Ganesh on a Pig

Now it's over, I'm slightly full of nostalgia for my Holiday. To be honest, I'd been slightly dreading it, because I thought I'd have just a little too much time on my hands to feel Dumped. 

Nothing of the Sort!

I just love this picture of my friends Jenny & Marge taken in my kitchen whilst we were waiting for my daughter to cook us dinner. I'm proudly holding a little damaged figurine of the Hindu God, Ganesh who I've always loved because he reminds me of Babar. Sadly, Ganesh is missing an arm but he still looks fairly majestic sitting on a rather life like miniature pig.

Both Jenny & Marg are posing like Senior News Readers, a job that I know that they both secretly desired. 

Don't Call on Me to Save Your Life

I've always been rather curious about the meaning of the term, 'Busman's Holiday'. In fact, I've hardly ever heard anyone ever say it. But I know it exists. It was the title of a Dorothy M. Sayers crime novel of the 1930s that I don't remember reading.

But  even though I really don't know the exact meaning of 'Busman's Holiday', I like to think that I've just had one. You know, fun & carefree, or about as carefree as a Woman who's been Dumped for Maybe Ten Weeks can get.

As you can probably work out from the picture, the holiday is Now Over, although you may think that practising CPR on an armless mannequin is a Fun Holiday Activity. After all, I did visit the cemetery whilst on holiday. 

Yes, it was Back in the Saddle this morning & first cab off the rank in a Pupil Free Day was the  CPR Refresher Course. Whilst I was sitting there listening to the Hunky Manmuffin from the Royal SurfLifesaving Association tell us gruesome tales   about  the dangers of saving lives, I wondered how many times have I actually sat through this material.  And when was the first time I heard it. I think I was  about twelve &  since then, I've probably heard it on average of once every couple of years.

And guess what?

I still don't know a thing. I was even pumping the mannequin in the wrong spot.

But don't think I don't have a Back-Up Plan. If one of my students suddenly went unconscious I'd run out of the classroom screaming for help. Or if I was perhaps a little calmer, I would simply direct one of my other students to perform CPR. I'm sure someone around me would know it.

But it just occurred to me that if a student went unconscious, they'd probably be dead before I'd notice. 

Fashion Should Be Funny

My Best Friend Marge is visiting Sydney from California. We went to school together right from Grade 4. I was originally attracted to her for many reasons, but the clincher was that I fell in love with a picture of a sailing ship floating in a deep blue sea that she painted in Grade 5.  From then on, I knew I wanted us to be friends for Life. That was in 1963.

This picture is definitely odd. We've both got on quite an assortment of clothes which is partly due to the changeable Spring weather. 

Of course, I'm dying to have a rant about my wardrobe choices. But I suppose I should  quickly mention that Marge is wearing a complete 'Anthropologie' outfit, including the shoes. She looks great & 'Anthro' is our favourite shop. 

But Back to Me.

One of the advantages of Relentless Self-Examination Through Photography is the opportunity to critique your everyday outfits. If I hadn't had this Completely Thrifted Outfit photographed I might never have realised how truly awful it is. But when I put it on this morning, I thought it was a Triumph of Pattern Mixing. The shirt was perhaps from the v. early nineties & came with fairly bulbous shoulder pads that I had a devil of a job cutting out before I put it on . I congratulated myself on how cleverly I had selected the faux reptilian skin skirt that accentuated the brown highlights in the shirt. Wrong. 

It looks like a Blind Person selected the outfit or I had my eyes closed when I opened my wardrobe. Or I was drunk.

And I've just got to stop wearing those little Kindergardenesque Sockettes! 

I know this sounds Very Negative. You might get the impression that I'm becoming a Crotchety Old Crone. 

Nothing of the Sort! I regard Wardrobe Selection as an amusing game that One Mustn't Take Too Seriously. It's not like Parenting, or Negotiating High Level Peace Talks or Going for President. 

In the words of one of my Great Role Models, Simon Doonan, the world famous Window Dresser, 'Fashion should be Funny'.

Face to Face with My Mortality

Yesterday, as part of our Fun Holiday Activities, my daughter & I visited my my mother's grave. It's not at all morbid , partly because the cemetery is hugely interesting & as historic as Sydney can get & is also in this killer location on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. 

Large Italian families have mausoleums resembling little miniature churches like the one on the left of the first photo. But my mum's grave is far more modest. She was cremated, so she just occupies a tiny patch of a small circular garden.

But yesterday I found it a slightly unsettling experience when we got to Mum's grave & found that a small stone bearing a sign that said, 'Reserved' was sitting right next to her. In fact there were two stones side by side  bearing 'Reserved' signs.

When my Mum died twenty three years ago, my Dad decided to buy three tiny plots. One for him, one for me & one for Mum. I found it a bit creepy at the time, but it turned out to be a wise move because now all the cemeteries are filling up & it's hard to get a spot.

But now the Cemetary People have put up these Reserved signs it really rammed it home to me that Yes, I'm going to die. And that's where I'm going to end up. And I also better go & find my Dad's ashes which have been languishing at the Crematorium since 1999 & stick them in his Reserved spot. 

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned.

I'm full of rage. For the last probably eight minutes I've been unsuccessfully trying to upload another photo of my daughter Billie-Mae with a different pair of shorts on.   

And nothing happens. 

I'm also listening on my headphones to a very soothing meditation tape featuring  a restful flute, tweeting birds & a  running water soundtrack. I could just scream.

And just after I've written all this, whaddya know, the second photo  miraculously appeared, making me look a little hysterical & unhinged. 

Now my daughter has walked in & said that she doesn't like the top photo of her with the parasol in a Field of Knomes. But I'm not deleting it. 

I'm loving her shorts, but glad that I'm not wearing them. I don't wish to appear a Captive to Age Stereotypes, but I'm not fond of shorts of any description on women over say, 21. Maybe a little older.

 I particularly don't like those longer, baggy ones favoured by many women of my age who love to bushwalk whilst  looking like an Porky Scout . Baggy shorts never have & never will look good on anyone even Kate Moss, who I don't think looks that great, but everyone else seems to think so.

In case you're wondering, which you probably aren't, we're on a small holiday together, which has nothing whatsoever to do with My Rage. I spent four days visiting her in Canberra where she attends University & then she v. kindly has been staying with me in Sydney. My friend Marge who I visited last holidays in California is here seeing her 95 year old mother, so we've been doing a few things together. This evening we had an early dinner  in a popular & homey looking beachside cafe. The food was dreadful but it didn't stop us eating it all. Never in my life have I been served slightly hard brussel sprouts & squash in a Goats Cheese Salad. 

And I was slightly disgusted with myself for eating part of a communal dessert which was a hugely ordinary Tiramisu. I realised that there's not much that anyone can do to ruin cream, which it was full of.  

 

So much for being a Zen Monk.

If Only My Boyfriends Could Have Been a Little Bit Like Paul Newman

I've been meaning to write a blog entry about Me & Paul Newman all week, & here it is. 

One of the unexpected side benefits of a Major Celebrity or a Member of the British Royal Family dying, is that all the Big Highlights of their Lives are wheeled out for everyone to get all all choked up about. 

Not that I was too choked up about Paul. I know that sounds a little Hard Hearted, but let's face it, he was pretty old & sick & I didn't know him personally. Ever since Princess Diana died, I've made it a rule not to bother getting upset when Famous People die. Just like everybody else, I cried through the entire ten hours of her televised funeral, from the time the coffin rolled out of the gates of Kensington Palace, to the gruelling flower-strewn trip to her final resting place. And when it was all over, you could have wrung me out like a rag. I was a mess.

So, even though I wasn't too sad about Paul's dying, seeing  snatches of his best films on the news sent me into a Lather of Nostalgia & Not Quite, But Almost, Regret. 

I970 was the year of Paul & Me. 

I was in my final year of high school & all the boys that we'd frolicked with for the past three or so years had suddenly disappeared.  They'd all gone to University or jobs or maybe they were just hiding in their bedrooms.  Plus, we were supposed to be serious about studying for our Final Exams.

So Paul Newman became my boyfriend. And in many ways it was a pretty satisfying relationship.

It all started when the local run down Art Deco theatre, the 'Randwick Ritz' began showing double features of his early films on a saturday night. My friend Elizabeth & I would trawl up the hill from her place & sit on these creaky old seats where we salivated for hours watching 'Cool Hand Luke' or 'Harper' or 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. 

When it was over, we'd roll down the hill together in a trance & then spend the next couple of hours drooling over a huge poster of Paul that hung above Elizabeth's bed. I'd sleep over & before drifting off, would imagine myself  lying in his arms while he whispered how wrong he'd been about loving his wife Joanne Woodward & how he'd finally found love at long last with me. This was a bit of a stretch  to believe because I couldn't really imagine Paul Newman falling in love with Me at the Time -  a seventeen year old slightly pimply & desperate Australian schoolgirl. 

I'd done a similar thing with John Lennon when I was eleven, where I had an elaborate fantasy going about how tragic it was that John's wife Cynthia had died in a  snow skiing accident, but then he met me on the slopes & fell in love. 

Back to Paul & Me.

 The Paul Newman film that really did my head in was the boxing biopic, 'Somebody Up There Likes Me',  a redemption story of a nasty real life boxer called of course, Rocky, becoming this fantastically charming & wonderful person all because of the love of  a Beautiful woman, played by Pier Angeli.  The tag line to the film was 'A Girl Can Lift a Fellow to the Skies!' 

You can imagine the fantasies that were going around in my head over that film. In fact, I think that it became the Blueprint for most of my subsequent relationships. 

By the end of the year the 'Ritz' had gone through all of Paul's films & had moved on to Warren Beatty, who I had a short fling with, but it didn't work out. 

I finished my exams, left school, got a holiday job in a cake shop & waited for a Real Boyfriend to arrive.

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