In the Swim - it's all in the togs, isn't it - Nude Swimming for beginners

I have obviously got to that time of life where something inside me rumbles to push out of the comfort zone and so on March 11th this year I am participating in the Sydney Skinny Swim http://www.thesydneyskinny.com.au/about/sydney-skinny-ocean-swim-event.htm

- the ‘Skinny’ bit of the title referring to the unclothed nature of participants rather than a radical change to my outline which remains frighteningly robust in nature - it is in fact a nude ocean swim. The nudity bit is not concerning me that much, in that I am more worried about the fact that being a typical Brit, my preferred, and indeed only stroke, is breaststoke, with my head held high in a manner that generally ensures that I emerge from the water with my hairstyle intact and as immaculate as ever.  I am therefore more stressed about the chances of me a) drowning or b) finishing a good hour after the rest of the swimmers rather than the fact that I am going to be minus my togs when completing it.  Interesting fact - based on the random survey of my group of friends who along with me were invited to join in this event, the British, New Zealanders and Dutch are marginally more likely to take their clothes off, whilst their Australian counterparts, in a total defiance of national stereotypes, are robustly, almost to a woman, refusing to countenance entering the water naked.

I am also finding it somewhat alarming that the most common response to hearing I am about to bare all, is how brave I am and I wonder if I am misleading people somewhat, as in my mind I am just going to nip down some beach, into the water, swim for my life (literally) and then re-emerge dripping and reach for a towel- (the only thing that does worry me is being pulled from the water by a life guard who has mistaken the British breaststoke for the last gasp of the drowning - and if that occurs it won't be a pretty sight), however people are talking about this rare outbreak of nudity on my part as if I was proposing to go and conduct a television interview in the nude or something equally outre, so I am beginning to wonder if there is a catch I haven't caught up with eg a parade of stripped swimmers prior to the big dive.

The whole event is raising money for Brain Cancer research and I am also swimming/stripping in order to raise funds for Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Sydney through a Just Giving page that you can access here:

 https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Catriona-Ling

Lifehouse has been the Ling family home from home during the course of our daughter Harriet’s treatment over the last five years.  The hospital is an integrated and focused centre of excellence, offering everything a cancer patient needs in one place.  As we as a family know, they support not only the patient, but the entire family in a holistic and caring way that makes living through the stress of diagnosis and treatment much more bearable.

So far my practice sessions have not been uniformly successful with one ocean swim resulting in my swimming into an armada of bluebottles, the Australian version of Portugese Man O' War jellyfish, and getting robustly and comprehensively stung - fortunately I was in my swimsuit for this outing limiting the extent of the stings to just my arms, the mind boggles, and eyes water, to think what the experience might have been like, had I been nude. Following this pretty painful experience that also included a couple of days itching like a particularly deranged Mexican bandit, I have focused on practising the nude side of the event and restricted my dummy run activities to floating in the bath.  However come March 11th, I will be giving the event a good go and crossing my fingers for no bluebottles and a finish before the next wave of competitors start.

"Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not ......"

Sydney weather has been ricocheting around.  May was totally glorious, I was in basking seal mode only a couple of weeks ago, swimming in the ocean off Lion Island in Pittwater, one of Sydney’s great natural harbours.  The water was a bit bracing but nothing compared to my childhood summer swims off St Andrews where I used to enter the water, draw a sharp breath and exit swiftly climbing back into three layers of clothing and hoping the blue tinge to my flesh faded quickly.  In contrast two weeks ago, we sat around the boat in the sunshine with that glorious feeling of salt drying on your skin and marvelled at one of the warmest Mays in record for Sydney with daytime temperatures over 20 oC every day for the first 26 days of the month.

But as in all good fairy stories there is always something nasty lurking in the woodshed.  In this case, an East Coast Low, apparently partly caused by the high sea temperatures that were responsible for my unseasonal sea like frolicking.  Having got a grand total of 7.2mm of rain in the whole of May, Sydney has received 226.2mm since Friday – most of which appears to have pooled under our house.  Husband has been looking manly in shorts, up to his knees in water creating siphon systems with hoses to get the water out – I refused to do the sucking bit to start the siphons off, having had nasty experiences with that particular exercise, in the past, with emptying out fish tank water.

We went for breakfast on Sunday at our local beachside café, Bathers' Pavilion at Balmoral.  As Balmoral is a harbour beach, rather than an ocean one, you normally get the kind of waves that you encourage your four year old to jump through, but as we sat at our window table, carefully avoiding the pools of water from the rain that was driving in through the frames, we could see surfers out on the water, surfing very respectable sized waves into the beach.

The storm coincided with the highest tide of the year, last night, a so called King Tide – have actually mentally labelled it the King Canute tide as he would have had more than a few problems trying to hold it back.  We went back down to Balmoral for a walk last night as the tide was at its peak, fortunately the storm had abated but the size of the waves as they crashed onto the usually placid beach and over the esplanade walls was impressive.  We spotted a pelican amongst the chaos of the surf, presumably looking for fish attracted by the Bathers' Pavilion lights that shine out at night over the water.  As we marvelled at his skill in dodging waves, he suddenly got it wrong and had to fly for his life down the face of a giant wave coming zooming out of the froth and water, skimming millimetres away from the wall of water.  It was one of those images that will stay with me for a long time as he flew in low towards us, before flapping off into the night in a somewhat disgruntled fashion.

It’s not just the weather that seems barmy in Sydney.  My front garden looks bizarre at the moment, though I would hate to give you the impression it ever looks particularly flash.  I have daffodils out, actually technically I think they are some kind of narcissi or jonquil but daffodils covers it, whilst at the same time the imported trees are turning gold and orange.  Given both flowers and trees come from northern hemispheres – surely one or other species has got it wrong re Spring and Autumn as a concept in their adopted home – and I’m guessing it’s the daffodils who are confused.

Mother's Day - Champagne or Colonoscopy?

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day in Australia. I would actually love it if we could get a global Mother’s Day – an International Day of the Mother. UK Mothering Sunday is linked to Easter and the Christian calendar and this year was March 6^th, whereas Australia and New Zealand follow the US custom of the second Sunday in May, which is tomorrow.  It is unfortunate that the UK Mothering Sunday falls before the Australian celebration in that it means my own mother’s chances of scoring a on time card from this particular off shore offspring are remarkably low.

My own Mother’s Day celebration tomorrow, is on paper, not shaping well.  Drama Queen No.1 is in hospital recuperating from an operation, Drama Queen No.2 is down at university in Melbourne, recuperating from a night spent on a beach photographing a meteorite shower and watching the phosphorescence in the waves, and Drama Queen No.3 is spending the night at a friend’s place so I am going to wake up with no daughters in residence – BUT IT GETS MUCH WORSE – because actually celebration of motherhood and the implied goal of me getting my just rewards in terms of cake and champagne does not actually require offspring physically present – I am quite capable of quaffing it with Husband or on my own.  The disaster is the result of a move that only I could make, I have somehow scheduled for Monday morning, the routine, age related, something it would be good to do, colonoscopy that I have been gently, and rightly, nagged into by my GP.

This fatal flaw on the timing front means that as per the instruction sheet, not only am I taking a variety of what I presume are laxatives – and I must confess to some worries about the speed and ferocity at which they work, based on the advice to stay close to a toilet, but I also have to exist on a clear liquid diet for 24 hours before the procedure, which effectively scuppers any hopes of a Mother’s Day high tea or indeed knees up.  I did phone the doctor’s receptionist in the vain hope champagne might qualify on the clear liquid front – it does, but sadly fails the no alcohol test.  

The upside is that I console myself that I am so lucky to live in a country with a fabulous medical system that supports and cares for us as a family, and that I am offered a test that could be invaluable in saving my life, so in the contest between champagne and colonoscopy – I guess colonoscopy wins hands down – with champagne afterwards naturally.

And of course there is the fact that I feel very loved by the dramatic offspring everyday of the year, so before I get absurdly sentimental I’d like pay homage to Tom Lehrer who wrote one of the best songs about loving your mother – Oedipus Rex – that contains one of my favourite lines “I’d rather marry a duck-billed platypus”.

Oedipus Rex

Dum de Dum de Dum - The Archers and the joys of internet radio

You know you are becoming a crusty old bore, akin to the type of colonial relics that inhabit a Somerset Maugham short story, when you start talking about ‘When I first went overseas …………. “

In the heady days of the early 90s there was no internet or email so you wrote and received letters in the form of blue areogrammes that you folded up and sent off – it was a red letter day when a blue letter arrived and I used to skip up the steps to the various rented flats clutching one when they came.

Phone calls to overseas countries were accompanied with a timer and hissing of in-drawn breath – my parents-in-law only rang us a couple of times during our years overseas as it was regarded as prohibitively expensive. 

And if you wanted to listen to the BBC Radio 4 long running serial, The Archers you had to get your parents to make a recording and send it out to you.

I wasn’t actually such an Archers fan that these desperate measures were required but when we lived in Hong Kong in the early 90’s, I had a great friend, Laura, whose mother used to tape the omnibus edition every Sunday and then send said tape to Laura.  When I tell this story to anyone under the age of 30, I can see their eyes roll in complete incomprehension, whilst they mentally pause and wonder whether to ask for a translation.

I love having the internet, and email, but I also love my box of tattered areogrammes, mainly from my mother who wrote the most superb letters, but slightly irritating never dated them beyond the month.  I now realise I should have written the year on them when I received them as it is now a deduction process from the contents, and the address on the front, in terms of working out when it was actually written.

One of the things I love most about life now is that I can conjure up BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 at the touch of a button on my computer, either live or as a podcast.  As I write now I have Essential Classics from Radio 3 playing in the background as I am someone who always needs noise around to work.  Most early evenings I will cook to the wake up call of the BBC Radio 4 flagship ‘Today’ programme which sets the tone for news and views each morning in the UK, and when ironing I will find a podcast from Woman’s Hour or The Life Scientific – both of which are the most fantastic programmes and I very rarely come away without having heard something that really interested me.   Desert Island Discs is a weekly treat and when I find one I love, I am on a one-woman mission to spread the word and all my friends find the link posted to their inboxes. 

‘The Archers’ is typically British institution, a radio soap opera that has been going since 1951, originally, and perhaps still, billed as the ‘everyday story of country folk’, I can remember listening to the after lunch slot in my primary school uniform and the theme tune is instantly recognisable to any Brit of my age. 

There is still a distinct rural flavour to it, and we are definitely talking village life, complete with established families, wealthy farmers, poor but honest (most of the time) tenant farmers and labourers, village shop, now run by worthy volunteers and a village green.  But no one could accuse The Archers of not being of their time – over the past couple of years the storylines have included a gay civil marriage, infidelity, donor insemination and the vicar marrying a Hindu and my personal favourite, one character, Emma, managing to marry not one, but two brothers in quick succession.  I have to come clean and admit I am now totally addicted and will listen to the 12 minutes slot whilst I cook most evenings.

In recent weeks the tension in The Archers community has ratcheted up as a domestic abuse storyline took over.  The build up was very dramatic and I was reduced to getting up and listening to the next episode whilst I ate my breakfast, furiously hushing any of my family who dared to interrupt the storyline.  When things came to a head – or to knifepoint – it was I think the story that stopped the nation.  The Today Programme had to utter a spoiler alert before they discussed the episode as one of their leading news stories of the day.

For anyone feeling nostalgic, here’s the theme tune, you only need the first few bars to be transported.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKVGFP93bPg

Dress Code - Pac-a mac or pearls

Absolutely fabulous, hot autumnal afternoon in Sydney with golden light slanting through the trees round the outdoor café I am sitting in, but as with all good dramas this is now the point for a line of dramatic dots……………… the weather forecast for the next few days is not good.

Rain is normally not a problem in my life, however in a crazed social organiser moment, crossed with the desire to embrace my inner cultural being, I have revved up several of my friends about what fun it would be to go to Turandot the Sydney Opera production staged outdoors on a floating stage on Sydney Harbour.  I fear I have perhaps waxed too lyrical about the operatic and dramatic delights in store, to the extent Husband is convinced he is going to see a fire breathing dragon – and whilst it is true there is definitely a giant pagoda and a mechanical dragon, I am not completely convinced it is going to spit fire – but as a result of my enthusiastic sales pitch, I now find myself in the fairly unaccustomed role of heading up a party who qualify for a group discount – am considering whether to get one of those little flags to wave so I can marshal them?  Meanwhile I am haunted by a craven fear that it will pour,  and my loyal concert party of opera tragics will be glaring at me from beneath plastic hoods as the rain drums around us.

However there are few things as spectacular as an evening spent sitting on the purpose built seating in the Botanic Gardens, complete with the bars and restaurants that appear for a couple of months whilst the Outdoor Cinema and the Opera on the Harbour are on.    The scenery is out of this world with the Opera House and Bridge as a backdrop as the lights go down and then the lights around the Harbour providing a sparkling frame as darkness falls.  The Flying Foxes (large and incontinent bats) used to make sitting in the back row of seats, underneath the overhanging trees, a bit of a sartorial challenge – what to wear that you don’t mind getting covered in bat shit was always a puzzle, but now the bats have been persuaded to move on, it is possible to sit in the back rows without more that an occasional glance upwards.

I am not a great opera buff – hence have had to consult Sydney Opera’s helpful ‘cheat sheet’ to discover that the final “t” in Turandot is not pronounced – bit like the Drama Queens’ pronunciation of ‘water’ which also generally lacks any mention of the ‘T’ sound, but I do love the drama of the outdoor opera – and boy do they go to the max on set and effects.  Fireworks are completely obligatory and are apparently going to light up the sky during ‘Nessum Dorma’.  During Carmen, a couple of years ago, a vintage car appeared to great effect whilst one of the highlights of Aida last year was getting up close with the camels that made a star appearance.

However the biggest nightmare is of course, what happens if it rains?  And the closely related question, what on earth am I going to wear, pac- a- mac or pashmina?  Normally I am never particularly stressed by dress code questions, taking the fairly characteristic, eg lazy, view that unless one looks spectacular or dreadful, people rarely notice and I would prefer they remember me for my sparkling repartee rather than outfit.  Note this attitude is mirrored by my thoughts on hosting dinner parties, where I feel that unless the food is beyond delicious, or I poison people, then that’s fine.  (Anyone who has been subjected to my dinner party food – please feel free to rebut this statement).

However I do at times get the dress code so spectacularly wrong that I am out of sight on the fashion front – and not in a Kardashian type way.   The worst I think was the Derby Day – part of the racing festival centred around the Melbourne Cup, in November– it was unfortunate that in the excitement of being invited down to Derby Day in Melbourne I had failed to ask anyone about the Dress Code – it turns out it is traditional to wear black and white to Derby Day.  It was perhaps a tad unfortunate I had gone for a celebratory fire station red outfit topped off by a red hat – if the expression ‘sore thumb’ comes to mind then you have the correct and bizarrely quite accurate picture in your mind of me, clad as the scarlet imposter, in the midst of a sea of black and white – it was like an inverted “Where’s Wally?” picture.

The good news is that being Sydney, anything will go at Turandot, so I can get it wrong in good company, and if the rain lashes down, I’ve got some great raingear that I wore daily in my northern hemisphere life that now hangs in the laundry unused most of the year.  And as for the under layer, as it were, I’m going to take Dan Porta, the set designer’s words to heart – “We have to temper the aesthetics to the weather …… but still make everything look dangerous and exciting” so I’m mentally channelling the black jumpsuit rather than jeans and sweater.

And just as a footnote, I have just heard on the radio that today was the hottest April day recorded in Sydney - no wonder it all seemed glorious - keep those opera loving fingers crossed it lasts.

Real People and Imaginary Friends

Today’s weather which is grey, not a scud of sun and heavy rain alternating with drizzle is a forcible reminder that perhaps I wouldn’t be that good at living in the UK any more.   I think I have become too much of a Southern Hemisphere gal – used to a default setting of sunshine, heat and blue skies, and rain that is more of the tropical downpour variety than the depressing backdrop to life stuff we are getting now.

During the almost 25 years we have been married, we’ve only spent 5 years in the UK.  It was a brief, undoubtedly rain-filled, but very happy, interlude, where we lived in Balham, and went from having one child to three.  Towards the end of the five years, I went back to university and qualified as a teacher, but before that foray back into student life, I spent a couple of years based mostly on my knees or sitting on the floor, clutching a cup of tea, chatting to my friends whilst numerous small children crawled and roamed around us.  In terms of timing it was just the best, our return to London, complete with a growing number of small children coincided with the brief period of time when the majority of my university friends were London based and all having children, so I had a ready made social group and the great luxury of having time with people who made me laugh, and even better understood my jokes.

I have just read ‘Late Fragments – Everything I Want to Tell You (About this

Magnificent Life)’ by Kate Gross.  She was as she says “ a successful thirty-something with an amazing job through which I travel the world and converse with presidents and prime ministers.  My adorable twins are three, and their father, Billy, is my soulmate, as well as being the best-looking man I’ve ever kissed.”   And then she discovers she has advanced colon cancer, and she decides to write a book for her twin sons to tell them who she was.  I loved the book, though I approached it with some trepidation as I am always nervy of cancer/illness memoirs as I think it takes really great writing to rise above the grief and misery, but what I think sets Kate Gross’s book apart is her thoughts on the business of living if you like, rather than dying.  I particularly liked her chapter on female friendships – I sat reading, going, ‘yes, yes, yes’ – thinking as I read that she was saying, so brilliantly, what I have always thought, and I so wish she were still alive so that I could write to her and say “Please, please, be my friend’. 

One of the things Kate says about her time at university is that “I count my time at university as precious not just because it is where I hatched [from a grub, as she characterises her teenage years], but because it is where I made the friendships that have accompanied me ever since.”  One of the upsides of moving round the world is that it forces you into situations of similar type intensity to those university days –  a survive, make friends or die type mentality, so I have been blessed in that I have continued to make great friends in life, but in the end it is the university and school friends who tend to get the middle of the night hysterical phone call or to whom I can admit that I have just eaten a whole packet of Cadbury’s mini-eggs and am now lurching round the kitchen like a Labrador that has committed a similar transgression.

Perhaps I actually was a Labrador in a previous life as I’m obviously very prone to wanting to bound up to people saying ‘Be my friend’ and metaphorically nuzzling around their knees – though obviously giving the sniffing their groin a miss.  Having just read J K Rowling’s address to Harvard Graduates in 2008  - (missed it at the time but it is just doing the rounds on Facebook a mere eight years later), she is clearly going on the list too as yet another inspirational and funny woman who seems to speak for me, and to me, but who also I feel wouldn’t be averse to a gingernut dunked in a mug of tea.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/

Before I get too carried away with my new all female fantasy friendship group, I should add the person who started me off on the wanting complete strangers, who take my fancy, as friends kick, which is now how I typify people who I admire and who make me laugh, was Jimmy Mulville, after I heard him on Desert Island Discs http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t613s

Regardless of the rain outside and my bizarre Labrador like tendencies to want to be friends with the outstanding who cross my path, in print or on radio, what I should be reflecting on is how lucky I am like Kate Gross, to have so many outstanding friends in my life already, who do inspire and make me laugh on a daily basis, so this is a reminder to myself to cherish them and always to have a packet of biscuits or a bottle of wine handy in case they drop in.

PS Belatedly I realise the title for this post was stolen from the titles of two books by Alison Lurie, the American novelist, who is definitely on the list of desired friends, though such is the level of my admiration for her, I am not sure I would actually be able to utter a word were I ever to come face to face with her.

Just a cough to the left, a splutter to the right

It’s been fabulous weather in Sydney and to be honest there are few places to beat Sydney Harbour when the sun is shining.  

February is often the hottest month of the year, coinciding helpfully as it does with school going back, but this year summer is continuing to excel itself well into March.  Sydney is in the middle of a record breaking run, 37 days in a row where the temperature has been 26 oC or over and 21 nights where it has been 20 oC – (for my Fahrenheit readers that’s a daily temperature of 79 oF or over and a lot of the time it has been well over, we are not talking warm here, we are talking days that are candle melting hot, and a nightly temperature that hasn’t dropped below 68 oF).  Basically safe to say jolly consistently hot, no matter what temperature gauge you are using.

I went to see La Boheme at Sydney Opera House on Friday– please note the way I slipped that in, culture vulture that I am – the reality is I am complete operatic philistine and were it not for subtitles I would not have a clue about what is going on in any given opera.  However I loved La Boheme and was mesmerised by the music, energy generated by the performers and the set.  The heroine, Mimi dies of consumption at the end – as in all operas in my limited experience, death seems to feature pretty majorly.  As she coughed her way to her last, I reflected upon the fact that despite the type of weather than induces heat exhaustion rather than a constant hacking, coughs are pretty much theme of the day in my household.

Based on past history a visit to my hairdresser is often fraught with drama – over the past year the monthly snip has been interrupted in one instance by a tow man towing my week old, brand new car out of the underground car park where it had given up the ghost, many of the locals still dine out on the story of the maniac woman with her hair in foils and wearing a black smock, who was directing traffic (and swearing a lot) during that incident.  Then there was the phone call I received, also whilst clad in a becoming black gown, to say my brother had been knocked down by a cyclist and was in an ambulance on his way to one of the major Sydney hospitals – fortunately he was okay after a few stitches and a couple of days rest, and equally fortunately (being totally self-centred as I am) Roger had finished cutting my hair before the phone call came and I belted out of the saloon at high speed.  As a result of these and other incidents, Roger and I both approach the cut as a time-trial before fresh drama breaks out.  So when my phone buzzed this time and I saw it was a text from Drama Queen No. 2 who has just started at university in Melbourne, approximately 876km from home, my heart sank.  Her text read, “ What do I have, a dry irritating cough or a chesty one?” – difficult to call that one from a distance I felt, but I was touched by her faith in my diagnostic powers on the cough front. 

However her chest ailments pale into insignificance next to those of Husband who is marooned in the grey and cold of a UK March, and who claims that he thinks he has got Legionnaire’s disease – there is an potential outbreak in Sydney at the moment and the source is thought to be close to his office here – so technically he could be afflicted, particularly as he assures me the incubation period is up to 10 days (he looked it up). 

In the great operatic tradition I feel I could be conducting my own cough symphony quite soon, waving in the hypochondriac section, and then cuing the student splutters, so that we finish in a combined family coughing fit of which Mimi would be proud.  Meanwhile I'm hoping we make 40 days in a row of great weather.

21 and the joint is jumping

Hooray, we survived.  Actually, pause for a brief moment whilst I check on full count of teeth, limbs, state of marriage, number of Drama Queens still on talking terms with rest of family.  All present and correct – just amazing, given I had expected to wake up post Drama Queen No. 1’s 21st Birthday Party in my own particular version of T S Eliot’s Wasteland.

She was actually 21 four days before Christmas, but sensibly decided to postpone the party until a time when no other major birthday (Jesus or anyone else) or celebration could overshadow it.  Having decided upon a Scottish theme, whiskey and haggis quickly hit the must have list – I vetoed requests for the sheep that would apparently add Scottish authenticity to our suburban Sydney house – apparently you can get one for $60 on Gumtree, but I remained resolute, having a pretty fair idea who’d be playing Little Bo Peep post party and frankly I’m far too old for the golden curls and shepherd’s crook called for by that particular role.

The run up to the party, mentally billed in my own mind as the Ben Hur event, was relatively smooth as the birthday girl is a three hour drive away at university and aside from fielding the boxes of tartan themed objects turning up on the doorstep I was able to stay calm.  Australian male friends wound up Husband with cries of “Mate (mate being drawn out in that peculiarly Australian way) you’re going to need more beer.  More beer, Mate” – I’m never sure whether his friends find it necessary to repeat these kind of instructions because they think he is hard of hearing,  or whether they worry about his powers of understanding.  As a result in between the tartan paperchains, bunting and ribbon deliveries, boxes of beer kept arriving and our spare room was soon standing room only for bottles as well as potential guests.

In the event we were blessed, it was a fabulous warm Sydney evening, the 21 year olds were on top form and a pleasure to have in the house. Even the dog dressed up as type of tartan shuttlecock and “My oath” another great Australianism, did they drink – at the end of the night we had six bottles of beer left which I think officially counts as being drunk dry and basically proves the Aussie blokes were right on the bottles of beer per head calculation.  We had people in the pool and a naked dancer on the dance floor – events that frankly all good parties need.

I am now a convert to the concept of a 21st – forget 18th or 16th birthday parties.  By 21 the guest list is that bit older, used to having a drink without going crazy and just an easier crowd to deal with in terms of the parental health and safety worries – not to mention sanity concerns.  So thank you to all the guests for making it such a fun event that was a pleasure to host, and I’ll carry on taking down the bunting – anyone thinking of hosting a St Andrew’s Night or Burn’s Night supper, have I got the décor for you.

Cupboard Love

We are of course in mid February and it is very true to form that it is only now that I am reflecting upon Christmas presents and resolutions for the New Year.  In fact now I think about it I am just in time for Valentine’s Day, which is traditionally actually the date I normally send out my Christmas Letter.  Whilst in the resolution reminiscent mood I should make one resolution right now; that at some point today I will find a suitably tasteful and romantic card to hand over to Husband on Sunday morning, thus avoiding the usual scramble at 5pm on February 13^th, where I, together with a group of disconsolate males, for strangely most of the other late purchasers tend to be male, stand gazing at sad remnants of the left over cards at the newsagent, these last minute tokens of love generally featuring koalas and/or badly drawn teddy bears clutching roses to their chests, and have quite rightly been deemed by more timely purchasers, as unfit for human consumption.

My family gave me a copy of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying” for Christmas, apparently, I asked to be given it, I have no memory of making such a request but I do concede that if I was taking a clear look at myself in the metaphorical mirror (generally smeary and surrounded by interesting objects parked there over the years) I would perhaps have acknowledged a guide to tidying could come in handy.

If I condense the wisdom of the author Marie Kondo in a couple of sentences, the essence is discard, discard, discard and then tidy the few possessions that remain.  Key to the discarding element is that if when you handle an object/book/clothing if it doesn’t bring you an immediate jolt of pleasure/joy you get rid of it – am so tempted to test this method on dog/Drama Queens/Husband but fear it might lead to unfortunate scenes, particularly as our council ‘Throw away day’ is coming up and I would hate to see a member of my family sitting on the kerb looking for a new home.  I can see the sense of her particular ‘no joy and it’s out’ mantra and I am actually looking forward to tackling my wardrobe as I do know there are many garments in there that I pick up, consider as daily wear, and then put back on the grounds they fail to thrill.

However an infestation of pantry moths meant that the larder cupboard was the place that needed my tidy-minded attention – top tip if every time you open the cupboard door, you are greeted by a flutter of moths, and your teenage children are complaining that the chocolate chips are full of weevils and they think they may have unwittingly eaten some, then it’s time for action.  I cleaned out the whole thing, discarded, discarded and discarded, less on the grounds did things give me joy, and more on the basis that were foodstuffs a) infested with weevils, b) out of date by a number of years, c) conspicuously bulging or d) fitting into the category of the type of food that is bought in a fit of optimism but which clearly is never going to be eaten by any member of the family – step forward flaxmeal. 

The whole thing was a gloriously purging exercise – and I was overcome with satisfaction at the end of it – until I opened the cupboard door this morning and another moth flew out.  I suppose on the bright side at least the moths and weevils have somewhere tidy to live – and I can now move onto the more entertaining wardrobe purge, hopefully not moth infested in its turn.

Just to avoid embarrassing confusion - these are pictures of my larder cupboard POST clean-up!

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Pants Off New Year

As with all January 1st’s, the first day of this new year was greeted by my crossing out 2014 at the top of the list of last year’s resolutions and writing 2015 in my best and boldest handwriting, resolved, yet again, that this would be a year where I finally get on top of the rotating resolutions.  Basically those resolutions fall in two camps,  those things I’m going to do more of including writing, exercise, spending relaxed time with Husband and Drama Queens and laughing with my friends, and in the red corner,  things I am going to do less of, such as eating, moaning and procrastinating.

There is a comfortable familiarity to the whole thing.  My resolutions and I are old friends, there’s a mutual understanding about expectations and reality involved.  However I can safely say that as the fireworks blazed their spectacular way across the Sydney skyline, and 2015 blasted in, in technicolour, it never occurred to me that one of my resolutions for 2015 should be to remain fully clothed at all time in front of impressionable adolescents.

On New Year’s Day, I was floating round the kitchen in my pyjamas feeling secretly rather pleased that here I was on a beautiful Sydney morning, all the windows and the doors open to the garden, surrounded by the Drama Queens and an assortment of their teenage friends.  Carried away by my Martha Stewart, Gracious Hostess able to relate across the generations image, I was directing the morning breakfast traffic and trying to get to grips with the coffee, tea, green tea requirements when somehow the Moka coffee pot got knocked over and boiling coffee went all down my pyjama clad legs.  I did what Martha Stewart and most self respecting 50-this-year-olds would do, and whilst shrieking in a fire engine like manner, ripped off my pyjama bottoms and hopped naked from the waist downwards round the kitchen.  In the midst of all the agony I looked up and met the horrified gaze of Drama Queen No.2’s 18-year-old boyfriend whose goals for the New Year clearly did not include a full frontal of his girlfriend’s mother before 9am on New Year’s Day.  The horror of the situation and the wide eyed nature of various teenage gazes was enough to have me ripping the pyjama bottoms back up as I exited the kitchen at speed to sit in a cold shower for 30 minutes.

The whole episode led to a number of interesting observations:

Firstly burns are unbelievably painful.  I was very lucky in that the pyjama bottoms were flannel (of course an obvious choice to sleep in, in high summer in Sydney) and having a thickish layer on my legs definitely saved me from the worst of the hot coffee and getting under cold water immediately was crucial.  I still have interesting red patches on my legs that are moving from sore to itchy but no blistering so I am pretty sure I have been really fortunate and escaped any kind of permanent damage.

Secondly there is a clear generation gap with regard to pyjama etiquette.  In reviewing the whole mortifying experience, the Drama Queens’ main concern was of course the fact that their friends and romantic interests had been mentally scarred by the experience of seeing their hostess perform a type of portly Highland Fling, naked from the waist down, rather than their mother’s brush with pain, suffering and potential actual scarring.  However the girls were quite clear that in their opinion the debacle could have been avoided had I been wearing underwear under my pyjamas.  I was brought up in the no underwear under pyjamas camp but completely unrealised by me this is apparently a complete no no in teenage circles.  I am going to make a mass generalisation – people my age in the UK generally don’t wear underwear under their pyjamas but perhaps I’m wrong?  Let me know – which side of the night-time knicker line do you fall?  Also very grateful if anyone has an answer to the question, why do Australian boys and men under the age of 30 wear underwear under their boardshorts when they swim?

Regardless of outcome of the pants/pyjama debate I am adding a new resolution to the list.  “Stay fully clothed at all times unless I are sure my audience’s eyes are going to pop for the right reason and that there is no clapping their hands over their eyes in horror type reaction involved.’

Move over Nigella - and just be grateful for the marmalade

I do definitely buy into the concept of a gratitude diary and the shift in your thinking produced by just trying to be mindful of the things that make you happy and lift your day.  One of my Christmas presents was in fact a real life Gratitude Diary – who says stationery companies can’t spot and flog a trend?  Before I paint myself into a ‘ Little House on the North Shore’ vision of apple pie wholesomeness I should also point out I was also given a journal to record ‘Lovers I had and liked’ and the juxtaposition of the two (blank) books on my bedside table gives me great pleasure.

However of course being me, the idea of noting things I am grateful for in a daily log goes out the window, so my own particular version of a gratitude diary would be more akin to the Gratitude Weekly – and in fact probably more like the grandmother of all Australian magazines, The Australian Women’s Weekly, that is published confusingly once a month.  We do try over supper as a kick start conversation opener to get everyone to talk about three gratitude things that happened to them during the day – and I have to say it is a useful way of inducing everyone to talk about their day, and I do buy into the notion that if you are consciously looking for things to feel happy about, then your brain does start trending towards the more cheerful, but once again am a bit nervous of us all sounding like the Waltons on a high.  In a more realistic snapshot of life a la Ling, Drama Queens 2 and 3 and I were in fact all arguing in the car this morning as to who could claim the sight of a large fluffy dog hanging out of a car window as the driver barrelled down the motorway slipway towards Sydney Harbour Bridge as one of their gratitude things for the day - having endured three years of what seems like constant learner driver supervision I am actually just grateful to climb out of the car alive most days.

I looked out of the kitchen window last week to see a huge sulphur crested cockatoo sitting on top of our small pot bound lemon tree, wrenching off the lemons.  

They are such amazing looking birds that this was definitely a gratitude diary winner in terms of colour and interest and “oh my goodness’ moments though in fact cockatoos are such a nuisance and so destructive in terms of pulling things off houses that rental leases in areas close to bushland will specify you must not feed birds.  This particular one flew off with a lemon in its beak – and it was clear from the debris around the bush that this wasn’t its first attempt at fruit snacking.

The sight of the citrus produce departing skywards was enough to send Husband into a Nigella like marmalade making frenzy.  Drama Queen 2 planted a grapefruit tree years ago and it has never really done much until this year when it has gone troppo and consequently the lawn has been taking direct hits from large and very sour yellow grapefruits, and he gathered up all the sodden grapefruit and the remaining unravaged lemons and boiled up an enormous batch of grapefruit and lemon marmalade.  The smell of citrus and sugar on the boil definitely gets a gratitude mention – and as for the fact that as the Drama Queens pointed out this morning, it still hasn’t set – slightly alarmingly they were holding a couple of jars upside down when they made this observation, well that’s just a minor hiccup – it’s the wholesome thought that counts so perhaps my own personal Nigella better go in the Lovers diary as well.

So do you believe in Dog Poo fairies?

I seem to have been stuck in one of those periods of life, and OMG as I type those words I think, this is it, what I am describing has a name – and that name is ‘MIDDLE AGE’ – but joy-sapping labels aside, it has been a couple of months where I seem to poised at the start of a rant when anyone foolishly asks me how I am and life events have had a nasty habit of being more on the depressing side of death, decline and the drip-drip aggravation of living with teenage life forms– so I love it when I come across something that makes me laugh out loud,  and this particular notice that has appeared down at the dog park, stuck prominently on the dog poo bin had me snorting away as I binned the poo. So well done that unexpected source of merriment, Mosman Council, this particular ratepayer loves you, however I am of course now worrying about the fact I am potentially old and grey inside as well as out!

Street Art - Street Smart, got to make you smile

Sunday was one of those champagne days of life that you try and store in your mental photograph album of life to flick back to when days are grey and cheerless.  A day we spent on the boat on Sydney Harbour with a group of friends.  Summer seems endless at the moment with still enough heat here for endless swims off the back of the boat and that blissful sensation of sitting in the sun with salt drying on the skin.  We were moored off a beach underneath the old Quarantine Station at the top of the Harbour, with lunch that great standby of British picnic food, Coronation chicken complete with a glass of Rose and a great sail home.   Difficult to pick up and go to work, school and normal routines of the week – but fortunately my days are brightened by the imagination and brilliance of the artists and creators who have created two separate forms of street art in Sydney.

How can you not smile at these Rhinos that are dotted round Sydney CBD as part of Taronga Zoo’s Wild Rhinos sculpture trail to raise funds for their Black Rhino Conservation Programme? -https://taronga.org.au/wild-rhinos

North Sydney Council is also bringing a smile to my face every time I see one of their brilliant new look traffic signal boxes.  They are taking these boring, green, rectangular boxes that are such a mundane part of the urban streetscape that you never even really notice them and with the help of local artists, Karen Atkins, Jessica Birk and Ad Long, turning them into colourful works of art that bring interest and zing to the street. http://www.northsydney.nsw.gov.au/Community_Services/Arts_Culture/Public_Art/Colouring_our_Habitat

THE BEFORE VERSION

Jessica Birk

Jessica Birk

Karen Atkins

My particular favourite is this envelope box that is addressed to the Neutral Bay Senior Citizens Club, it has cheered my day every day I drive past it, the colour and wit make me smile.  

Ad Long

Ad Long

The downside is that I am incandescent with rage about the fact that some Goth of a Vandal has decided this would be a suitable site for their pathetic self promotion graffiti.   Go and look for a green traffic signal box next time, there are plenty around, rather than ruining a piece of art.  Fortunately it’s too nice a day here to be cross for long and what better than a geometric rhino to make my day and if this detail from Karen Atkins' take on Sydney Harbour doesn't make you smile then nothing will.

Karen Atkins

Facebook - Friend or Foe

Call me the Queen of Procrastinators on the blogging front, I don’t think I can even claim to have Writer’s Block, as that implies you have got out of the starting blocks instead of fiddling about at the start claiming that you need to tie your shoe laces and style your hair before you line up.

Bruce Springsteen, The ‘Boss’ was in town recently – and when I say recently I do mean at least four weeks ago, at this point you begin to realise I am not joking on the procrastination front. 

As part of Springsteen’s Australian tour, he did a concert in the Hunter Valley, a wine growing area a couple of hours outside of Sydney.  Having my finger on the pulse of popular culture as I do, I had completely failed to spot this event and then was slightly miffed to discover every friend and acquaintance that I possessed was off to see him strut his stuff.  To be honest according to Facebook, social media and the school grapevine, I was the only person of a certain age left in Sydney that weekend.

What I found interesting was my frankly juvenile reaction to all the Facebook photos and posts that appeared in nanoseconds. Bizarrely it felt as if I had been left out in some way - and nothing could be further from the truth.  But it did make me realise how difficult life is for my teenage daughters in today’s immediate world of posts and tweets.  No one ever puts up a sad photo of them having a grim time on Facebook, everyone is always having a fabulous evening out encompassing wine, women and song.  My reaction was completely irrational, given the fact the nearest I have ever got to being a Springsteen fan was when discussing the lyrics of “Cover Me’ with a chap called Mickey who I was marginally keen on, whilst we were both dressed in togas at a garden party at 11am – this detail giving you some idea of the fact we are talking different eras here – and also reinforcing the fact that all credit to him, Springsteen has been around a long time, but it does make me think that there is probably a universal human reaction - a giant FOMO emotion that Facebook intensifies.  

I reckon that I and my cohort, got off lightly.  During my teenage and toga wearing years, the only record of events was a photo that you then had to trot off to Boots to have developed, so by the time the 12 out of focus shots appeared, you could be weeks after the event and everyone had lost interest anyway; the party was passé.  I feel for my daughters completely bombarded with immediate evidence of what a good time everyone else is having, without the reality check that this is a snapshot of life not the full blown novel.

However having slammed Facebook, I now have to confess I have really enjoyed seeing the recent pictures a long lost school friend posted there of us all as teenagers on a school ski holiday.  OMG what were our mothers thinking letting us out with those pudding bowl haircuts, I think we were all channelling Joanna Lumley in her New Avengers persona (and failing dismally – Purdy we were not).  And the clothes, I had to peer at the bizarrely clad teenage version of myself to check it was actually me.  But once again the glorious fact about those teenage days was that even if someone took a picture of you looking ‘daggy’ and believe you me, we put the ‘dag’ into that fabulously descriptive Australian word ‘daggy’, it took at least two weeks for the evidence to surface (or in fact 35 years in this case). 

Pudding Bowl or Purdy - take your pick!