Please look after this blog

I must apologise to my reader (hi, Glenda) that I haven't posted anything to my blog for a while. All my word power, approx 70K worth, has been harnessed in writing assignments for a diploma course I've been meaning to finish since early 2008. The qualification has been superseded and I've been shamed into completing it or else risk the ignominy of losing the work I put in and of being a lousy role model to the many people I have recruited to the course in my professional role.

I've submitted 2 of 5 assignments that were outstanding (as in 'overdue' not as in 'exemplary'), that makes 3 more I have to do between now and 9 Feb. So there won't be much new content here for a couple of weeks unless I get heavily into diversion therapy! I will post a pic of me with my diploma (or at least an anecdote about the graduation ceremony) if I actually get all the work in.

Completion is not my strong point - I like the freshness of a new experience, the cut and thrust of classroom debate. Chronicling the steps I took to arrange catering and bums on seats for a project to educate lawyers about their potentially psychotic clients or identifying and listing hazards in my workplace doesn't do it for me!

I have had an interesting discussion (sadly, off blog) about marmalade. A friend makes blood orange marmalade which is apparently delicious. I have to try it! Thinking of marmalade makes me think of bears: Paddington Bear from darkest Peru (hence the image above) and Winnie the Pooh, whose immortaliser AA Milne also wrote The King's Breakfast:

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."

The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told the Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."

The Alderney said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."

The Dairymaid
Said "Fancy!"
And went to
Her Majesty.
She curtsied to the Queen, and
She turned a little red:
"Excuse me,
Your Majesty,
For taking of
The liberty,
But marmalade is tasty, if
It's very
Thickly
Spread."

The Queen said
"Oh!"
And went to his Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"

The King said,
"Bother!"
And then he said,
"Oh, deary me!"
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"

The Queen said,
"There, there!"
And went to
The Dairymaid.
The Dairymaid
Said, "There, there!"
And went to the shed.
The cow said,
"There, there!
I didn't really
Mean it;
Here's milk for his porringer
And butter for his bread."

The queen took the butter
And brought it to
His Majesty.
The King said
"Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
As he kissed her
Tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down
The banisters,
"Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man -
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"

So (b)logging off for a while to write more assignments, sample marmalade and finish this month's selection for our book group 'Brick Lane'.

Isn't saying 'President Obama' a joy?

Mr Darcy Does Christmas

Mummy Money Monet

Starting the New Year with an anti-Scientology rant, always understandable but the timing was in questionable taste. Here’s the ‘what I did on my holiday’ essay.

Mummy – missing one and being one
This Christmas Eve was the 9th anniversary of our mother’s death and it was the first year that I haven’t felt weighed down with memories and painfully conscious of her absence. In early December I was able to go through my stock of Christmas cards and see the ‘With love to Grandma at Christmas’ one I’d bought optimistically in ’99 without completely stopping in my tracks and feeling a thud in my heart (although I am feeling one as I write this). When planning the decorations and menu I didn’t feel I was an impostor in her role any more. I satisfied myself that there was a completeness about the group that gathered together and enough love and sense of family not to constantly lament my kids’ lack of grandparents. Importantly too I felt grown up enough, at 52, to cope. The mantle of family matriarch I’ve inherited doesn’t chafe so much any more! So perhaps time does heal or at least lead to a sense that one will manage what comes.

We had the immediate family over for Christmas Eve dinner and for Christmas Day lunch. I rode the wave of the first coping with making the house and yard look presentable, cooking the roast turkey dinner and collecting my grown up niece and her driving licence-less partner and an enormous TV they were giving my sister from their place in Glebe and getting the car back just in time for my husband to collect the Tasmanian contingent from the airport. The second saw me starting to fray a little as the day was a great deal hotter and I was a great deal tireder but I rallied and everything went well thanks to the contributions and help of my sisters and a good friend from our dog walking/book group. While the event was not a chocolate biscuit commercial nor an afternoon at the Algonquin it was PLEASANT and as Elwood P Dowd [Harvey (1950)] says ‘I recommend pleasant’.

Testament to my good mood was the fact that I joined my teen daughter and her cousin, my husband and our ancient staffies on the sofa on Christmas night to watch ‘Mama Mia’ on DVD. Never an ABBA fan in their heyday and finding Rachel Griffiths & Toni Collette’s tribute in ‘Muriel's Wedding’ [YouTube - Muriel's Wedding - Trailer] the grotesque spectacle I have the generosity to think it was meant to be, I was ready to be underwhelmed. I really enjoyed it, didn’t give a damn about the Streep/Firth generation gap, thought the choreography was exuberant and inspired and adored the authentic ‘Greek chorus’. It is true that you can’t get the lyrics out of your head for the next few days but Julie Walters’ nudge nudge wink wink spoken delivery of ‘If you change your mind, I’m the first in line’ was cute enough for me not to care.

Money – it’s not easy, or cheap, being green
The $60 Wollemi Pine I bought two years ago has been indefinitely suspended from Christmas tree duty until it can learn to grow and support more than 3 tiny baubles. We invested $70 in a ‘real’ tree (i.e. a severed plantation pine tree branch) this year that I could smother with nostalgic decorations and tinsel and that smelled ‘like Christmas’! Miraculously (how appropriate) it has stayed looking spruce (although it isn’t) and hasn’t toppled over or dropped many needles at all. I am extremely pleased with it and will ask it to give Australia’s botanic ‘dinosaur’ a good talking to.

It cost us $230 for the free range turkey and the free range ham. It was worth it. They were totally delicious and at a time of year when 800 kittens have been surrendered to the RSPCA I didn’t have to dwell on still more incidents of animal neglect and cruelty. The rest of Christmas was blessedly (how appropriate again) inexpensive. For better or worse the circle of gift exchangers amongst our family and friends has shrunk and the kids focus on one or two big ticket items rather than the endless Bratz dolls and their accessories or multiple computer games they used to want. It is also true that you can do stuff that is free or inexpensive in Sydney. One of our nicest outings was to the Dawn Fraser Baths in Balmain which I think was under $20 admission for the 4 of us, and, being on holiday, we watched a bit of telly and some DVDs and I also actually had the energy to take advantage of half price Tuesday at the movies. We were visited by and visitors of people too, something that barely seems to happen the rest of the year.

Monet - New Year’s Day with the numbre une Impressionist
Very few places open their doors on New Year’s Day. It is hard to buy milk let alone do anything more adventurous. While my sister was up from Tassie we had planned to see the Monet and the Impressionists and the Tails of the City: Sydney's Passion for Pets exhibitions. In the event we were all too whacked to make it but I did check with the Gallery to see if they were open on NYD and lo and behold (to keep the irreverent faux biblical tone up) they were. So off we (14 yr old daughter, me and spouse) trolled and took refuge from the scorching heat amongst artificially cooled water lily ponds. The exhibition was balm for any traces of hangover or fatigue, uplifting and sensuous and not at all intellectually taxing even when considering the influence of photography and Japanese prints on the work of the Impressionists. We still haven’t made it to Tails of the City but our own two mutts and moggies provide us with around the clock performance art on the same theme so we are by no means deprived.

Getting the Scientology story straight

“Tom Cruise says Scientology helped him overcome dyslexia” – so read one of the headlines in yesterday’s (5.1.09) Sydney Morning Herald. Dyslexia therefore must be a condition that Scientology recognises and can cure! However elsewhere in the same newspaper an article about John Travolta’s and Kelly Preston’s grief at the death of their only son states that while US media have claimed the Travolta’s son may have been autistic, Scientology does not recognise the condition and the couple has been moved to deny through their lawyer that their son was autistic.

Funny old celebrity world, innit? Where Hollywood’s two most famous Scientology adherents can with equal vehemence rule out the existence of autism and claim that using Ron L Hubbard’s reading ‘technique’ cures dyslexia!

Oh, well I suppose they’re entitled to their opinions - it’s not as if they’re parents or role models or anything!