Theatre with child

The thing I liked about Nyet Nyet’s picnic was that it didn’t compromise. It didn’t lose the perspective (I know I’m supposed to say lens right there) it came from. Well, as far as I could tell it didn’t compromise. From the lens I was using. White, middle-class eyes. Oh look, and I found something to back me up here.

It was pretty scary. I wondered at times whether I really approved of myself letting (making?) my children sit there. Particularly at the one or two points where my eldest boy was petrified. And who wouldn’t be petrified? I mean look at them. Snuff puppets are enormous. Huuuuge. You’re seven years old, you’re in a big dark cavern of a space and the mother bunyip looms over you. That mother bunyip was, without exaggeration, as tall as a not small house. Taller than our house for sure.

And not to mention the towering man with his head caught on fire staggering about the auditorium and roaring a gutteral roar. A lot of the children (including, I think, my youngest) revelled in the frightening, in the way that people do on the Ghost Train or a rollercoaster. Screaming exaggerated screams as the bunyip loomed overheard.

If Dreamtime stories are supposed to act as a cautionary tales, well, in our house it’s worked. I’m pretty confident my kids won’t be getting too close to the campfire that’s for sure.

Through it all, my boys were on high alert. ‘They could come out from any of those corners, Mum’. ‘I didn’t see where that other bunyip went, did you?’ ‘Is there anything else in that lagoon?’

Bunyips? We believe.

But there were fart jokes too. And poo. What makes fart jokes so funny? I just can’t see it.

When it was finished, I let my boy peek behind the curtain to see the lifeless bunyip. Pretty sure it didn’t look lifeless to him. Pretty sure it looked like it had one eye open. Always.

But like I said to him that night when we were snuggled up together in bed (don’t leave until I’m asleep, okay?) if you can handle Ben10* then you’re up for a bit of Dreamtime.

*Watched it on holiday with his Granny – according to the mister, if I’d seen it, I would have been disapproving. Sometimes I wonder: is that my job? To disapprove.

books




books

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

The dust on my books is depressing me. Their disorder is distressing me. They are horizontal, vertical, diagonal. They are in wobbly piles all over the house. Next to my bed, the fridge, the television, my favourite chair. The new bookcase, delivered only yesterday, is full.

The edges of their classification have long ago blurred. Time was, you could see the fiction, non-fiction line. You knew where to go for Australian history, Russian history, Spanish history. Australian literature. Magical realists. Playscripts. All alphabetical by author. Of course.

It was great.

I am going to order my books by colour. Spine colour. It will be an undemanding order and will require little maintenance. I will not grade the shades of orange or black. I will not concern myself with their size.

The only exception will be the books which I brought home from my grandfather’s. They are sitting together on the top shelves of my new bookshelf. I am their guardian but it would not be right to subsume them into my collection. The subsumption would be an untimely assumption.

What should I do with the piles of Australian Book Reviews? Throw them out? But they’re so interesting to flick through every now and then. Here. Put them in this box and put this box in the studio to be reopened again the next time I try to bring order to my life. What about this patchy collection of New Yorkers and this incomplete set of Overlands? I don’t know. Are you going to read them again? Probably not. Do you like having them? Not when they get dusty and disorderly like this. Then throw them out.

I can’t.

Don’t get me started on the children’s books. They have a lot more books than I realised. Did I buy them all? I must have though I don’t know when. At Christmas time, and birthdays. But there’s more books here than that. They are unwieldy things in all manner of awkward sizes. And so, this afternoon, I have given them three homes. This shelf in the study for the large picture books and those two bottom shelves on that bookcase in their room. The very bottom shelf for smaller picture books, and the one above for the growing collection of novels. There’s four homes if you count the space I made in the cupboard for the board books. Next to the bag with grow suits and singlets.

Time goes.

Here is the box of books I am throwing into the recycling bin and here is the box I am giving away.

When this job is done I will be able to read my books again. It’s going to be great.

Lunchtime in Adelaide

I was going to sit down and watch Days of our Lives while I ate my cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch (not toasted today) when I remembered that I’m boycotting Channel 9 until they do something meaningful about Sam Newman and The Footy Show and it’s frightening attitude to women. So I’ll watch Judge Judy instead.

Effective activism? We has it.

He’s chewed the new grapevine, but not the iceberg roses

So, we’re calling in the ‘we come to you’ dog trainers. It’s all very middle class working families, isn’t it? But as the mister said ‘you’ve got a station wagon and a beagle…if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…’. I guess the only thing I would’ve added was the pink pashmina (currently draped around my shoulders in a most becoming fashion).

Mother’s Day

A long time ago, I wrote this short piece about Mother’s Day. It’s not the world’s best piece of writing, but I still feel that way.

Like a great number of people, I don’t go much for the commercialism of Mother’s Day, but I like that my boys made me cards and put on a music performance for me this morning.

My youngest boy also gave me a box which he made at school. He had already eaten whatever  it was that was supposed to have been inside. It was a coffee cup made of lollies – with a biscuit for the saucer, a marshmallow, and what sounds like it might have been a freckle. I love freckles. Apparently, ‘the box is the best bit’ anyway. Plus ‘it’s still got shredded paper’ inside.

And now, I’m off to sit outside in the sun and drink my coffee and read a book for an hour or so.

Friday afternoon

Some things:

* I was going to tell you the story of the flowers (see below), but as it turns out, it is not at all what I thought it would be, and so it requires more work.

* I wrote you the excellent story of an encounter I had in the playground earlier today, but wordpress lost it – suffice to say it ended with me thinking ‘well, I hope my children teach your children to say f**k’

* This weekend, I will not be reading Philip Adams’ column in The Australian magazine thingo. No, really, I’m not. I hadn’t read it for months, and then I read the one he wrote about John Button. Doesn’t he bore himself with his constant ‘anyway getting back to me’s? And yes, I get the irony of a blogger accusing a journalist of being a narcissit. But, like, at least I let other people get a word in.

* Facebook has pretty much weirded me out. But what will I miss out on if I leave?

* I’m not going in the ABR reviewing competition. You can still do it if you like, but since I’m not in it, it means you might come second. Second seems to be the reserved spot for me. Actually, I’m not feeling too down on myself about it, I’m just marvelling at my consistency (of which I have been reminded twice in this week alone).

* I do not have to go and scrub the laundry or the kitchen floor or the bathroom this weekend. The house is on the market (I am not some kind of landed gentry, I’ve just been co-ordinating a real estate ‘project’ – not my specialty if you know what I mean).

* We went to Target to buy socks and undies for my boys. Have I ever told you how much I hate shopping. No? That’s because words fail me. Shops suck. Especially shops which drip synthetic onto your skin as soon as you walk in the door and which always seem to have all their stock strewn across the floor. Why is that? If I wanted to sort through shit strewn across the floor I’d stay at home.

* I considered applying for a job. A really interesting job being the Arts in Health co-ordinator at a hospital. I’m sort of qualified for it. Sort of. But it’s three days. I just can’t fit it in. What with one thing and another. Plus, I do have to spread my opportunities for rejection around carefully (see point about coming second).

* There is more, but it gets progressively more boring after this…

do have a good weekend, won’t youse?