Tag Archives: The Bloke

We Did It: The Communist Approach to Vacation Planning

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rosie-the-riveter

It’s all about the polka dots, peeps — Rosie the Riveter and Minnie Mouse know fashion.

Those of you who follow this blog with any regularity will know that I am a planner.

A sometimes fasitidous list maker.

An occasionally ridiculously anal nth degree detailer.

But then, there’s the other part of me (which The Bloke has been known to attribute to my left-leaning political stance) that quite enjoys the long view. The Five Year Plan, for example. The kind that might be set down in a notebook (red, of course) along with an outline of how the means of production and communal — er, sorry, I mean family — income might be channelled into attaining whatever Big Goal I have determined will best serve the Common Good.

And while it may be true that I studied Russian history at university and have copies of The Portable Karl Marx and The Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution and A History of the Soviet Union (Final Edition) — amongst other salacious titles — on my bookshelf, The Bloke has insisted that these be hidden behind an armchair so as not to offend the sensibilities of my in-laws.

I’m totally OK with that.

Really — I’m broad minded.

(And — for the sake of my inlaws’ sanity — I’m not Communist either).

Which is probably why our most recently completed Five Year Plan abandoned any remotely leftie sentiments and culminated in a family vacation to the cultural heartland of capitalist consumerism: Disneyland!

disney-quote

Maybe Walt was a kindred spirit too…

Seriously, we had a ball.

Yes, I might have planned out each day of our holiday (as best as I could) in advance, making sure we took advantage of Park Hopper Tickets and Magic Hours and Fast Passes and every other trick and time-saving contrivance I could research and/or think of, but as a result we saw and did just about everything we wanted to — and still had time to shop for souvenirs.

Because those Disney dudes know that it’s all about the merch, my friends!

(Though I suspect even Rosie the Riveter — who, as a wartime icon of American feminism and women’s economic power — could have told you that, despite pre-dating the die-hard Disney era by a decade or more).

So, despite my somewhat communist approach to vacation planning — or perhaps because of it?! — we have returned to the Great Southern Land with multiple sets of mouse ears, numerous magnets and keyrings, several caps (Star Wars ones, of course, thanks to Lucasfilm being aquired by Disney for the bargain price of $4.06 billion back in 2012 — which may or may not equate to about two week’s worth of ticket sales to the park), along with three new lightsabers (two of them custom built) and Mickey Mouse only knows what else.

And now that this Five Year Plan has been completed — which probably revolved more around Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop being just the right age to revel in the magic of the Happiest Place on Earth than anything else — I can honestly say that I’m so glad we did it.

The Common Good, I think the whole family would agree, was well and truly served.

They might even let me come up with another Five Year Plan…

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Main Street USA, all decked out for Halloween. Planning ahead meant, to misquote the most famous Disney Princess of recent years, Elsa of Arendelle, “the crowds never bothered us anyway”.

 

Bittersweet Symphony

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BSS

Still one of the greatest songs ever written…

Winter arrived this week.

We woke one morning — I think it was Thursday — and discovered that Sydney’s seemingly endless summer had disappeared overnight. The world was suddenly a cold and windy place, rain-soaked and grey-stained, where clouds had settled themselves just above the rooftops.

‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life…

The change of season often happens suddenly here, though perhaps I have been more aware of it this year because I managed to come down with the dreaded lurgy about ten days ago, when the days were still sunsoaked, and tried (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) to keep working and to soldier on. The day winter arrived was the morning I awoke with the dawning realisation that the wretched thing has grabbed me in its claws again — this time, by the throat.

…try to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die…

Well, maybe not die. Not quite.

BSS 2

Well, maybe not a million — but, like I said, being ill makes me slightly prone to exaggeration.

I will admit, albeit reluctantly, that illness does tend to make me slightly prone to exaggeration. I suspect that the main reason for this is that I, like many mothers, feel as though my family requires a great deal of convincing that when I say I feel unwell, I actually mean it. For example, one night last week, when I had finally stopped coughing long enough to fall asleep in the spare room (to which I had banished myself so as not to inflict the lurgy on The Bloke), I was woken at 2am by the light of a torch being shone directly into my eyes by my younger child, who proceeded to announce that she had a sore ankle.

Seriously?! 

Like the creator of aforementioned the dreaded lurgy, Spike Milligan, I sometimes wonder whether my headstone will end up reading I told you I was sick.

Since the cold snap hit, however, I have stopped trying to convert the non-believers in my house and have simply, and quite uncharacteristically, given into being ill. I have wrapped myself in blankets, drunk endless cups of hot tea, and surrounded myself with fresh lemons, a rather alarming variety of pharmaceuticals, a welcome selection of books, and The Verve’s Urban Hymns album.

The Bloke despairs of my love for what he refers to as “whingey Britpop”, but since I am as steadfast as I am eclectic in my musical affections, there are certain things in the life we share that he is forced to roll his eyes and endure. It’s not just that he doesn’t like what he refers to as “that awful music”. The bigger problem, I suspect, is that I have — as some wag once put it — three moods: skip every song on my iPod, let the music play without interruption, or play the same song on repeat for days.

In my defence, I tend to put entire albums on repeat instead of single songs: last week, for example, it was twentyone pilot’s Blurryface — because let’s face it, you need a little dubstep when you’re struggling to put one foot in front of the other. And this week, it was Urban Hymns, which is still think is one of the finest albums ever recorded (even if its moody atmospherics drive my dear and long-suffering husband demented).

…I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now…

BSS 3

It’s amazing how other people respond when you start looking after yourself…

But here’s the thing, the (in my view) really weird thing: regardless of what I’ve been playing on the stereo, since I started treating myself like a person who wasn’t in the best of health, my family started behaving the same way.

To my utter disbelief, Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop bounced out of bed each morning (while I dragged myself, coughing and spluttering, into the shower) and made their own lunches. And packed their snacks. For recess and for fruit break.

Three days in a row.

Who knew they could do that?!

And then this morning, after I had rewarded them for their helpful behaviour by ordering them both a hot lunch from the school canteen, they offered to make me breakfast.

Who are you, I was tempted to ask, and what have you done with my children?

Upon reflection, though, it’s not all that surprising that my kids stepped up when I needed them to. I am forever telling them to ask for what they want, say what they mean, and throw in a please or thank you and they can’t go too far wrong. What I had forgotten, in my desire to impress upon them just how awfully unwell I was feeling, was that I needed to do the same thing. So when I actually started taking care of myself, they started taking care of me too.

Yeah, it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life. And it’s going by faster and faster with every passing year. But today, I heard that symphony in my kids’ asking me if I wanted them to make me some toast, in my GP taking the time to listen to my symptoms sympathetically instead of treating me as yet another flu case, in a wonderful friend’s text offering to drop my girls at school this morning so I could rest.

It’s bittersweet, but it’s beautiful too.

And as well as being grateful, I’m on the mend.

Saltwater People

Posted on by • Posted in Musings, Ocean, Sea, Writing • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , • 1 Comment
I Will Never Turn My Back on the Ocean...

The Surfers’ Code: I Will Never Turn My Back on the Ocean.

One of my life’s greatest joys is living close to the ocean.  Smelling the briny air each morning, feeling the salt on my skin after a swim, hearing the waves crashing onto the shore while I’m drifting off to sleep at night — these are all things that I love. Things I would have trouble giving up, or even trading for something else.

I don’t need to be in the sea, I just need to be near it. To see it, at the very least, every day. I love being able to bear witness to the ocean’s varying colours and moods, and I find security in the knowledge that the stormy grey chaos I see one day could very well be sun-tipped sapphire saltwater the next. Like life itself, the ocean is ever-changing.

When I see the ocean, I see power. I see a potent, expansive presence. We may speak of the good green earth on which we live, but it is no accident that anyone who has seen our world from space refers to it as the Blue Planet: more than seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by sea.

The ocean is a force to be reckoned with.  It is teeming with life, but is just as capable of taking life away. It gives and it takes, it ebbs and it flows. The ocean has hidden depths, far beyond our reach. There are mysteries beneath the waves that we may never see. The ocean, with all its power and its wonder, has my utmost respect.

The Bloke's rule of thumb...it's a good one, and he's sticking to it.

The Bloke’s rule of thumb…it’s a good one, and he’s sticking to it.

The Bloke has a different relationship with the sea to me: he needs to immerse himself in it. He rejoices in it, revels in it. My husband is happiest when he is swimming, surfing, snorkeling, or Scuba diving. Being in the water is his downtime, his exercise, his release — even his hangover cure. Given half the chance, I suspect he would live underwater if he could. Yet while we may connect to the sea in different ways, we both have a love of the ocean that is as strong as it is lifelong. And when we’re no longer here to see and ride the waves, our Wills specify exactly which part of the sea our ashes should be scattered over, so the ocean can claim us one last time.

Jacques Yves Cousteau once said that “the sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever”. Our children have already been well and truly captured by the ocean, though perhaps, with the parents they have, they didn’t have much choice but to become saltwater people too. And while they may not yet know exactly what they need from the sea — to be in it, to be near it, to see it, or something else entirely — we are all loving the experience of allowing them to explore the ocean, inside and out. I don’t just mean they are learning to swim in the sea or in an oceanside rockpool, different as those experiences are from swimming in a backyard pool, they are also learning to negotiate waves, to understand tides, to recognise rips, to go with the flow.

Shaun Thompson...surfer, father, environmentalist, actor, author, businessman, legend.

Shaun Tomson…surfer, father, environmentalist, actor, author, businessman, legend.

And as they learn more about the ocean, our kids are also beginning to appreciate the Surfers’ Code — or my preferred version of it, which was set down by Shaun Tomson, the former world champion surfer who was an integral part of the Free Ride Generation, and a person I greatly admire. The tenets of the Surfers’ Code are as much lessons for life as they are for living with the sea, and the first of them is as simple as it is powerful: I will never turn my back on the ocean.

It was gratifying to hear one of the kids call, “Never turn your back on the ocean!” to her sister the other day, just in time to stop her getting wiped out by a wave. It might have only been shorebreak, but knowing that the principle had been absorbed brought a smile to my face. One day, hopefully, they will take this and the other precepts set down by Tomson and apply them to their lives as much as they do to being in the surf: I will take the drop with commitment…I will watch out for other surfers…I will paddle back out…There will always be another wave…

After all, as Anne Morrow Lindberg wrote,”The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea”.

Then again, for some of us, the sea itself is a gift.

The Wellspring

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My First Principles: words, music, food.

Know your First Principles…

This month marks the first anniversary of the day I sat down, summoned my courage and started blogging. From the outset, I have said that this is where I come to make sense of it all, and after twelve months of showing up on the page I firmly believe that doing so has benefited me, and probably my family, too.

I believe it’s important to thank all the people who have joined me since I set sail on this voyage, and to make special mention of the mums who sought me in the school playground to chat about everything from Holiday Bonus Points to the meaning of saudade, or to jokingly re-introduce themselves after I blogged about The Name Game. I want to thank the friends who provided early encouragement (and who, to my eternal gratitude and partial disbelief, continue to do so), as well as the hundreds of complete strangers who stumbled across my little site and stayed to read a post or two. Discovering that my words have been read by people all over the world, from Argentina to Germany, Turkey to Taiwan, as well as here in Australia has been an astonishing and humbling experience.

Find your wellspring...

Find your wellspring…

I believe there is a wellspring in each of us, the source of our creativity and our connection with humanity and the planet we are so lucky to live on.  Writing this blog has enabled me to dive into that wellspring and to clarify what is important to me, what I am passionate about, and also what I am challenged by. It has provided me with a platform to speak my truth, whether I was struggling to make sense of the Sydney Siege, or speaking out against the death penalty, or fangirling over my two favourite Toms (Wlaschiha and Hiddleston), or reveling in the beauty of street art.  And writing about all these things has enabled me to connect with people in ways I never have before.

I believe that I am truer to my First Principles – my Holy Trinity of words, music and food – when I visit my wellspring regularly.   When I align myself to these three things, my most important sources of nourishment, I live a better and far more authentic life. I may not always progress smoothly; life simply isn’t like that. But honouring the things that make me who I am and finding the time and space to share them with others certainly makes it easier to deal with the inevitable ups and downs that characterise every person’s existence.  Blogging reminds me that we are all riding this rollercoaster together, and that it can be terrifying and thrilling and every other kind of emotion I can name (and probably a few I don’t know yet know precisely the right word for) along the way.  It also prompts me to remember that the same is true for each of us, the world over.

Connect...

Connect to your own greatness…

I believe I am blessed in my life to be supported by my family, the crazy trio you may laughed with – or perhaps just laughed at – and cried with over the past year.  You’ve shared our adventures and misadventures, and witnessed some of the tests and trials my husband and I have encountered while parenting two strong-willed and independently-minded girls. The Bloke, Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop all inspire me, challenge me, delight me, frustrate me, and fill me with more joy than I ever thought possible. They also willingly put up with a wife and mother who is happiest when tapping away at the keyboard, and who considers herself incredibly fortunate to be able to do so on a personal and a professional basis – even if it means my life is regulated by the alarms I set to remind me to pick the kids up from school.

I believe, looking back, that it probably wasn’t a coincidence that I began blogging in spring, the season of rebirth and renewal.  Spring is a great time to start new things, and to watch them grow. One of the themes I have returned to again and again over the past twelve months has been seasonal change, as I’ve connected with the world as it transforms itself around me and noticed details I may not have otherwise. In the process, I have become far more aware of how I respond to the seasons and the unique ways they express themselves in this Great Southern Land. (As a side note, I would also argue that spring is probably a much better time to set resolutions than those first remorse-filled weeks of January when we lament our Christmas and New Year’s excesses and wish for the umpteenth year in a row that the festive season and the bikini season did not coincide.)

But having said that, I also believe that it doesn’t matter when you start something new: the important thing is to begin. To have a go. Or to have another go. Or even to resume doing something you love, because you know it serves you and brings you closer to who you truly are. For me, it’s writing, reading, listening to and playing music, cooking well and eating better.  It’s also exercising: running, weight training, and practicing yoga.

...and Begin.

…and Begin.

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend a yoga workshop welcoming the coming of spring.  It was a chance to find stillness within, to connect with my breath, to meditate on new beginnings and to draw strength and inspiration from the wellspring within.  Emerging into the twilight two hours later, I was greeted by the sight of the moon, luminous and full, lighting up the evening sky.  Seeing that shining orb reminded me that I, too, have come full circle, and I remembered what I wrote in my very first blog post: that what I write here may never be great, or even particularly good, but it will be mine. The most important thing was that I began.

So rise up.  Follow your breath.  Find the wellspring within.  Connect.  And begin.