So you think you can dance?

Alla Hoo Hoo has been giving Mr3 dancing lessons. His newfound skills appeared, quite suddenly, during dinner about a week ago. He put down his fork, stood up, took a step back and began to move, overtaken by an urge he could not explain. He was a whirling dervish of clapping, foot stomping, knee slapping beauty in red flannel pyjamas. His blonde hair flew as he turned faster and faster, cheeks reddening with effort, eyes sparkling with joy.

The Builder and I could only sit, open-mouthed, and take it all in. It was like watching someone possessed.

The actual dance itself is difficult to describe. Imagine a slapping/tapping/Lederhosen style of Germanic origin, crossed with an Irish jig and some Scottish sword work. Spectacular does not begin to describe it.

He is earnest about practising his new moves. Willing to demonstrate them at the drop of a hat.

He told me that his ‘friend’ Alla Hoo Hoo taught him everything she knows. At all the parties they frequent together, no doubt. Which, it transpires, they attend in her purple forklift. How she manages the complexity of moves in her ‘big shoes’ is quite beyond me, but he assures me that she always wears purple shoes and that’s the secret.

Sometimes, I wonder about Alla Hoo Hoo. The other day, we were driving around in Theresa when Mr3 suddenly burst into song. A song that Mr6 didn’t know and hadn’t taught him. A song that I hadn’t taught him. A song that I’m pretty sure The Builder doesn’t know.

“Did you learn that at preschool?” I asked, after the requisite round of applause and effusive compliments on his singing that he requires. No, demands.

“No,” he said, serene, looking out the window. “Alla Hoo Hoo taught me.”

Mr6 and I were silent. Our eyes met in the mirror. Wondering… Well, wouldn't you?

{image: bbc.co.uk}

PS: I'm flogging my blog again this fine Friday, thanks to Lori at RRSAHM, MommaPebz, and Emma at Toddler Awesome - pop over to visit them to discover lots of great new blogs. You know you want to...

It's never too early for a foot in the door

Do you remember Work Experience? It all came flooding back to me when I read this post by the very talented Deer Baby (go look, you’ll love it – her name is Alison, how could you not love it?). The girl who wrote ‘Help, I’m being held prisoner’ inside the flap of the envelopes was truly inspirational. I wish I’d thought of that.

My recollections of work experience involve shoes that hurt, tights that sagged, and early mornings. For some reason, I, already a confirmed night owl at 15, chose to do my first lot of work experience at the local radio station, involving 5am starts. My second lot of work experience involved childcare and is best not thought about now. My third lot, at 16, took place at a metropolitan daily broadsheet, involved 5am starts and was responsible for my almost never becoming a journalist.

It wasn’t the starts (though I’m never at my best at that ungodly hour – ask my children). Rather it was the fact that day one saw me held captive ensconced in the office of the Letters Editor, reading page after page of semi-literate abuse. My second day saw me on the front steps of a suburban house in a suburban street, shadowing a ‘stick-one-foot-in-the-door’ reporter as he asked the family inside for pictures of two children who’d died hours before when a bomb went off in an airport overseas. Day three involved eight hours of excitement spotting spelling mistakes at the subs’ desk. Days four and five pass in the kind of blur that only victims of shell shock will understand.

Quite the introduction to journalism.

I went home and told my parents I’d decided to become a secretary.

In fact, I was lucky. Not that it felt that way at the time. But by the time I came into contact with work experience again – 10 years later, and this time as the experiencee, rather than the experiencer – I came to understand what a valuable program that paper had in place. I was given a very clear picture of each facet of working on a newspaper – whether I liked it or not.

In Magazine Land, work experience tended to involve waiting around the foyer, wearing your best ‘fashion ensemble’, waiting for someone to send you for a coffee. If you were lucky, you were chosen to package clothes up for return. Occasionally, someone would talk you through a story and possibly get you to write up a product review. On the plus side, you'd always be sent home with a beauty 'goody' bag, so it wasn't all bad.

It’s not that we didn’t care about our ‘workies’, just that, by then, magazines were already running on shoe strings, everyone was doing the work of two people and nobody had time to explain anything. Except how they liked their coffee.

It didn’t seem to deter the ones who really wanted to ‘get into mags’. You’d see their faces again a few years later, working as interns (read: for free) in the fashion cupboard, doing whatever it took to be in the right place at the right time when a job opening came up.

Now that’s what I call a ‘foot in the door’ approach.

{image: candimandi}

Practice makes... well, more practice really

It's never a good day when you come face-to-face with your limitations. I've had several such days of late. Moments when my dreams and expectations don't quite match my realities. I had another one today.

Picture, if you will, me sitting on a train, face pressed against the window, white iPod headphone cord snaking down into my handbag. I'm singing along (inside my head only, because I know there's nothing worse than sitting next to someone who's actually singing along to an iPod - hello tuneless, uncool person) to Kate Miller-Heidke's 'The Last Day on Earth', the swelling, soaring, aching longing of which perfectly suits the dramatic coastline out my window. Suddenly, into my head pops a vision of me sitting, not on the train, but on a chair at home, guitar in hand, playing said song and singing for real. This beautiful moment lasts all of five seconds - until the sum total of my guitar playing skills comes flooding in to knock it sidewards. Five notes and seven chords do not an epic pop song make.

The reality that every beginner musician faces is that what they want to play and what they can actually play are two completely different things. I can play 'For He's A Jolly Good Fellow'. I cannot play the Crowded House songbook (Neil, Neil, why did you have to make them so hard?) I can fudge my way through 'Me and Bobby McGee' and even 'Can't Find a Better Man', but not really. I'm better at 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'.

The Lovely B, my guitar teacher, is teaching Mr6 and I to understand tabulation as well as chords. She wants to teach us how to play the theme from Inspector Gadget. To do so, she is preparing us with the basics - we are learning the opening riff of Nirvana's 'Come As You Are'. This is fun for me. Mr6 not so much. He needed a full explanation of who Nirvana was, and why you'd want to play their songs. Much the same when we learned 'Smoke On The Water' - trying to explain to a six-year-old why they might want to play a 40-year-old song in a guitar shop in an ironic fashion is not easy.

All I can do is persist. If I give up now, I'll be in exactly the same boat in 40 years as I'm in now. I'll be wishing I'd stuck with it when I was young. So I'll take those limitations, raise you another couple of terms of lessons and, hopefully, start working on 'Roll Out The Barrel' to play in the old folks home when I get there.

Writing features #2: A simple explanation

In honour of the fact that I am sitting here with very little inspiration, save my newly cut hair (which looked a bit Leather Tuscadero whilst wet, but has dried much less Rock Chick) and the fact that I had a successful brow maintenance moment today (read about less successful moments here), I thought I might continue my very occasional series about writing features. Last time I tried this, I got bogged down in armpits, but hopefully things will fly a little straighter tonight.

I was speaking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about a complicated story she was trying to write. It involved genetics and, despite my intense knowledge of the genetics of red hair, I wasn't much use to her. So I asked her who'd she'd spoken to. Her answer was no-one. She was trying to work her away through Rocket Science-level research papers so that she'd know what questions to ask an expert once she got around to interviewing him or her.

Um, no. My theory when writing features about subjects about which I know nothing (which happens more often than you might imagine - I know, surprising...) is that readers want to know what you want to know. Chances are, they know nothing about genetics/pruning roses/the secrets of happiness either. What interests you about a subject will probably interest them. And you/they need it explained in words of one syllable.

The secret to this equation is that experts don't expect you to know anything. Well, they don't expect me to know anything once I tell them that I know nothing. It gives me permission to ask the dumbest questions I can think of because, and this is the key, I need to know this stuff on a very elementary level so that I can write it into an entertaining story.

With features writing, you're not just trying to show off your gargantuan knowledge of the subject at hand, you're trying to share it with a reader in such a way that they'll get right to the end of the story with you. If they don't get it, they won't get past the first paragraph one. If they don't like it, they won't get past the first sentence.

Quotes are what keeps a story lively. Dialogue, conversation, call it what you like. Back it up with all the research in the world, but make sure you've got your simple explanation front and centre.

And now, I'm going back to admiring my new eyebrows.

*PS: I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the experts in every field that I've interviewed over the years. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you for not laughing.

Considering life in a crowded, country church

Even people who live in the country like to get away to the country. On Saturday, The Builder and I skived off, leaving Gran and Pops to keep the home fires burning, and went to stay in a one-pub, one-café, three-horse (I saw them) town up the road a bit.

We ate, we wine-tasted, we talked about the important things in life (like where we’d go on our next holiday and whether we’d buy the riesling or the sauvignon blanc*). We sat out the back of the One Pub as the sun set and contemplated the vast ocean of peace that surrounded us. Dark, silent peace. If Fibrotown is quiet (and it is) compared to our former home in The Big Smoke, Three-Horse Town is a black hole where sound and matter simply don’t matter.

We sat there a while, breathing it all in (listening to the sound of our breathing and the clattering of a pin being dropped three houses down). Then retreated to the relative chaos of a log fire and a bar filled with six people.

Today, on our way home, we detoured past the world’s cutest church (that's it above). Stone. Picturesque. Picket fence. For Sale. It is simply the sweetest little property in the world. Surrounded by humongous houses on sweeping acres with interminable fences requiring maintenance, it’s a perfect 2000 square metres. It’s also one-bedroom, and that’s a loft, so not ideal for a family of four. We kept driving.

When I think of my ideal home in the country, I always picture somewhere like that little church. Surrounded by green, bathed in sunshine, bees abuzz in the swarm of flowers beside the drive. In reality, it’s a 15-minute drive even from Three-Horse Town. If I thought the back of the pub was dark and quiet, how would I go out there in the true blackness, listening to the field mice scuttle past the door?

Coming to terms with the sometimes deep gulf between what we think we want and what would be right for us is all part of growing up. Now that I’m on the slippery slopes of middle age, it appears I’m finally getting there.

Plus, it saves me having to rename this blog. Though Life in a Crowded Country Church has distinct possibilities…

{image: Frances Cashman}

*We went the only real option and bought both.

Dear Australian Idol, we're working on it

There are a few statements destined to strike fear into any parent's heart.

“I’m pregnant and dropping out in year 8.”

“I’m taking up base jumping.”

“I’m [insert your own worst fear right here].”

Given that my guys are so young, our statements of intent are not quite to that standard yet. Which is not to say that we don’t have our moments. The six months or so when Mr6 (then three) fell in love with Sam Moran, the then-new yellow Wiggle, and wanted to wear only yellow shirts and be addressed as Sam were trying. “I am Sam,” is not as cute outside a Dr Seuss book.

Our current phase, what I like to call the Concert Phase, is proving to be more so. There is something about the statement “We’re going to do a concert for you tonight” that makes me thrilled and appalled, all at the same time. I do love it – the earnest performance, the desire to be with us and make us happy, the fact that they want our approval. But at the same time…

A concert, I need to point out, involves Mr6 banging on a selection of makeshift drums for what seems like, oh, hours, while Mr3 blows on the ear-shattering whistle that keeps finding its way back into the house no matter how many times I lose it. All the while, The Builder and I sit with what we hope are expressions of parental love and pride. Inwardly, I’m wishing I could hide in a cupboard. He is no doubt made of stronger stuff.

Then again, we found ourselves having a whispered conversation in the linen press tonight. A concert had been announced. Whereupon The Builder decided to take himself off to the shower. “You can’t abandon me,” I hissed over a pile of sheets. “You’ll be fine,” he mouthed back, patting my hand. “I’ll be with you in spirit.”

My parents will read this and know that Karma is real.

They will remember the thousands of hours of ‘concerts’ they sat through in the living room, watching us sing and dance like the worst Idol contestants ever.

They might recall the epic concert performed in the neighbour's garage to the entire ‘You Can’t Stop The Music’ soundtrack – and the coin donation they had to pay for the privilege.

My Dad will no doubt be able to bring to mind the thousands of hours of actual ballet concerts he endured. To the point where he perfected what is generally known in the family as his ‘Concert Face’. It’s an outward expression of polite interest, but you know that, behind it, the man is sleeping.

All I can hope is that the guitar lessons kick in soon and Mr6 at least will begin serenading us with something vaguely musical. Until then, I’ll be the one working on my Concert Face.

{image: internationalposter.com}

PS: Thanks to Lori at RRSAHM, I'm flogging my blog this fine Friday. Visit her for lots of fab new blogs to check out.