Paisley didn’t particularly care for wash day, especially in late October. By the time she hauled the bedsheets onto the line her hands were chapped, bright red against the white linen, and her face felt much the same. The wind had picked up already, whipping the prairie grass into a writhing sea of grey green.
Winter was well and truly on its way to Milk River.
Snow already capped the Sweetgrass Hills across the border. Kátoyissiksi, the Blackfoot called them. Paisley caught glimpses of the peaks between gaps in the sheets as she pegged them steadily on the washing line, the point of West Butte rising high above the others. In her fifteen years, she had never known any other view.
Paisley’s mother had gone into Milk River township for groceries, and her father was working one of the further flung fields of their farm. The canola had just been brought in, and her dad was finishing up the harvest before the snows began their inevitable fall. Her younger brother, Tyson, had begged to go along with their mother, to watch the harvest being loaded into the massive grain elevators on the outskirts of town.
There was no question Ty would take over the farm when he was old enough. The only reason her brother had learned to read was so he could consult the Farmer’s Almanac and join in conversations with his father and grandfather about weather predictions, crop rotations and soil quality.
Paisley had learned to read for a very different reason.
She eased one last crumbling wooden peg onto the line, securing a pillowcase against the whipping wind. A novel was already tucked into the deep pocket of her pinnafore, an Agatha Christie mystery whose worn pages Paisley had already read several times before. Death on the Nile was preferable to the Farmer’s Almanac any day of the week.
Grabbing an apple from the wizened tree at the back of the farmstead, Paisley stowed the wicker washing basket back in the wash house and latched the gate on her way out. Guessing she had less than an hour before her mother’s battered brown Oldsmobile lumbered into the garage, she took off at a run. Paisley’s favourite place to sit was inside a clump of juniper bushes overlooking a bend of the Milk River itself. There she could hide herself away, observing the off-white waters of the river rushing by, surrounded by hoodoos and cliffs which — if you knew where to look — were inscribed with ancient petroglyphs.
Paisley knew where every last engraving was, knew the outline of the rocky outcrops as well as she knew the back of her own hand. But today, just for a while, she was about to rejoin Hercule Poirot as he approached Abu Simbel, and the Milk River suddenly looked very much like the Nile…
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
Alethea had been walking for days, and she could feel it in every muscle of her body. Her pack sat heavily on her back, the leather straps digging into her shoulders. Her boots, waterlogged after fording the many streams that criss-crossed the forest, felt like twice their normal weight as she slogged her way along the Kingsway.
The mouldering leaf litter smelled dank and vaguely rotten as she trudged along, and the morning mist seeped into her clothes.
Everything felt damp.
Alethea was also beginning to feel cold. She had not been able to light a fire since she entered the forest three days earlier. The golden sundrenched wheat fields had given way to coppices and tree-lined glades, and as Alethea had ventured onwards the woods had grown steadily thicker and darker. Mists clung to the trees, giving way to drizzling rain more often than not.
The Kingsway wound through mile after mile of forest. Alethea had been keeping to the edge of the path, ready to melt into the undergrowth at a moment’s notice. She walked quietly and deliberately, but after spending so much time in the deep quiet of the woods her footfalls thudded in her ears, along with her heartbeat — the thumping in her chest keeping time with the tramping of her feet. All she had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, and make it to the Silver City before Samhain.
Even though she had not seen another soul since entering the forest, Alethea remained alert: the Kingsway was the only route through the dense woodland, and she was well aware a young woman making the arduous journey alone was an easy target. As the drizzle gave way to an unrelenting downpour, Alethea sighed and pulled the hood of her jacket further over her face, grateful for the double layer of protection the cowled neck of her garment gave her. She plodded onwards, resolutely dismissing thoughts of a warm fire, dry clothes, and a hot meal.
A flash of red caught Alethea’s eye through the rain — a robin, the first creature of any kind she had seen in many miles, had flown directly across the path in front of her. Alethea stopped in her tracks and watched the little bird as it hopped from vine to branch, making its way up the slope on the right hand side of the path. The rain eased momentarily, and Alethea glimpsed something unusual beneath the dripping bough of the oak the robin had just alighted on: the beginnings of a stone staircase.
Alethea looked up and down the Kingsway, even though she was quite certain she was alone, and quickly made her way across the path. Scrambling through the sodden undergrowth, inwardly cursing the wet branches lashing at her face and body, she soon arrived at the place where the stone staircase began winding its way upwards between mossy rocks. The robin was hopping his way up the steps ahead of her, the feathers of his breast flaring red against the grey stone.
Alethea’s breath caught.
At the top of the stairs was a small, circular tower with an arched doorway and two similarly shaped windows set into the wall above. She crept upwards, taking care not to make any sound, and peered at the archway. Alethea could see rusted hinges on the side of the doorway, and realised the wooden door that must have once stood here had long since rotted away. She sniffed carefully: there was no scent of smoke, of food, of anything other than the decaying leaf litter that layered the forest floor.
With a final glance behind her, Alethea took a deep breath and stepped inside the tower…
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
Now that I have written this, I’m also wondering whether this could be a different part of the story I created in Blue Jai’s Vignettes #2? Could Alethea be walking through the Forest of Andyr referenced by Sullivan and Lady Ariana Crane? Let me know in the comments if you’d like me to explore more of this world…
Ellie really liked Joe, but she wasn’t sure how to tell him.
When he’d arrived at Crickwood High at the beginning of second term, heaps of girls had been interested in him: swarming around, waiting in clusters for the bus, all trying to figure out who he might be into.
Joe was tall. He was reasonably well muscled. He had curly hair which flopped in a slightly dorky but adorable way into his eyes. He looked nice, smelled nice, was nice.
And yet, not long after arriving at Crickwood, Joe had decided the gaggles of girls at the bus stop weren’t worth his time, and had apparently — inexplicably — chosen to befriend Ellie instead.
Ellie now suspected the fact she had been wearing a muscle tee saying “BOWIE” provided the biggest clue as to why Joe had slung himself into the seat next to hers on the bus one afternoon.
“You a fan?” was the first thing he’d asked her, nodding at the rainbow of letters emblazoned across her chest, which included — of course — a lightning bolt in place of the “I”.
Ellie had attempted a nonchalant shrug in response, deciding after one sidelong glance into Joe’s blue eyes there was no way she was admitting the Bowie tee was actually her mother’s.
“I guess. I like a lot of different music.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Hunky Dory.”
Joe had laughed — not at her, but with her — appreciating the fact that she had gone there, making the corniest of jokes. And ever since that day, they sat together as they rode the bus home.
Music was what they talked about. Mostly. There wasn’t a huge amount to do in Crickwood after school — apart from hitting the gym alongside all the girls attempting to squat their way to a backside rivalling one of the Kardashians, or working the check out aisles at the local Coles. On the rare afternoons they had homework, Ellie and Joe went to the library. But most of the time they just hung out, propping themselves up against the wall of the milk bar, talking about music and bands.
Ellie’s mum had said it was OK — even it she had been a bit distracted at the time, trying to get an assignment finished for the uni course she was studying part time.
“Can I hang out with Joe this afternoon?”
“The new kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d they move from again?”
“Sydney, I think?”
“Christ on a bike. Why the hell would anyone move to Crickwood?”
“Probably the mine.”
“Mmmm…probably…can you pass me that green text book?”
As time went on, Ellie had just about run out of music-related things Joe might find remotely interesting, and reluctantly found herself asking her mum about what she listened to during high school. She felt simultaneously bemused and embarrassed by her mother’s enthusiastic sharing of Spotify playlists, but was grateful all the same. The Violent Femmes, Pearl Jam, REM, the Pixies, Massive Attack, Lou Reed, and the Ramones all found their way into her ears via her mum’s recommendations. And Bowie — always David Bowie.
Ellie realised conversations about music were bringing her closer to her mother as well as to Joe, which felt a bit weird.
Weird but good.
“Hey Ellie — how about you ask your friend Jo over for dinner this Friday? I’ve finally finished all my exams and assignments, so maybe we could get takeaway. It’d be nice to finally meet her.”
Wait, what — her?
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
The clatter of her sandals on the cobblestones made Mariana anxious and jittery.
Rome was dangerous after dark.
The villa was being watched, and she had been warned attempting to be stealthy was more likely to attract unwanted attention. She understood she was almost certainly being followed, and was convinced there were eyes tracking her every move — not that she could see them.
Mariana carefully adjusted the palla concealing her face and tried to step quietly and confidently, the way her mistress, Calpurnia, would.
Calpurnia, who had loaned her the expensive palla beneath which she hid.
Calpurnia, who had entrusted Mariana with the message hidden deep beneath the folds of her stola, sending her out into the gathering darkness with a single unliveried servant bearing a swinging, sputtering lantern.
Calpurnia, wife of Julius Ceasar, whose husband had just been brutally murdered.
The columns of Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus loomed portentously above Mariana as she made her way down the Capitoline Hill into the Forum. She kept a cautious distance from the servant striding purposefully ahead of her, sticking to the shadows just beyond the circle of bobbing lanternlight. Never before had she been so accutely aware of the vast number of columns surrounding her — some decorating the facades of buildings, others displaying statues, all of them capable of hiding a well-armed man behind them.
The moon was rising swiftly above the Palatine Hill, a huge golden orb just past full. The Ides of March had fallen only two days prior, the same day Caesar had fallen.
Beneath her clothing, Mariana could feel the slip of parchment Calpurnia had handed to her minutes before digging into her skin, each sharply folded edge pricking like a knife…
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
The early morning mist had not yet lifted when the bird alighted behind her, taking several elegant steps to join her at the water’s edge.
“Report,” she commanded.
The bird inclined his head.
The Vespyn armies are massing in the Borderlands, along the edge of the Forest of Andyr. We do not have much time.
She could hear his voice clearly in her head, as cutting as the icy breeze biting the bare skin between her shoulder blades.
“And the Messendyr? Will they come?”
I believe so, but the more pressing question is whether they can mobilise in time. We have requested archers and cavalry, together with a small detachment of Pine Riders, renowned for being best scouts within the Forest. Bastian flew south two days ago to press our case with General Tausten and is expected to return before nightfall.
Ariana considered his words in silence. She did not doubt Bastian’s powers of persuasion, nor the Messendyrs’ abilities in battle. When General Tausten’s forces combined with the troops she had already rallied beneath her blue-grey banner they should be able to foil an attack — provided they could cross the River Arden, navigate the narrow paths of the Forest of Andyr and take up an advantageous position beneath the pines and firs on the Forest’s edge before the Vespyns did.
Sullivan was right, as usual.
What they needed most was time.
Surreptitiously, she observed his reflection in the water. His posture was strong and sure, as always, but even in avian form she could detect a weariness around his eyes.
“How long is it since you resumed human form?” she asked quietly, folding her arms against the morning chill. Shapeshifting was as dangerous as it was difficult, mastered by only a few highly accomplished Adepts. Ariana was all too aware Sullivan’s position was more problematic than that of most Shapeshifters: he was nobleborn as well as Adept, a hazardous combination which forced him to choose constantly between conflicting loyalties. That said, she could not fault his steadfast allegience to herself and her cause.
Two nights, he responded eventually.
Ariana turned her head to look at him directly for the first time since he landed, accutely aware of the pair of servants crunching their way towards them over the wide expanse of gravel in front of the chateau.
“Be careful, my feathered friend.”
The bird dipped his head in response, opened his wings and took off, flying low above the slate coloured water.
Always, my Lady Crane…
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
I was driving my elder daughter to school this morning when Marvel Girl made the unexpected announcement that she had watched The Princess Bride again last night. As someone who has watched that film approximately eleventy-six times, I was filled with a warmish sense of maternal pride. I say warm-ish because it was precisely eleven degrees and blustery outside (and that, as any self-respecting Sydneysider knows, is what we proclaim around here to be cold — along with any other celsius temperature reading that fails to begin with the number 2 and is followed by another digit).
I am still unsure what prompted Marvel Girl to take another look at one of the favourite films of my childhood, and as a result have been afflicted ever since I dropped her off by what I am now grandiosely (and ever so slightly theatrically) referring to as the Curse of Inigo Montoya.
Although Inigo’s more famous and oft-quoted line in The Princess Bride features him introducing himself and then advising his foe that they should prepare to die (in what some have described as a masterclass in effective networking), I believe another of his classic statements is entirely more relatable and have thus co-opted it to form the basis of said Curse.
Even if you’ve only seen the movie once, you know the line:
I hate waiting.
See? TOTALLY RELATABLE. I defy you to present me with a single person on the planet who actually enjoys waiting. Even though waiting is something we all have to do — it could even be said to be a defining feature of the human condition — I genuinely believe the person who finds waiting pleasurable is about as rare as say…oh, I dunno, someone with six fingers on their right hand?
Waiting SUCKS.
Anyone who has held on for any kind of meaningful response (and I include this category everything from academic scores, job applications, marriage proposals and — probably worst of all — medical test results) knows how agonisingly dreadful waiting is. Samuel Beckett clearly knew all about it: Waiting for Godot goes exactly nowhere yet somehow keeps audiences riveted to their seats.
The slippery, torturous and endlessly annoying thing about waiting, you see, is that the tantalising promise of some kind of result or outcome forces us to endure the unbearable space between.
I wrote a while back about the liminal places in our lives when I was in the process of finishing my novel. But now, now that I have shepherded my words onto the page and guided them into the hands of a prospective publisher, I am back in that space between again. This is not nearly as simple as waiting for Marvel Girl to get home to ask her why she watched The Princess Bride again (and to apologise for forgetting to ask her how her English exam went yesterday — yet another maternal fail). The stakes feel so much higher and, depending on the day, they are tangled up with words like worthiness and success and the unthinkable opposites of those.
This, my friends, is the Curse of Inigo Montoya.
And yet, The Princess Bridegives me hope.
Inigo Montoya, though cursed to wait, never gives up. Buttercup never stops loving Westley. Miracle Max somehow finds a way to pull off a marvellous death-defying feat. The baddies (even the Rodents Of Unusual Size) get beaten, the goodies rescue the princess, true love prevails, and the world now knows the true meaning of the phrase, “As you wish”.
It’s all quite heartening, really.
Waiting is giving me the opportunity to tinker here, in my little patch of cyberspace, for the first time in months. It’s allowing me to read books occupying the same genre I write (which I tend to avoid when creating to avoid becoming at all derivative), to listen to podcasts I wouldn’t normally have time to (which led this morning to me snort laughing when I heard the enormously intelligent and wickedly funny Marina Hyde describing the long-feuding Cyrus family as “Tennessee Lannisters”), to plan extensively detailed holiday itineraries, to cook things I haven’t made for ages or haven’t ever made — the list goes on and on and on — and all because waiting, much as I find it utterly and completely maddening, waiting gives me the space and time to do all these things.
Turns out the Curse of Inigo Montoya may be a blessing in disguise.
And so, my friends, whatever you find yourself waiting for, may you find Inigo’s Blessing rather than his Curse.
Or, more accurately, I have been revising my novel — filling in plot holes, teasing out unnecessary words, working on phrases and sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters until…now.
I am in unchartered waters.
I have revised and rewritten until I have caught myself up, and what lies ahead is unborn and unwritten.
It is a strange place to be, this liminal world in between the creation and the act. It is a shadowy space, where the voices in my head begin their whisperings, where I listen until one of them suggests something that sparks an idea that takes hold and forms itself into something on the page.
I have a rough outline in my head of how my novel will end, but I have listened to the whispers for long enough to know that they have minds of their own, and that they fashion what they will, when they want to. When I am quiet and still enough to let them, they tell me things I do not expect, take me places I did not know existed, and reveal truths I had not excavated.
Sometimes a single blank page appears to be infinitesimally small, adrift upon a great heaving ocean of unformed creations.
Other times words come slowly, drip by drip.
But when I allow myself to settle in that liminal space, sentences often come in streams — flowing out in descriptions and dialogue and drama — and I know I have sat long enough to be allowed the privilege of navigating that wild and watery world, hoping against hope that before too long, I will sight land.
It’s been ages since I wrote, which usually means I need to get how I am feeling about whatever is happening to my dear old Dad out of my system. The Professor had a birthday last month, so is now heading towards his mid-eighties…not that Alzheimer’s Disease will let him remember that.
Or much else, for that matter.
Every now and then I feel weirdly guilty about the time when my brother and I gave Dad one of those birthday cards with a badge attached — the one we picked was one bright orange with navy blue writing, and said “Mentally Confused and Prone to Wandering”. Our then-teenaged selves never once suspected he might actually need such an accoutrement: to us, Dad was so incredibly whip smart and intellectually beyond us that such a thought was ludicrous, particularly as he was then working at the dizzying heights of academia. We made him wear it to the Ivory Tower he worked at, a university which later granted him a PhD after he completed all the course work, oral and written examinations in three languages, his dissertation and his thesis defence in just under two and a half years. All while financially supporting his family.
We thought making Dad wearing the badge to work was absolutely hilarious.
Mentally confused and prone to wandering? Pfft…
And now, several decades later, The Professor is exactly that.
Seven years ago, when he was first diagnosed with dementia, if you did not know The Professor you would have been hard pressed to recognise the signs and symptoms that had alerted us to the fact that all was not well. And now, after years of gradual decline, the past twelve months have produced an accelerating deterioration of his condition.
Even so, The Professor is trying to retain his dignity while his world is so utterly, heartbreakingly diminished.
The man who we would constantly have to ask to slow down when he strode briskly ahead of us now moves unsteadily, and at a glacial pace.
A year ago, crossword puzzles delighted him…but then they became more difficult. He started looking up answers in the back of the book and filling them in. Then those answers became confused, or mis-spelled, or entered into the wrong squares. Now the whole concept is beyond him.
Spoken words, which were once a source of great enjoyment for him — let’s be honest, The Professor was literally a lecturer, both at work and at home — have all but disappeared. He now prefers to use hand gestures and facial expressions to communicate what he wants (or, increasingly, what he doesn’t want). His verbal communication is limited at best, and we have to remind him to use his words.
Use your words.
I thought my days of saying that phrase ended around the time when my children started school.
Turns out I was wrong about that, too.
I haven’t heard him say my name in a long time, and many times when we meet up I can see he has no clear idea who I am. He seems to know, however, that I am someone who loves him, and who is not is going to threaten or harm him in any way.
And so, we take refuge in humour.
If I do end up having a phone conversation with The Professor, which is now almost exclusively one-sided, I try to make him laugh. If we’re on FaceTime, I’ll settle for a smile — or a hint of recognition that he has got whatever joke I’m attempting to make.
My mother, who would definitely win the Nobel Prize for Caregiving if there was such a thing, is still looking after The Professor in their home. I honestly don’t know how sustainable that arrangement will be if he continues to decline, but given it’s something she is currently committed to, I am attempting to support her however I can. We used to try to make light of The Professor letting the (indoor) cat out, but now we’ve been reduced to joking about not letting The Professor out.
The whole situation is unsettling and confusing and seemingly never-ending, but evidently The Professor is not yet ready to leave us.
I suspect I will be more than ready when he does.
That is one thing a diagnosis like The Professor’s gives you: an extended period of time in which to grieve.
And I can honestly say I do not write about this to garner sympathy or attention for myself. Writing enables me to make sense of what I am feeling about a complicated situation, one which I am resigned to and accepting of (even though it absolutely sucks). While these are my words, they are about and for my father, who genuinely deserves all the compassion and consideration in the world.
I choose to write publicly about my experiences to acknowledge and provide a window into The Professor’s ever-shrinking world. To remind my teenaged self that the badge my brother and I gave our Dad was intended, and taken, as a joke — and one we all laughed long and hard at. To give my mother something to refer people to if their questions or kindnesses make it too hard for her to respond. To use my words to tell The Professor’s story now he is unable to tell his own.
So, if you’re reading this, please remember — for as long as your brain allows you to remember — to LIVE!
Live freely, love fiercely, choose wisely and make every single day count.
Folks, it has been a considerable amount of time since I have put fingers to keys and tended to my tiny patch of cyberspace. I have been waiting for the right moment to dive back into this blog after the longest hiatus I have taken from it since its inception in 2014, and now seems as good a time as any.
Much of my life is incredibly structured. There is a substantial part of me that relishes rigour and routine, swoons over spreadsheets, fancies fitting every last thing into a clearly and carefully labelled box, and is obsessed with order and organisation. This is the part of me that gets all of the things done.
But there is also an insubstantial part of me, which loves nothing better than immersing myself in ideas and imaginings, adores making something out of nothing, savours stories and fictions of all kinds and favours following meandering thoughts to unanticipated places and taking time to feel and remember and notice…stuff…all the stuff. This is the part of me that is creative, unconfined, and sometimes unconventional — despite (or perhaps because of) the other part of me that gets all of the things done.
So, with those two strange bedfellows in mind, I decided during my break from this blog to take it back to where it began a decade ago — to making this a place where I come to make sense of it all (whatever “it” happens to be on any given day), a space to accommodate the musings of the Daydream Believer (as incongruent and eccentric as they may be).
I’m not planning on trotting out my monthly THREADs any more, or posting with any regularity either. I’m taking this patch of cyberspace back to its roots, which were barely grounded in whim and whimsy back then, and are likely to be just as flimsily planted now. Despite all the gardening imagery I might use when describing this place, it was never intended to be a formally cultivated space. It was meant to be a space where mere wisps of thoughts and imaginings could expand in the ether, and end up wherever their vapourous trails unfurled.
As Rick Rubin says:
No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.
So, I’m diving back in, folks. If you’ve stuck around since the beginning or just been here for a single post, I thank you — and I invite you to ride the wave with me and find out where we end up next.
So this THREAD is late, I know. It also doesn’t include pictures.
But I have a VERY GOOD REASON (and yes, that absolutely required shouty caps). This time last week, I had everything set in my mind about what I would write about in relation to October (because at that point it had shaped up to be a pretty good month, all things considered). But at precisely this time last week — as in 5:13pm last Saturday — I boarded a Manly Fast Ferry and set off for Circular Quay with The Bloke and one of his clients, who had asked us to keep that particular night free.
Because this person is not only a client, but is also one of The Bloke’s great surfing mates (specifically) and an all round good person (generally), we did as requested and made no plans, thinking we were heading out to dinner. But no — he was waaaaaaay more generous than that.
HE TOOK US TO SEE SIR PAUL McCARTNEY IN CONCERT.
And as a result of that amazing and completely unexpected experience, my tiny mind was blown and I failed to put fingers to keys because I was unsure how to adequately describe what had happened. To do so, you see, I need to rewind several months…which I will do when I start the October THREAD proper…which is NOW!
THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO
I have been thinking, since that extraordinary concert last week, about manifestation and serendipity. As regular readers of the THREAD will know, in June this year in our entire household was in the throes of Taylor Swift Ticket Acquisition Fever. It was an extremely serious preoccupation, and one which ended very fortunately for us, but not without considerable expense. Which is why, when July rolled around and Paul McCartney tickets went on sale (also at considerable expense), I was sorely tempted to purchase some but held off. I do recall saying, however — and Marvel Girl can attest to this — “If I am meant to see Paul McCartney in concert, the universe will provide. Imagine seeing a real live Beatle, though…that would be really something.” And not long after that, life continued and I promptly forgot about the tickets I had opted not to buy.
Until…one week out from the Paul McCartney concert — and with reports flowing in of how great the shows had been in Perth and Adelaide and Melbourne — I began feeling a little wistful. I even logged on to see whether there were any seats available for the Sydney shows. Still not making the connection regarding dates, I asked The Bloke to call his client to find out what we could bring for dinner…and found out it was not dinner at all. “I’m taking you to see Paul McCartney,” he said. “Can you believe we’re going to see a real live Beatle?”.
They were his EXACT WORDS — I kid you not. The Bloke had the call on speaker, so by this point my jaw was on the floor, as was Marvel Girl’s when I told her what had been said (followed by a short silence, and a firm affirmation that I had completely restored her belief in manifestation). Needless to say, I absolutely loved the concert and remain ever so grateful to The Bloke’s client for taking us along. Paul McCartney is 81 years old but played for over three hours, and got better and better as he went along. It was a once in a lifetime experience, capped off by us making actual eye contact with the man himself as his tour bus left the venue, driving away from the crowds and coming directly towards where we were walking instead, with the four of us waving to a real live Beatle who was waving right back.
Magical doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Anyhoo…I’ll try to stop fangirling now and get on to what I have been hearing, which — unsurprisingly — has been a lot of Beatles tunes, Wings tracks and parts of the Get Back movie Peter Jackson so brilliantly made. I can’t go past this section without including a final anecdote relating to the Paul McCartney concert, which relates to one of the encore pieces he played: I’ve Got a Feeling. During the song, John Lennon was on the big screen singing his part (lifted straight from the famous rooftop performance that ended up being the last time the Beatles played together), and Sir Paul was on the stage in front of him singing his part. For any Beatles fan — or music fan for that matter — it was spinetingling stuff, the kind of moment that brings genuine tears to your eyes. I still can’t quite believe I witnessed it, but am ever so grateful I did.
I’m going to move onto reading, because otherwise this entire post will end up being about last Saturday night, and we have a whole month to review. I have read a couple of great books this month, but not before I finished Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens — I know I mentioned in the July THREAD that it had won the Miles Franklin award, but please get your hands on a copy and discover how great Shankari Chandran is. I love her writing — almost as much as I love Maggie O’Farrell’s writing, and I also had the great pleasure of reading Hamnet this month. I know it’s not new, but it was novel I fell straight into and then…well, several hours had past and I was turning the final pages.
There was one passage in Hamnet which struck a chord with me at a very deep level, describing Hamnet’s mother Agnes:
She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare.
Agnes is, of course, the wife of William Shakespeare, who wrote the play Hamlet one year after the death of his son, Hamnet. It’s a play that holds a special place in my heart, having seen it performed for the first time on the day my grandfather passed away. We never really let go of the ones we love, whether it be casting out our fishing lines while they are alive, or casting our memories back when they have left us.
Ahhhh…moving on to eating, life-sustaining activity that it is. At the end of the school holidays (mid-October) I took my dear mum to a concert at the Sydney Opera House (more about that later), and before the show we dined — and I do mean dined, because it was fancy — at Aria. We began with a couple of sparkling glasses of French champagne, then proceeded to enjoy our selections from the pre-theatre menu, which included multiple amuse bouche offerings from the chef (Matt Moran is a genius) and even an palate cleansing pre-dessert. I had never eaten at Aria before, though have had the pleasure of dining at Benelong (inside the smallest Opera House sail) multiple times. I have to say I enjoyed the menu at Aria more — though perhaps that was because it was entirely new to me, or because we had a view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House (instead of sitting in it), or because I was having a truly extravagant meal with my wonderful and ever-so-deserving mother. OK: it was probaby a combination of all three, but I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a dinner out so much.
And now onto admiring, in which (be warned!) I will wax lyrical about yet another concert I went to — this time the one I attended with my mother. We were fortunate to see violinist Joshua Bell perform with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the newly renovated Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.
Bell is famous for performing at an extremely high level, having made the transition from child prodigy to virtuoso violinist many years ago. Yes, he plays a Stradivarius rumoured to be worth as much as $14million (USD), but his technical prowess and musicality cannot be attributed simply to the quality of his instrument. Now aged 55, Bell has been practicing and perfecting his craft for decades. He is renowned the world over for the purity of his tone, which was described by one reviewer of the concert I attended as ‘silvery’, which almost describes what I felt when I heard Bell play.
It was like listening to a moonbeam.
Silvery, yes – but also bright and clear and radiant and possessed with profoundly otherworldly beauty. As I sat, enthralled, listening to the notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor spill seemingly effortlessly from Bell’s instrument, I felt tears forming in my eyes. It was another one of those unforgettable, breathtaking experiences, and I was beyond grateful to share it with my mother, who promptly declared it the best concert she had ever been to. I thought she was just saying that to be nice, but she then informed me the best concert she had been to before that was seeing Victoria de los Angeles at the Sydney Town Hall before I was born, so…I suspect she was being truthful?!
And just as aside, did you know that William Shakespeare invented the word moonbeam? That’s also true.
So now we come, finally to doing. I think it’s fair to say that for much of the month, I have relishing the tingling highs that have come with seeing some truly fabulous performances, eating some delicious meals and reading some brilliant books, and then nursing myself through the crashing lows that inevitably follow those experiences. For me, being able to bear witness to cultural greatness is one of the great privileges of being alive, and this month I’ve been beyond blessed — so much so that I even forgot to mention in the reading section above that I also devoured the latest offering from my literary hero, Trent Dalton, which is called Lola in the Mirror. Reading that book is one of the best things I did during October, along with watching both seasons of The Bear on Disney+, which is a complete tour de force. I defy anyone to watch that show and not be viscerally affected.
So that brings me to the end of the October THREAD, knowing that it has been a rollercoaster month of highs and lows, punctuated by some spectactular perfomances: on the stage, the dining table, the page and the screen. It is the sort of month that has made me feel truly alive, and glad to be alive, and wanting to share that feeling with everyone I encounter — but with my family most of all.
I hope October was a good month for you, too. I wonder what November will bring us?!
Mind yourselves,
BJx
PS I’m just gonna leave this here…because who doesn’t want to sing along to Hey Jude with a real live Beatle and 50,000 of your new best friends?
Blue Jai: 