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The THREAD: May 2023

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Another month has seemingly sped by. The days are getting shorter here in the Antipodes, the nights longer, colder and darker. Lately I have been watching the moon rise in the early evening, first a fingernail and now a more substantial crescent, glowing with its own beautiful reflected light. It is literally otherworldly, and I look forward to it each night.

May is drawing to a close. I associate May with emeralds (which is the birthstone associated with this month), with the randomly-acquired weird fact that babies born in May are on average heavier than those born in any other month, and with my much-loved and even more greatly missed aunt, Marita, whose birthday was in May. I’m not sure why these are all things that involve birth, but there you go. Freud would probably have something to say about it, but I honestly couldn’t care what it was?!

Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into the THREAD for this month.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

I’ve been thinking about all sorts of things this month. Many of them have been prompted by what I have been listening to and reading, but others have been about work (because I recently started a new job and am starting to find my feet) and also about health (because my kids both went on school camps, and two-thirds of the students who went with them ended up sick with Covid or RSV or Influenza or really bad head colds). I also deal with children who are unwell when I’m working, so during the past month I have come to appreciate how good health can be a truly tenuous thing. Looking after yourself becomes far more important when the ill-health of others brings it into sharper focus, though I suspect my age also provides a useful lens to view health through.

For me and many of my friends, our parents are becoming elderly or unwell, and some have sadly already passed away. Our children are at an age where they can almost look after themselves, but they still require reminders to protect — or more accurately not to risk — their own wellbeing (and that, I suppose, will continue until I no longer have to submit online forms when I need to advise their school they will be absent). I’m far more aware than I used to be that my own wellbeing and that of my peers is often being worn down by all manner of things. Lengthy commutes and even lengthier working hours. The infamous mental load — particularly for women. Cramming all the extracurricular stuff in. “Stuff” generally. It’s all necessary, but it’s all…there. And it’s not about to go away any time soon. So, since I only have time for one personal training session a week at the moment, I’ve been trying to relish it, knowing that it’s an hour I have carved out for my own benefit: physical, mental, emotional. And since there is a meditative quality to the reps, I might as well through spiritual in there, too. I value that time more than ever now, and recognise it for the precious thing it is. As Anne Wilson Schaef said, “Good health is not something we can buy. However, it can be an extremely valuable savings account”.

On a similar note, I fortuitously stumbled across Julia Louis Dreyfus’ new podcase Wiser Than Me this month, and have been listening as she interviews older women, mining the rich veins of their wisdom about the world and how to live in it. So far I’ve heard her speak with Jane Fonda, Isabelle Allende, Ruth Reichl, Fran Lebowitz and Darlene Love, and I’m midway through the episode with Diane von Furstenberg. Each conversation has been interesting, revealing, and — without fail — provides me with either a much needed kick in the pants to do something (or to attempt to do it differently), or with a ‘nugget’, which is the word I attach to a piece of advice that rings as true as pure gold to me.

The women Julia Louis Dreyfus interviews are all inspirational in their own way, and I have found it interesting to hear them talking about all manner of things. Keeping active. Staying healthy. Dealing with regrets and disappointments. Navigating marriages and friendships. And suggesting that it might be a good idea to rid of the word “ageing” and replace it with “living” — because that’s what we’re all doing: living (or in Paris Hilton’s case, sliving — but that’s a story for another time and place).

I’ve been reading about women and friendships, too. First I devoured Kamila Shamsie’s novel Best of Friends, which brings to life the world of Karachi, Pakistan on the eve of Benezir Bhutto coming to power in rich and atmospheric detail, before shifting to almost present day London. The main characters, Zahra and Maryam, have been friends since they were teenagers. I’m not going to say too much more about it, other than I admired Shamsie’s writing a great deal, and recognised the truth in some of her insights, like this one:

Perhaps that was the key to the longevity of childhood friends — all those shared subtexts that no one else could discern. And perhaps shared subtext felt even more necessary when you both lived far away from the city of your childhood that was itself the subtext to your lives. Childhood friendship really was the most mysterious of all relationships, Maryam thought…it was built around rules that didn’t extend to any other pairing in life. You weren’t tied by blood, or profession, or an enmeshed domesticity or even — as was the case with friendships made in adulthood — much by way of common interests.

If you enjoy the novels of Elana Ferrante (such as The Lying Life of Adults or, more particularly, the Neoplotian quartet that begins with My Brilliant Friend and features a similar pairing of friends in Lenu and Lila), this is definitely in the same wheelhouse and well worth your time.

I also read a fabulous book by Meg Bignell called The Angry Women’s Choir, and followed that blast of fresh air with Laura Imai Messina’s more subdued but still beautiful novel The Phonebox at the Edge of the World. Both are great and I recommend them.

In terms of what I’ve been eating, soup has featured prominently on the menu for me recently. I generally make a big pot each weekend and use whatever we have most of in the fridge, then take it to work for lunch. So far I’ve made a couple of pots of celery and zucchini soup (the zucchini adds much needed creaminess to the otherwise potentially stringy celery), and more recently have made a giant tureen of another favourite: pumpkin soup. I’m planning on doing another pot of something on Tuesday — I have some pearl barley so I might do good old fashioned vegetable soup and use up whatever odds and ends are in the fridge.

Last week I was also lucky enough to eat out a few nights, because both the kids were away on school camp. Having a couple of unexpected mid-week date nights with The Bloke was great. We hit up a couple of local favourites, first Teddy Larkins and then the Manly Skiff Club. Both were great — but the best bit, for me, was the company. Sometimes it take being away from the whole family for an extended period to remind me that The Bloke is still very much My Person, even after twenty years. It’s nice to know we still get along, too.

In terms of what I’ve been admiring, I finally finished watching The Americans. I know I’ve been late to the party on this one, but I was so happy when Disney+ released all six seasons I started watching it immediately and was just as quickly hooked. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are fine actors, and at the top of their games in this series (though Rhys was also fantastic as Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, which starred Tom Hanks as Mr Rogers). Noah Emmerich also deserves a massive shout out for his role as FBI agent Stan Beeman, the unwitting neighbour of extremely active Russian KGB agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (played by Rhys and Russell). Emmerich has now gone from being “Oh, it’s that guy,” when he appears on screen to me actually knowing his name.

The Americans had it all for me, but really delivered in two areas: nostalgia and tension. The sets, props, costumes, language, everything took me straight back to my childhood, and made me realise just how much (even in Australia) the Cold War hung over our heads in the 1980s. The tension, on every level — international, suburban, intergenerational, marital — was brilliantly orchestrated and calibrated, and truly masterfully delivered in the series finale. For my money, the absence of dialogue and use entire musical tracks in the finale following the now-famous garage scene (let’s face it: it had to happen eventually) was a brave decision that — for my money — absolutely worked. Now I’ve finished watching it I feel slightly bereft, but also in need of television viewing that does not leave me realising I’ve been holding my breath.

And now, finally, onto doing. The Bloke and I unlocked an adulting achievement this month when (drumroll please) we managed to park our cars side by side in our new garage for the very first time. After decades — yes, decades — of tandem parking and having to do the old switcheroo when one of us needed to get one of our cars out, we can now simply press a button to raise the garage door and back out down the driveway. I realise tandem parking is the epitome of a First World Problem, but to say this achivement is momentous is underestimating how truly lifechanging this has been for us.

The other thing I did (another drumroll please!) was take my wonderful mother to see the Ballet! If you cast your mind back to the second edition of the THREAD, you might remember I was sad to think that I would never get to see Adam Bull dance again before he retired from the Australian Ballet. Well folks, I did get to see him perform — in one of his last shows at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Mum and I had a fantastic afternoon on a truly sparkling Sydney day (you gotta love this city)…

…and we absolutely loved the performance, which was called Identity and featured two works, The Hum by Daniel Riley and Paragon by Alice Topp. Spending the whole entire afternoon with my mother was such an incredible treat, and I was so grateful to The Bloke and our kids for looking after The Professor while mum and I quite literally sat back and enjoyed the show. In fact, we loved it so much we’ve booked to see another show together later in the year — not ballet, but something equally enthralling which I will no doubt get to write about in October.

Anyhoo, that’s all for now. As always, I’d love to know what you’ve been up to and enjoying, so feel free to leave a comment if you’d like to.

Mind yourselves, too!

BJx

The THREAD: April 2023

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It’s autumn here in the Antipodes. Although the days are still pleasantly warm enough, the nights are starting to cool down. Sleep comes easier at this time of year. The summer doona is back in the linen press, replaced with a warmer one that always reminds me of a cloud — so much that changing the sheets makes me feel happy.

There many aspects of autumn that I love, but one of the best things about this time of year is that the ocean temperature is still delightfully warm, and the beaches are less crowded. An April dip in the Pacific brings me a quiet sort of joy. Sometimes I think autumn in Sydney might be a reward for surviving the drooping humidity of late summer.

But enough rambling on about the season. Even though we have just slipped into May, it’s time for the April THREAD.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

It was ANZAC Day last week, so I’ve been thinking about my grandfather, who served in the Royal Australian Navy during World War Two and was present in Toyko Bay when the Japanese signed the surrender ending that awful conflict. We went to a small Dawn Service on April 25th at the caravan park at Seal Rocks, to which we had escaped for a couple of days to cap off the Easter holidays. It was a solemn and simple commemoration: a couple of school kids reading short reflection on the bravery of the ANZACs and the Ode, then a trumpeter playing the Last Post. There was a minute’s silence before he continued with the Reveille, followed by the beautiful and moving sight of a lone uniformed horseman with an Australian flag paying tribute to the Light Horsemen who served in World War One, riding along the beach as the sun rose over the sea.

I wondered, as I stood there, my hands cradling a candle in a paper cup, whether my grandfather had seen Seal Rocks from his ship when he sailed back to Sydney Harbour, having survived the war in the Pacific with all its horrors — not least of which were the infamous kamikaze pilots. Perhaps he saw the coastline, crowned by the lighthouse that has warned ships away from the rocks since 1875. Maybe he didn’t — and it really doesn’t matter. I felt gratitude as I stood there, surrounded by my family and by strangers. There were people of all generations, from well dressed retirees to kids still in their pajamas and dressing gowns, all gathered to remember those who served, especially the fallen, and to pay our respects to those who continue to serve. It also felt distinctly Australian, perhaps because as we sang the first part of the National Anthem I felt all of us there knew exactly what it feels like to be girt by sea, or maybe because despite the solemnity of the occasion the vast majority of us in attendance were wearing thongs or ugg boots or no shoes at all.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them. Lest we forget.

Ahhh…moving on. Because we’ve had a few hours in the car getting to and from Seal Rocks, I’ve been hearing a couple of podcasts The Bloke has been listening to lately. The first one is called Billy Joel A to Z, a podcast by a couple of comedians called Elon Altman and Dave Juskow who happen to love Billy Joel songs and have decided to go through all 121 songs he recorded from A to Z — or, more accurately perhaps, from A Matter of Trust to Zanzibar. I’d never heard any of it before, so landed where The Bloke was up to (towards the end of the F’s), and found it entertaining enough. It seems I made the same complaint many listeners do, which is that they do not play the song they are talking about at the beginning of each episode — though given licencing laws I can understand why. Some of the content is genuinely funny, especially the song parodies they come up with, and if you’re a fan of Billy Joel’s music, it’s worth a listen. That said, I would also recommend listening to the specific song they are dissecting before each episode so it makes more sense.

Since the NBA Playoffs are upon us and The Bloke is a big basketball fan, we also listened to the latest installment of The Mismatch. Fortunately, I’ve been watching some of the game highlights on YouTube so was familiar with some of the big topics covered (not least of which was Draymond Green’s suspension), but at the end of the episode it came out that their theme song was recorded by Father John Misty, which led us down a rabbithole of his songs — kicking off with Mr Tillman, which has the kids and I have counted as a favourite for quite a while but The Bloke had never heard, until we found ourselves pulling into our driveway at home.

I mentioned during the March THREAD that I had just finished reading Ian McEwan’s book Lessons, which explores — in a significant amount of detail — the life story of one Roland Baines, starting from his primary school days at an English boarding school and finishing when he has become a grandfather. Beejay Silcox summed the novel up well in her review for The Guardian:

McEwan’s 17th novel is old-fashioned, digressive and indulgently long; the hero is a gold-plated ditherer, and the story opens with a teenage wank (few books are improved by an achingly sentimental wank). But Lessons is also deeply generous. It’s compassionate and gentle, and so bereft of cynicism it feels almost radical. Can earnestness be a form of literary rebellion?

I’m still not sure whether I enjoyed Lessons. It’s densely written, full of allusions and references (if you care to pick them all up), and of historical and socio-political detail (frequently from more than one point of view). I will admit, however, that since I finished reading it I have thought about passages in the book often — particularly in relation to women and the creation of art. As McEwan writes towards the end of Lessons: “The larger subject was the ruthlessness of artists. Do we forgive or ignore their single-mindedness or cruelty in the service of their art? And are we more tolerant the greater the art?” This is a question that makes me wonder about my own creativity, because although I may possess a room of my own (or more accurately, passageway?!) à la Virginia Woolf, I know I do not possess the sort of ruthlessness portrayed by Roland’s first wife in Lessons. Does that mean I will never create something great? I wonder…

Not surprisingly, after reading Lessons, I needed something entirely different — and so devoured Samantha Shannon’s epic A Day of Fallen Night, which returns to the same fantasy world of The Priory of the Orange Tree. Happily, it did the job I needed it to.

As part of our return to menu planning, we have been eating some old favourites and some new creations lately. After ordering a massive box of green vegetables when my usual fruit and vegetable delivery was on a hiatus, I made a silverbeet version of what was meant to be Spinach and Feta Pie, based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver. I’ve not used filo pastry for ages, and forgot how versatile it is, not to mention how crispy and tasty. The kids told me this one definitely needs to be added to the list, along with various other favourites like Beef and Bean Nachos, Satay Chicken and good old reliable Spag Bol.

I also made a batch of passionfruit and pear muffins this week. These were intended to be blueberry muffins, but upon opening the freezer I discovered that Miss Malaprop her helped herself to a bag and a half of frozen blueberries while making smoothie bowls. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and the pears were on the verge of being relegated to being thrown out or turned into crumble, so…yeah. At least we had something to go into lunch boxes until the next lot of blueberries arrived.

I have been admiring the resilience of my dear little cat, Tauriel, lately. She had emergency abdominal surgery just before Easter, having (very unfortunately) blocked her own bowel with a furball. Despite being in obvious discomfort — not to mention slightly off her head on methadone and fentanyl — she has patiently endured the post-operative recovery process, with all its vet visits and oral antibiotics (I only got scratched once). Since being given the all clear to return to her regular feline pursuits, Tauriel has been rather more affectionate than usual and has even given me her version of a hug. Truly heartwarming stuff.

My admiration has also been kindled by a dear family friend of ours, Valda, who was experiencing some health issues recently and subsequently received an unexpected and unpleasant diagnosis. She has displayed great dignity and calm as she faces this challenge — which, upon reflection, is hardly surprising, because as for as far back as I can remember she has been a dignified and calm person. She also has a wonderful sense of humour, which I sincerely hope serves her well in the coming weeks and months, and she has always been very kind to me and mine — so fingers crossed some exceptionally good karma is coming her way.

And that brings us, as always, to doing, and also returns this post back to where it started — at Seal Rocks. After having a great initial experience in the surf at our local break in late January, I mused one evening that I might like The Bloke to teach me how to surf when we went for our ANZAC Day getaway up the coast. He, having being provided with this flimsiest of excuses, decided this would be a great opportunity to purchase (yet another) surfboard for our burgeoning collection — a foam topped one for beginners of my size and (lack of) ability.

On our first day at Seal Rocks, the surf was too big for beginners such as myself. But on the second day, The Bloke deemed the conditions to be more manageable and decided it would be a good time to take me and my new blue board and push us out to sea. The water was very clear, and the most beautiful shade of turquoise I’ve seen in a long time. It was also reasonably warm, but a little bit dumpy. Friends — I had a go. Not a particularly successful go, given I grazed both my knees on the surface of my new board (which turned out to be a weird combination of rough and slippery). Sadly, I did not manage to stand up on the board a single time without immediately pitching sideways into the surf. Then, having experienced the excruciating ignominy of attempting to paddle back out to the break and discovering that — despite my genuinely best efforts — the board was travelling backwards through the water instead of forwards, I was forced to make a demeaning retreat to the sand and walk along the beach beforing attempting to catch one more wave.

I ended up riding that last wave in on my belly, boogie board style, to The Bloke’s (probably) eternal shame. Clearly, I did not cover myself in any kind of glory, but lived instead to tell the tale — however humiliating. That said, I have not given up and to my immense surprise, my ego has rebounded from the experience far more swiftly than I thought it would. I will, despite my relatively ancient age to be taking up such pursuits, try surfing again at some point…most likely when The Bloke is next willing to suffer through what will likely be yet another embarrassing spectacle. Such is life?!

Anyway, that brings us to the end of the April THREAD.

I would love to hear what you’ve been up to and what you’ve been consuming — via ears, eyes, mouth or any combination of these.

Until next time, mind yourselves.

BJx

The THREAD: March 2023

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I’m not entirely sure who said it (though I strongly suspect it was C S Lewis), but there’s an old saying that goes something like this:

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?

It doesn’t feel like more than a month has gone by since I sat down and wrote the first of these THREAD posts, but here I am again. Only a few weeks ago that I was musing about raising teenagers, reading Jonathan Franzen and reminiscing about our (now far less) recent trip to New Zealand. That holiday feels like an eternity ago, now we are well and truly in the swing of all things school and work.

Since it’s been a busy month, I’ve got a bunch of things buzzing around in my head — so best to let them out.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

This month I have been Thinking about the imminent retirement of Adam Bull from the Australian Ballet. I have genuinely enjoyed watching him dance over the years, and am sorry the blasted pandemic meant I had to put my ballet subscription on hold, meaning I will probably not get to see him take the stage again. I’ve never been a dancer (my body favours sporty stuff rather than the life balletic), but I have come to love and appreciate the athleticism, grace beauty of both classical and contemporary ballet. I will be sad to see Adam Bull’s tall and striking figure leave the company after more than two decades, but am grateful to have seen him perform.

I’ve also been thinking about how various artforms inform and inspire each other, largely because I have just finished reading Maggie O’Farrell’s book The Marriage Portrait. The novel opens with Lucrezia de’ Medici, Duchess of Ferrara realising — on page one, no less — that her husband intends to murder her, and that the portrait he has commissioned of her is being painted in isolated castello precisely because that is where he intends to carry out the fell deed without anyone realising or interfering. Needless to say, I was pretty much hooked from the initial paragraphs and finished the book in a night.

The painting which inspired the novel is generally attributed to Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino, and also served as the stimulus for Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess”. Like O’Farrell’s novel, the poem has an equally memorable opening:

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,/Looking as if she were alive.”

When I first looked at Bronzino’s portrait, I was struck by how modern Lucrezia appears — and how worldly, despite her youth. She did not survive her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, and died suddenly at the age of 16. Lucrezia’s dress in the painting might be dreadfully outmoded, but her expression is intelligent and her gaze direct. I went down quite the rabbithole trying to figure out who she reminded me of, and stumbled across this comparison, which seemed rather apt:

Fortunately, Anya Taylor-Joy is very much alive, and I suspect she’d do a great job of playing Lucrezia de’ Medici if The Marriage Portrait ever made it to the big screen — much like Scarlett Johansson did in Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was based on Tracy Chevalier’s novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the painting by Johannes Vermeer. Or how Adam Bull played the Prince in Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty, which was based on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault.

Is everything created somehow borrowed, rather than brand new? I’m not sure…but it’s certainly given me a lot to think about.

I finally got around to Hearing this interview Helen Garner gave Annabel Crabb late last year. Recorded to mark the occasion of Garner’s 80th birthday, it is a thought provoking hour of insights into the life of artists generally and writers particularly. I suspect one of the main reasons I enjoyed listening to this so much was that this particular interview was a discussion between two women I admire (and whose general vocabulary I covet). Then again, in my experience it is always pleasurable to listen to intelligent, articulate and opinionated people discuss…things. Anything, really. If they are speaking of something about which you know nothing, you have the opportunity to learn something new. Perhaps more importantly, if they are discussing something with which you are familiar, you may gain a fresh perpsective or better understanding of someone else’s point of view.

In any case, Garner spoke candidly about many things, including the self-doubt which plagues her whenever she is writing something new, the book she believes to be her worst, her views on feminism, the controversy provoked by The First Stone and her understanding of how and why that particular storm erupted and how it appears differently to her now. She also talked about her numerous journals, leading Crabb to extract a promise from her not to burn any more of them. I found the interview thoroughly entertaining — much as I did Garner’s book Everywhere I Look, which just so happens to contain a superb extended essay about the Australian Ballet.

In addition to Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, I have been doing quite a lot of Reading lately. Truly excitingly, I strongly suspect some of the books I have read lately are Great Books (and yes, those capitals are Definitely Required). Last weekend I finished reading Ian McEwan’s lastest, Lessons, which was brilliant but requires further reflection before I write about it. A few weeks ago, however, I finished Shehan Karunatilaka’s outstanding novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which won the 2022 Booker Prize. This book got under my skin, and well and truly into my subconscious. Quite literally, I found myself dreaming things based on the pages I had read before I went to sleep — and, not surprisingly given the novel details the post-mortem exploits of a war photographer, they were not particularly pleasant things.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is both a ghost story and a murder mystery, but is neither in the traditional sense. Set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the novel demands you engage with all sorts of things including politics, religion, gender, class, friendship and family dynamics — the works. Despite concerning the exploits of a dead photographer during his first week an the Afterlife populated by supernatural beings, the book brims with roiling mass of humanity. This is a novel of colour and movement, peppered with dialects and idiomatic speech, bursts of hilarity and moments of adroitly observed insight, like this one:

Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.

I highly recommend The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. A word to the wise, however: if you do choose to read it, really go with it. Suspend your disbelief and you’ll be in for quite a ride.

I next read Leigh Bardugo’s book Hell Bent, her sequel to Ninth House. Even though this is a fantasy novel with substantial supernatural elements, reading Hell Bent after The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida felt like returning to a reassuringly familiar world: not only is the geographical setting real, but the temporal setting is also close to present day. Additionally, the main characters are distinctly human…until they’re not. No spoilers here! Though I’m genuinely looking foward to the next instalment of Galaxy Stern’s adventures.

In terms of Eating, I’ve been getting a lot more organised and have resumed menu planning. Not only does this save me time and reduces my mental load, but it also boosts the variety factor when it comes to family meals. The added benefit of posting the week’s menu ahead of time is that other family members can also pitch in and start meal prepping if needs be (not that this has ever happened…I live in hope). Knowing I have increased work commitments coming up next term, I am making an effort to get into good habits now and and am reminding myself of meals I can cook ahead or dinners that are “one pot wonders”. In this vein I’ve also been calling to mind various traybake recipes, and have been figuring out what (other than muffins) I can make as lunchbox treats.

Since we’ve had a long hot March, we’re still enjoying our salad days — especially the salads featured in Hetty McKinnon’s brilliant cookbook Community: Salad Recipes from Arthur Street Kitchen. I don’t think I own a single coobook I have made more meals from than this one, and our most recent discovery from this gem is Pumpkin with Chickpeas, Toasted Coconut and Lemon Tahini (except we ditched the Lemon Tahini dressing in favour or a bit of extra lime juice). It’s a Fijian inspired salad, packed with fabulous flavours and topped with the satisfying crunch of toasted pepitas. It’s also truly delicious.

Admiring is one of my favourite sections of the THREAD, and this month I cannot go past the brilliantly and blackly comic television show Bad Sisters. Set in present day Dublin and featuring five sisters, the first episode features the funeral of John Paul — husband of the second eldest of the Garvey sisters, Grace. It turns out JP, during his life, was quite a piece of work (abusive, controlling, manipulative and generally nasty) so it may come as no surprise that the storyline flip flops between the past — during which all four of Grace’s sisters have some sort of a go at bumping off their evil brother-in-law to rescue their sister and niece — and the present, when a harried and hapless insurance agent is desperately trying to prove JP’s death has been caused by the Garvey sisters’ foul play so he does not have to pay out a life insurance claim. It is not immediately apparent who or what has killed John Paul, but the show is so darkly funny and entertaining that Marvel Girl and I binged the ten episodes over the course of a single weekend.

Back at the beginning of the month I also found myself admiring the glorious scenery that forms the backdrop to Yellowstone. I had been putting off watching Season 6 of this fabulous show, because I didn’t want to watch an episode a week. (I also suspect I was feeling slightly superstitious about watching the most recent season because I watched the other five while I was isolating when I had COVID, and a fresh wave was hitting around the time Season 6 came out). In any case, I adore the scenery in the show — which could probably, given how many people fight over the land in Yellowstone, be counted as a character in itself — particularly as it reminds me of the country near where I spent part of my childhood when our family moved to Canada for a couple of years. So, as it turns out, I watch Yellowstone the nostalgia it evokes for me just as much as the drama — and for Kelly Reilly’s vivid portrayal of badass Beth Dutton. Just as an aside — did you know Kelly Reilly is English? Her accent in the show is pretty tight.

And that brings us, as always, to Doing, though this month one of the main things I have been doing is waiting for and then celebrating the return of another stellar television series: Ted Lasso. Season 3 is landing at last, and not a moment too soon! There are so many things that I (along with the rest of the known world) love about Ted Lasso. The writing is so sharp it sparkles, and the performances — especially now we are three seasons in — are so well-honed they truly shine. Rather than fangirling at length over the cast, because I can’t think of a single one of them I don’t love, let’s just leave it by saying there are so many lines from this show that have found their way into our family’s daily vocabulary — not least of which is simply, “Oi!” — that I can’t imagine life without Ted Lasso. It’s that good.

Other things I have been doing have included making a concerted effort to maintain good hydration and to keep stringing together sessions with my personal trainer. PT sessions are easier to keep up with (you schedule regular sessions, you turn up: “Simples” as the meerkats say). Drinking enough water? You’d think it would be so straightforward, but making and sustaining this habit is taking me longer than I expected. I am incredibly grateful to my girls, who thoughtfully presented me with a large Ravenclaw drinkbottle for my birthday, because I now try to chug my way through this several times a day. I’m getting better with hydration, and I’m deadset sure it will be worth the effort, so…go me?!

Anyway, we’ve reached the end of the THREAD for March 2023. Like a piece of string, I’m never sure how long it’s going to be and this one has been a bit of an epic, (so good on you if you’ve stuck with me and got this far), so my head is definitely less “buzzy” than it was when I started. As always, I’d love to hear what’s buzzing around in your head or what you’ve been THREADing your way through, so leave a comment if you’d like to.

Until next time, mind yourselves!

BJx

Introducing the THREAD

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It’s been a long while since I last posted here. Christmas has come and gone, and New Year’s too.

Since our family finally ventured overseas for the first time in years at the beginning of January 2023, my year in review posts for 2022 never eventuated. And, although I often have a multitude of ideas for posts, I frequently don’t have the time to execute them — mostly because life. So between my last post and this, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to make this blog more relevant to my life as it is now.

When I started making a list of what I wanted to write about — things I’d been thinking, reading, eating and doing — I realised I had the beginnings of a workable acronym for all I wanted to communicate. A couple of minutes of tinkering later, I had a plan in my notebook and a smile on my face.

And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the THREAD.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

I’ve been thinking about this post by Amy Betters-Midvelt, which someone shared to the Chat10LooksTeen Facebook group recently. It’s called All Parents of Teenagers are Liars, and examines the way we speak about — OK, lie about — the lives of those she refers to as “tall kids”, or teenagers. It reminded me of the old saying, which I may have heard myself imparting to my own tall kids of late, that everyone is dealing with something. You might be privy to someone’s situation. Perhaps, to you, it seems trivial, perhaps not. Or maybe you’ll never know what a person is going through, and it’s something truly ghastly. Or maybe it’s not. But the fact remains: everyone is dealing with something.

My two main takeaways from this thought-provoking piece were, firstly, that regardless of how tall they are (and believe me, Marvel Girl has well and truly passed me, and Miss Malaprop’s not far behind her), teenagers are still kids. And secondly, that just about every parent of a teenager I know is more likely to respond as cheerily as they can to a query about how their tall kid is doing rather than launching into a ten minute diatribe about whatever it is they are dealing with at that time, whether it be school refusal, bullying, slipping grades, vaping, porn, alcohol, general slothfulness, or their insistence on publicly wearing a bikini so miniscule it would make a Brazilian blush. We’re all doing our best, with varying degrees of success, and sometimes as unsure of ourselves as parents as our tall kids are of the almost-adults they’re becoming.

Everyone is dealing with something. But focusing on the good bits when we’re asked? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

Since I live in a house with two tall kids, I’ve been hearing a lot of their music lately. Our summer days have been filled with songs from Lana Del Ray, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles. Marvel Girl got a record player for Christmas, so there have been numerous trips to various music stores in search of specific titles on vinyl. (I suspect I did clock up more than a few brownie points for presenting her with the Moonstone Blue edition of Midnights to start off her collection, but that may have been more good luck than good management on my part).

The Bloke and I have made sure Marvel Girl has added a few classics to her record collection too, making sure she’s got some Beatles tunes, and some U2, and even dug out some old vinyl we’d been hanging on to since forever and introduced her to Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights. We even found some Elvis records that had belonged to her great grandmother, and the theme song to Felix the Cat, just for good measure.

When the kids are not around, I’ve been listening to a weird mix of Indie Folk and whatever happens to be on Spotify’s ever-changing “Front Left” playlist. And when I’m working, it’s all instrumental…no words, because lyrics have a tendency to get in the way of the words I’m writing.

I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading this summer, have have been on a bit of a Jonathan Franzen kick after reading Crossroads just after Christmas. I was happy to hear Crossroads is intended as the first of a trilogy, and I enjoyed it so much I decided to read Freedom. Franzen writes about family so well — the weird, somtimes stilted, inter-generational dynamics of living with people purely by accident of birth — and often in a darkly funny way.

I also plowed my way through several holiday reads via the Libby app (Jane Harper’s Exiles, and two very British mystery novels by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett called A Murder of Crows and A Cast of Falcons). In various airports and armchairs I read Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel, Hilde Hinton’s new book A Solitary Walk on the Moon, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold and a couple of entertaining thrillers: The Cloisters by Katy Hays and A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris. I also read and found myself frequently reflecting on the tragically beautiful portrait of love and mental illness in Olivie Blake’s novel Alone With You in the Ether. I enjoyed them all, some more than others, but mostly because each was exactly what I needed at the time.

Eating is something I am eternally grateful for. I am one of those people who lives to eat, not one who eats to live, so good food — whether prepared by me or for me — is something I truly relish. We ate some fantastic meals during our road trip around New Zealand, discovering some great restaurants. To this end I highly recommend Atticus Finch in Rotorua, Pacifica in Napier (where our kids enjoyed their first ever degustation dinner), and the Pier Hotel in Kaikoura.

Since we’ve been home and school has resumed, we are back to far more routine offerings, such as Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Banana Muffins (my copy of her book Kitchen automatically falls open at the page featuring this recipe, not least because it is a very effective way of using up over-ripe bananas). Like most of Australia — OK, half the world — we’ve been singing the praises of Nagi Maehashi, of RecipeTin Eats fame, whose cookbook Dinner has been a source of many a home cooked meal at our place this summer. We are particular fans of the Asian Glazed Salmon, not only because it’s insanely delicious, but also because it is super quick to prepare. We tip our collective hats to Nagi, a Northern Beaches local who creates amazing recipes and gives so much back to our local community via RecipeTin Meals.

I know it might seem like a peculiar thing, but one thing I have been admiring lately is the bottom of our new swimming pool. Yep — the bottom! You know how the light hitting the water creates those mesmerising moving patterns? The ones that make you think you might be swimming over the top of a gigantic turquoise-shelled sea turtle (if such a thing existed)? Or some kind of weirdly warped honeycomb-like tessellation? OK…maybe it’s just me. But I do love watching it, floating on the surface, gazing down into the blue.

I am also admiring my kids, who both started at a new school this year. It’s not been entirely plain sailing, but they’re both doing all those hard things that stand you in good stead later in life, as well as in the here and now: making new friends, finding their way in unfamiliar territory, remembering (after a long summer) how to be punctual, showing up to things they’ve signed up for, speaking up for themselves when they need to. I’m struck by their courage, their tenacity, their humour. It was truly gratifying to see their care for each other after their first day, checking in and making sure their sister had survived their first day before regaling me with tales of what they’d experienced. And I’m grateful — beyond measure — that after four years at separate schools, they are finally together again.

And finally, we find ourselves at doing! We’ve been doing so much, but the standout highlight would have to be our New Zealand road trip. We flew into Auckland, and drove — via Hobbiton, of course — to Rotorua in all its (stinky) geothermal glory, then onto Napier before heading down to see very dear friends who have made their home in Wellington, at the tip of the North Island. A particularly exciting moment for Marvel Girl was watching her godfather flying a plane out of his “office”, Wellington airport: she had requested he do a barrel roll but apparently such aerobatics are frowned upon on domestic flights, so we settled for seeing him take off instead. We might even have cheered.

From Wellington we made our way across to the South Island via the Interislander Ferry to Kaikoura, saw hundreds of seals including about fifty pups at O’hau, then made our way via Christchurch to Aoraki (Mt Cook). There we were blown away by mountain views, icebergs and glaciers, and even swam in the very cold but still refreshing Lake Pukaki. We finally wended our way to Queenstown, made a magical day trip to Milford Sound and saw a bunch of bottlenosed dolphins put on quite a show, before finishing up with a hair-raising jetboat ride on the Shotover River. We flew home tired but happy, pleased with all we’d been able to do and see but also glad to be back in our new house.

So there you have it, folks: the inaugural edition of the THREAD, which I hope you’ve enjoyed.

I’d love to know what you’ve been getting up to over the summer and how life is treating you now school is back in session for another year. I’d also appreciate any thoughts you have on tall kids and how to manage being a parent (I’ve just about given up trying to “manage” the tall kids at this point, but I think that’s also kind of the point at this stage in their development?!), or anything else that has got your brain turning over lately. And feel free, as always, to use the comments for recommendations for any music, books or recipes you’re into as well.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

And They’re Off!

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No, this is not a post about a race.

Or strip poker.

Or a bucket of prawns in the sun.

It’s about Marvel Girl’s braces — which came off last week. (Please feel free to do a happy dance at this juncture, even though they’re not your braces.)

Except it’s not exactly about Marvel Girl getting her braces off, but about the fact that even though it has been more than seven and a half years since I wrote this post about her losing her very first tooth, my sense of saudade remains.

Back then, when she was ever so much smaller (and definitely not taller than me, which she is now), I expressed it like this:

I feel saudade most acutely in those moments when part of me recognises, at some deep and otherwise undetected level, that after this, things will never be the same. These are the occasions when I feel that I am bearing witness to life — most frequently, for me, to the lives of my daughters. These are the moments that are captured by my heart’s camera, imprinted between heartbeats, indelible impressions of life most raw and pure.

That same feeling hit me all over again when Marvel Girl’s braces were removed, except this time I was also ready with my phone camera, to photograph the first glimpse of her beautiful new smile — a smile that reached all the way to her eyes and truly made them twinkle.

The smile that had never been seen before, hidden as it had been behind carefully positioned chunks and bands of metal for so long.

The smile that had not been gained without more than a year’s worth of careful teeth cleaning, diligent application of tiny rubber bands multiple times a day, and — let’s be honest — a decent amount of pain.

The smile that somehow made my Marvel Girl look three years older than she did when she sat down in the orthodontist’s chair less than an hour earlier.

The smile that made me think of the wise words of the American poet, Mary Oliver, who was so good at capturing in scant, succinct lines the sentiments that came rushing through my brain and body that afternoon.

Of how ridiculously precious — and short — life is.

Of how clinging to the past is pointless, and possibly perverse.

Of how pining for the future always denies us the present.

Of how important it is to pay attention to the here and now, since it is all we truly have.

Of saudade, all over again.

Living the Dream and Donna Summer

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I’m typing this in my new kitchen.

It’s light and bright and the ceiling is double height. It looks new. It still smells new.

More — no most — importantly, it feels like HOME.

The Bloke and I dreamed of building a house for a decade before we had the knowledge, funds and chutzpah to pull it off. Physically occupying the place we have been imagining for so long is gratifying. It also feels strangely familiar – we designed this home, right down to the last detail, and it has been a pleasure (and a relief) to see the final form take shape exactly as I had pictured it would.

We’re beyond happy with the result. And we’re all happy to be here.

Even the cat.

But the best thing is, it’s home.

Did I mention that already?!

The past few weeks have not been without their challenges, but they have also been filled with good things. Like curling up on our new couch with Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop, watching Zan Rowe’s Take Five. The Tony Armstrong episode rocked (as does Tony Armstrong), and it reminded me just how great Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love is.

Incredibly, Summer recorded the vocal in a single take, ushering in a new age of disco and electronic music. It still sounds amazing, with its driving rhythms and floating melody. The legendary David Bowie told the story of how Brian Eno heard I Feel Love for the first time while they were recording in Berlin, and come running in to say he had heard “the sound of the future”.

If you haven’t already clicked on that link and started listening to it, do it now!

This house sounds and feels like my future.

I’m content, even though there are still a few boxes lying around (mostly of books, because my library shelves have not yet arrived).

We dared to dream and now we’re living the dream.

And, as I might have mentioned, it feels like home.

An Oasis in Time

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It’s been ages, folks…I’ve been keeping a lot of balls in the air (which does make me happy), but it’s nice to find a moment or two on yet another rainy day in Sydneytown to tend my tiny patch of cyberspace.

Our house build is ever-so-nearly complete, and it has been truly gratifying to see my castle in the air take shape in solid form, particularly since my mental image and the finished product match.

Now, with the finish line in sight, my mind has turned to packing things up and turfing things out, to sorting out insurance and utilities, and to booking removalists and deliveries and cleaners and all manner of other bits and pieces.

It’s a lot, but it’s all good.

I’m at a point in my life where I am far better at making conscious choices about how I spend my time, and I was grateful today to find a few moments to read a novel at the hairdresser (instead of drafting interview questions for my next article), and to tap away for a few brief moments here (instead of packing yet another box).

It’s these small oases in time that allow me to fill my cup, and enable me to keep all the balls in the air.

I’m learning to pay attention to the little prompts from the universe which, by coincidence — if you still believe in such things — presented me with a picture of a beautiful wadi in Oman when I switched my laptop on today.

I understood the message.

Find time, find space.

What did the universe tell you today?

Mind yourselves,

BJx

Write Like You’re Running Out of Time

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I’ve not been posting much here lately.

It feels like my patch of cyberspace is looking a little desolate: far more like a wonky pavement with weeds spilling from between the cracks than a verdant, carefully tended garden. That said, there is a good reason why I have neglected this space, despite my various attempts to nurture it over the years, and that is I’m trying to finish the first draft of my novel.

Writing is one of my great true loves. I love the feeling of sentences pouring forth from my fingers, pooling themselves paragraphs and flowing into pages of prose. I savour the feeling of selecting precisely the right words and placing them in a specific order to bring a particular scenario, emotion, or plot point to life.

But it takes time.

It takes time to enter the headspace of the character whose perspective you’re writing from, to inhabit their skin and to bring their inner life and backstory to the forefront of your own mind so you can produce a believeable, genuine response to what is happening in the story at any given time. And to achieve that, you need to possess a clear understanding of exactly where the tale you’re telling has come from and where it will end up — because you’ve had to create all that too, not to mention the world in which it takes place.

And sometimes you need time just to sit with an idea.

For the past two days I have been allowing a scene to germinate in my head. I’ve got some writing done, sure, but writing is not always about how many words you’ve got on a page. I’ve needed time to flesh out a new character in my mind, to understand where they fit into the action and how they relate to the other characters who already populate my world. I have needed time to figure out what they look like, how they move, and what makes them unique. And then I have needed time to turn my attention to the first impressions the character whose point of view I am currently writing from might have of them, and what knowledge these characters possess about themselves, each other and the wider plot of the novel as a whole. Only then could I map out how these characters might interact, and to decide what information I needed to hide or reveal to build suspense and drive the story towards its climax.

And that’s just for one small scene at the end of Chapter Thirteen!

Writing is hard, sometimes, no matter how much you love it.

It’s hard to find uninterrupted time to let the story unfurl in your head in the way I have just described.

It’s hard to admit you’re writing a novel in the first place.

It’s hard to answer questions about when your book will be finished, or where you’re up to, or whether it will ever be published.

It’s hard to silence the ever-present and insistent voice of my inner critic, who frequently tells me I am a fool for attempting to write a novel, or I’m arrogant to assume anyone would want to read it, or I’m any number of other negative things. (Then again, I’m yet to meet a writer whose inner critic does not persist in making a multitude of unhelpful comments and suggestions, usually at the most inopportune times).

It’s hard to keep believing in yourself and your story, knowing it might never make it onto the printed page.

But since I have started creating my characters and the world in which they live, I feel a strange sense of duty to make sure I see them through to the end — even if it means my patch of cyberspace suffers from benign neglect in the meantime.

As Glennon Doyle says, we can do hard things.

So I wish you well with whatever hard things you’re doing.

I’m off to write that scene.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

The Thrifty Fictionista Feels Nostalgic…

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“Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day . . .”

These are the opening lines of the Thrifty Fictionista’s favourite picture book, one I have loved since I was a child: Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder. Telling the story of a girl and her younger sister spending their summer holidays on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, it follows them as they explore the natural world around them. They swim, they sail, they laze in the sun — they even survive a hurricane that blows in one night.

I still love everything about that book: the beauty of the painted illustrations, the cadence of the sentences, every last carefully chosen word. I often wished, when I was little, that I could go on holidays just like the girls in the book, even though I lived on the other side of the world from Maine.

Like the girls in the book, I spent a lot of time on boats when I was a kid. My grandfather, who had served in the navy, was never one to be without some kind of seafaring craft, so my brother and I enjoyed time on a succession of yachts, one of which had sailed the Sydney to Hobart race multiple times, and later on an old Halvorsen cruiser. The sights, sounds and smells of moorings and marinas still make me happy.

What reminded me of Time of Wonder most recently, however, was something equally nostalgic, but completely unexpected. I was watching M*A*S*H with my kids (having got them hooked on that golden oldie after they had watched so many episodes of Brooklyn 99 I thought I was going to scream), and we came to the part of Series 5 when Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan gets engaged to Lt Colonel Donald Penobscott — and at the first mention of his name, there I was: right back in the middle of Penobscot Bay, exploring the Time of Wonder island and all its natural wonders.

At the moment, all I would like to do is dive between the pages of my old, battered copy of Time of Wonder and relive it all once again. Or even the shiny new copy I got for my own kids when they were old enough to read it.

But, since we’re in the process of building our house, that dear old book is somewhere in storage, along with many other treasured possessions of the paged variety. It has been hard not having my book “friends” around for the past nine or ten months, but now that build is drawing to close up stage I am itching to get my fingers on volumes I have wished for while living here in our tiny rental.

The Thrifty Fictionista could not do with out ALL her books, however — so old favourites and new have found their way up the 49 steps to our front door. Anna Karenina is here, rubbing shoulders with Lolita and Dorian Gray, and even The Once and Future King. There are books by authors whose writing I can’t live without: Helen Garner, Trent Dalton, Ed Ayres, Ursula Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, Hilary Mantel, Anne Lamott. And there are cookbooks, of course, too, thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, Poh Ling Yeow and Annabel Crabb.

Before too long, however, it will be time for us to pack these few books that did wend their way up all those stairs into boxes and take them to our new house. In Time of Wonder the girl is a little bit sad about the place she’s leaving, a little bit glad about the place she’s going to. The Thrifty Fictionista, on the other hand, is a little bit impatient to get out of the place I’m leaving, and tremendously excited about the place I’m going to — not least because it will have a library.

There will be space for books, space to watch endless re-runs of M*A*S*H, space to cook and space to dream, and even space to wonder where hummingbirds go in a hurricane.

And I can’t wait.