Squibblog

the annual blog hiatus or why is there sand in my sheets?

We are back from our beach holiday, filled up on sun, swimming and games of barefoot cops 'n' robbers. I've been off work for almost four weeks and have only brushed my hair twice: the last time was for a wedding just before New Year. Soy's glandular fever which has laid him low since October is just starting to abate, although it hung around long enough for him to spent much of the summer in front of the tests against India. Zac has a new cricketing hero in Michael Clarke.

And me? I had a moment last Saturday, when a long held ambition was finally realised. 

Before we had kids Soy and I used to snorkel every weekend. We tried to keep up our snorkeling in the years we were parents but let's face it - there's no taking off to hours to tool about underwater when you have little ones. Especially little ones as pale as ours. But each year we have wondered would this be the one when all four of us would snorkel together? Would we be able to share our love of the underwater world with the kids this summer? Last year we snorkeled a little in Fiji - but the water was incredibly shallow and the kids never wanted to do it together.

This year, on our holiday near Currarong, I took each of the kids out snorkeling with me. Both of them are now confident in deep water, but are excellent at spotting schools of garfish or tiny iridescent squid. And on our last day we hiked out to Shell Beach near Currarong with our snorkeling gear and all four of us swam together. We saw rays, big fish, little fish, crabs on the rocks, jelly fish in the deep, acres of sea weed and lots and lots of sea urchins. I took a moment to look about at the legs of my whole family, all equally enthralled with the sea life, and know that we have reached a milestone.

lost in translation, or do you not know that I am a hunchback?

When Soy and I were growing up in Canberra there was an excellent Arthouse cinema called Electric Shadows. No Canberra student household was complete without an Electric Shadows poster on the back of the toilet door, showing the listings for the coming months. In amongst those listings was, inevitably, a running of the Gerard Depardieu film “Jean de Florette” and its companion piece “Manon des Sources”. They would usually play back to back on a Sunday afternoon.

In the climax of Jean de Florette, Gerard Depardieu’s character, who is generally optimistic and forebearing, is cursing God for not sending rain to his farm. He raises his fists to the sky and shouts for God to remember that he is a hunchback. For years whenever something random has gone wrong around the house, be it a broken glass or a broken nail, Soy and I would to raise our hands to the sky and say, in an outrageous French accent, “Do you not know I am a ‘unchback?”

The other day Zac was in the back yard and he lost his ball over the fence. He raised his hands to the sky and shouted “Do you not know I am a ‘unchback?”  It suddenly occurred to me that not only has Zac never seen the film Jean de Florette, but Gerard Depardieu does not deliver the line in an outrageous French accent, because the whole film is in French.

Last night Soy and I sat down to watch Jean de Florette again. It is beautiful and tragic and I cried even though I knew what was going to happen from the start. But I was a little apprehensive when I saw that Gerard Depardieu actually says “I am a hunchback! Have you forgotten? Do you think it is easy?” For years we have been misquoting poor Monsieur Jean.

Still, next time I hit my thumb with a hammer, I’m pretty sure I will still cry out “Do you not know I am a hunchback?”

un-Christmassy Christmas songs

Since childhood I have had an aversion to Christmas-in-a-department-store Christmas songs. For the last few years I've been perfecting a playlist of songs which mention Christmas, but which aren't your usual Frosty the Snowman annoying crap. So here is my alternative Christmas playlist:

How to Make Gravy - Paul Kelly

They say it's going to be a hundred degrees, even more maybe, but that won't stop the roast. Who's gonna make the gravy? I bet it won't taste the same

The only song I know about what Christmas is really like in Australia, with our hot, hot Christmas days where we still eat roast turkey and steamed pudding. Also, it makes me cry every time I hear it, which is extraordinary because I hear it four times a day in the month before Christmas.

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl

So happy Christmas, I love you, baby. I can see a better time, when all our dreams come true.

Those happy words start the song, it ends with "Merry Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last". Love, disappointment and hate: what Christmas is really about.

Tojo - The Hoodoo Gurus

I said 'Tracey, this is Christmas, don't you know? don't you know?
She said 'Baby, I wouldn't miss this for the world. I've got to blow. I've got to blow.

For many of the people I grew up with in Darwin, Christmas was synonymous with memories of Cyclone Tracey which devastated the city on Christmas Eve 1974. So a song about pleading with Tracey to have mercy because it's Christmas speaks to me. Also, it's the Hoodoo Gurus whose style is very un-Christmassy.

River - Joni Mitchell

It doesn't really snow here, it stays pretty green, I'm gonna make a lot of money and quit this crazy scene.

A beautiful song of lost love, with a jingle bells riff.

Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight) - The Ramones

There's something about hearing Joey Ramone singing mournfully about reindeer and sugar plum fairies that makes me smile.

Another Lonely Christmas - Prince

Baby you promised me (you promised me) you'd never leave, then you went and died on the twenty-fifth day of December

This song is everything I love about Prince and a whole lot more. Reverb, falsetto, lyrics about swimming naked, reverb, melodrama, screaming and more reverb.

Santa's Beard - They Might Be Giants

When she stands beneath the mistletoe screaming, for him to stand beneath the mistletoe screaming, I can't help but feeling jealous, each time she climbs on his knee. Why must she climb on his knee?

Ostensibly a song about Santa, but really a song about your wife cheating with your best friend. And it contains the ultimate anti-Christmas line: "and I don't want that fat guy around." And a piano accordian.

I want an alien for Christmas - Fountains of Wayne

I want a little green guy about three feet high, with seventeen eyes and he knows how to fly, I want an alien for Christmas this year.

This is my favourite find of the year, the kids and I are addicted to singing it loud in the car. 

yule enabled

We are great lovers of Christmas in the Squibblog household. As soon as Zac's birthday celebrations wind up, we crack open the Christmas decorations. This year has been special because we bought a cut tree for the first time since the kids were born. I'm willing to sweep up dropped pine needles every day for the smell it brings into the house.

As school is almost finished for the year we spent this afternoon, after reading reports, decorating the tree. Nell insisted we listen to 'proper Christmas carols' and not the collection of un-Christmassy Christmas songs I have spent the past few years perfecting (more on this in another post, perhaps). Tonight after the kids were in bed we drank wine and watched the tree lights glow and began to think about the year behind us and the year ahead.

ten years and a world of difference

Zac turned ten yesterday. TEN! While some of us remembered him as a squalling infant or energetic toddler, yesterday he was all cool hairdo, video games and new guitar. He's a kid who really appreciates getting new clothes and books (yay!) as well as the boxes and boxes of Lego his friends gave him. I watched him talking to his cousins last night and remembered when they were all babies (and not taller than me!), and had a little sniffle.

Today's party was crazy on a stick - twelve kids in a small room with a slot car track and cars that fell off every corner. And yet he remembered to thank us solemnly for organising it and asked what he could do to help us relax this afternoon.

He is a really nice kid and I couldn't be more proud.

mini beast

Nell has always loved living things, great and small. She was delighted last term when her class was studying 'mini beasts' (ie insects, arachnids and molluscs). So she was delighted when a dragonfly chose our lounge room as home and, sadly, final resting place. The dried shell is so beautiful that we don't have the heart to throw it out so it remains on our windowsill.

 

first tomatoes

Tastebuds are tingling around Chez Squibblog with strawberries ripening every day, blueberries getting bluer, zucchini flowers opening and now the first tomatoes of the summer. These cute little egg tomatoes are a Diggers Club heirloom variety but I forget which one.

pawpaw salad

With summer setting in and the humidity reaching into the 90s in Sydney, I thought it was about time to try to recreate the pawpaw salad I had at the Rapid Creek markets (on recommendation from my dear friend Liz). I recently bought a julienne slicer (essential for this recipe, I think) and armed with a Darwin recipe from the wonderful Poh, came up with this.

Perfectly garlicky and hot, crunchy and sour, it was a very good first attempt and took me back to my last morning in Darwin in August. I might save my second attempt for a time when limes don't cost $29.99 a kilo! (I used lemon juice instead).

yes, you may call me 'Master'

I've become so used to having some period of art history on my mind that I find it difficult to believe that it all stops now. Last week I handed in my last essay and, assuming of course that it's good enough and I pass the course, I will have obtained my Masters degree.

Five years and many, many happy hours in the library have passed since I (rather self consciously) headed back to University. I was the scary mature aged student in the undergrad tutorials, and I almost became part of the furniture in Schaeffer library, so many years I have been visiting there. I finished with an examination of this gorgeous portrait of Madame de Pompadour and its implications for early feminist thought in the Enlightenment.

I am a little sad to be leaving study behind me. It's been a transformative experience and opened my eyes to many beautiful things, not all of them about the art.

lucky thirteen

The week that you wander around Sydney noticing the jacarandas in bloom, is the week I got married. Thirteen years ago today, Soy and I stood amongst the jacarandas in the Botanical Gardens and got hitched. Although there have been many happy days since then, nothing has even equalled the ridiculous joy of that day. I know that, as a parent, I'm supposed to say that the day my children were born was the happiest of my life, but let's face it: on my wedding day I was slim and beautiful, surrounded by friends and family, drunk on champagne and love and dancing around eating chocolate cake. The day the kids were born involved a lot less laughing and a lot more stitches. Fortunately all of those days involved gathering together the three people I love most in the world, today I celebrate hooking up with the big one. Love you, Soy.