The Mummy Car

The Heiress named it the mummy car because it was usually Mummy who drove her around in it. The mummy car made many a trip between Collingwood and South Melbourne in the peak-our traffic, with Grumpy Girl desperately trying to keep The Heiress amused by singing, playing word games and telling stories.

I bought the mummy car when Grump and Matt took The Heiress to Germany seven weeks ago but, owing to what Kinsley Amis called a “Bum Recital” (AAMI bum, roadworthy bum, VicRoads bum, City of Port Phillip bum, man-across-the-road-bum …) I only drove it for the first time today and will have to drive it home (in the dark) tonight.

For 40 years I have driven a manual car: the mummy car is automatic. There doesn’t seem to be enough for me to do. What have I forgotten? Gears? Clutch? Hardest of all is the leap of faith required to believe the car won’t roll back when I take my foot off the brake. Can it be true? I have done my last handbrake start? Corner of Toorak and Tooronga – bring it on!



I was very nervous this morning, grimly clutching the steering wheel and not daring to put the radio on (that’ll soon change – can’t get home without Francis and Ox). Then I tuned in to the good vibes left behind by Grumpy and The Heiress and knew I was safe. The wheels on the car would go round and round, round and round and the person in the car would be protected by familiar mitochondrial DNA, notwithstanding the driver behind going toot, toot, toot! Toot, toot, toot! All the way to town.

Endless weekend

Our third weekend without The Heiress and definitely the worst. The first one was spent cleaning up the aftermath of 3 extra bodies and their stuff in our small apartment and the second one was Easter with its distractions. But yesterday the Great Nothingness descended. What did we do on weekends in the olden days before Mads was born?

We began the day at Camby Market which Dr Shed loves and I tolerate once per decade. We left there with a supply of rusty washboards, useless tools and fresh colds.
From there it was off to DFO for some el cheapo tees, whose relative newness was the only thing distinguishing them from the dejected-looking clothing at Camby.
This was followed by a walk around Albert Park Lake throwing thawing cake at the ducks. (I had at last found time to clean out the freezer).

The afternoon loomed ominously ahead. Half an hour on Skype talking to Grumpy Girl made me feel both better and worse. It’s fab technology but there’s no bod to bod. Grandparents need cuddles.

The Heiress has gone. To live in Germany. So have her mum, Grumpy Girl and dad, Matthew. Dr Shed and I have lost our first born daughter and our only grandchild. It is very very depressing. What’ll we do on weekends now? No more play parks, babychinos, Hooble Dooble DVDs, bath toys or playdough. No more singing nursery rhymes in the car, no more tram rides along St Kilda Rd pointing out the floral clock, the Arts Centre spire and Mummy’s old school (VCA). No more lying on the floor of the Great Hall, choosing our favourite colour leadlight in the ceiling.

No more chirping little girl voice, no more warm bod to bod cuddles, no more kissing the cheek of a sleeping angel.

Grumpy Girl has now sold 400,000 copies of her 17 books. Here is a picture of her and her little family on the night of the launch of her 18th. Note The Heiress in her Madeline outsuit (as she calls it)

Parking Schmarking

Because Dr. Shed has the garage stuffed with a wild variety of objects, useful, not useful, bizarre, unidentifiable and just a bloody nuisance, we cannot get either of our cars in there. We have to find two parking spots in the street and when we nab ones close to home we become extremely reluctant to move our cars at all, preferring to walk, catch a tram or a taxi or simply stay home.
We try hard to avoid moving both cars at once and if one of us leaves the other lines up behind and zips into the spot quickly so that no passing random grabs it.
The trickiest time is after work. There is a window of opportunity between 5 and 6 when the St. Kilda Road office workers head back to the ‘burbs, and the neighbours arrive home. I never get home before 6 and often have to park illegally. We then spend the evening competing for any spot that opens up. We have a slight advantage over most of our rivals. From our apartment we can see empty places out the window and can hear car doors slam and ignitions start. We react like Pavlov’s dogs: leaping to our feet, grabbing our keys, running down two flights of stairs and dashing across the road, often to be gazumped by a neighbour who lives on the lower floor. When this happens we act nonchalant and pretend we were just going out to collect something from our car so that we don’t look as foolish as we feel.
Some nights we are feeling quite satisfied with the spots we have until one of us makes the mistake of glancing out the window. A spot closer to home represents an irresistible Upgrade Opportunity and we are compelled to dash down again to secure it.
On the weekends the problem is different. The Blow-ins from Baysie arrive to enjoy some of St Kilda’s sophistication which, unfortunately, never seems to rub off on them. It’s maddening to lose a spot to a Bayswater bogan. I much prefer the classier visitors to the Indonesian embassy a couple of doors down. They are very sedate and always go home early and sober.
Then there’s the Grand Prix, the Million Paws Walk and the extraordinary intrusion of the Melbourne Marathon. Don’t get me started.

Limerick for a departing campus nurse

Oh, how we will miss our Nurse Trout!
She keeps us from growing too stout
She checks out the fannies
Of girls, mums and grannies
And tells them they’re all up the spout!

Pools

There are four swimming pools in my life: the ‘Fred’, the ‘Harry’, the ‘Jock’ and the ‘Albert’ each with its own unique ambience.

The daggy old Fred was originally called the Fred Dwerryhouse Swimming Pool but now has the far less interesting name, Ringwood Aquatic Centre. I swim here to avoid the peak-hour traffic on my long trip home. The Fred has truly bizarre showers - the water is on a timer and each cubicle is different. The most generous allows you a minute but the one I was in earlier this week gave me only 7 seconds.

Visiting the Harry, the ironically named Harold Holt Memorial Swim Centre (it turned out he couldn’t) is like taking a trip to Lourdes. There are lots of very elderly and infirm folk drifting along hoping for a miracle. The lanes aren’t labeled Fast, Medium and Slow but ‘Visible Signs of Life’, ‘Float Like a Lotus Blossom’ and ‘I’m Not Waving, I’m Drowning!’

The Jock is the pool at Melbourne High School and it’s for serious swimmers. You rarely have to share a lane here and can swim unimpeded. I occasionally get to swim beside budding young AFL players, usually from Richmond so I’m keeping a lookout for Ben Cousins. There are one or two things I’d like to say to him.

The Albert, aka Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, in Albert Park, in an unpredictable place. Ordinary mortals are regularly excluded because of competitions or even if Leisel, Libby or Eamon feel like training that day. But if I do get in I’m treated to a cacophony of sound and light, waves, water slides, fountains, music, aerobics and sometimes the hilarious sight of synchronized swimmers practicing their routine on the side of the pool. If you think it looks funny in the water, wait ‘til you see them doing it on dry land. Great entertainment.

Amazing! An insect read my blog and knew how to edit the banner. Many thanks whoever you are. Now I have to think of some witty slogan to replace it. Maybe the butterfly can help again.

Can anyone tell me how to edit the banner on this blog? That stuff about Sarawak is so out of date but I don't know how to get rid of it. I have millions of readers out there. One of youse must know

I’ve got half an hour or so to spare so it’s a good time to polish off the last of the 3 extra things.

Kartoo

Kartoo is rather fun but I did get some weird and wacky results looking for images to insert into a presentation I have coming up soon. Then, egotist that I am, I tried to find a picture of moi but it offered me August Strindberg instead. Hmm… must be because he wrote ‘Miss Julie’. Still, it’s good to try something other than Google Images.

Voyage RSS feed reader

I became rather wary of feed readers after the 23 things when I found them to be a distraction when I least needed it. On my first attempt at Voyage my screen froze, on my second I retrieved an article called ‘Spider forces family out of home’ which led me to a treasure trove of man bites dog stories. More distractions! Very entertaining though.

Semantic Web

I’ve been hearing about this for a while but the case studies linked to our Wiki helped make it clearer. The concept-based search is a great advantage especially when it can manage multiple languages. The diagrams illustrating the technology look horrendously complex so I am glad I’m an end-user rather than a developer in this instance.

Now I have done all my things. I hope there won’t be too many more encores. I just want to go to the cinema for free, thank-you.

23 things plus 5

I've just linkedin to 4 colleagues who I'm trusting to advance my illustrious career shortly. Get on with it gals! I've been looking at VuFind for quite a while as well as a couple of other similar products such as AquaBrowser http://www.aquabrowser.com

They make resources look attractive but obviously don't impact on the quality of what is retrieved.

23 Things - Gallop to the finish line

OK. It’s time to make a belated lurch to the finish line on the 23 things. I still have 4 to go officially although I’ve done 3 of them without realising they were on the list.

The countdown:-

Thing 18

The aspect of Library 2.0 that most interests me is user involvement in the creation and maintenance of products and services. Libraries are the natural habitat of technological innovation and the willingness to share ideas and applications discussed by Eric von Hippel in ‘Democratising innovation’ is part of our professional ethic. Library 2.0 is also progress towards really putting customers first that we talk a lot about but actually do in a fairly limited way.

Thing 20

I found two clips on Youtube when I searched for ‘Swinburne Library’ though one was recognizably set in ‘Mr Tulk’, the café around the corner from the State Library in LaTrobe Street. The other involved dressed-up library users racing up and down the aisles between the book stacks.

Next I watched 4 students wreaking havoc in the Monash University Library and spoofing a library tour at the same time. Then ontoanother group of students surreptitiously devouring Big Macs in the Matheson. Hmmm, time to find something more edifying but what search terms to use?

I attempted to watch a tour of the beautiful Library of Congress having been on one myself several years ago but unfortunately the camera operator had so many technical problems it was unwatchable.

The best thing I found was a video on a children’s interactive library which synergised with Thing 18 above. Nice!

Thing 21

Onto the Sirsi Dynix Institute to listen to a Podcast. This is a site I’ve used a bit with students so no worries here. Another Thing accomplished and the end’s in sight.

Thing 23

The Wash Up. Although the Things hung over my head like the Sword of Damocles for months I’m glad to have done them and am already using several to good effect. We librarians are guns at adopting and adapting new technology and proof positive that one is never too old too learn.

Will I keep blogging? Of course. Blogging is vanity publishing at its best. You can see your name in lights and no-one is obliged to read it if they don’t want to. What could be better than that? Finishing the 23 things that’s what.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Yesterday was the fifth and final celebration for my special birthday. Entering a new decade is a fearful experience and it’s good to have lots of people around to see you over the hump. We had lunch at “The Point” on Albert Park Lake – very pretty, very pleasant, great company and conversation and some amazing gifts. I feel very spoilt but I still want one more thing – a change of government on Saturday, topped off with a win in the seat of Bennelong. Then I can die happy.

Today is my birthday. It’s one of those Big Birthdays that end in zero and get you thinking about the meaning of life and the state of your superannuation fund.

A number of luminaries share my birthday:
1. The late great miss Veronica Lake who taught me that it was OK to have long lank straight hair;
2. The loathsome Prince Charles who gives me a focus for all my negative energy;
3. Condoleezza Rice – great to see a woman in power but some of her political ideas are a worry;
4. Senator Joseph McCarthy - now we’re in really dangerous territory; and
5. Claude Monet – any one of his paintings would be an acceptable gift should you be wondering.

Google Docs

Set up my Google docs and started sharing the writing of the ANZIIL report with Mary, Zarina and Sue, inviting Tom as a visitor so he’d know we were really doing it. But the next day some intruder with a Gmail address had joined the group and our document had disappeared! So it’s back to sharing on G drive I guess.

Hurray! At last I have my star for Week 4 and my cinema tickets are on the way. Bake up the popcorn! Freeze up the choc tops!

The original four family members (now we have seven) Left Foot, Right Foot, Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur

Information Literacy and Mango Tarts

The ANZIIL symposium in Hobart last week was a great success judging by the comments on delegates’ evaluation sheets. This was good news for the organising committee as we had a few difficulties along the way, most notably our man on the spot moving from Tassie to Brisbane just before the symposium and our Chair also changing jobs and being unable to attend.

It appears though that the glory days of Information Literacy are over. The feeling is that there’s less support from senior management confronting issues of accountability and effectiveness. It’s difficult to demonstrate the lasting benefits of many of our interventions.

On the plus side, the lovely lovely unmatchable, unmissable CRIG information literacy forum is coming up soon. The forum is timed to coincide with the mango season and, apart from the presentations, the highlights of these gatherings has always been the socialising and networking over a mango tart. The mango tarts were legendary but I’ve been told that for the second year in a row there will be none.

It’s a portent of doom. The thin end of the wedge. How long before no mango tarts equals no information literacy? I fear the worst.

A quiet Friday arvo so I've knocked over a few more of the 23 things. I've used Google Booksearch many times but have had another look. There's still not many full books I want to read on it. I've set up an iGoogle homepage but found it did not transport from one computer to another. I've del.icio.used and posted photos of four late great pets.

There's lots of websites about Second Life and some articles in the databases too. It was reading one of these that alerted me to the existence of Web 3.0. And we're just coming to grips with Web 2.0! Enuff already!

I'm off to the ANZIIL symposium on Sunday so probably won't be blogging until the end of next week. See ya!

Star Quest

There is a black hole in the galaxy of stars alongside my blog. Week 4. I SWEAR TO GOD I have done all of the 23 things up to and a little beyond that point. So, Big Brother, I eagerly await the arrival of my Village cinema tickets any day now.

SWINBURNE LIVING LIBRARY TOURS THE ANCIENT WORLD

There's nothing like a night shift to get you romping through the 23 things. I've Flickrd and Googled and now have a few doz more passwords to remember. What have I learnt? According to Google Maps I could be getting home in one hour and 3 minutes instead of the hour and 20 it takes me now. I don't believe it.

I've sussed out Facebook and Myspace and know that they are not for me.

Now that I've arrived at the rest week I'm going to indulge myself by blogging about Living Library's tour through the Ancient World. LL visited the Topaki Palace in Istanbul to interview Suleyman the Magnificent; Delphi to consult the oracle; Olympia to win gold for Australia; Pompeii to ask for a ‘please explain’ from the vulcanologist; Rome to ask Romulus and Remus about establishing an empire; etc.

Pictures and details are on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/15224574@N08/

Here’s a few to go on with.

OK, I've just polished off the Week 5 stuff, including subscribing to some feeds and blogs on health issues. I expect to be a complete hypochondriac within a week.

I've just done the Library Thing (23 things week 4) and now I know that 87 other people also enjoy the novels of Barbara Trapido. That'll come in handy.

After zillions of attempts and frustrations and much advice from peers, I have finally managed to Simpsonise myself. And it looks just like me!!!

23 Things

Just back from leave, I'm very late to the party on the 23 things. Have got as far as Flickr but have resisted putting up my holiday snaps. Didn't think you'd be interested.

Here are the 23 things I wish I were still doing:
munching a light and crispy pizza in Rome
savouring a chocolate gelati in Sorrento
browsing the market in Amalfi
sipping a limoncello
admiring the view from the ferry on the way to Capri
inspecting the ruins at Pompeii and running in to a former student)
visiting Santa's grave in Bari
touring the colosseum
sneaking into a bar in the Piazza Venezia for a free pee
dining right on the beach at Tolo with the waves lapping around my feet
consulting the oracle at Delphi
running down the track at Olympia
singing my heart out in the theatre at Epidaurus
having a picnic lunch in the grounds of the public library at Nafplion
baking in the Athens heat
climbing halfway to Heaven at Meteora
picking up the great vibe on the streets of Istanbul
admiring the homes of the rich and famous from the middle of the Bosphorus
rapping with Suleyman the Magnificent at the Topkapi Palace
shopping for cushions in the Grand Bazaar
steering clear of the Istanbul carpet salesmen
getting high on the aroma in the Spice Bazaar
choosing among a dozen different breads to have with my kebab.

Sigh!

In his book ‘Microtrends’ Mark J. Penn identifies 75 consumer groups which are growing in importance for marketers. I seem to belong to several of them: Wordy Women (gotta admit to this), Southpaws Unbound (militant lefthanders), Powerful Petites (women tired of buying their clothes in children’s boutiques) but most of all, I am an Extreme Commuter.

Driving from St Kilda to Lilydale every day I have tried most of the time-passing activities Penn discusses. I have decimated the audiobook collections of every library in the south-eastern suburbs and can claim to have read all sorts of weighty tomes I would never have struggled through if I’d had to read them myself instead of having a professional actor read them to me. Being stuck in the middle of the Glen Iris level crossing while some fruity-voiced actor reads Proust to you is a unique experience.

Language tapes are another option. Penn claims you can learn Spanish in 16 hours and get a job as a UN translator. I haven't achieved those dizzy heights but, on and off for 10 years I have practiced my parley vous and can now place an order at a restaurant or book a hotel in Paris while simultaneously negotiating my way around the number 6 tram at the corner of high Street and Glenferrie Road.

Penn is right about the marketing opportunities. Extreme Commuters are a captive audience eager for anything to make the drive more pleasant. Libraries should be targeting us. Just be careful with the relaxation tapes - ZZZZZ.

The Frontier Librarians, Left and Right are off to explore some very ancient frontiers in Turkey, Greece and Italy. I've got lots of questions ready for the Oracle at Delphi:
1. Will I ever have another grandchild?
2. Will Cee ever reach her goal weight? (She really wants to know)
3. Will I fall so far behind with my 23 things (this is only the 2nd) that Derek will let me off?
4. Will that beagle at Melbourne airport bail me up again?

I hope I'll be able to tell you the answer to some of these questions when I return. I'm not sure how many goes at the Oracle you're allowed to have.

Imagine this. The best information literacy session you've ever had. All the participants have chosen to be there and all seem eager to learn. They speak the lingo, they are all PLU, they are on your side. If you've had this experience you must be a teacher of library technicians too.

Clearly retrospective travel blogs are too boring even for those on the trip. Never mind, the frontier librarians have another adventure coming up soon. Stand by for the first installment

Novgorod. Did I say Novgorod? After four months I can still remember it but my intention of writing a retrospective travel blog obviously didn’t happen. I came back from Eastern Europe and walked into the busiest semester I have had in ten years. There are still two weeks to go and i am crawling to the finish line.

While I have been going up and down on the spot for four months Right Foot has completed his PhD and is no longer known as Mister Shed around the neighbourhood. He is now Doctor Shed. And officially An Historian. I am going to insist on his correct title appearing on every piece of mail that comes into the house: Telstra bills, Australian heritage magazine, parking and speeding fines and all sorts of junk mail.

His career as a jazz banjoist has blossomed as well and he is now playing in four groups, a couple of them for money. So now I am not only married to a doctor but a popular musician as well!

RETROSPECTIVE TRAVEL BLOG

Sunday, 11th June
Right Foot and I, along with my sister, Middle Sized Bear and my brother in law, set off on our “Not too young & not too old” tour of Russia, the Baltic countries, Poland and the Czech Republic. Middle Sized Bear and Brother-in-Law (BIL) had not travelled overseas since their honeymoon in New Zealand in 1969 so were diving in the deep end.

After numerous adventures involving Singapore Airlines, Luftansa, incorrect boarding passes, wrong gate numbers, etc we arrived in Moscow 27 hours after leaving Melbourne. By this time we had gathered up 9 other not too young, not too old companions so we arrived en masse at our hotel in Moscow where the staff denied all knowledge of our bookings. This turned out to be the pattern for all our dealings with Russian bureaucracy. Processes are very unwieldy, time-consuming and mysterious.

Moscow itself is absolutely wonderful - fabulous streetscapes and buildings such as St Basil’s Cathedral, http://www.moscow-taxi.com/churches/st-basils-cathedral.html
the amazing Metro stations http://www.moscow-taxi.com/sightseeing/metro.html
wonderful scenery (seeing Swan Lake which inspired Tchaikovsky’s ballet, at night was absolutely magical).

Russians became accustomed to queueing for staple items in Soviet times. Now they queue in their thousands for many hours outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to view an extraordinary relic: John the Baptist’s right hand, the very hand that baptised Jesus Christ. We saw many such demonstrations of unquestioning faith throughout Russia. It seems there is nothing like years of oppression to strengthen the hold of religion. http://www.moscow-taxi.com/sightseeing/savior.html

Right Foot led me to a park and tried to convince me that it was Gorky Park. It wasn't, but was interesting all the same. The old-fashioned, run down amusements reminded me of Vietnam. My favourite was a ride for young children, similar to a little train but featuring toy tanks instead of railway carriages.

Contrary to expectations we ate well. Petite had predicted ‘meat stuffed with meat with a side serving of meat’ but we found lots of fresh fruit and vegetables including bananas, bananas, bananas! The beer was not bad and the wine was not good.
As an accompaniment to our dinner we were treated to the first of several corny, hokey folkloric performances, got up for the tourists. No local would be seen dead attending.

The yuckiest thing was the lat night entertainment, the horrible Moscow Circus with its outdated performing animal acts. It was surprising and depressing to see that this old hat style of circus is still around.

NEXT: Novgorod

Oh the joy!
The Frontier Librarians have a grand-daughter. Madeleine Pearl Wallace was born on 17th October at 7.50 pm in St Vincent’s Private Hospital. She is the most beautiful, intelligent and finest human being the world has ever known.
Thank-you Grumpy Girl and Matt.

People have been chiding me for my prolonged non-blogging. No excuses really except that Winter saps my strength to such an extent that I usually lose the will to live between June and October and who would want to read about that?

Feeling has returned to my fingertips so now I can record the excitement of contemplating the arrival of Our First Grandaughter who is expected to put in an appearance in about three weeks.

Grumpy Girl is blooming: she looks healthy, relaxed and ready for anything which is just as well of course.

The only worry Right Foot and I have at all is the baby’s name. Grumpy is steadfastly non-committal and I fear the worst. One of those stern First World War names like Bertha, Dorothy, Mildred or Gladys. Could I love a child called Beryl even though she has a quarter of my genes residing inside?
Or the baby may be given a relative’s name in honour of a family member blessed with a winsome personality but cursed with an unattractive moniker.
I feel safe from all the cutely spelt names with their superfluity of Es and Is and the unfortunate inventions of a mother determined to be original but fear there is no hope of any of my current favourites making the cut. However, for what it’s worth here are my suggestions: Miranda, Alicia, Saskia.

Fat chance.

I have seen the face of my grandchild on video and on a 3D scan. It is like a miracle. I keep thinking how Leonardo da Vinci would have loved this technology. To see a 19 week foetus, looking a lot like Grumpy Girl and a bit like Matthew but mostly like Golum is a wondrous thing.

Eighty percent of a granddaughter
Grumpy Girl emails: “Just came back from the 19 week ultrasound. Baby's heartbeat a very impressive 158 beats per minute, four chambers in heart, two hemispheres in brain, thigh bones slightly longer than expected for this age and an 80% possibility that it's a girl!”

Grumpy is going to show us the video, a twenty-minute art-house classic in the making, featuring the inside of the baby's brain, with a supporting cast which includes its spine and a brief cameo performance by the kidneys. Pass the popcorn!

Nobs versus Hoi Polloi
On Saturday I gathered up my Hawthorn and Collingwood supporting colleagues and took them to the Members Reserve at the ‘G’. It was the first time I had ever been to the footy in a mixed marriage situation. I sat between two maggies, L and R who enthusiastically applauded each Collingwood goal and smirked gleefully across me as they got further and further in front.

When I used to watch footy with my sister on a regular basis we tried to steer the ball through the goals by stiffening our bodies and bending in unison in a sort of ritualistic dance. On Saturday I was dancing with R but we weren’t swaying harmoniously, willing the same result. Instead we moved in opposite directions, one of us horribly out of step, and in danger of clashing our heads together. Bizarre.

All I managed to win was an argument about the meaning of ‘hoi polloi’. The consolation prize but no consolation at all.

Full frontal fridge

Well the big old fridge is gone from the hallway at last and we no longer have to squeeze past it dozens of times a day. I had become quite good at this: although I had to turn sideways I didn’t slow down or drop even a morsel of anyone’s dinner.
Now, the simple pleasure of an unobstructed pathway feels like luxury.

The new fridge has a device called a bottle snuggler. It looks like a mould from a knight-in armour’s-codpiece and is supposed to stop your drinks from toppling over. Right Foot and I tried in vain to install it but just could not figure out how it was meant to go.

With the new fridge in situ it was time to stock up on a few favourite tipples. I should have taken the bottle snuggler with me. After a spend up in Dan Murphy’s I called in to Priceline to pick up a prescription. Plastic bags these days biodegrade within minutes and while I waited for my medication a bottle of James Boag fell on the floor and cracked. Soon the unmistakable aroma of bitter beer wafted outwards and upwards from my feet towards the very soignée female pharmacist. How embarrassment! Oh well, at least it wasn’t a VB.

Renovation Bum
There is a book by Kingsley Amis in which he lists the horrors of arriving at an airport:
Disembarkation bum
Customs queue bum
Luggage collection bum
Taxi negotiating bum, etc. etc.

Over the years Right Foot and I have adapted the Bum Recital to suit a range of unpleasant situations, most recently Kitchen Renovation Bum. Carpenters who put up a cupboard, leave the other six in a pile and don’t come back for weeks, incompetent plumbers who charge a fortune, and the biggest Bum of all, the painter who works for an hour, then announces cheerily that he is going into hospital for heart surgery the next day but hopes to be back soon! I may need some heart surgery myself.

Due Recognition
It had been a couple of years since we’d won a Trivia Night and I’d had to forgo the Mary Owen Dinner to attend this one but it was in aid of a very, very good cause and I do so love proper general knowledge questions rather than MTV videos and the other crapola that feature at many triv nights now. The downside of Friday night at the Hawthorn Town Hall was the appalling food but I’ll get over that. What’s really bothering me is the lack of acknowledgement for our performance. Oh sure the MC announced that Table 9 had won but we wanted the world to know that we were representing our University and stuff like that. So just in case anyone’s interested let it be known that Table 9 was occupied by seven librarians from Swinburne, one from La Trobe and one from Holmesglen TAFE. So there.

Grand Footling Update
Week 15 and Grumpy Girl’s grumpalino is developing finger nails and prints. Wow.

Eurothrash

For 11 years we have lived in an apartment building with communal laundries. For me, this has meant saving every dollar coin that came my way to use in the washers and dryers. It has meant going down two flights of stairs to look for a vacant machine, load the washer, unload the washer, load the dryer, unload the dryer, engage in barneys with my neighbours and stave off passing snowdroppers. It has meant engraving my name on four dozen pegs.

So the piece-de-resistance of our renovation was to be the installation of a washer dryer in the new Bunnings kitchen, Pommie style.
Such things are common in Europe and we finished up with an Italian number with the brand name Thor. For weeks we have been amusing each other with Thor jokes: “I’m thaw but I’m not thorry” and “I’m thaw too but I’m thatisfied”.

But the Thor has had the last laugh. The first plumber we contracted to install it took one look and fled the scene. The second did a bodgy job and when we attempted our first wash the kitchen cupboard filled up with water. The Thor’s next trick was to dance boisterously around the kitchen to its own bump and grind musical accompaniment.

At our next laundering attempt we both stood peering nervously at the Thor which sneered back, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

We were right to be afraid. Euro washing machines have very long cycles. The German one we had in Kuching took days to agitate, rinse and spin. The Thor wash cycle lasts 90 minutes. Our difficulty was figuring out how to get it to move on to the drying cycle and our efforts only succeeded in putting our clothes through the wash three times. That’s three times 90 minutes. At 1.30 a.m. the Thor was still boogeying around the room, the clothes were turning into mulch and Right Foot and I, bleary-eyed and anxious, were huddled in the bedroom awaiting the knock of the angry upstairs neighbour.

We were thaw all right but definitely not thatisfied.

The best news I have ever received in my whole life
After years and years of hoping and despairing, a miracle has occurred and Right Foot and I find that by the end of October, all going well, we will be Grand Feet! Yes it’s true – Grumpy Girl and Thieu (Guess what that’s short for) are having a baby (actually a Capuchin monkey if the photo is anything to go by).

We have been concealing this secret for five weeks now waiting for various genetic tests to be completed but Grumpy has finally given us the go-ahead to broadcast it far and wide.
So to the tune of “My baby just cares for me” please sing along with me:
Our baby’s got arms and legs
That’s what Dr. Skinner says
Our baby’s got eyebrows too
They’re all there on the ultrasound scan
Grumpy Girl is going to make me a gran!

Now at last Right Foot can make a start on all those wooden toys he has collected dozens of books about: Noah’s Ark, The Little Red Engine, A Victorian Dolls’ House and, above all, a stable full of rocking horses. Standby for ‘Rocking Horse Rampant with Flared Nostrils and Ears Erect’, Rocking Horse Couchant with Sable Bridle, Ermine-spotted Saddle and Tail Argent, and Rocking Horse a Little Wobbly, with Dodgy Paint Job but it’s only a Prototype.

My handcraft skills are at a much more rudimentary level so I have sought help from the ABC’s Play School website which has a long list of things to make that are within my capabilities, i.e. that of a preschool child. I think I’ll start with 'Toy Wok' (put a doll and a teddy bear into a wok and pretend it’s a space craft). Easy peasey.

Two weddings and a funeral (with another one to come)

Who WAS that insufferable American with the Kermit voice who presumed to translate the Latin mass and talked over the inspirational music at the Pope's funeral? How crass, rude and arrogant!
We couldn't get a descent picture on SBS so ended up listening to Ray Martin's inanities for a couple of hours. When Ray is the best thing going times are tough.

The rottweiler didn't look too bad in that first outfit but how about her teeth? Why wouldn't you get them fixed when you had the heir to the throne to foot the bill?

On the subject of 'The Bill' spunky June Acland married boring old Jim Carver on Saturday night in the latest episode of the ridiculous soap opera this once great show has become. Will we ever see real policing again? Bring back the scrotes and toe-rags PLEASE.

Bunnings men have taken over my place completely now. Roy Replacement for Peter who spat the dummy Plumber is, I hope, doing his best to make water come out of the tap at this very moment.
I have to keep escaping to nearby cinemas and have seen three movies in five days. On Sunday, all movied out and with Joe Carpenter firmly ensconced in the kitchen, I took Right Foot to the G to see the Hawks robbed of their only likely victory for the year. Right Foot does not know much about footy and asked a number of very elementary questions to the bemusement of the young woman sitting in front of us. "Which one is Spider?" "Who are the guys in orange?"
The high point was late in the third quarter when he asked, "Who is the one in the lime fluoro pixie shoes?" It was, of course, the great, high profile, former captain, Shane Crawford. General merriment for all within earshot.

On the other hand, the Richmond supporters were still wearing their bloody idiot tee-shirts. Ha!

Part two of the Great Renovation of 05 is underway - the installation of a Bunnings kitchen - which means a constant succession of tradesmen:
Andrew Apprentice Electrician
Peter Plumber
Joe Installer
Frank Tiler
Aldo Not Sure What He Does But Seems To Be Indispensible And Will Have To Be Paid.

None of these guys much likes working on 50 year-old appartments. Peter Plumber was the first to spit the dummy. It was all too hard so he packed up his tools and went home, throwing the schedule into disarray and forcing Right Foot and me to camp in the dining room, boiling kettles and cooking toast on the floor. It's going to be another fun weekend. Grrrr.

Floored by a flawless floor.
The delays and cost blow-outs are over. We now have an ice-rink gleaming, ballet rehearsal room sheening, Tassie Oak MAGNIFICENT floor. It looks a million dollars which is roughly what it cost. You could eat your dinner off it and we may have to.

Desperate Housewife

There is no furniture in our appartment and the carpet has been torn up revealing the concrete beneath. And not your smooth grey, parking lot, could-draw-a-hoppy-on-it, kind of concrete. Instead there's a vulcanic, granitey Martian landscape, sulphuric and acne-pitted.

We have rented a neighbouring flat which, despite having no power or hot water and all our stuff piled high, is Ritz-like by comparison. We need so many candles to be able to read in bed that it looks like a black mass and I choke on the smoke when I blow them out. We do the dash between Number 22 and Number 24 in our PJs each morning to take a shower and forage for food.

But amidst the Hell that is renovation I think we finally turned the corner when Right Foot painted the Feature Wall in brilliant yellow. A glimmer of hope is flickering in my heart.

Twelfth day of Christmas yesterday so I took the tree down. It is a melancholy task.

We have only room for a small tree which does its best to showcase our gargantuan collection of gorgeous, gawdy, and oh-my-Gawd! decorations which include a few home madeys and many we have picked up on our travels. My favourite overseas decoration is the cross-eyed Vietnamese Santa and the most intriguing home made one is a glowy white ball with a Christmas wish in red glitter pen from Julianna and Glenn. Nobody knows who Julianna and Glenn are, why they are wishing us 'Merry Christmas' or, more likely, how we have managed to pilfer someone else's Christmas decoration. Just one of the many mysteries to ponder at Christmas time.

Christmas positives
(1) Trying on a skirt in Myer. They don't have my size so the sales assistant goes down to David Jones to get it for me. By the time she gets back I have settled on something else. She smiles.
(2) Buying a set of bowls and the young casual has no idea how to wrap them. She makes two or three attempts while I make helpful suggestions and the queue behind me grows and grows. I turn and offer a general apology. The woman immediately behind me says, 'Don't worry, it's fine.'and leans forward to massage my shoulders.

Christmas negatives
(1)'Bad Santa'. Very bad movie.
(2)Living on shortbread and champagne. Longing for tofu and beans.

Ah, the bliss of living in a post-ANZIIL symposium world. There is nothing more to mop up except accolades. The international students were brilliant. Joy to the world.

On Saturday night we cooked Chicken Kiev to empathise with Petite Soeur who is currently shooting a Dulux commercial in the Ukraine. Oi! Garlic! Butter! More Garlic! More Butter! No vampires came near us all evening. Yesterday Petite rang to wish me happy birthday and told us that the hotel, the weather and, above all, the food in the Ukraine are excruciatingly bad. No Chicken Kiev to be had anywhere.

We have started feeding the possums again after neglecting them for weeks while we travelled. I gave them strawberries last night to assuage my guilt. Paris has no possums but our appartment was in Rue d'Esquirol - Squirrel Street. We didn't see any squirrels but we did see beautiful beautiful Paris and all its wonders. And tasted the best ice-cream in the world, excellent crepes, leaden croque madame, tolerable wine and vastly inferior fruit and vegetables. I bought two jumpers in Gap and lots and lots of books, all written in French so requiring concentration.

We went to a revue at the Lido which looked a lot less sleezy than the Moulin Rouge from the outside. The show itself was colourful but rather lame: I think it had been toned down for the more conservative tourists. I have seen far racier things in Melbourne.

One Saturday we went to a marche aux puces (flea market) where Right Foot was in his element. He even found an aeroplane ashtray, at a price no Aussie could consider. Much of the stuff there would have been in an antique shop in Australia. When I could finally drag Right Foot away we went to Pere Lachaise Cemetery which was cold, wet and pretty miserable. We struggled with our map in the wind and rain, trying to find Abelard and Heloise, the original residents. Several people asked us for directions to Jim Morrison's grave. We eventually caught up with them all - Spaniards, Italians, Japanese, all way to young to remember Jim Morrison but making the pilgrimage all the same. The young Italian was quietly singing 'Light my fire'. Right Foot had only one question - 'who was Jim Morrison?'

Snapshots from Shanghai.
The photos are back and show us cavorting along the Bund on China's National Day(s) holiday, mixing with the locals all of us wearing party hats. Coming from 'Audalia' seemed to be acceptable. We didn't get the negative reaction we often did in Malaysia.

We visited the museum which was beautiful, restful and very interesting.Museums in Asia are unpredictable: this is one of the best.

I had no trouble fulfilling my desire of purchasing a hot pink cable-knit jumper - gorgeous! But our quest to buy coffee was a major undertaking, requiring a lot of miming and head-shaking. We eventually found a small, hard-to-open jar of bitter instant coffee in a locked cabinet in a supermarket. Everything else on offer was self service but the coffee was obviously too precious a commodity for that.

It was a shame to leave the wonderfully comfortable Broadway Mansions hotel, especially for an overnight flight with the capricious and, dare I say it, inscrutable China Eastern Airways. Never mind - at the other end was Paris and our first-ever landing on continental Europe. So very exciting.

Arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport in the early hours of next morning took the edge off the excitement. We had to wait for the Bureau de Change to open before we could buy a rail ticket to the Gare du Nord and on to our accommodation in Place d'Italie. Our early attempts at communicating in French were disappointing but at least we could read the signage.

Meanwhile back in the real world.
Last night on SBS a program on ancient Greece explained that the word 'symposium' originally only meant a 'drinking session'. WHY did they change it? Helping to organise the ANZIIL symposium is quite a responsibility. I don't think I'll ever be nervous again about writing and delivering a paper. That's for babies.

Today is that horrible first day back at work after a holiday when you are deluged by emails, questions, gossip and backlogs of urgent stuff as you grimly fight to rise above residual jetlag and depression.

Two weeks in France left me cursing my English and Irish forebears for emigrating and depriving me of my European birthright. How could they leave? How COULD they? Wonderful Paris: the culture, the architecture, the sophistication. Amazing Avignon with a view of the Papal Palace from our hotel window and where I danced along the 'pont' of song and story. Although Right Foot loved it all too he did not share my sense of loss, becoming more and more Aussie every day. And there ARE negatives. Here are some: the high carb diet of croissants for breakfast, baguettes for lunch and crepes for dinner makes you feel sluggy and spong. The fruit and vegetables are essentially compost and good coffee is hard to find. And as for tofu. Quand?
In Avignon we stayed at the Ibis which is pronounced 'Abyss' in French and the breakfasts were exactly that, abyssmal.
Worst of all, smoking is public places is still permitted and prevalent. As an American girl we met at the Arc de Triomphe said, "Like, didn't they get the memo?"

They smoke all over you in China too but the food is much better - beautiful vegetables, plenty of tofu and magnificent brekkies at the Novotel in Beijing and the Broadway mansions in Shanghai. It was National Day celebrations in Shanghai and life was one long street party. They have lovely museums and nice shops. The Bund was everything I hoped.
Beijing has nice places too but the museums are badly curated, poorly lit, dusty and dingy. It is also scam city and the harassment on the street is fierce. Our best day was a trip out to Simatai where you can walk on the only remaining authentic section of the Great Wall. It was exhilarating and hugely satisfying.

And now we're back in little old Melbourne which is OK I suppose. At least the smokers have to stay outside in the cold, tee hee hee.

This morning Right Foot and I withdrew all our money from our running away account. We have done quite a bit of running away over the last few years and there was only $164 left but we hope this is enough for a Supreme de Volaille and a Crepe Suzette which we have been hanging for since 1968.
We have also voted in the federal election, packed the vegemite and a selection of native flora which I suspect will not get past the first customs officer who sees it and certainly no where near its intended destination, the Australian memorial at Villers Bretonneux. A lady in the tourist office in Peterborough, South Australia has sent over several Glad resealable sandwich bags containing sprays from indigenous shrubs so Right Foot can leave them in memory of his great uncle, a 19 year-old Peterborough local who was killed at the Somme in 1915. I hope these tributes don't end up in a bin along with a collection of putrid salamis, raw cheeses and ostriche feathers. The kind lady deserves more, so does Right Foot and so, especially, does great uncle David.

Two more sleeps and Right Foot and I are off to Shanghai, France and Beijing in that order. I am very excited, never having been to Continental Europe before. But before we get there I'll see Shanghai in all its Last Emperor glory (I hope). We are flying with Dodgy Air and they are even more obsessive about reconfirming flights than I am. We arrive on National Day, a major public holiday, so are expecting chaos. My Mandarin teacher has written down the address of the hotel in Chinese characters for me so that's gotta help doesn't it?

My last civic duty before I go is attending tonight's graduation ceremony, wearing my highest heels so I don't trip over my trailing gown, and with my mortar board rammed down over my eyebrows to prevent its slipping off. I don't do costuming-up well.

After months of "Yes I will, no I won't" I posted my cheque for Membership of the MCC and am now awaiting the arrival of a shiny medallion or something. I wrote the cheque out weeks ago and twice walked to the postbox and came home with it still in my hand. After 20 years on the waiting list I couldn't decide whether I really wanted to join up but now the deed is done. It was the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony that made me decide.
Soon I can start dining with the nobs and frocking up for the footy. I wonder if I ever will.