Before…

Well, I don’t know why I am posting on my last summer holidays when I am off to Europe tomorrow and I have work to do. This is what you call procrastinating…

Anyway, I’m following on from my previous post and have here a picture of me mucking around on my mini malabu in the smooth water of the bay before I actually learnt to surf (posted for your amusement):

To be fair to myself, it is actually really difficult to stand on a board without forwards momentum. My brother does it easily but he is a gun surfer. When I took it to my favorite surf beach I had much more success standing and balancing.

Who’s that man?

Possums, I know you’ll all be asking, Who’s that gorgeous man in the photos, mucking around with the kids on a surfbord?

Well, he’s my brother. We had a lot of fun together over summer because he came down from Queensland with his wife and kids to stay with us. He taught all of my kids to surf, and I ended up buying his mini malabu (also featured in the photos). It was on this board that I also learnt to surf over summer. Fun, fun.

I have just been chatting to him on the phone. It was his 4oth birthday last Saturday! I do have a little bit of trouble accepting that my little brother is forty, let me tell you. Anyhow, he certainly is not acting his age. Unfortunately he had to report that on his birthday he had a skateboarding accident. He always tells his son to wear a helmet, but does he wear one himself? Does he in fact own one himself? The answer to both of these questions is, NO!

He fell from the top of a half pipe onto the concrete below. He tells me that as you age concrete gets harder; your relationship with concrete changes. He was knocked unconscious for a couple of minutes! He told me that he has never had an accident on the board like this before, but that the three stubbies of beer may have taken the edge off his reflexes. Did you tell dad? I asked him. Yes, he did tell our dad. That was brave, I said.

Anyway I think he’s alright. But he hasn’t been to the doctors to check it out. Have you had any headaches since? I asked. Oh yeah, sort of a dull ache, he replies. Well get your butt off to the doctors tomorrow quick smart, I say. He promised he will.

My little brother, forty…

… how’d you be?

To take it or leave it?

Well, I’m just about packed for Europe. The last decision I need to make is whether or not to pack the laptop. The pros for taking it are that I could do some work on the plane; keep in touch with friends via email more easily; download photos as we go and keep up the blog. The factors against taking it are: well, I would have to lug it around, although we do have a hire car and are not staying anywhere for less than a week at a time; um, oh yes and I suppose if I take it then it will detract from spending evenings relaxing and doing nothing, which I suppose is what holidays are for…

We are away until the 11th August. The hub has decided not to take his. This is the first time (since children) that he will be completely leaving work behind on a holiday!

The other question of course is, will I actually miss writing if I don’t have it? Since I started blogging in February, I’ve found that writing in the evenings has taken over from reading in bed. I have a pile of fiction and non-fiction books that I have hardly touched. We had book club on Monday and I hadn’t finished reading ‘March’, which I am enjoying and intend to finish. However, the group has moved onto ‘The Lollipop Shoes’ by Joanne Harris. Harry Potter 7 comes out on 21st July. Plus I bought ‘The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies’ at the conference in Chicago in April and haven’t had time to read past the intro. So I might have plenty to do without it…

Oh decisions! I’ll feel guilty if I do take it and guilty if I don’t.

One stop cherry pop

I have this song stuck in my head. Singin’ and dancin’ in the kitchen, Possums!

Deja vu

I put my favorite jacket on as I left the hair dressers this morning, and horror of horrors part of the zip broke! The little slidy thingy and the little keeper at the end that is supposed to hold the slidy thingy on just popped clean off and fell onto the foot path. I needed to go to the lou, so I shoved the bits into a shopping bag and kept walking; an action at odds with the feeling of regret building up inside me.

When I was more relaxed, I took the zip sections out and tried to reassemble it… It is a complete mystery to me how a bloody slider can pop off but will not go back on again!

Resigned to the fact that my favorite jacket was broken, I began walking back to my car. Suddenly the memory of a tailor on that very street stirred in my mind, but not clearly. I determined to keep my eyes open and sure enough, just a little way up the hill, came across a tiny tailor shop into which I took my big problem.

There was enough room in the shop for a small desk, two sewing tables and an ironing board. Spools of over-locking thread lined up on shelves added splashes of colour to the scene. A good looking Asian man of about my age with short cropped greying hair stood up from the sewing table and came to stand behind the counter to greet me with a smile. I took my coat off. I’m sure my distress was obvious. It was a freezing morning, and I really hoped that I didn’t have to leave the shop without my favorite coat.

He looked over the coat and decided that instead of replacing the zip he could replace the plastic keepers with metal ones. He prised the metal keepers off a zip he had, slipped the slider back on and secured it with the new keepers. This was a fiddly job and it took him about fifteen minutes. When he finished he put my coat back on me, said there you are and went to sit back down at the sewing table. I said, I will pay you. He waved his hand and smiled, don’t worry about it! Overwhelmed with gratitude and joy I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder as I thanked him. On impulse, I gave him a kiss on the side of his forehead.

That was this morning. As I was driving home from work this afternoon I reflected on the experience and a weird, intense feeling of deja vous hit me. I have kissed that person before, I have been in that shop before, and he has fixed something for me for free before. The whole scene has happened before! It was a long time ago, and we were both younger… Strange. Was it a dream?

What’s it all about?

Mid life crises, what are they all about? I had an enlightening conversation with a young acquaintance of mine on Thursday who is rapidly becoming a treasured coffee-date friend. He and I met at the start of the year at a postgraduate student orientation over pizza lunch. The lunch was a haphazard deal, you just wandered up to trestle tables set up outside in the heat, and helped yourself. It was then a bit of a challenge to find a place in the shade to eat them. After choosing a slice of pizza with hot salami, I turned around and he was just there eating his pizza in the shade of a large tree and looking rather cute, so I just had to go over and say hello. After quite an enjoyable conversation we swapped contact details and since then have been catching up for coffee periodically throughout the year.

Recently in conversation with Mirabella we discussed the phenomenon of the coffee date. She distinguished between a non-coffee-date friendship with men, for example the contact would be mainly through email or convenience, such as working at the same place, and a coffee-date friendship, where the practice of having coffee together and a chat is an established or natural part of the friendship. She has a theory that one cannot invite a non-coffee-date friend out to a coffee. She feels that the breach in protocol is too great to be born. If this is true, then I am glad that G and I have established coffee-dating as part of our friendship early in the piece. Note that I use the word dating here for want of a better word, because I’m talking about friendship at this point.

He emailed me the night we met and our pattern of meeting for coffee was set up. The first time we talked a kaleidoscope of topics for ages and ages. We both had fun. Its like this every time. Last Thursday he told me that he doesn’t have that style of conversation with any of his other friends. This did surprise me. Anyway for the first time we dug a little more deeply into each others lives and discovered that we are both going through life crises of different varieties. Mine, a mid life crisis and his a crisis of consciousness and direction.

He asked me a difficult question: What is a mid life crisis for you?

After trying to avoid a direct answer, I finally articulated how I felt as best I could and came up with the following: I have had four children. As you can imagine I have been very much absorbed by raising them for many years. For example, I was either pregnant or breast feeding for eight years straight. This was a wonderful part of my life. My children were my focus, but slowly I faded into the background. This is OK because you do look at your children as though they are shining, and you want them to shine.

But now they are older and I am moving on to doing other things. For the first time last year I left my family to go to an interstate conference and all of a sudden I was being noticed and treated as an individual. I was not used to this and found it overwhelming. I am used to it now, but I am changing as a result.

He is a very thoughtful person. His reply to me was this: So you are experiencing a certain amount of freedom for the first time in a long time. Sometimes freedom of choice is the hardest thing to deal with. It reminds me of a Sartre novel that illustrates what people will endure to avoid having to choose. In his novel, a woman is torn between her husband and her lover. But rather than make a choice she just preferred to go with the one who could pull her the hardest. You know, the metaphor is that each had hold of one of her arms and were pulling.

Well I could have kissed him then and there! This is it exactly! My role as mother nolonger locks me in, and freedom is scary. The other interesting thing we uncovered on Thursday is that I am eleven years older than him. How can such a young man be so wise?

Packing Light

OK, I’m thinking about what to take to Europe. It’s hard to imagine not needing a coat and a jumper. My favorite coat I have already posted on, will stay at home. My favorite jumper is a fluffy red polo neck made with 40% possum fur, toasty warm, will also have to stay at home. I will have to part with them. Raya told me it was twenty-eight degrees in Rome the other day (celcius of course, can’t think in farenheit) – a beautiful temperature. Shorts and Tshirt weather!

So I’ll be packing light and attempting to get the girls to do the same. I have a gorgeous black summer dress that I wore in Sydney on St Pats day and some Italian sandals. The girls have grown out of their summer gear, so all I think I’ll get them to pack is their shorts, Tshirts, runners, thongs, and I’ll buy them some dresses and sandals at the sales in Rome when we get there (our first port of call). Oh fun!

They can wear warm gear on the plane and I think that’s all we’ll need. This will leave lots of room in the suitcase for stuff we purchase. I am gathering a list of other items to seek out. The hub needs a nice jacket and I think I should supervise if not instigate this purchase because the poor luv has no idea. A pair of leather gloves for the beautiful Mirabella, and a gift for Dee, who bought me my travel diary (not sure what yet, maybe gloves as well – she is very elegant). Something extraordinary for my sister and Mindi and Cindi (my old school chums), and lots of little things for everyone else. I’m sure things will jump out at me when I’m there. Maybe an art book for a certain maths teacher who has revealed his love of sculpture, sketching it in particular (I know Mirabella will scowl at me for thinking this. I can’t help it dear!). All Kate has asked for are photos and travel stories – that’s guaranteed my dear, sweet cyber-friend.

The excitement is building

I received a very exciting email today from my girlfriend Jess. She has been researching cooking classes in Tuscany. Here is a little synopsis of the content:

I have found two ladies who will come to the Villa and give us a cooking lesson. They will arrive at the villa with everything – pots, pans, fresh food and good wine. I am going to organise the date. I think they are coming at 4.00pm on the day we choose, but I am waiting for them to confirm. We will be cooking a 4 course meal with stuffed zucchini flowers, spinach & ricotta ravioli, something that looks like a beef & pepper stew and panna cotta.

I am also going to book tickets for both families to the fresco workshop at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. This is a hands on “learn how to paint a fresco on a piece of terracotta” workshop, and I think we bring our piece of art home. The Palazzo Vecchio is famous for its magnificent frescos. I hope I can get us into a class. It seems a fun way for kids to enjoy and appreciate the art – by learning how it was made and having a go. I think our youngest two might have to pretend to be 8 again.

I have also discovered that there is a “gladiator school” in Rome, but the course I came across is a serious course for adults involving dressing up and real weapons! I am e-mailing my friend in Rome to see if she knows anything about it and whether or not there is a less serious version for kids, or some other fun way for kids to get into the history in addition to just looking at the ruins.

But that’s about all I intend to plan in advance.

Where would you rather be?

I don’t think Sally’s grandfather would have wanted to be anywhere else on his eightieth birthday! Whilst everyone else was engrossed in conversation at the dinner table, these two found a quiet moment to themselves. It was Sally’s idea. She wanted to play for him.

Thanks for the tips

When you embark upon a trip of a life time such as the one my family and I are about to embark upon, you find friends and acquaintances ready with snippets of advice for you. This is human nature really, and I am a ready recipient. We are off to Europe for six weeks (Rome, Florence, Paris and the Dordogne region) and have never been there before.

However, successfully weaving the advice into some sort of coherent impression or realistic expectation is another matter entirely. What am I to make of this collection of advice, Possums?

1. In Summer you queue for hours just to get into the art galleries, but you must go.

2. Be aware of gypsies and they sometimes work in teams of two or more. Be especially weary of strangers who begin conversations on train platforms. Gypsies look like normal people, but they have a look about them, maybe not quite clean or something.

3. Be aware of thieves, especially in Rome.

4. Never have your valuables hanging off your body in view. Theives will cut the straps if they see a camera or something valuable.

5. You will be surprised at how dirty and polluted everything is in Europe at first, but you will appreciate it after the initial shock. Its not like Australia.

6. You must see the statue of David.

7. Take sturdy walking shoes.

8. Don’t take thongs and track suit pants. People in Europe dress well. Take along a few dresses in classic colours like black or grey.

9. Pack lightly because you need room for the stuff you buy.

10. The sales start in Rome on 1st July.