comfy shoes


comfy shoesOriginally uploaded by adelaide writer

This is one of the most comfortable pairs of shoes I have ever owned. They are now so comfortable that I am almost too scared to wear them. Because doesn’t it always end in worn heels and grooves where your toes no longer want to go.

Goodness, they could do with a polish, couldn’t they? The mister’s shoes never look like that. He keeps his shoes very nice indeed. It’s a family thing.

And couldn’t the lawn do with a mow. We should get a goat.

PS In the very short amount of time since I took that photo (enough time to answer a few emails, boil the kettle, curse the absence of peppermint teas, retrain peppermint-expectant brain to accept green tea, glance out of window), the sun has completely left the back yard.

shit shoes


shit shoes

Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

This is one half of one of the worst pairs of shoes I have ever owned. They are quite uncomfortable because the soles are thin and give no real support. By the end of the day my feet ache. The thin soles also mean that during winter my feet are nearly always cold. As you can see, they are also quite grubby, though that is not the fault of the thin soles.

I wouldn’t be thinking at all, but there’s no footy on

I’m no longer completely petrified when I go on stage.

I’ve done it a good number of times now (I’m not sure exactly how many, though it is still a small enough number that I could probably count them if I needed to), so I know what the stage(s) feel like under my feet, I know what the mic feels and sounds like, I know where to stand, and I almost know where to look.

Raw helped of course, because it has allowed me to believe that getting up in front of people and promising to make them laugh is a valid thing for me to do.

It’s a bit chicken and egg, I suppose, but that confidence is allowing me to gain control of my performance (which in turn gives me more confidence and so it spirals on, or so I hope). I have a few solid jokes which I know will work – like Dr Phil says ‘the greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour’ – plus, I’m starting to understand why they will work. I have learnt to take my breath at exactly the right time, I have changed the word that I – and therefore the audience – always stumbled on, I have found a better order of putting things in.

This also means that I know the potential flat spots in my script. I know the jokes (I think we call them gags, but like I’ve said before, I’m not too good with the language of it yet) which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. In some cases, I’ve even made a decision to leave in a joke even though I know it isn’t quite funny yet. That might be because I haven’t got enough material if I take out all the stuff that isn’t quite funny yet. It might be because I know it will be funny, but I have to work out how. Or it might be because I need it as the setup to a later joke. In any case, I am starting to understand how to get the audience back, and I’ve started to develop a stock of material I can use to do that.

I’m also surprisingly comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to find a middle aged librarian funny (and not that I’m saying I’m middle aged or that is something to be concerned about, just that is how my character would be perceived – you know, in comparison, plus I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who wishes her bar tab included a nice cup of tea). This could become my ruminations on the ‘women aren’t funny, all they talk about is periods and kids’ debate, and one day I suppose I will write about that, but not right now. All I mean is that I don’t expect that everyone will find me funny. This is because not all comedians can be funny to all people. And that’s why the same universe has been able to give us both Woody Allen and Benny Hill. I think – thought my thoughts on this are still developing – that there are some people with a more universal comedic appeal. Dylan Moran, for example, or Ben Elton.

But now, as I write, I have started to think differently to what I thought I thought. See just up there where I wrote ‘I’m also surprising comfortable…’? Between there and here I have started to think differently…or at least to ask myself a different set of questions. Is being ‘surprisingly comfortable’ being rational, realistic and mature about me and my likely audience? Or is that just being complacent and not trying hard enough?

I’ll have to get back to you on that after all. But it won’t be until after we’ve been out to T-Chow for tea and I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy.

Crumbs and sandpit sand

‘Just follow through. Just get the dustpan and sweep it up,’ the mister said as Adelaide rested the broom, carefully nesting the pile of crumbs, glitter, paper snow and sandpit sand between the bristles and the wall.

There was a silence between them – despite the boy dressed up as Spiderman and the boy with the basketball – and her silence was this: when you aren’t here, I open the door and push at the mat with my foot and swoosh the sweepings into the yard. And then I hold the broom at shoulder height..I look at the shit that is scattered around and I think ‘that will all just blow back in’. And then I get the outside broom and I sweep it all across the pavers and over towards the lawn.

His silence was the grout. And the way that he always said oh, look here they are whenever she said I can’t find my keys.

Adelaide looked at the pile she’d swept and it was all the piles she’d seen. They’d been on parquetry, floorboards, lino, slate. This house, that house, that one too. The brooms were blue and yellow and red.

But those piles underneath the orange broom…against the lino that was never quite Handy Andy white…whose piles were they? Probably Mum’s. Possibly Dad’s. And who in the end had scooped those up? Who was the one who followed through?

Adelaide cleared her throat and wished again that if the cold she had almost got this week were going to appear it would just get on with it, she wouldn’t mind the day in bed with a book. And then she said: ‘would you like a cup of tea?’ and the mister said ‘yes’ and she put the kettle on. And later on, he stuck his face over the top of her book and said ‘peppermint or green?’

Temporary passing of narcissim

I’m feeling better, by the way. Do you know how I know? The zip on the coin part of my purse broke and my coins all fell out, and I just said Shit. I didn’t burst into tears. And I didn’t start constructing some woe-filled sentence about the symbolism I might attach to the passing of my purse. So there you go. You can ask me out for coffee again now, and I might even say and so, how are you?

I can do it

And so, making today’s step towards the simplification of my life (I know, if it gets any simpler, I’ll be asleep, but it’s just one of those times), I said and remember after the AGM I’m definitely standing down as Chair and they nodded and said yes, yes, we hadn’t forgotten. And I felt strong and good.

Taming the paper tiger

I couldn’t work out why being the secretary of a straightforward committee was getting me down so much to the point that when I said I could no longer do the job and no one else offered to take it on, I felt like bursting into tears. If I hadn’t been in public, I really would have cried.

And just now I realised. It’s the paper. Each piece of which is a decision needing to be made.