us the last few weeks. If the Crows don't get up after all. If the Pies weren't shamming. If everybody fires on the day... And what a day, what a day that would be!)

True Spring

According to my trusty Aboriginal calendar, True Spring is upon us, and will last until the beginning of November. "Warm, wet, windy" -- well, the windy part is certainly true, and there have been moments of warmth lately, albeit interspersed with icy blasts. For some reason, the playground of Alice's primary school is the coldest, windiest place on Earth, especially as you're counting down the minutes till the bell goes. Anyway, here's hoping for a bit more rain to go along with the winds.

The Grade 2s and 3s have gone off on an excursion today. They were feral this morning, racing around shrieking. I'm glad I don't have to sit with them for two hours on a bus. There is excitement in the air at school, as our stimulation package finally gets underway. A nice big hole has been levelled in the ground where the new building's going to be, and soon the foundations will be poured. Next year Alice will have a beautiful new library and flexible classrooms to enjoy, instead of the shabby old asbestos-ridden shed that currently comprises the "Senior School," and the library shoe-horned into an upstairs classroom. I think the old shed was there when my mum was at the school in the 40s.

By the end of True Spring, Evie will be starting Prep Orientation; my baby will be a grown up school girl. I'm both glad and sorry; but you can't have spring sunshine without the winds and rain.

Writing My Way In

I am writing. No, honestly, I am!

My current work-in-progress is evolving in a new way; I've never approached a book like this before. Generally the jumping-off point for a new novel for me is a scene or an image, like a scene in a silent film. For Singer, it was an image of a girl gazing over a snowy landscape, seeing an unconscious stranger carried to the tower on which she stood; for Taste Of Lightning, it was a herd of white horses flowing over a hill. Gradually I begin to see the figures in the landscape more clearly, their situation evolves, my characters come into focus and take on their own life, and the story accretes around them, like a pearl forming around a morsel of grit (well, hopefully it's a pearl). Often the piece of grit (that initial image) doesn't survive the writing process, but it's the foundation for all that follows.

This time it's different. Because I started out wanting to write about a particular time and place (PNG in the 1970s), I didn't begin with any characters, or a clear situation. I've accumulated lots of characters now (exiled schoolgirl Julie, dashing young pilot Doug, hard-bitten housewife Barb, haus meri Koki, explorer's son Simon), but they're just milling around, staring at me mutely, waiting for directions. I have to find something for them to do.

It's complicated, too, by the fact that my own memories keep getting in the way. It's hard to push my personal history aside, to remember that this story is not about me or my family, that this is fiction, that I have to imagine my way in, just as I would with any other story, not fall back on reminiscence. I'm not Julie, and my sister is not Nadine; Allan and Barbara are definitely not my parents.

So I've been writing my way in: fragments of scenes where two characters interact, talk to each other, go to a party, argue, swap books. I never know what's going to happen when I put them in a room together. Julie and the mission wife next door unexpectedly began to play Monopoly; Julie's mother cast lustful looks in a surprising direction; Julie's sister Nadine turns out to be a compulsive fibber. This is all very interesting (for me), but it isn't yet a story.

Then yesterday the scene that I've unconsciously been waiting for dropped into my mind -- the spark to ignite the narrative, the push to start the story rolling. Once I'd seen it, it seemed so obvious: of course, that's what happened! This is how X and Y and Z first met, this is what binds them, this is the source of the tension between them, this is their shared secret. The mists lift and there is the solution, plain and simple and true. Everything else flows from this; the shape of the story begins dimly to reveal itself, like a mountain range lifting out of the clouds. Which is a very appropriate metaphor in this instance, as anyone familiar with the Highlands will recognise.

Now I just have to write the damn thing.

Being a Bulldog

"You need to be strong to be a Bullies supporter," my mother-in-law says, and she should know; she's been a staunch Western Bulldog all her life. Family legend has it that her mother washed the team's jumpers after Footscray's one and only premiership in 1954*.

Joy has learned to live with dashed hopes, promising starts that fizzle into nothing, years of being the poorest, most struggling club in the league, years of being just not good enough. Her instinct is to assume the worst. Michael refuses to sit next to her at games because of her persistent, superstitious negativity. We might be fifty points up at three quarter time, but "You never know..." Joy shakes her head dolefully and refuses to celebrate until the final siren. Even then, it's not so much elation as relief.

When Rodney Eade took over as coach, he commented on the side's lack of confidence. It's an attitude the supporters share. Even when we're doing well, we can't quite believe it. We've seen the wheels fall off too many times. No one hates the Bulldogs, because we've never been a threat.

At work, Michael sits near a Collingwood supporter. She says, "I always tip the Magpies, and I always think they're going to win." Michael says, "I always tip the Bulldogs, and I always think they're going to lose."

So we'll be watching the game against the Cats on telly tomorrow night, resisting the temptation to switch on the radio and find out what's happening in real time, and we'll fight the usual battle between excruciating hope and the familiar comfy slippers of despair.

Go Dogs!



* though actually, it turns out this story isn't true. But why spoil a family legend?? And yes, that's right, 1954. There's an entire generation of Doggies supporters who have never seen their team bring home the big one. NEVER. I wonder if indoctrinating Alice and Evie into the Dogs is a form of child abuse?

Written on the Landscape

This is just the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

An artist called Rhett Dashwood has created an alphabet from images culled from Google Earth. I think all the locations are from Victoria. O looks like the MCG when the Commonwealth Games were on, and J is the pedestrian footbridge across the Yarra.

We Were Wrong (Again)

Okay, so I mixed up James Freud's rock'n'roll memoir I Am The Voice Left From Drinking with Mark Seymour's Thirteen Tonne Theory, which is the one I heard on the radio. No offence to James, but Mark Seymour's is much more literary. Not to say that James Freud's story isn't interesting -- it's fascinating, in a train-wreck kind of way, and it's reminding me of the heady days of the eighties and nineties when I was working in the "industry." Lots of money splashed around, booze, lots of drugs (not that I had anything to do with that, I was much too prim), lots of silly mayhem and really, really stupid hair.

And it turns out, Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight, which I associated with high school, wasn't released until the year after I left. Whoops. It must have been I Hear Motion that we danced to in the quad.

Desperately Seeking... Something?

I'm sure I read reviews a little while ago (within the last couple of years?) of a book about a girl who could pick up clairvoyant images from objects she touched -- see their past owners etc. For ages I thought it was I, Coriander but then I read I, Coriander and realised it wasn't. Was I hallucinating? Does anyone know the book I'm thinking of?

PS You know how I was wondering (below) if Nancy Drew was as good as I remembered? Well, it isn't. It's crap.

Library Book Sale Time Again

For Evie
I Don't Want To Go To The Hospital! Tony Ross
Because we love the Little Princess, and Evie is phobic about doctors and hospitals after her traumatic splinter extraction last summer which ended with blood splattered on the surgery walls (long story).
(Anyone who feels that Evie gets ripped off in these sales should be reassured that she has shelves and shelves of books in her room already. Mind you, so do I, and that doesn't stop me acquiring more.)

For Alice
In-Line Skating Basics, Cam Millar
for the roller girl...
Born Free, Joy Adamson
... who also wants to run her own lion park.
Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo
Which I will read to her. Goody.
Queen of the Universe, Libby Gleeson
Which I hope she will read to herself. A Solo book, which are fantastic for struggling readers because they're chapter books, but very short and simple.
Against the Odds, Robin Klein
Unlikely stories which Penni thought might appeal to Al, after the success of Tales From Outer Suburbia, which she adores.

For me
Damned Whores and God's Police, Anne Summers
I'm pretty doubtful that I'll actually read this, to be honest, but I felt it was something I ought to have. It's the updated version, too. Maybe the girls will use it for a school project, or a uni essay. If they still write essays by then. If the girls ever go to uni.
I Am The Voice Left From Drinking, James Freud
I heard some of this read on Radio National, and it was fascinating, and well-written, even though rock'n'roll memoirs usually leave me pretty cold. Also the Models were the soundtrack of my high school years. Out of mind, out of sight, gotta keep my body TIGHT!
People Might Hear You, Robin Klein
One of the Wattle Birds, Jessica Anderson
Jinx, Margaret Wild
Penni thrust all these on me and said I ought to read them. Which is true. So I will.
Women's Trouble, Kaz Cooke and Ruth Trickey
To complete my collection of Kaz Cooke health and well-being tomes. And it might be useful, it has natural remedies for lots of ailments, which appeals to my Christian Science, medicine-distrustful ancestry. (Hm, maybe that's where Evie gets her doctor-phobia...)
Ruby Rosemount and the Travellers Telescope, Jodie Brownlee
Because it's about magic lessons, and it has a nice cover. Another one I might read aloud to the girls. Though I must say now I've noticed the missing apostrophe in the title, I have gone off it slightly.
Cathy's Secret Kingdom, Nancy W. Faber
Not an ex-library book, this was published in the year I was born. It's about the relationship between two very different step-sisters and a secret room.
Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Glowing Eye
Is Nancy as good as I remember? I suspect not.
The Georges' Wife, Elizabeth Jolley
Another unread Australian classic. As a struggling would-be writer, I was always cheered by the fact that Elizabeth Jolley didn't get published until she was ancient. Now I look this up and find she was in her fifties. Gulp. Not that far away after all.

Grand total: $9.50