On television routines

In which it’s a bit late on Sunday evening

It nearly happened again. I was on my way to bed – tea cup on the sink, check on the boys, lights off – when I remembered: BLOG! But I was kind of relieved because it gave me an excuse to turn the television back on and finish the episode of Vera. I do like the show, but it finishes a little late for a Sunday evening so I never watch the whole thing. It feels quite old-fashioned watching television on a Sunday night, but Rake has started it’s final season so I’ll be in front of the television every Sunday night for another few weeks yet. I find the Vera programming interesting because on the one hand it’s quintessential Sunday night ABC (British drama, although the space for British drama has morphed into crime over the years) but on the other it’s almost eleven o’clock by the time it’s finished which is a little late for your typical ABC Sunday night viewer I would have thought. But then what would I know about running the ABC? I mean, I would never have cut PM back to half an hour (a change which has DESTROYED my evening and that is no exaggeration–an hour-long PM has defined my evening routine ever since I was a child and my dad had it on in the kitchen while he drank a long neck of Southwark and got our dinner ready). Vera is reaching it’s conclusion after its somewhat horrifying climax and it will give me nightmares and why on earth would anyone watch such a thing this late on Sunday night? Oh, that’s right, because they’re a blogger.
(The jury still out on whether this daily blogger caper is a good idea–but see you tomorrow all the same)

On Saturday

In which Saturday night is not a rockstar night

I was just on my way to bed when I remembered that I’m a blogger and I have to post something every day because that’s what I told myself I would do and I am determined to do the things I told myself I would do. I know, that sounds ridiculous even to me, but anyway, here we are and I must quickly think of something to say.

Thinking of something to say is more difficult than it sounds because I’m exhausted and I’ve been writing all day and into the night and I don’t think I’ve got any words left to share with you. Don’t feel sorry for me though, because in about five minutes I’ll be crawling into bed. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the mister is having a nap in the back of the car. He has been jackhammering tiles all day so is more exhausted than I am, but teenagers needed to be taxied to places and in the end he decided he would just hop into the backseat and sleep rather than drive all the way back here only to drive all the way back there again. This is the price you pay when you move to a city without paying proper attention to where you live in relation to where your children go to school and thus where their friends will be located during their sociable teenage years. And of course they should get themselves there only the public transport between here and there is lacking to the point of non-existence and the party doesn’t end until one and a P plater’s curfew is 12. We could say you have to be home before your P plate curfew but I was a teenager once and I do get that if the party finishes at one, you want to be there until one. So, the back seat of the car it is for the mister (insert ‘joke’ about that’s where he was when he was a teenager too and something something irony, funny ‘joke’).

The other advantage I have over the mister besides access to a bed is a cup of tea. The mister only made his decision after he had left home so he hasn’t even got a thermos.

I think we can all agree the world would not be worse off if I’d simply gone to bed without filling this space with noise.

On Friday

In which I remain distracted, but am finally focused on the task at hand

I’ve spent way too much time this week distracted by the horrifying spectacle out of Canberra, culminating in the previously unthinkable relief that our prime minister is Scott Morrison. I’m not actually relieved about that because along with the deplorable human rights abuses committed by him, he abstained from voting for the marriage equality legislation despite his own electorate voting in fovour of it. Still, I guess overall it’s situation unchanged for someone with my politics so the week has ended as it began only I’m a little more despairing about the state of politics generally. I fear that the ‘they’re all the same narrative’ is set like concrete in our psyche now and that cannot be good news for civil debate. Oh, and the planet is still on fire and the Australian government certainly won’t be rocking up with a hose to fight it.

Anyway and anyhoo, the mister did ring me only moments after the results of the vote were announced to say that our new puppy will be arriving on Wednesday so life does go on for now at least and I’m fairly certain the sun will rise tomorrow as they say.

As a result of my distraction this week, it’s now 8pm on Friday night and I am in front of my computer, a toasted sandwich for my dinner and a shitload of work to do. I’ve finally switched ABC News 24 off and am listening to Double J’s playlist of greatest women on their spotify playlist. It is ace. And to be fair, even working is better than sitting down in front of the television watching my team who promised so much so early in the season lose the final game of the season.

I did have a much more interesting post underway for today but then I ran out of time to polish it off, because I was too busy writing even more emails to politicians, so it’s this mish-mash of nothingness instead. Until tomorrow.

PS I’ve tagged this Friyay. It’s a word I learnt from instagram. I’m using it ironically just in case you were wondering. I’d never use it for real.

PPS As well as getting my blog back on track, I’ve started a tinyletter, you cant sign up for it over here over here

On distraction

In which I spend the day attending to work as best I can

I can’t look away from the ABC and the news about the Liberal party eating itself. And trying to stay logged out of twitter. But I’m not sure what to say. And although it’s my dad’s birthday today I don’t want to write about grief or even about relationships…

…so today I’ve been getting some of my writing projects tidied up a bit, and as well as getting to work on my blog I’ve been doing some tinyletter work lately. So far, I’ve only posted them to myself but I’m getting on top of things now, so if you want to subscribe, the link is on this page over here

On leadership

In which I am utterly despondent about politics and turn to television

Utterly despondent about politics right now. Malcolm Turnbull has been an absolute disappointment. I mean I was never going to love the leader of the Liberal party, but his continual capitulation of anything he believed in–most particularly same sex marriage and climate change–was unedifying at best. The idea that we might have Peter Dutton has left me, quite literally, in tears. We are locking kids up in offshore detention, and our planet is on fire, and our solution is Peter Dutton.

But I hate, just hate this constant trashing of our democracy by the guardians of our democracy. I think I should write about something different because honestly I am finding this really upsetting and stupidly I engaged on twitter which is something I never usually do because it’s entirely toxic…I should just stay on the instas…

so, quick, what else can I write about? I can’t think of anything much and the only reason I’m writing at all is because it’s only day three of my renewed commitment to my blog.

I know! Over the weekend I watched the loveliest series on netflix–The Dectectorists. I’m a bit sad the last series isn’t there, but I highly recommend. It has that perfect blend of comedy (well, more humour really than comedy) blended with characters who walk on the edge of loneliness because humans and their friendships are always fragile but never quite fall in because friendships win. Writing that sentence has cheered me up a bit and if you need cheering up go and watch The Dectectorists.

On exercise

In which I discover the daggy world of the fitbit

I’ve been wearing a fit bit. I think this is a. quite daggy; b. slightly too focussed on weight and body image; and c. so late to the party that all that’s really left to do is pick up the glasses, tip the dregs down the sink and clean out the ashtrays (and that’s how late I truly am to this party because this party was held so long ago that it was full of smokers).

I have been feeling my fitness shift significantly downwards ever since I moved back from Abu Dhabi and while I’ve never been especially fit, over the last ten years I’ve been slightly above average and I do like the energy and strength that comes from a bit of added fitness. And if I’m honest, I do identify now as someone who has above average fitness and at nearly fifty I’ve got enough identity rediscovery going on without adding another element into the mix.

The main issue is that I haven’t found my exercise groove since I moved back from Abu Dhabi. This is a slightly good development because it means my life has been filled with things other than getting to the gym every day, but at the aforementioned nearly fifty it’s become an issue of ‘what do I do?’ Even when I was working full time, I did still have more time in Abu Dhabi for getting to the gym, and on top of that, the class structures meant that getting to classes with people of about my level of fitness was much easier. Here, I’m a bit out of synch with the school-mum routine so the school-mum classes start a bit too late in the morning; I’m not going to even try to pretend to be someone who can get to an early-morning class; and the evening classes are filled with people who are often twenty years younger than I am. It’s not that I mind being older, it’s just that it’s not all that much fun being in a class of people who are naturally so much fitter and also … well, it’s not that they are actually rude, but it’s true what they say about middle aged women and invisibility.

So I’ve been trying to do fitness without the classes, and when done well, time on the gym floor is more effective than classes but the thing about classes is that the thinking and the motivation is done for a person and all a person has to do is move. I’ve had a personal trainer for the last maybe two years, but I broke up with him a few months ago. There were two things underlying this decision. First, I wasn’t convinced it was doing me any good after a while. It’s that thing where doing one thing convinces you that you don’t have to do another, so all I was doing was rocking up, doing what I was told for 45 minutes a week but without properly constructing a routine around that.

Second, having a trainer is extremely expensive and I was conscious that I wasn’t getting the benefit I needed to justify the expense. Especially in the context of our current household economy which has seen an unexpected expense, the ongoing general expenses of teenagers about to go to university, and a more fine-grained understanding that retirement will come sooner than we realise.

My decision not to see my trainer anymore has been retrospectively justified in his attitude towards me since which has, in truth, been kind of hurtful as, even after a long absence from the gym, he has barely looked at me let alone asked how I’m going on. Not that he owes me anything, but after two years in what is a reasonably intimate relationship (you do have to let your guard down a bit if a trainer is really going to do their work) I don’t think the odd ‘hey, how’s it?’ is too much to ask.

Anyhoo, the point is that I realised that even with the trainer I wasn’t sure what exercise I was really, truly doing. Hence why (a phrase I do hope is going out of fashion as quickly as ‘ace’ because while I love ‘ace’, ‘hence why’ is weird) the fitbit. So I can understand what each exercise session is truly about in terms of heart-rate-raised and time-spent-ways.

The results are in: I am shocked at how little exercise I really do. As I suspected my time at the gym was not especially strenuous. But not only that I am way more inactive during the day than I had realised. I mean, I sit at a desk writing or on the couch knitting for most of my time so obviously I knew I was at least moderately inactive. But honestly, I can see now that there are days when I did almost nothing beyond breathing. I’ve also been shocked to understand how little sleep I’ve been getting. I do go to bed a bit too late, but even allowing for the fitbit’s inaccuracies I don’t spend much time in deep sleep.

As daggy as the fitbit is, it does suck you in with all it’s little progress measures (have you done 250 steps this hour? don’t you think it’s time you had something to eat?), and I’ve been walking a lot more since I got it (on which I will write more tomorrow, because how good is walking) and now that I’ve had it for a couple of weeks it’s cheaper than a trainer.

Perhaps the least interesting blog post ever written but it’s helped to distract me for another hour from the idea that Peter Dutton is likely to be our next prime minister. This is extraordinarily alarming and who will save us? (Julie Bishop? I bet she wears a fitbit–of no relevance to whether she can run a country of course. I can’t abide her politics but I do love her wardrobe–again of no relevance to whether she can run a country).

On tulips

In which I discover that tulips aren’t the only flowers

Tulips seem to have gone out of fashion, which is a pity because they’re my favourites. I buy a bunch of flowers every Friday with my market shopping. It’s my last stop on the way, and this final thing, a bunch of flowers pushed jauntily into my basket carries me through the week. Except less so because they’re no longer tulips.

When my dad was sick, flowers were my treat to myself. They were an anchor to the living. Which I guess is weird given that they had been cut off from life and now were dying. But I brought the deep orange tulips home and watched them open, their stems growing longer so that the tulips looked like spiders spreading out of the vase.

These days when I do find a bunch of tulips they sit in the vase, limp and pale, many of them never opening.

I keep buying the flowers, but each week now, it’s as if another part of my father has died. The world moves on.

Adelaide Central Market

In which I take hours to do my shopping but it’s worth it

I’ve been lurching from one thing to another lately and was starting to feel really ground down. And the more ground down I felt the more grumpy I was getting myself because all in all my life is pretty straightforward right now and then I was getting more ground down by being grumpy and so on and etcerearrrgh … looking at what I was doing there wasn’t a lot I could change in relation to my actual activities because it’s all fairly standard has-to-be-done kind of stuff: get the lads back and forth to things, go to work, do the shopping, fit some writing in … so I thought I had better try to build some breathing space in. That’s why I’ve gone back to doing my shopping at the Central Market every week. It’s been part of my routine for over twenty years, in fact whenever I’ve been living in Adelaide I’ve done most of my food shopping there. The foundations of the habit were really laid when the boys were little and it was an easy thing to do with littles. On Saturday mornings we would meet my dad for breakfast and then he would take the lads for a wander around while the mister and I did the shopping. We would often walk there from school and kindy so that we could stock up on apples (there was a time when the floppy adolescent would eat twenty apples each week). And when we were living in Abu Dhabi the market was one of the touchstones I used. After sausage rolls at our aunty’s a lasagne at Lucia’s was our first point of call whenever we came back for a visit. Walking into the market is like taking a breath of my whole adult life. It was a good decision to build it back into my week.

Running

In which I wonder who I even am

From 1981 to maybe 1983, at around 10am every morning, as students at Risdon Park High School (now demolished), we had to go out onto the oval in our (somewhat inappropriately named for this moment) ‘care group’ and spend what seemed like one hour but I think was fifteen minutes doing DPA. Daily Physical Activity. I cannot describe to you how excruciating each of those single minutes was for me as an entirely uncoordinated teenager with a dreadful fringe perm (why was I only allowed to get my fringe permed? That makes no sense to me) and in increasing understanding about how my hips did not conform to the Dolly standard. All of the activities were dreadful, but the most dreadful of all was the ten-minute run an activity whereby you ran in a square marked out by cones (or, more often, rubbish bins dragged across the oval by year eleven boys) for a total of ten minutes.

‘Stop being a dickhead,’ my dad said to me one day after school. In that first year at high school, he was at the same school I was and he had noticed my many and varied attempts to get out of the dreaded DPA. ‘It’s good for you to do things you’re bad at. Helps you understand that’s how some people are feeling in maths.’ Why he chose maths as an example I will never know, because I think it’s safe to say I rarely turned in a stunning performance there either.

Anyhoo, for many and varied reasons (including avoiding my master’s thesis) I did begin exercising in my adult life and I’ve maintained a surprisingly consistent gym attendance record for many years. And I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to running. No idea why, can’t even begin to speculate. But drawn I have been. Except not really able to follow through and for about three years now, I’ve had the Cto5 app on my phone. For a while I diligently follow the programme, three minutes running, five minutes walking, five minutes running, three minutes walking … I get my playlist increasingly hardcore (Rawhide!). I keep getting to the point where she chirpily says, ‘Congratulations! You are halfway through the programme! People who make it halfway complete the programme!’ And then I stop.

I haven’t really been at the gym for the last few weeks because I’ve been a bit consumed by my show and also I’ve been drinking too much so I’ve been pretty sluggish, and also I have had terrible insomnia. But it was time to get back into it this week, so after catching up on Barnaby Joyce’s latest dickheadery, I went down to the gym. I didn’t have a plan of what I was going to do, so I got on the treadmill for a warmup then thought, ‘Well, I’ll do Week 6 Day 1 on the C25 app again,’ and I did the warm up, then I did the first five minutes running block. At about one minute in, I thought, ‘Fuck this shit, I’ll do the five then I’ll go and do a few leg curls or whatever, I’ll start back properly tomorrow.’ But then when I’d finished those five minutes and she said, ‘Start walking,’ I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just run these three minutes, then at least that’s eight minutes and that’s not too bad,’ and then at the end of those three minutes I thought, ‘If I do another 200 metres that’s two kilometres,’ and the next thing I knew I HAD RUN THE FULL FIVE KILOMETRES. WITHOUT STOPPING.

Now, in truth, five kilometres is not a very long run for runners, but for people such as myself who fall off stationary bikes and punch themselves in the face at pilates, this is something of an achievement. When I looked around the gym there was no one there I knew well enough to say, ‘Look! I just ran five ks.’ So now I have had a shower, a cup of coffee and the last of the Florentines and I am still filled with the endorphins and I have to tell someone so I am telling you.

And people this is why those ‘letters to my teenage self’ make no sense to me. There is absolutely no point telling the 12-year-old me, ‘One day, you will be so very grateful to be alive that you will WANT to run five kilometres.’ She doesn’t need that shit filling her mind. She’s too busy just making it through to recess, she doesn’t need to try and understand how she is going to get to be forty-nine and wanting to run.
THE END

Adelaide Fringe: Louise Reay, Eraserhead

In which I see Louise Reay’s Eraserhead at Tuxedo Cat’s Broadcast Bar

I am going to interrupt my chronological narrative of shows I have seen at the fringe to tell you about the most unique show I am likely to see. Monday is one night when I can sneak in an unexpected show or two. There isn’t much fringe on on Monday nights (again, read it twice and it will make sense I promise), but I haven’t been to anything at Tuxedo Cat’s Broadcast Bar yet and they do indeed run their programme on Mondays. So yay. I know this is going to sound very, ‘Yeah, nah, I liked their early stuff,’ but thank goodness for the Tuxedo Cat. The large fringe hubs like The Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony are brilliant fun, and they have added a dynamism to the fringe and opened it up to audiences that might not otherwise have existed. But the danger is that their emphasis on carnivale and big-name stand-ups can suck the life from other smaller, quieter events and shows. Through the many evolutions of Tuxedo Cat (and it does sound a little like a Pokemon so perhaps I should call that ‘evolves’ instead of ‘evolutions’) Cass Tombs and Bryan Lynagh have been fighting the good fight to provide a venue that is more than a little bit left of centre. I’m not sure about the idea of ‘real fringe’, but definitely we need a range of different spaces and venues that allow audiences and artists of all types and flavours to see and be seen.

So now I’ve got that off my chest, by happy happenstance, the Tuxedo Cat Monday lineup included a show that I especially wanted to see, Louise Reay’s Eraserhead. The few comedians/artists facey groups that I’m part of have all had at least one post talking about Louise Reay, a comedian from England who is being sued by her (ex)partner for defamation. This goes far beyond the midnight tangles I’ve got myself into wondering about whether I should or should not say this or that about my mother, will people get the wrong idea, will they think I’m making fun when really I’m trying to demonstrate my love? Mine have been usual worries any one who writes any kind of memoir struggles with from time to time.

Being sued for defamation takes things to a whole new level. I can’t comment much on the whys or wherefores because, as explained in the many articles around the place such as this one the comments for which she is being sued weren’t in the show for very long. But I will say, as have many other comedians and artists (such as this one), I find its potential precedent a truly troubling one. And speaking feministically, I would also point to the issues of control. And just so you know where I stand (in case I need to spell it out), I will certainly be contributing to her crowdfunding fund to help pay for legal costs.

As to the show? Under the advice of lawyers, the original show has been scrapped and this has been written and put together in a matter of days and that does show. It is not seamless, and it is clear that she is sometimes still finding her timing. She holds a script in her hand for much of the time, reads directly from it for some of the time. But where that is often an unforgivable weakness, I saw that as a true strength. Sometimes ‘the show must go on’ is more than a simple cliche, it is a call to arms. A celebration of solidarity.

There are moments of palpable vulnerability and rawness that give us a glimpse of how deeply she feels the impact of being sued and the subsequent silencing of her work. We meet her mother through pre-recorded skype calls and her own sense of humour and her love for her daughter shine through. I was the oldest person in the audience by some way, and the closest in age and experience to her mother. Seeing the calls with her mother in combination with the aforementioned vulnerability it was all I could do last night to stop myself stalking Reay’s mother and sending her a note to say, ‘It’s okay, we’ll look after her while she’s over here, she’ll be okay.’

Reay is a truly unique performer, willing to take risks and to push her art. She has previously performed shows for English audiences in Chinese and mime as demonstration of the truth that communication is only seven percent words (and I was pretty pleased to find that my own rather basic and rusty Chinese allowed me to understand nearly all of the dating scene). She isn’t only unique, she is talented too. She writes beautifully, her delivery is disarmingly precise, and she has an oddly unassuming but charismatic presence on the stage. I have no doubt that she will one day soon be filling the tents down at The Garden of Unearthly Delights and I for one will be happy to buy a ticket in advance so that I can skip the huge queue to get into the GOUD.

In the meantime you should go and see this show, not only because it needs to be seen, but because you won’t see anything else quite like it this fringe.