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…
It’s time for something new on Blue Jai Creative. Rather than simply musing, the Daydream Believer is going to do one of her favourite things: play with words!
Here’s how it will work…I’ll find and post a random picture, then use it as a writing prompt. You can like it, scroll past it, comment on it, tell me what you would have done instead, or enjoy it as a pop of fictional colour in your day.
Welcome to Blue Jai’s Vignettes!
Dorothy Brownlow was not having it.
There was no way she would let Janice McNulty’s snide remarks get her down, just as surely she was not buying Janice a cup of coffee after aqua aerobics — even though it was almost certainly her turn.
So what if she had inadvertently picked up her shower cap from the hook on the back of the bathroom door? Hank had decided to leave early for golf, muttering something about having his putter fixed at the pro shop, and it wasn’t until he dropped her at the pool that she realised her error — not that it was a big deal. Dorothy had been to the hairdresser only two days before, and the shower cap wouldn’t squash her freshly-set curls the way her thick rubber swimming cap did. Besides, if Marjorie Guthrie chose to wear that ridiculous straw sun visor during class every week, how come Janice had never felt the need to comment on that?
No, Dorothy was not having it.
She had opted not to take up her customary place beside Janice in the front row of the class, even though it afforded the best vantage point for observing Donny, the aqua aerobics instructor, in his tank top and trim white shorts. Instead, she had tucked the arms of her natty catseye sunglasses securely beneath the elastic of her blue shower cap, and chose a position in the second row directly behind her so-called friend.
It was early spring in Florida, and begonias and black-eyed Susans were beginning to bloom beyond the neat row of white sun lounges beneath the pooside palm trees. Insects droned and buzzed above the red and pink petals, while in the pool the water was refreshing and cool. The second row, Dorothy considered, offered her a more than satisfactory view of the vibrant flowers and the handsome instructor. She felt a smug and satified smile turning up the corners of her mouth as she followed Donny’s commands, putting her hands on her hips and stretching backwards, tilting her face towards the sun.
As the class went on, the women raised and lowered their arms in accordance with Donny’s instructions, twirled in the water, kicked their legs and hopped from foot to foot. Still smarting from Janice’s nasty comments, Dorothy was periodically seized by a juvenile urge to pull a face behind her friend’s back, but found herself increasingly mesmerised by the back of her friend’s head. Unlike her plain and practical shower cap, Janice’s swimming cap was bedecked with chunky yellow and orange flowers, bobbing like a bouquet in the water in front of her, around which an alarming number of bees had begun to swarm…
The tree, the decorations, the lights, all the little vignettes I had created in various parts of the house — everything was bundled back into boxes and put away.
To be honest, it’s not a task I particularly enjoy. It might not sound like a big job, but given that I have managed to accumulate baubles and tinsel in every colour of the rainbow, not to mention all manner of decorations from tiny timber cottages to little green pine trees to sprigs of lifelike mistletoe to shiny bead garlands and butterflies and bows and even an angel we call Shazza that I use to decorate our home come Christmas time, it is actually more onerous a prospect than one may think.
At the beginning of December, I keep adding Christmassy bits and pieces all over the house until I feel it looks suitably festive (and also completely out of season, since it’s high summer here in the Antipodes). Come the end of the month, removing it all takes considerable time and effort, and the sort of self-discipline that is required when you’re sorely tempted to chuck anything and everything into an oversized container rather than making sure it’s properly stowed. The whole process inevitably ends up with me covered in a tonne of glitter and cursing when I discover one last recalcitrant string of bunting or a rogue wreath hiding where I forgotten I’d put it.
Despite the drawbacks, however, putting the Christmas away it is a job I tend to do on 31 December every year. It helps me make space for the new year. And every year — especially in the years since we rebuilt our house — I find myself delighted by the all the space that opens up once the tree and all the decorations come down.
This year, it felt positively E X P A N S I V E.
Like a massive, audible sigh of relief…perhaps that 2024, which has been a challenging year in ways I never expected, is about to make way for a new year.
So, as I wandered around the house this morning, collecting decorations and sorting them into colours and stowing them carefully away, I found myself reflecting on some of the things 2024 has taught me.
The Best Way Out is Always Through
I thank Robert Frost for this old thought, because it’s still a good one — and I found it applied to 2024 in several ways. For me, 2024 will always be the year I FINISHED WRITING MY NOVEL! I can still recall writing the first sentence of my book, which has remained (quite remarkably) unchanged after all these years. But I suspect I will never forget the spine-tingling excitement that accompanied the moment when my fingers typed the last sentence, and I knew it was the last sentence, and that it was a good finish. I might have even taken a photo of the date and time in the corner of my laptop screen, so momentous did that occasion feel…but that is a tale for another time.
The phrase has also applied to my husband battling some health challenges in 2024, and to the various operations and tests and bits and pieces he’s gone through over the year. We know it’s not over yet, but the best way out is always through has a ring of truth to it about that I find myself trusting in. The Bloke and I have weathered storms before, and we will ride this one out as well. (Go us).
Water is Really, Really Good for You
This may seem to be an obvious statement, especially coming someone who has been on the planet for the better part of five decades, but it is something I am still learning. Just typing that line reminded me to get up and pour myself a glass of water. Being better hydrated is life-changing. If nothing else, it provides a fabulous boost to your skin care regime. But for me, water has been helpful in other ways too. Showers are particularly therapeutic. So is swimming the our backyard pool (especially if I’m alone and if it’s been recently cleaned and it’s a clear sunny day). And if I’m feeling down, looking at the ocean always makes me feel better, even if only for a few minutes.
Unpacking Intergenerational “STUFF” is Useful
I’ve been fortunate to have had great support as I’ve navigated this year, from friends to professionals who have enabled me to get through (which we now know is the best way out) and to see things from different perspectives. One thing that changed me for the better in 2024 was identifying some of the patterns of behaviour I had been raised with which, for better or for worse, have impacted the way I live and raise my own children. Please understand I am not suggesting I had a traumatic or abusive childhood — far from it. But I think there are learned behaviours every person takes into their adult life from their formative years, and I have found it worthwhile examining or re-examining my own behaviours to see if they fit with how I want to live my life today.
It’s as the late, great Maya Angelou said: Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. The older I get the more I am aware of how much my life is a work in progress.
Live Music is Genuinely Amazing
2024 is a year in which I went to two massive concerts: Taylor Swift and Coldplay. I got to see them both with Marvel Girl, one with Miss Malaprop and one with one of my dearest friends. And about 80,000 other people on both occasions.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of rocking up to a gigantic stadium to see an artist perform. They are doing what they love, you are there because you love what they do. And everyone else is there for the same reason. Being at a concert is one of the most joyful experiences in the world, and can be (even for this introvert) the best expression of being in a crowd. In Sydney we’re lucky that when major events are on special trains and buses run, so even getting to and from the event is a positive experience, shared with people who are just as excited to be going/have been to see and hear someone whose music they love.
Other Random Learningsfrom 2024…
My favourite cocktail is a French 75.
If you ask for what you want, you should be prepared to get it.
The unmistakably awful sound of a small child attempting to play a recorder is a complete and total nuisance in your house, but can be quite funny if it’s happening over the back fence.
I really like dresses with pockets.
I’m waaaaay too old to keep up with my kids’ slang.
Persistence pays off.
I’m sure there are plenty of other things I learned this year, most of which will come to me right after Ihit the publish button, but those are the random musings that came to me this morning.
And, since I love books, I thought I would leave you this year with a blessing for the new year from a great fantasy novel I read recently, because it’s full of passion and integrity and ever so slightly over the top — and those are all good things to be in this life.
May you be strong and courageous. May your enemies kneel before you. May you find the answers you seek. May you be victorious and spirits-blessed, and may peace follow as your shadow.
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 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.
In which the Thrify Fictionista abandons her usual carefully considered annual Top 5 posts and crams all her thoughts about the things she has read, watched and listened to during 2021into one hot mess of a post entirely appropriate for the year that was…
Folks, I am so grateful for the gift of literacy. To be able to read — and hence escape between the pages of a book — is one of my life’s true delights, a pleasure that has only been heightened by being part of a protracted historical event. So, as of now, I’m putting on my positive pants and dismissing any further mentions of that pesky Pandemic in this post, and presenting to you in an order as yet unknown to me with the things I loved most this year. Books, TV shows, movies, songs and various bits of ephemera that caught my attention, held it, and made me feel. Because FEELING is what it’s all about, my friends.
I’m going to kick things off by recommending Craig Silvey’s book Honeybee, which just so happened to be the first book I read in 2021. It’s brilliant. So much so, I wondered whether I would read anything as good for the rest of the year (spoiler alert — I did, so please read on). Honeybee made me laugh, cry, shake my fist in both rage and triumph. I absolutely loved it, and reckon you should get a copy for yourself. Pronto.
Another summer holiday read I thoroughly enjoyed was Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip. In addition to having a cracking storyline following the main protagonist, Kerry Salter, and generations of her First Nations family, this story is dramatic and darkly comic. I may have found it even more engaging because the country where the tale is set (despite focusing on a fictional town called Durrongo) reminded me strongly of a part of northern NSW where I spent a lot of summers during my childhood.
Shortly after reading these, I got stuck into watching Narcos on Netflix. I was very late to the party, I know, but after watching Pedro Pascal in The Mandalorian I was keen to see what he could do without a helmet on and was not disappointed. Wagner Moura did a brilliant job of portraying Pablo Escobar and (being a non-Spanish speaker) I was not troubled by the fact that he apparently wasn’t so great at nailing the Medellín accent. Watching Narcos was an edge-of-your-seat ride combining politics, risky and highly illegal business, insurgents, excess and corruption, ever-present danger, families and cartels, the Colombian jungle, and a few blokes who were trying to stop the whole cocaine trade in its tracks, and I loved it.
By the time Lockdown rolled around again (I think it was the third one for us — the one that went for 17 weeks?), our whole family was looking for something to escape into, and when we weren’t snort-laughing watching back episodes of Travel Guides, which we also watched to take in scenery of anywhere but our own backyard, we got right into The Mysterious Benedict Society on Disney Plus. This was a show the entire family enjoyed, and the fact that a new episode dropped only once a week gave Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop a taste of what life was like for The Bloke and I when we were kids in the days before streaming services. We’re all looking forward to Season Two!
Speaking of second seasons, we also used up quite a few tissues earlier in the year watching Old People’s Home for Four Year Olds on ABC iView, which also prompted Marvel Girl to develop an app for older Australians with some of her classmates for a Praxis project at school. The entire family loved the show and The Bloke and I were really proud when Marvel Girl and her mates took out the top gong for the project it inspired.
During lockdown I also embarked up on a Couch to 5km project that was curtailed only by us having to pack up and move house, but heading out on a run gave me the opportunity to listen to tunes. Not surprisingly, the music I’ve been listening to this year has been far more gentle than I would normally go for. I got into things like:
Running Red Lights by the Avalanches, Rivers Cuomo, Pink Siifu
Balenciaga by New West
Strange Girl by Laura Marling
Smile by Valerie June
Move by Flight Facilities, DRAMA
I also delved back into some oldies but goodies like The Wallflowers’ One Headlight, Funkadelic’s Can You Get to That and U2’s I Will Follow. Troubled times call for familiar favourites.
On the reading front, I got through those seventeen long weeks with the help of Hilary Mantel and hertruly remarkable trilogy of Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies (both of which I re-read) and The Mirror and the Light. I am in awe of Mantel’s writing: sometimes her words were so beautifully, perfectly chosen that I would have to mark my place in whichever of the gorgeous hardbacks I was currently reading with the jewel-toned ribbon bound into the cover and simply close my eyes. Then I would go back and read the passage again and sigh (often quite audibly), and would then find myself hoping that one day I, too, will be able to write so succintly, so eloquently, so precisely, and also to elicit such feeling. Because — as I said earlier — it’s all about the FEELING, folks.
I had a similar reaction to reading Ed Ayres’ book Whole Notes, which is truly and utterly a MUST READ for any music lover. Unusually for me, I have embarked upon a second reading of this volume, which is part “call to instruments” and part memoir of becoming a trans man aged 50 (better late than never, as Ed says). Same goes for the brilliant Trent Dalton’s book Love Stories — but as any regular readers of this blog will know, the Thrifty Fictionista is a massive fan of Dalton’s work and it did not come as a surprise to me that I found myself wanting to stretch Love Stories out for as looooooong as I could, trying to make it last — it was that good.
Sigh, again.
What else did I enjoy this year? I binged all three seasons of Medici on SBS On Demand and found myself going down various Florentine themed rabbitholes on the interwebs for quite some time afterwards. Filmwise, I got a bit of a kick out of the 2020 movie Rose Island (or, in the original Italian, L’incredibile storia dell’Isola delle Rose), and I also enjoyed Hugh Grant in The Gentlemen.
The Bloke and I decided it was high time we introduced the kids to Daniel Craig’s Bond movies, and so far we’ve watched Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. I suspect Spectre will be on the menu soon (if my offspring are not devouring more episodes of Gilmore Girls, which they have recently discovered and have many questions about — including what a video store was — thereby making The Bloke and I feel somewhat antiquated, if not ancient). We also made the kids watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which looks massively dated but the jokes still hold up, for the most part. I tried to get them into watching Lupin (which I loved) but it only piqued the interest of the Paris-loving Marvel Girl, and failed to grab Miss Malaprop. That said, we all thoroughly enjoyed Hawkeye.
There are a couple of other things I don’t think I could have got through 2021 without — like watching episodies of 30 Rock on Stan, because sometimes all you really need is 20 minutes of madness and mayhem from Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey to lift your spirits. In a year where internet shopping has taken on a life of its own, I am still eyeing off a T shirt reading “Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks” in honour of Jenna Maroney’s alma mater, but I ended up settling for a 3 pack of Silent Theory T shirts instead (the Lucy style is great and the quality is top notch, in case you’re asking). Another internet purchase I loved? A drink bottle from Target that has the hours of the day printed down the side so I know where my water intake should be up to when. But I digress…
What else? What else did the Thrifty Fictionista love? Well, towards the end of the year I got right into reading Dave Grohl’s book The Storyteller, which inspired our New Year’s Eve feast of Kentucky Fried Chicken and French Champagne. And I finished up the year reading Hannah Kent’s Devotion, Sarah Winman’s Still Life, Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock and Anne Enright’s Actress — all of which were great, and made for a solid finish to a rather troublesome year.
And so, friends, here endeth the Thrifty Fictionista’s cultural ramblings through the year that was. I would love to hear what you watched, listened to and read during the past year than made it more bearable for you and yours. I hope you find some solace or joy in what I enjoyed.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write when most of the people you know are experiencing exactly the same thing as you are. For me it’s the same four walls, the same family members, the same walk to the surf club and back — just to check the entire Pacific Ocean hasn’t mysteriously disappeared overnight.
The Bloke, knowing full well that I am generally the family member who jollies everyone else along, deadpanned that I should embrace gratitude during Lockdown.
Pfffft…
Then again, he has a point, and I do know I am indeed fortunate.
I am fully vaccinated, and The Bloke not far behind me (though the kids are yet to have a vaccine approved for them).
I am gainfully employed (though my work is being frequently interrupted by helping my children with home schooling).
I am happily married (though my anniversary present to The Bloke this year was booking in his second Pfizer shot).
You see the recurring theme, I’m sure — especially if you have a child in Year 5 and have been working through number patterns and algebra problems with them.
Yes, but —
For every upside, it seems there is an inevitable downside.
Sick of the same four walls?
I’m trying to go back to the things I have learned from tapping away at the keys in this, my little patch of cyberspace. I’m looking for moments of delight. I’m attempting to put into practice the Divine Qualities I began exploring at the beginning of this year. That said, I also freely admit I have uncharacteristically shelved my project to continue looking into them throughout 2021: if past Lockdown experiences taught me anything, it’s that it’s OK to let go of things if it they are adding pressure to my existence rather than relieving it.
As a family, we’re trying to do things together that make us laugh — like watching old episodes of Travel Guides, which not only lets us explore the world from the comfort or our armchairs, but also has us simultaneously giggling and cringing at the antics of the various participants. For example, we watched the South African episode last night, and while we were in hysterics at some of the commentary during the safari portion of the show, we were downright mystified that some of the travel guides had never heard of Nelson Mandela?
There it is again. Yes, but —
You see my dilemma?
I suspect I am not alone in this predicament, and that many parents across the Northern Beaches, across Sydney, and across Australia are, too.
So taking The Bloke’s advice to heart this time, I have challenged myself to come up with a list (in no particular order) of some of the things that I am purely grateful for — no ifs, no buts, no strings attached.
Baked potatoes and pumpkin. Baked lasagne. Baked apple and rhubarb crumble. Baked anything, really.
A reliable internet connection, Netflix and Spotify.
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy (specifically) and fiction (generally).
Piping hot tea, coffee and showers.
Words, and being able to read them, speak them, write them and wield them.
I suppose, given that in a few weeks it will be fifteen years since we tied the knot, I should add The Bloke to the list too — if only so I can publicly proclaim that I do take his advice from time to time. (Pun deliberate, and Dad-joke worthy.)
I knew surrendering to the doona on Sunday afternoon was a mistake. Naturally, every last one of the weather gods took note of my devil may care attitude to the sunny weather they had provided, and proceeded to drench the Northern Beaches in several of days of rain. Admittedly, there was a splash of variety to said rain: it was either steady and incessant, or squally and hitting when you least expected it, but the fact remains that it was still rain. On the one occasion I actually left the house (for 2 of the 4 allowable reasons under the current stay at home orders), I even drove through pouring rain in bright sunlight…which is a seriously weird experience even when one is not in Lockdown.
Anyway, after a shaky start (replete with yelling from all sides), both of my children appear to have adapted to this new regime reasonably well — which is rather a relief, given The Bloke and I are both working from home in finance-related jobs and Lockdown has conincided with EOFY. Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop have been keeping each other admirably entertained, including boisterous exercise sessions outside and plenty of creative pursuits inside, and have sometimes even remembering to clean up after themselves. Needless to say, I have issued an open invitation to all family members to empty the dishwasher whenever they find it full of shiny, clean crockery and cutlery, but sadly so far only The Bloke has taken me up on this salacious offer. OK…it’s not even remotely salacious, it’s just flipping necessary…
WFH anyone?
Miss Malaprop and I have indulged in a spot of Lockdown Baking — no, not sourdough — which is hardly surprising as we are both rather fond of bunging things in the oven and being able to eat them in the not too distant future. Spotting a claw of increasingly blackened bananas darkening the kitchen fruit bowl, we made Banana Bread. Not just ANY garden variety banana bread, but Yotam Ottolenghi’s Banana Bread featuring roasted pecans, if you don’t mind, which is why this particular baked offering requires the use of Capitals…so la dee dah..
Recalling her recent online shopping for new jeans, the Thrifty Fictionista has resolved not to bake too much during Lockdown, lest she find herself unable to fit into said jeans, which are yet to wend their way to my doorstop. That has not, however, stopped her from ummm… well, from ordering…a few, no…a largish pile, let’s see… shall we say “several other” things online? They’ve all been necessary purchases, of course, like a lovely tartan woollen blanket. And an iPad case. And two sweatshirts. And the Nespresso pods that are due to arrive this afternoon. You cannot seriously expect me to endure Lockdown with coffee, can you?! Besides, it’s not like I’m rushing to the nearest supermarket to panic buy toilet paper…
Too much Baking…
So far, despite adding many things to cart when I probably should have said, nay shouted at the top of my lungs: “NO! Begone, tempting online shopping demons of the Interwebs!“, the Thrifty Fictionista is rather proud of herself for not purchasing any more books — with the (exceedingly) permissible exception of some small tomes she sent to New Zealand for a friend’s upcoming birthday. Resisting the seductive siren song of Booktopia and the Book Grocer and all those other sublime online book retailers has not been easy, but I am pleased to announce that managed to apply myself and diligently finished the Nureyev biography (which I struggled to complete, simply because I knew it would have to end inevitably with his demise and that’s not the cheeriest subject matter to confront while unable to freely leave your house for the foreseeable future).
Next, however, the Thrifty Fictionista took her own advice and cracked open the very beautiful (hardbacked and bookmark ribboned) Hilary Mantel box set I had been waiting to devour. Quite honestly, I am relishing every single moment I am spending with Thomas Cromwell in Tudor England.
Right from the opening line of Wolf Hall, the first book, I was entranced all over again:
So now get up…
A box set, you say…
It’s not such a bad suggestion, and one I probably should have heeded last Sunday instead of allowing the doona to welcome me as its own.
So now get up…
It really did remind me that Lockdown doesn’t have to be all bad. It doesn’t have to mean forgetting to shower on a regular basis, or spending days in your pj’s because you can’t be bothered getting dressed, or lamenting the fact that you can’t do anything.
Because there’s always something to do, somewhere, if you’re willing to look for it.
Well, I’ve covered my Top 5’s for 2020 in music and on screen, and now it’s time for my alter ego, the Thrifty Fictionista, to take centre stage and reveal Blue Jai’s Top 5 Books of 2020.
I don’t normally keep track of how many books I read, but for some bizarre reason utterly unknown to me I did in 2020 – and, despite home schooling and remote working, somehow found time to escape into more than 60 books. They ranged from non-fiction to biography to literary fiction to fantasy, read either on the page or on an iPad using the Libby app (which I think is brilliant).
Along the way I read some stuff I definitely won’t pick up again but which served its purpose during the darker times of the year just gone, but I also uncovered some genuine gems which, without further ado, make up Blue Jai’s Top 5 Books of 2020.
Phosphorescence: on Awe, Wonder and Things that Sustain You when the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird (2019)
I actually kicked off 2020 by reading Julia Baird’s masterful biography of Queen Victoria (which, if that sort of thing is your jam, I highly recommend). But it was this gorgeously ornamented hardback volume, which I will refer to simply as Phosphorescence for short, which took my breath away. In it, Julia Baird has delivered what I view as the best kind of writing: thoughts and ephemera so beautifully expressed and interwoven that you want to start reading the book again as soon as you have finished it.
In preparation for writing this post I was flicking back through Phosphorescence trying to find a specific passage which stuck in my memory – it was a description of sunrise on the East Coast of Australia, which compared (if I recall it correctly) the suddenness of the sun’s appearance over the rim of the Pacific to a lit match being dropped into petrol.
I couldn’t find the precise quote I was looking for…but as I leafed through the pages of this wonderful book, it reminded me of all the amazing things Baird talks about: not only phosphorescence, but storm chasing, and the Overview Effect, and forest bathing, and so many other glorious things. And in the process, I found another, completely different passage, which probably sums up even better what I love about this book:
If we accept flowering by its nature is a fleeting occurrence, then we are more likely to recognise each blossom as a triumph. And if we accept impermanence, we are far more likely to live in the present, to relish the beauty in front of us, and the almost infinite possibilities contained in every hour, or every single breath.
Enough said, yes?
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (2019)
Turning now to fiction, I could not fail to include Bernadine Evaristo’s prize winning Girl, Woman, Other, which deservedly took out the Booker in 2019. The intersecting stories and perspectives in this book stayed with me for a long time. Reading this novel might be described as the literary equivalent of looking into one of those glass faced clocks you can see the inner workings of – all the wheels and cogs are separate but still necessarily connected, which I loved. I also appreciated the diverse perspectives were overwhelmingly female, and the characters’ experiences – both good and bad – eminently familiar to female readers. Girl, Woman, Other is well worth your time and money, and I highly recommend it.
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019)
Charlie Redmond and Maurice Hearne are “fading gangsters from Cork City”, sitting in the port of Algeciras, looking for Maurice’s missing daughter, Dilly. The entire novel takes place over the course of a single day, but because it is packed full of reminiscences of their time drug running in Spain and the various ups and downs of their lives in Ireland, it feels like it takes in decades.
Kevin Barry’s ability to capture the nuances of speech of the various characters in the book –particularly of the two main protagonists – stayed with me for long after I’d finished it. This novel definitely has a streak of darkness at its heart, made lighter by comedic turns and the banter between two old and very battered mates.
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (2020)
The Thrifty Fictionista has come late to the Curtis Sittenfeld party, not having read American Wife or Sisterland or any of Sittenfeld’s other novels. And yet, the premise of this book – whatif Hillary hadn’t married Bill? – had me hooked from the start. By necessity, the first part of the novel deals with Sittenfeld’s imagining of the romance between university students Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton, but midway through the book they part: and when Hillary refuses Bill’s proposal of marriage, a very different version of “history” ensues.
To date I have resisted the urge to go googling down various rabbit holes on the interwebs in an effort to determine whether the very much still living Hillary Rodham Clinton has read this fictionalised account of her life as it might have been and how she has reacted to it, partly because it reminds me a bit too much of Barack Obama adding Fleabag to his list of favourite television series for the year some time back (which raised at least several eyebrows given what Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character was doing while she watched a video of him making a speech). At least, after American Wife, one can only assume Hillary Clinton can chat to Laura Bush about what must be a truly singular experience.
I’m not going to say any more about this one for fear of spoiling the ending, but I can tell you it is well worth a read.
M Train by Patty Smith (2015)
It’s only fair and fitting, I suspect, that I bookend this Top 5 of 2020 with a biographical meandering far more similar in tone to Phosphorescence than the fiction writing I’ve included as the meat in the sandwich, so to speak.
When my aunt lent me her copy of M Train it took me a while to get into it – I suspect I was on a massive fiction bender (no doubt plowing through a massive fantasy series by Sarah J Maas or someone similar), and after reading a chapter or two I found Patti Smith wasn’t what I was after at the time. When I picked it up again later, however, I devoured the remainder in a single sitting and absolutely loved it. Smith, who is perhaps better known as a singer-songwriter and poet, has – unsurprisingly – a lyrical ability to express emotion and to bring her interior life into the light…such as this passage when Patti visits a friend in Morocco who is close to the end of his life:
Everything pours forth. Photographs their history. Books their words. Walls their sounds. The spirits rose like an ether that spun an arabesque and touched down as gently as a benevolent mask.
—Paul, I have to go. I will come back and see you.
He opened his eyes and laid his long, lined hand upon mine.
Ahhh….I don’t think there’s a better way to end the main part of this post than with such beautiful, poignant words.
The Thrifty Fictionista’s Highly Commended Books of 2020 are, as ever, a mixed bag of goodies:
All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton (2020) – how I love anything this man writes! A truly unique Australian voice with an abundance of humanity;
The Erratics by Vicky Laveau-Harvie (2017) – a tyrannical mother, a traumatised father, an extraordinary memoir;
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020) – a mystery, some giggles and a few keenly observed words of wisdom;
Ayiti by Roxane Gay (2011) – short stories that pack a real punch;
Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty (2020) – a self-help book, but notable because it’s the first I’ve read based on a Vedic perspective;
Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power (2019) – a fascinating autobiography from Barack Obama’s UN Ambassador to the United Nations; and
Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (2015) – one of the most engrossing and interesting memoirs I have ever read.
Thanks so much for checking out my Top 5s for 2020!
Here’s to 2021 being a very different year, in only good ways. I am looking forward to delving into a whole trove of excting new volumes and engrossing experiences, all between the pages of books.
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Blue Jai: 