Noonie i'm sorry for being so VEHEMENT last night, but there was no need to slag off my dress on the WORLD WIDE web. albeit a reasonably subtle slag. also, i think for VEHEMENTLY you could possibly substitute PASSIONATELY.
He's talking about unspeak and I do know what he means. Reprehensible, I think. But convenient sometimes. I wonder about wardrobe malfunction. I do feel depressed about global warming, though, and resolve not to drive to work every day.
We put on more make-up and head across the street to the party. The volunteers are very eager. There's a woman who's written a book about expat experiences. Another one. A publicist is whinging about the writer of comics who's brought his goth goddaughter with him. Tim says that the Vanity Fair writers hadn't done their research, wore cardigans and didn't have a mobile phone between them. Get straight on the line to Graydon, I say. Noonie chirps in in support of cardigans. Yes, we know. You just have to know how to wear them. We talk more about Dirty and Denton. Gina spills her red wine over Noonie's old chairs dress. We laugh and talk about work in a frenzied manner. It's not until we get on to Everest that it starts to unravel. I say that beyond base camp it's not the real world, and maybe we can't understand. Noonie disagrees. Vehemently. Obviously the evening ended at Istanbul on King. No tabouli, thanks.
My car is trapped in the underground carpark. As I get in the taxi on the way to work Tony Eastley says, and the was Sir Edmund Hilary.
We're watching Denton and there's a text from Gina: "didn't realise dbc was a bit of orright, if coming out the other side of therapy". I'm surprised as well. It's not how I remember him. I do remember the bad hair, though. I don't think Denton particularly liked him. Although, I do like the idea that narcissism is a real thing. And I like that he says "listen" when beginning to speak. We wonder how old he is. Ed says she'll Google him.
I go to bed and read de Botton. A few days out from the Writers' Festival and it's all about the writers.
I dream that I'm staying at Janet's. I go to the wrong train station on the way to work. As I try to walk down the stairs to the platform I realise that there are two giant bison prowling around down there.
On the way to work I remember this: "get BICK behind that counter and make me a cappuccino and I want it in a LAARGE glass".
It's colder than this morning and all around the water is grey shivering peaks. Over there, though, beside the island there's an imaginary line and on the other side suddenly a mirror as the sun comes through the cloud.
It's like the arbitrary line that Tommy Lee Jones talks about, the Mexican border. He talks articulately about insult and injustice. Marg felt alienated. It's a boys film. David loved it. It's a boys film. Marg says there was no justice except if you took it into your own hands. Boys film. David asks what if that's the only kind of justice there is. Boys film. Boys film.
There's fake blood on the stairs inside and a chocolate truffle on the outside ones. Monsters and trolls from Finland hold their bouquets aloft, and Wogan is the driest man in the world.
As I leave the bathroom and walk back through the bar I hear a man say: "masturbate in the shower", but then I'm back to the bank fees conversation feeling like a total victim.
There's a boy riding a bike onto the flyover. He has a brown scruffy dog sitting in a bucket on the back.
Lano and Woodley at the Enmore. Double-park to feed the black cat. As I'm driving away I imagine that someone opens the door of the house I've just been in, or that there's a face looking out from Gina's car parked beside me. Recover thanks to King Street neon.
Stuck on the couch under a blanket with the remote at the other side of the room, I watch The Footy Show. Mundine reminds me of Handyman Sam. Howcome boxers are permitted to talk themselves up when we only let other sports people say that they're focusing on the next game/heat/match/race? I know it's time to go to bed when the other Footy Show comes on, although I am tempted by Lillee.
There are sniffer dogs upstairs at the Marlborough and Mark Dapin is in the corner. I want to tell him that he's funny but he's with a man wearing a red sweater slung around his shoulders and I'm scared what I might learn. Instead Ed and I discuss the merits of slouchy boots (there aren't any) and dressing like your friends. Madonna is on the video screen. She's in her Dick Tracey phase, and she looks pinched.
Later, in the film I'm trying to eat my Twisties but there's very little noise and I have to suck them until they dissolve. That's one of the ways he's trying to unnerve us, this Australian man who directs French films. It's quiet. And still. The camera barely moves.
We're unnerved already and then a man slits his own throat.
What happens to children is important and far-reaching. Like we needed a reminder. But maybe the children turn in the end?
On Saturday I buy Charlotte Joy Low Miffy Goes to the Playground. I cook a cake with pears in it, stew some rhubarb and think about how I should get the washing machine fixed.
Lunch is in the sunny courtyard and Shannah has a new fringe.
The gods intervene for an evening and grant us the ABC. Arj Barker on The Glasshouse. A different kind of comedian to these smug Australians in their frenzy to deliver the line. Then All About My Mother. At first I don't recognise it. The trigger is the blue green of the kitchen cupboards and from then I'm waiting for that shot I remember. The aerial of Barcelona at dusk, over the hill, setting up the city from a distance, a mauve twinkling gem. I imagine I'm in a glider for that shot, but then it lands in that outskirts carpark and transvestite prostitutes are giving blowjobs. Penelope has a bird face, but the wallpaper is amazing.
Salt 'n Peppa sing Shoop. There's a small truck in front with a sticker that says: When I grow up I want to be a Kenworth. The pain of bitten down fingernails. A woman with bright orange hair near the pub where Mary met the prince. When I grow up I want to be Salt 'n Peppa.
There’s a dachshund in the park attempting to play with a soccer ball. Chest skimming the ground, it doesn’t have the height for much control. Eventually a bigger dog with better skills commandeers the ball and quickly it’s at the other side of the park. Dachshund stands by its owners and barks in the general direction.
I’ve crashed a burger and beer recovery session which belongs to Caroline, Eamonn and the artist from WA. We sit in the sunshine of the park and drink warm Grolsch. Conversation starts with The Hanging Man. What if Death did decline? Or is that a part of the story with which the tellers took liberty? Perversely, it’s comforting that Death is an actual person. Perhaps because played by a dwarf it seems less intimidating. I like the idea of making her acquaintance throughout your life until it’s time. Have I seen her already, and where?
Caroline says that Gab’s baby, Charlotte, throws up about 80 times a day. We talk about our new house where everything will be perfect, and the artist asks if I’m a lucky person. At one point he motions to me to stop biting my fingernails. Inside I frown.
We discuss differences between Sydney and Melbourne, the christening, rescheduling the Pearl Beach weekend and Avi’s dress up party. Mostly we observe dog behaviour, and I pick at the leftover chips.
After a while Caroline and the artist take the keys to my house and walk down to go to the bathroom. As they’re coming back they hear Hazel’s daughter yelling on the phone.
Soon the sun is down and it’s time to move on. The man at the deli says I’m the first soup person of the season. He seems impressed but he doesn’t think it’s cold enough and hasn’t ordered ham hocks yet.
In the supermarket a man in a cap bowls up to me, opens a plastic bag in front of my nose and asks: “is this radicchio?” I nod and he’s gone.
I arrive home with split peas, two bottles of red and no ham. On the kitchen blackboard there’s a drawing of a dachshund chasing a ball.
Later in the evening when we’re gossiping over dinner Scotty thinks that if the rumours are true then the Tom Cruise Jamie Foxx twosome would be called ToeJam, in the spirit of TomKat. He writes that on the board too.
It’s a Scrabble night but we don’t play. Instead we eat mashy soup, drink Moet and talk about the technical differences between dwarves and midgets. We test Ed’s long service decanter, hear stories about the reading room and too hot tennis in Malaysia. I send them home at 2.30. Have to be in good form for What Not to Wear.
There's a fire truck outside the Chinese cafe and I peer in expecting action. The firemen are sitting on a bench seat ordering take-away. Next door in the bottle shop the television is on and one of the Big Brother girls is telling another that she wants to get to know "the real you". I wonder why you'd bother. There are fully grown palm trees newly lining Towns Place. I wonder why you'd bother.
Dinner is pies and fast moving gossip. I'm amazed and uncomfortable at how much these people know. The pies are Simmone Logue and there's talk of the body corporate meeting at the Horizon when Harry and Deborah came from a long lunch. Pets were on the agenda. Baz Luhrmann was there. Then there's Derby Day and Sandra Sully shouting across the marquee about truthfulness. Or should it be honesty? The celebrity chef wants his Abercrombie and Fitch jeans back, but it can be through a third party. No need for direct contact.
During dinner the police arrive outside and we wonder if it's because we've been stealing music. All of us. We wait for the knock at the door but it never comes and instead we move on to ice-cream, Naomi Robson and the Tracey Grimshaw segue from Beconsfield to liposuction.
Afterwards we look at cathedrals in Florence, Milan and Salisbury on Google Earth. Newcastle lacks deinfition, though, so we don't even bother with Lochinvar.
Many things are not written, just remembered from time to time. From time to time. Somehow poetic and not particularly specific. Constantly surprising when it appears, as it does from time to time, in legal documents.
One thing remembered is the huge orange moon over the bush as we speed down the freeway. It's there again in the images as Augie March play their rollicking and wistful songs. But it looks square in the projection, and I'm preoccupied by the edges. I want to shave them off.
Another thing remembered is adolescent tantrums on the tennis court, at the sewing machine and on horseback, mostly on horseback. Propelled by perfectionism into teeth gritting paralysis. I see it here too tonight with this man, the lead singer, and his increasingly tight requests to the sound mixer to turn the acoustic down, PLEASE.
They play Thin Captain Crackers and he asks us if we know what they are. I remember a childhood spent kneeling around cheese platters in front of blistering open fires, Gran inevitably sitting away in the corner (for my skin, darling). Hon is obsessed. They're spot on, these biscuits. But are they still Thin Captain Crackers? They don't make them thin like they used to. Lorraine, are they Thin Captain Crackers?
