What lies beneath

What a difference a day makes. Today was a ‘sun is shining, birds are singing, work is getting done’ kind of day. Polished off the To Do list, went out for lunch, bought The Great Gatsby (I blush even as I admit I’ve never read it), went to choir and then, in an event worthy of the front page of this week’s local paper, went to the movies.

On my own.

There are two schools of thought regarding Tickets For One at the cinema. You’re either in the camp (mixing metaphors, who me?) who loves the idea (that would be me) or in the camp that suggests that people who venture solo to the movies are sad, lonely losers with no life and no friends.

Hmmm.

Anyhoo.

I could try winning you over with the whole ‘watching a movie with someone is like reading a book over someone’s shoulder’ argument, but nobody really buys that. So I’ll try something different.

It's fun. There is nothing like sitting in the dark by yourself, with your own (small) softdrink and your own (large) bag of M&Ms. You, the chocolate, the intimacy of the cinema, and a story writ large across the screen.

You can laugh when you like without censorship. Cry into your popcorn if you want to. Mutter under your breath. Roll Jaffas down the aisle. Whatever floats your boat.

You have personal space out the wazoo (nobody ever wants to sit near the weirdo on their own) and the pleasure of at least 90 minutes of pure escapism.

In Fibrotown, there’s even an added bonus. Choose a late-night (that would be 9pm) session and a slightly off-beat film (anything less than Avatar should do it), and you’ll also have the whole place to yourself. Yep, private screenings. But don’t tell anyone.

I was a bit disappointed to walk in tonight and discover that I had to share my cinema with a crowd of five. But we all sat in different rows so, you know, I didn’t have to get all Diva-like about it.

When it was over, I stood up – before the credits finished rolling – slipped out the side door, into the car and home. Simple. Neat. Easy.

Too easy for the ‘Movies are for two’ crowd. You’re right, I didn’t have anyone to discuss the film with. But that’s okay. Most of the time I like to sit with a film for a little while. Think about it. Let it roll around in my head.

If we’d been together at the film, you’d have asked me ‘what did you think?’. I’d have said ‘I liked it, bit sad at the end’. And then we would have had coffee and talked about Brendan Cowell’s ears.

On my own, I got to think about the beauty of the Flanders blue mud. The many nuances of male relationships. The ingenuity of man. The futility of war. How incredibly uncomfortable those World War One uniforms must have been in all that water. Why there’s a sporting fixture in every war movie. And how clever Jeremy Sims was to come up with this particular film at this particular time.

The movie was Beneath Hill 60. It’s well worth seeing. I suggest you go on your own.

Working around the block

I’m suffering writer’s block. It doesn’t happen often. Usually, I sit down at the computer and turn on the autopilot. But not today. Today, I have managed not to write several things: a press release, a house story, an email to a friend. Instead, I have managed to create that thing most beloved of all writers - a blank page.

This is actually an improvement on Friday, when I managed not to write three press releases, a house story, an email to a friend, a pitch to an editor and an outline for a feature story.

Big day, Friday.

The only reason today’s list is shorter is that I rewrote my To Do list and put all the other stuff on Monday’s list. When I will hopefully sit down at my computer and turn on the autopilot.

Big day, tomorrow.

It’s not that I’m not trying. Just that the words aren’t coming out right. It’s all fits and starts before they sputter to a halt (picture me banging head on keyboard at this point).

The good news is that I know why I’m struggling. Last week was a big week of endings. I finished off a whole heap of stuff that’s been weighing me down for ages. A rewrite, a new proposal, three finance features…stuff that had been keeping me busy mentally. When it all finished at once, my brain decided to drop down a gear or two. And, unfortunately, went directly into a stall. Possibly even reverse.

I’m not sure how it works for you, but I’m best when I’m busy. When things are humming along, throwing another task, job or 100,000 words into the mix causes barely a blip. Take things down a notch or two, however, and that extra task becomes a big problem.

So I’m waiting it out. Already I’ll be waking up tomorrow morning with a HUGE list of things to do. Hopefully, there’ll be an email or two, adding to my stress levels. At which point, the adrenaline should kick in, the brain should crank up and, voila, all systems will be go.

Either that, or I’ll be so overwhelmed as to be paralysed by the enormity of it all and take to my bed with a book. I’d call that a win-win situation, wouldn’t you?

{image: Anton Gvozdikov}

What did you talk about this week?

It’s that time of the week when I share some of the topics of conversation that came up through work or play (I'll leave it to you to figure out which) in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Sandcastles, Plasto toys, press releases, Fleur McDonald, deadlines, painting, roofing, plumbing, feeding the fish, the Famous Five, making ice, haircuts, new school pants, toenail fungus, market stalls, consumerism, Florence and the Machine, party plan businesses, rivets, karate, superannuation, property investment, blogging, freelancing, my lack of organisation, massage, grant applications, underpants, Splendour in the Grass, the stars, the weather, secret-recipe pistachio biscuits, Scrabble, scarves made from electric blankets, renovations, weddings, Twitter, Michael Robotham, silhouettes, alzheimers, Kangaroo Valley, glamping, birthdays, credit cards, scooters...and how does the grass grow (Mummy)?

What came up at your house this week?

{image: theweddingideasblog.co.uk}

It's Scrabble and it's personal

At the last meeting of the local Scrabble Club, the highest game scored 461 points. The highest word was ‘blowsier’, scoring 89 points, played by Brenda. The most unusual word played was ‘qophs’, which means the 19^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (also one of Brenda’s).

I did not go to the meeting, I hasten to point out – I would be out of place given that my highest game tends to be around the 89 point mark, meaning I’d be trounced in one move by Brenda – but I learned all the details from our local paper.

I love our local paper. In the first five pages of today’s edition it covered a visit by KRudd, the theft of a large, red tricycle by heartless thieves, the fact that women’s breasts are getting bigger, and a big win at the Easter Show by a team of young Dairy Farmers. But it’s not the front section to which I immediately turn when it lands on my doorstep.

If you want to understand a community in a short space of time, pick up a local paper and head directly for two sections: the Letters to the Editor and the Classifieds. Every edition of the paper contains updates on the ongoing saga between the letter-writers of the Pro-Progress Lobby and those from the Maintain the Status Quo Brigade. There’ll be a letter about the Young People of Today, and there will always, always, be scurrilous scuttlebutt about one local councillor or another. Usually written by another councillor. Love it.

The Classifieds are a whole different ballgame. Among the garage sales (plentiful) and the job vacancies (scarce), the public notices about chestnut picking (truly), art classes and general meetings, are the more, um, personal announcements. In the Big Smoke, these would run for pages and pages and I wouldn’t read them. Here there are only two or three a week and I’ve become an avid fan.

My favourite so far was the one that ran last month, just once: “Try something different. Tranny. One week only.” A travelling tranny? My mind ran wild. Holiday? Business? Visiting mum?

Back at the Scrabble Club, words such as ‘noil’ (a noun meaning ‘short or knotted fibres that are separated from the long fibres by combing’) and ‘crankle’ (a verb meaning to ‘bend or wind’) are flowing thick and fast. I’m not sure where you stand on Scrabble, but I love the game in its original form. The online version, where everyone has access to a dictionary, not so much.

My mum is a demon Scrabble player. She’d give Brenda a run for her money, if she were a joiner – which she’s not. Mum was outraged at last week’s news that proper nouns are now allowed on the Scrabble board. Outraged. Almost as outraged as she was the week before when she played a game with a friend and discovered that the word ‘shranked’ was in the Scrabble dictionary. Shranked. Is that even a word?

Perhaps I’ll pop along to the next Scrabble Club meeting and ask Brenda. Better still, I’ll write a letter to the local paper. I can see the response now: “The Young People of Today wouldn’t know a proper word if they fell over one…”

{image: Gaissa.com}

Some days are better than others

This is where I spent my day. Well, the best part of it. It was one of Those Days in the Fibro today. Mr6 woke up at 5.45am, on the wrong side of the bed. By 7.30am he was the grumpiest child on the planet and by 10am I was the Worst Mother in The World. To give you an idea, I was hoarse from shrieking, his beloved bear was in the highest cupboard I could find, and I was trying to work out if he needed to go or I did. As it turned out, we both did.

We were saved by friends visiting from The Big Smoke. “Come see us,” they said. “We’re camping down the coast.” I admit, I ummed and ahhed. It was a 30-minute drive. I had things to do. Mr6 didn’t want to go (and I didn’t want to take him anywhere). It seemed like a lot of trouble on a crisp autumn day, when I knew the water temperature would be set to ‘chill’ and the boys would want to swim anyway.

I realised, however, that it was either go or end up a shrill, screaming mess. So I packed my shrill, screaming child in the car, along with his cherubic brother and we headed off. To this beach. Where we paddled about in rock pools, discovered secret passages and smuggler’s trails in the rocks (Mr6 is heavily into Famous Five of late and there are ‘secret passages’ everywhere we go… I think he’s also tapping the walls in the Fibro when I’m not looking, searching for secret, sliding panels…of which there are none), and built what Mr3 described as ‘The World’s Biggest Sandcastle. His world is small.

It’s a beautiful world, though. The beaches here, in all their white-sanded, aquamarine glory, are the reasons that people flock to this area. They’re one of the reasons we came back here. They are uncrowded and unspoilt.

While I was sitting on the beach this morning, sand between my toes, tiny waves rolling in, with the warm autumn sun warming my scalp, I realised that I need to get out more. I would not have been on that beach had a visitor not invited me. I would have been in my Fibro, going about my boring day-to-day business, shrieking at my children.

When you live somewhere, it’s easy to walk only well-trodden paths from point A to point B. But view your area as a tourist does, and it’s like going on holidays. Only better – because our friends are sleeping in a tent tonight, while we’re all at home in warm, comfy beds. My kind of camping.

{image: Beachmaster}

All about books: The Outsiders

As part of my New Year's (or thereabouts) resolution to read more classics, I re-read The Outsiders by SE Hinton. Not strictly a classic - no orange-and-white cover here - but Puffin calls it a Modern Classic and I'm happy to agree. Given that it was written in 1967 and I last read it in about 1984, I was surprised by how the themes still resonate - as does the language.

SE Hinton was 17 when she wrote the book and I'm incredibly impressed by the simple, straightforward way in which she tells the story. Especially now that I know how difficult that is. Ponyboy's voice, as narrator, is clear and male - no mean feat. The characters are all well-drawn, given that we have a first-person narrator and only get one perspective. There's a lot of Show, and we're allowed to come to our own conclusions about them, even as we take in Ponyboy's.

I think the one thing that really surprised me about the book was how much I'd changed. (That this surprised me surprises me even more...). When I read it the first time I was 15, and I wanted to be in the gang - or at least hold hands with one of them (particularly after I saw the movie). These days, I just want to take them all home and look after them.

The only parents in the book are dead or losers. Appealing in their absence when you're 15. Sad and lonely when you have sons of your own.

If you haven't read it, or haven't read it for a few years, find a copy. It'll help you remember a little bit what it was like to be a teen. Even if only what it was like to be you as a teen.