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.
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.
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?
September, and spring has not sprung in Sydney, it’s deadset yo-yoing. The temperature this weekend is meant to hit 34°, while next weekend it is forecast to plunge to lows of 9° at night, and then the following week? Your guess is as good as mine. Needless to say, no one knows which layers to wear, what to sleep under, or whether The BOM (aka the Bureau of Meteorology) is to be believed or is making it all up on the fly.
It’s also school holidays (huzzah!), so settle down with a cuppa and let me fill you in on the latest in my September THREAD.
THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO
During the past two days I have been thinking about transformation. I can identify the catalyst for this stream of thought very precisely: yesterday afternoon, Miss Malaprop rolled back the cover of our backyard swimming pool (which I had thoroughly cleaned last week) to reveal an algal bloom had turned the sparkling blue water in our pool a deep emerald green. Since then, I have spent a substantial amount of time pool side, vacuuming debris from the bottom, backwashing and rinsing the filter, then scrubbing the walls and floor with a brush before adding a bottleful of a magical indigo elixir supplied by the very polite and patient assistant at our local pool shop. As the hours pass, the pool is gradually being restored to its former glory. Emerald green has given way to a deep aqua, followed by turquoise, and now the colour is definitely appearing far more blue than green.
Watching the transformation has been quite alluring — addictive, even. And definitely more productive than the several hours I spent worrying about the pool last night from about 2:45am onwards. Even so, this morning I was skeptical about the success of the whole process, and initially I did not think it had worked. But — with time, and a little faith — I have witnessed the colours change and the concerns that had plagued me overnight literally fade away. There is something about rapid change that I find both beguiling and satisfying, much like time-lapse photography (such as this clip filmed by Neil Bromhall). I can’t quite explain what makes it so enchanting but that, I suspect, is the very nature of enchantment. It’s a bit like being in Oz before the curtain was drawn back — though I am well and truly done with the colour emerald green right now?!
What else is going on? Well, apart from remedying the pool, I’ve been trying to remedy another “ailment”. It’s school holidays, so I’ve been hearing a lot of…back chat. This is partly, I suspect, because I have teenagers — who are often, by turns, tired and hungry — but also because we are all a bit worn out and frazzled after Term Three, especially since the last day of school ended up with Marvel Girl having a six hour stint in the local hospital with suspected appendicitis (it’s not; she’s fine).
I am trying, ever so carefully, to pick my battles. I am also trying to say less. Much less. I am trying to remember the words of Anais Nin: We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. I am trying to apply that salient and sage piece of advice to my current situation and recognise teenagers and parents see things very, very differently, and then respond accordingly. And the back chat? I’m trying not to react. Trying. Still trying.
Which brings me, perhaps unsurprisingly, to a book I’m about to start reading. It’s called Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood and it’s by a clinical psychologist called Lisa Damour. The book was recommended by the Wellbeing Coordinator at the girls’ school, and the industry reviews I found suggested it was worth a read. Although I’ve not yet started it (full disclosure — I didn’t have the slightest inkling what the seven transitions might be until I looked at the table of contents), the quotation from Anna Freud the author chose to use at the beginning of the book made me feel like I was in the right place.
While an adolescent remains inconsistent and unpredictable in her behaviour, she may suffer, but she does not seem to me to be in need of treatment. I think that she should be given time and scope to work out her own solution. Rather, it may be her parents who need help and guidance so as to be able to bear with her. There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.
Anna Freud, 1958 (pronouns altered)
As a parent of two teens, I am seeing these attempts at liberation play out in different ways every day. I do want them to succeed, so I’ll keep trying. And while I do it, I’ll read the book.
The other thing I am attempting to do while parenting teenagers, is making sure that The Bloke and I are on the same page, which I do not via reading by eating! I very much doubt The Bloke will have time to read Lamour’s book, so every now and then we make sure we’re still connecting by heading out to dinner together. Last night we had some amazing high end Mexican fare at a local restaurant we’d been meaning to try for ages, complemented beautifully by a bottle of Californian Chardonnay. Despite having faced the challenge of the pool turning green, I am on holidays with the kids — unlike the Bloke. It was gratifying for me to watch him become increasingly calm and relaxed as the evening passed, even though he had to work again today. We make a point of discussing a multitude of things on date nights, and try to avoid topics like the kids or our respective To Do Lists or finances or work. While these things do crop up from time to time, we both make an effort to bring the conversation back to something positive, or to something we’re looking forward to (not that our “off limits” topics are necessarily negative, they’re just really easy to get mired in).
One of the best things about last night was that at the bottom of the menu was a very convenient “Trust the Chef” option with a set price. With no decisions necessary, we just sat back and enjoyed the parade of culinary surprises. And the food was glorious! Delicious tacos, fabulous fish and perfectly cooked pork, generous sides and a show-stopping pavlova to share for dessert. And while the restaurant was worth a re-visit, we’re making a real effort to go somewhere new every time we choose to go out, trying to support a variety of local businesses instead of the same ones over and again. So far, it’s a plan that is serving us well!
I’ve been admiring a few things on the box lately, including the Supermodels series on Apple+. There is something inherently nostalgic about watching the footage of these beautiful women and their extraordinary careers — it’s a combination of the fashion, the music, the hairstyles (OMG!) and the models’ explanations of and encounters with prevailing attitudes at the time. Watching it (I haven’t finished yet) is making me feel grateful for how far we have come, and thanking the old gods and the new for feminism.
On Stan I’ve started watching The Winter King, a retelling of the story of King Arthur. It’s in a similar vein to The Last Kingdom and was a timely find for me, having just read Alexandra Bracken’s novel Silver in the Bone, which also deals with many aspects of the Arthurian legend — and is worth a read, too. I finished binge watching Borgen not so long ago, which I absolutely adored. I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I thought Sidse Babett Knudsen was utterly brilliant as Birgitte Nyborg, I loved Birgitte Hjort Sørensen as Katrine Fønsmark and I had a real soft spot for Bennedikte Hansen as Hanne Holm. Peter Mygind was expertly Machiavellian as Lars Hesselboe, and Pilou Asbæk was just the right amount of unhinged as Kasper Juul.
I then proceeded to dip into a bunch of other things featuring Sidse Babett Knudsen, including a fabulous little movie Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction (which also stars Mikkel Boe Følsgaard in a very different role to that which he played in Borgen) and Inferno, the third and final film in the Da Vinci Code series which, to my delight, was set in Florence, Venice and Istanbul.
And that brings me, as always, to doing. At the moment I have a list of things I am working through and none of them is particularly exciting. But I am, slowly but surely, ticking them off (in between checking on the colour of the pool water) — and that is satisfying in itself. Sometimes we just need time to do the things that we have had on our lists for what seems like an eternity, even if we don’t particularly want to do them. So I’m making a point of getting the ticks, and celebrating them if they are big things. Especially when they’re boring things!
And when I’m through, I’ll probably get back to more thinking, hearing, reading eating, admiring and doing…
We’ve gone past the shortest day here in the Antipodes! The Winter Solstice is a milestone I mark each year, not least because it means that from this point onwards the days are getting longer again. Admittedly, we still have to get through that small botheration called winter, but nobody has really noticed much of that around here lately because we’ve all been glued to various devices trying to get tickets to see Taylor Swift.
So, keeping with our theme of brevity, let’s jump straight into the June THREAD.
THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO
I’ve been thinking a lot about equity and fairness during the past week or, perhaps more specifically, since Taylor Swift announced the dates for the Australian leg (such as it is) of her Eras tour. As regular readers of this blog will know, I live with a pair of Swifties — one diehard, one far more nonchalant — so the news that Tay Tay was finally heading Down Under was met with great excitement.
However, as details of concert dates and pre-sales and ticket pricing began to filter through, my cogitations began in earnest. The amount I would have to spend on some of the packages available to attend just one of these highly desirable concerts is equivalent to the amount we would normally spend on a weeklong family holiday. Could I justify the expense? Was it fair of me to tell my children that if I did manage to get tickets, they might not get Christmas and birthday presents this year? Would Marvel Girl even cope if we did not secure this most elusive of bookings?
I’ve been hearing a lot of the same sorts of questions from other parents, and from other people who are fans. The hype surrounding the Eras tour has been phenomenal, and I know that this concert is not simply a “bit of a gig”, but a full blown stadium spectacular choreographed down to the last pyrotechnically enhanced millisecond.
I’m also conscious that, if I did get my hands on Taylor Swift tickets, this would be Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop’s first proper concert (because at this point I’m not counting the Babies Proms at the Sydney Opera House folks…that ship sailed so long ago it’s halfway to Haiti by now). I’m also acutely, painfully aware that — thanks to a global pandemic and a bunch of lockdowns — my kids have missed out on unforgettable experiences like this.
So, like so many others, I started reading all the fine print. And the presale information. And began setting alarms and checking login details and updating passwords and acquiring ticketing codes and taking a long hard look at my bank balance. I also started reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s new book Romantic Comedy, and had been perusing a bunch of travel guides (dreaming of a European vacation before the girls get to the pointy end of high school), but all these had to be put on the back burner. Tay Tay was coming to town, and I had to be ready.
It was around this point that the stress eating began. I can safely say that I have eaten more chocolate in the past week than I ever ate at Easter time.
I may also, equally sadly, have fallen into the trap of eating cheese and drinking wine. So much so that The Bloke — who, by now, had joined the feeding frenzy — went to the trouble of finding Tim Minchin’s hilarious song about cheese on Spotify or YouTube or some other thing and began playing it for me in a very misguided show of what he called ‘support’. I think it’s fair to say that Minchin’s lyrics about him loving cheese but cheese not loving him did apply, but it was not The Bloke’s finest moment?!
As things turned out, however, it did become one of Miss Malaprop’s finest moments, one that I am still admiring. The first presale came and went with a giant crash (brought to you by American Express), and despite frantic — and might I also say valiant — efforts on my part to navigate some sort of safe passage through the maze of the interwebs to ticket ownership, I came up empty handed. By some small miracle, one of The Bloke’s staff got wind of what we were up to (perhaps because there were several fraught phonecalls to his office as we kept him apprised of our lack of success), and she managed to find her way onto the presale site…but the best she could come up with was a pair of tickets (at a whopping $900 each), and I was determined that both my girls would be coming with me to the show or none of us would go at all.
It was at this point that Miss Malaprop, bless her cotton socks, piped up that if we could only get two tickets we should nab them and that I should take Marvel Girl, superfan as she is of Ms Swift. Her generosity and selflessness caught me off guard, and made me even more determined to get her a ticket as well…if that was humanly possible?!
Which brings us, of course to doing. By the time the next presale rolled around (OK, it was only two days later but I can tell you the hours drag until the event begins), we were ready. We were SO ready. Three laptops and three phones were logged on and ready to enter the Ticketek lounge — home of the infamous blue bar of doom (if you were there you know what it is I speak of) — and after 10:00am the minutes, which had so recently felt like they were lagging by, suddenly began to fly past as I knew there were tickets flying into people’s online shopping carts faster than you could say …Ready For It.
And then, about twenty adrenaline-filled minutes in, The Bloke called. It turned out that half the staff in his office, upon hearing of our plight (first world problem as it absolutely is), had registered for presale codes and were all trying to get us tickets as well. And — wait for it — the same staff member who had got through to the elusive Amex presale had been miraculously plucked from the Ticketek lounge (which we are all now aware is anything but a queue), deposited on the hallowed seat selection page and beaten the famous clock to secure us a trio of tickets for Taylor Swift’s opening night in Sydney.
We were gobsmacked. Celebratory. Relieved. Grateful. Even a little bit tearful, in Marvel Girl’s case. Miss Malaprop was practically turning cartwheels and the cat, never one to be left out, got the zoomies and began racing up and down the stairs.
I still can’t quite believe our luck, not to mention the generosity of The Bloke’s staff. But that’s good people for you — they chip in and help make the impossible somehow, unexpectedly, brilliantly possible.
We’re going to Taylor Swift.
And until a Taylor’s version is released, that’s a wrap on the June THREAD.
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 inTchaikovsky’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 beforeI 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.
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.
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.
“It’s the one with the guitar in it,” says Marvel Girl, a dreamy look on her face.
I burst out laughing.
“Well, that would be every last song of theirs,” I reply.
We’re talking about U2, a band whose songs have formed the soundtrack to my life. A band my elder daughter — a dedicated Swifty who also possesses an unexpected penchant for Guns N’ Roses era glam rock — is now discovering. And wanting to add to her playlists. Except she doesn’t know the names of the songs whose lyrics I can recite without even having to think.
Where the songs have no name?
Ironically, the tune Marvel Girl has stuck in her head is Where the Streets Have No Name.
It doesn’t surprise me that the opening track of the iconic Joshua Tree album has become her gateway into U2. I had the same experience myself, though at a much younger age, with their post-punk anthem I Will Follow.
That song came from U2’s debut album, Boy. But I also have very clear memories of seeing the words U2 I WILL FOLLOW in fading red spray paint on the wall of an overpass near my childhood home. We would drive past those words most days when I was small. I hadn’t been able to read for very long, so the words stayed with me. I felt a weird sense of satisfaction when I finally understood what they referred to, and what they really meant.
I’ve been reading Bono’s autobiography, Surrender, a journey through his life via forty different songs, so music and memories have been occupying a lot of my headspace. I’ve also had U2 songs playing as we go about our business, finding our way in the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar space that is our new home. I now know that Bono connects I Will Follow with what they called the Yellow House, a rehearsal space they used in the early days of the band. Where the Streets Have No Name, on the other hand, takes him back to his first experiences in sub-Saharan Africa.
But I’m wondering what memory Marvel Girl might attach to this particular song, at this moment in her life.
Will she associate Where the Streets Have No Name with moving house? With us dusting off the old DVD player, getting it going, and then watching a battered copy of Rattle and Hum together? Of me struggling to explain the euphoric, visceral, all-consuming experience of going to a stadium rock concert featuring one of the biggest bands in the world to a teenager who — thanks to a global pandemic — has never had the opportunity to attend one?
I wonder…
I wonder whether the music I listened to, danced to, sang along to when I was pregnant with Marvel Girl (U2, REM, Radiohead, The Verve, alongside…ahem…Guns N’ Roses era glam rock) has somehow informed her own musical tastes? I wonder whether such a phenomenon exists, and whether it explains why I love the words of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak and Nabokov so much, given my mother spent time reading Russian literature when she was pregnant with me?
But I digress.
My own memory of Where the Streets Have No Name dates very specifically back to August 1997, of an early morning bus ride from the Greek resort town of Kavala to Istanbul, Turkey. The sun was rising as we entered the city limits of what was once known as Constantinople, a golden orb lighting up a skyline of square concrete dwellings, tangled electricity wires, TV antennas and satellite dishes, with muezzin-filled minarets rising above them all.
I could not hear their call to prayer.
My ears were already filled with words and music of a different kind:
I want to run, I want to hide I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside I wanna reach out and touch the flame Where the streets have no name, ha, ha, ha
I wanna feel sunlight on my face I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace I wanna take shelter from the poison rain Where the streets have no name…
I’d already run about as far as I could from where I’d grown up, in the affluent northern suburbs of Sydney, all the way to the other side of the world. And I could already feel the sunlight on my face, as it began lighting up a city where I could literally stand with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. A place which felt steeped in history and religion and conflict and renewal and mystery.
Searching for a picture that might capture that specific sunrise on the outskirts of Istanbul I stumble across one, on the page of another blogger who made the reverse journey — from Istanbul to Kavala — in 2014. More than fifteen years later, it seems the road has not changed so much, and their impressions of it were very similar to my own.
Those travellers also witnessed the many and various indications of deprivation and poverty. They saw what they described as the bleakness of the peripheries but, unlike me, they had not seen them tinged with golden light, accompanied by the crescendo that is Where the Streets Have No Name, by the music of U2.
I will be forever grateful that in the year I was born, Larry Mullen Jr stuck a notice on the wall at Mount Temple Comprehensive in Dublin. He was the drummer seeking musicians who have now been his band mates for over forty-five years, providing the music I have been playing all my life. I will always smile at Bono’s bluster, get caught up in the rock solid rhythms of Adam Clayton’s bass, and lose myself entirely in The Edge’s hypnotic guitar sounds and sparkling harmonics, all while knowing deep down it’s the drummer who is not just the foundation, but the true rock star in this band.
Larry Mullen Jr always has been — and always will be — perfectly, completely, and impossibly cool.
As I write this, Marvel Girl has U2’s Song for Someone from the Songs of Innocence album playing on repeat downstairs.
She says it’s her new favourite song.
I am filled with quiet pride, knowing I have raised a child who is not afraid to find something new (to her) and stake a claim to it.
If there is a light You can’t always see And there is a world We can’t always be If there is a dark Now we shouldn’t doubt And there is a light Don’t let it go out
And this is a song A song for someone This is a song A song for someone
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.
Blue Jai: 