It’s still hot and humid, maybe that’s why I’m not thinking clearly

One thing I am working on at the moment is a series of essays on such fascinating subects as me and the things that I think while I’m busy being me (Oh, so you mean you’re writing a blog? No, I do not mean that, please shut up brain and let me write).

Partly because of that, and partly because of other reasons, I have been reading a lot of memoir and autobiography. I’ve always loved that kind of writing, that kind of book (Do you think maybe that’s why you like blogging so much? Look, I don’t know who you are, but please do shut up and let me get on with saying whatever it is I’m about to say).

Last year, I started a short course in ethics, and did lots of research and writing about ethics and life writing. I find this an endlessly fascinating area to explore, particularly because I think there are almost as many answers as there are writers. More answers than that even, because each person who reads that writer creates another answer and so on. I think that if I’d done as my teachers had suggested and paid (why do I want to write payed?) more attention to that statistics stuff in Maths I that I would be better equipped to explain to you how many answers I think there are in the questions of ethics and life writing and so forth. Though of course, I do think there are some broad and general conclusions about how we should or should not approach life writing.

One specific area I have been looking at while I’ve been doing that research is performance comedy as life writing. I was messing around with that research a bit more at the end of last week, which led me, by various circuitous paths to be comparing Craig Sherborne’s Muck with Judith Lucy’s The Lucy Family Alphabet. No, comparing isn’t the right word, but looking at them in the context of each other and in the context of the other forms that each uses and has used to say the same and different things.

This led me to wonder once again about which form/platform/format I should use for saying what it is I want to say. You see, some of it is firmly rooted in the essays, some of it is sneaking into my fiction, and some of it is leaking into my show as I rewrite and tweak it for possible production in Adelaide.

So now I’m back where I so often seem to be. In a pickle, and I find pickles paralysing, and it’s no coincidence that we now have a nicely vacuumed floor and probably by tonight I’ll have the kitchen sorted.

(So, look, I don’t mean to bother, but this ‘right form’ you’re looking for, it wouldn’t be blogging, would it? Oh, don’t bother me now, I’ve got vacuuming to do).

So I guess this must be autumn

‘You should have been here in August,’ people say. It was hotter then. More humid (one hundred percent humidity). I stand in the school corridor recovering from the walk, the sweat so thick it is a second skin.

When we first moved to Port Pirie my Mum would say, ‘There’s only two degrees of hot…there’s hot and bloody hot’. She was wrong. There is this.

Later, at the intersection, one of the mums I recognise but do not know calls from her 4-wheel drive window, ‘Hop in.’

‘It’s okay,’ I call back, ‘We’re nearly home. But thank you…thanks so much, that’s really kind.’

She furrows her brow as she winds the window up.

We are nearly home. If it is thirty degrees. Even if it is thirty five. But it is forty degrees. Humid. And two o’clock in the afternoon. I am carrying all of our bags. Those ten minutes are long.

‘It’s all right,’ I tell the boys, ‘we’ll have the car tomorrow, or maybe the day after that at the latest and then we’ll drive until the weather cools down again.’

Like everything here, the car is taped in red. The buyer and the seller must be present at the buyer’s bank, the seller’s bank, there is a valuation not more than 5 days old, a trip to a government department, forms, more forms, photocopies of forms. But it all goes smoothly and we take possession of the car. No, not ‘we’, the mister.

Our car is a humble one. It is not gold-plated. It is not a Lexus or a VW Golf. It will spend its nights parked next to a Hummer. Again, not gold-plated.

I have always preferred to walk or bus or tram. Here, that I am trapped without a car makes me feel twice as trapped. It is an odd kind of claustrophobia.

But my google reader brings hope. Look, it’s spring at Cristy’s and at Pav’s While you spring, we will cool down, and in a month or so, we will be out of the car again. And in the meantime, I can enjoy an Australian spring, without getting hayfever.

From 13th street

Settling in

We did indeed move the lounge, and it looks much better over there under the window. Funny thing I hadn’t realised is just how many photos of my Dad I brought with me. No teaspoons, not enough clothes and barely any books, but photographs everywhere. There he is: there and there and there. I might put one or two of them away. Not because I love him less, but because it’s too much. It’s just too much.

The lads have gone back to school today. Nervous, they were in their own different ways. They didn’t know which class they were in or which friends they would have. One of them worries his shoes will pinch, the other realises that he has outgrown Lightning McQueen and gratefully accepts my black backpack.

I remember those nerves, don’t you? And it’s not so much the nerves, but the fact that when you are six, you have no idea that everyone feels this way. In that respect, it’s easier being forty than it is being six.

Nerves wore off quickly, and excitement settled in. They hugged their friends, made bunny ears behind each other’s backs, then started thumb wars. And in that respect, it’s better being six than it is being nearly forty one.

So, here I am, alone for just a few hours in the house, about to get my butcher’s paper and textas out and get to novel work, bouyed as I am by this rather lovely review.

Homecoming?

And when, after an early morning and a not-bad plane journey, we arrived back at this place, he followed me as I walked around looking at the house I had only ever seen unfurnished, and he said, ‘Of course we can move the lounge,’ (an enormous blue thing that we snaffled for free) and then he said, ‘And we can rearrange the clothes’.

Until, in the end I said, ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to cry.’

All good things really do come to an end

One day to go. The end of the holidays always has to arrive. I know that. But when it does arrive, don’t you always wish it hadn’t?

Finished my show Saturday; got on an Edinburgh-London train Sunday (we had half a mind to go to the Ashes on Monday, but didn’t book tickets just in case and we all know how that ended up, don’t we); and not tomorrow (that being Thursday) but the next day (that being Friday) we’re boarding a plane to Abu Dhabi at 6.30 am. Which means we have to be there at 4.30 which means we have to get up almost before we go to bed, so we’re going out to one of those hotels which charges cheap rates because they know you’ll only be there a few hours at most.

Tomorrow (that being Thursday) we’ll need to move our things from this extraordinarily expensive accommodation (I’m trying not to spend too much time converting the pounds to dollars, but oh my goodness, I don’t think we’ve ever spent more on a holiday than we have during these four days in London – how on Earth do people afford to live here) out to the airport hotel and then we’ll come back in and spend the day at the Natural History Museum, before back to the hotel for an early night and a few hours’ sleep before the sound of the many alarms that we will set just to be sure we don’t sleep in, though of course we won’t sleep in, because we won’t sleep at all, too worried will we be that we will sleep through our alarms.

What a time this has been.

I loved every single moment of Spain, even the moments I didn’t. My show was awesome, Edinburgh was gorgeous and I saw Carol Ann Duffy at the Storytelling Centre. Also, it has rained as much as I hoped it would, and if only I could teach my body to bank the cool.

The lads are looking forward to going back to school and have spent hours discussing their respective birthday parties and who will come and what they will do (two or perhaps three friends each for sleepovers). The mister will go back to work. And I will: try to push my second novel into shape; rewrite the back end of my script because I’ve over-used most of that in Adelaide already; and polish off a few essays that I’ve written on topics such as adult orphan-age, grief and art, grief and comedy, middle-aged creativity and other things, and then I will not send them anywhere because I just can’t stand the thought of them being rejected. I will also drink less and exercise more and that will not be such a bad thing.

Talk to you soon.

On genre (a beginning – believe me, there’s more to come on this topic)

Learning lots. So, so much. And answering a great number of the questions that I hoped doing my first solo show would help me answer.

But I’m wondering, still wondering, which section of the fringe I should be registering myself in. When I first registered, I spent a lot of time tossing up whether or not to put myself in comedy or theatre. I steered away from theatre in the end, because I’m not an actor and I don’t have a director. But then, in festivals at least, ‘comedy’ feels so closely aligned to the gag-punch style of comedy that I’m not sure I really fit in there either. Obviously, I want there to be laughs, but I don’t necessarily want it to be stand-up, and I’m not sketch or character comedy mostly because again with the ‘not an actor’.

For the Adelaide Fringe, I was thinking maybe I could put myself in the ‘writing’ category, but does that imply something more literary? Poetry slams and spoken word and so on.

And not that I think I’m some sort of genre-defying genius. Flicking through the Fringe guide here, I see plenty of other shows and performers that are more theatre than they are comedy, more music than they are theatre and so on.

Maybe the guide needs sub-categories. Which leads me to wonder: do other people worry over this stuff or is it just because I’m a librarian?

And on the way home we got rained on

Did you know that there is a Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre? Neither did I. But there is.

These dudes, Clewis Productions seem to be associated with it, and we went to their Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes which was as much fun as you would hope it would be. The more I read and listen to his work (which is a lot around these parts these days), the more I am struck by the enormity of Roald Dahl’s storytelling talents.

Also, watching this performance with my newly-formed performer’s eyes, I was in awe of their ability to take volunteers from the audience and give them such substantial roles. Unpredictability, she be frizwiggling to me.

Is it Wednesday already?

Pleased to report that I am having a most excellent time. Over five performances, my (modest) audience expectations have been reached every night and exceeded three times.

More importantly, people are enjoying it. Over the last few nights, more than one person has said, ‘That was brilliant’, still with smiles on their faces. You can tell when people mean it.

In the meantime, we’ve been taking the boys to quite a few things. We went to Potted Pirates yesterday which seems to have been here last year as well. Excellent fun, and perfectly suited for our two boys who love a good dose of the sillies. The BFG has sold out, so I think today we’re off to The Greatest Bubble Show on Earth.

Would love to write more, but it’s a bit hard right now, not just tired, but lacking clarity of thought…there’ll be plenty of time when I’m back in Abu Dhabi.

Lots to say, but too tired to be articulate…

I have so much to tell you, but I’m tired…so very, very tired. My venue has Sundays off, for which I am extraordinarily grateful. Sitting on a couch (which is draped in a spread of dubious colour to hide the dubious colour of the lounge), flicking around the interwebs and listening to The Archers. (rock and roll? we has it)

I’m pleased. Extraordinarily pleased. For all sorts of reasons I will tell you about eventually, but am too tired to tell you about now. For now, suffice to say, still love my script and I’ve had lovely, gorgeous people in my audience.

On the matter of audience and getting one to come along…I made a good decision back there when I decided that if I was going to come to Edinburgh to have a look around, I may as well bring my own show. Honestly, if I’d come just to have a look like I originally planned, I would never have brought my own show.

I was completely unprepared for the…erm…exuberance of the Royal Mile. It’s just amazing down there. The thought and energy that people put in to selling their shows (okay, so getting around in your underwear isn’t that thoughtful, but there’s lots more than that). Looking at it, I feel all at once overwhelmed and inadequate and it would have scared me off if I had given myself an opportunity to think about it. Now, I look at it and think, ‘My goodness me, I’m part of this.’

All of this is not completely unrelated to the following brilliant sentence I read on Pen’s blog earlier today:
“So here is my advice to budding researchers – ask yourself a question you really want to know the answer to, not a question that fits what you think you can find out.”

And now, from my window, I can see a truck, the tray of which is overflowing with people banging on drums. At the insistence of eldest child we’re back to Our Dynamic Earth today, then Still Breathing which I think my boys will love.

PS Sorry I can’t show you any photos just now, but I don’t have enough byte in my giga. Shall see if I can find a coffee shop that sells good coffee and has wireless at the same time that I have both my computer and my camera in my bag.