Striped Pyjamas

I'm teaching The Wave to Year 10 at the moment. So I do have a bit of Third Reich on the brain.

And I reckon The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne would make my top 6 books released in the last 10 years. (It is a list in progress).

Yes, it is a Holocaust story.

Yes, they made it into a film.

Yes, you should go and see it. Even if you haven't read the book. Even if you have.

They have done amazing things with parallel narratives, with symbolism, with music.

With this story, the less that is said, the better. Just go see.

ANZMacs

Nigella has catapaulted the phrase Domestic Goddess into the modern vernacular. And I love the chick. Except for her Twinings ads, which, quite frankly, shit me no end.





I don't even OWN this book. But dammit, I wish I did. Something about the warmer weather makes me want to melt chocolate, preheat ovens, grease pans and lick the bowl. Kind of makes me want to be even more like the ever fabulous Tori. And decorated cupcakes make me feel so feminine. Which is something that doesn't happen all too often, truth be told.



So last weekend was a monstrosity that didn't really work out. Sure the triple chocolate brownies TASTED good, but seeing as I forgot to put the sugar in (and so pulled out the tray after it had been in there for 8 minutes aleady, and attempted to stir through caster sugar... didn't work out so well) they were pretty darn amazing. Simultaneously not good enough but too good to share with my Year 12 boys at The Factory. But very good it you cut into small pieces (like a quarter of a normal



Today, as the cold weather finally descends on West Bubblefuck (not that I have been wanting it to arrive, but it is better to suffer than anticipate the suffering. Or so my inner martyr says), the days are more suited to stirring and ovens than really most anything else. So today it is ANZAC biscuits. With Macadamias in. The recipe has been dubbed ANZMacs. Mum reckons it is a natural evolution in Australian cuisine.

Please excuse the dodgy pic. Camera is flat and phone is less than ideal

Shows Some Merit

My brother calls me Wayne. As in Dane, son of Wayne. I don't quite understand the inner workings of his mind. He used to call me other brother Fridge, as some kind of morph from Nick.

And my name is NOT Dane. That part of the moniker came from the consistent mispronounciation of my name (which actually has a harder e sound on the end. Like there is an invisible i in my name.).

Since I was 7, receiving my first award on a school assembly. The identity of the teacher has been smeared away. The faceless woman called Dane Levy to the stage. I didn't know it was me, so the nudges of my classmates and that huge pause just magnified the humiliation.

Yesterday - 22 years later - I got an award on assembly. I pretty bloody chuffed about it, really. I don't quite know who made the decision to deign me as demonstrating "outstanding dedication to the teaching and learning of students" but I am pretty damn delighted that he did (taking a chance on it being a he, since The Boy Factory (pretty unsurprisingly) is a bit of a sausage fest).

Anyway, the award was presented by Swainy - the vice captain. A lovely string bean of a kid - full back in the 1sts, and a lolloping enthusiasm in English that almost makes up for his near complete lack of attendance. So he is at the mic, calling the names of the teachers, and I was worried he was going to call me Mrs. The notion of being married to your father is pretty nauseating, and so that was my greatest concern. I KNOW that I have had the "What's your first name, Miss?" conversation with my Year 12 kids. I definitely have. I guess Swainy was away that day...

But he comes from a long tradition of mispronouncing my name on assemblies, so really, the boy can't fight fate. I just know that all day I am going to be answering to the name of Dane.

Escape to Chatsworth Estate

Channel 4 may well be behind the greatest scripted television ever created. Britain's commercial station with a youngish bent (but not as trashy/ soft porn as Channel Five). They made Spaced, the show that turns my legs to jelly and my belly to squishy chocolate cake. They made the greatest celebration of nerdyness - The IT Crowd.

And they are the home of Shameless.

This show started when I was Over There, but I really didn't get entirely hooked until I snaffled a super cheap copy of season 1 on DVD, and since then I have wanted to emerse myself in northern slang, take up smoking and return to drinking pints. I also really really really want to punch someone in the nose.

Set in the grimey world of the houseing esates, following the less than functional Gallagher family, this show is seriously addictive and so so well made. Intelligent structures and adorable flawed heroes. Season One also cradled James McAvoy (oh my) (and perhaps I only watch each subsequent episode with the tiniest of shining hopes that he will come back into it, but alas, he is somewhere in Spain with Fiona on the run from the boys in blue).

This show kinda glorifies the world of the coupon and the gyro and the quick scam. Not quite to a point where we want to be involved, but almost. There is not much that makes me want to live near the Maguires (ooh and I love the way the Maguires say their name. Ma Gwy Ahs. !!) or take a spot in Lilian's home made brothel. And I don't fancy getting my bag snatched at the Jockey or getting lost in the streets of the estate. Frank (or Vernon Francis) is a slug, a worm, a germ of a man. His latest (and original but not only) wife Monica is an annoying narcissist who really deserves a knitting needle through one of her central organs. Fiona was a little too self righteous for me, plus she was a monkey wingnut (or maybe I'm just jealous that she used to snog James on a regular basis). But Lip (I want him back too) is a heavy browed sex god, Ian is the gay brother I want to have and Debbie has grown into a narky sarcastic cow that I wish I had the guts to be when I was a teenager. I do feel like the Gallaghers are a part of my life.

And what astounds me is that 5 years later, the kiddie actors they hired - especially Our Carl and Debbie - are pretty bloody good, really.

I'm rationing myself on Season 5 at the moment (having picked up the 1-4 box set when I was Over There last year, and then ordered #5 on Amazon, because SBS DVD only want Season 1 to be on DVD here - bastards) because I missed most of it last year, being on Boy Factory duty on Monday nights. And I am avoiding watching Season 6 on Mondays, because it might ruin #5 for me.

If you love character dramas with dark dark humour and a fair whack of silliness, then you will love this show. If you like to steer clear of obscene language, sex scenes, hand held cameras (counting out David Stratton here I guess), vomit, punched noses or gratuitous drinking, or you can't catch on to a thick Northern accent then I'd give it a miss. But never let me know you have spurned it. Or I might call you one of the creative insults like they have on the show, like.

Oh. And the bad news. Like most things of beauty, that hint at originality on TV, the Yanks are going to do their own version. I don't care if the "writers" do come from West Wing pedigree. Leave this televisiual masterpiece alone, you vultures!!!

Under 13. Underwhelmed.

I love football. The one with the round ball that you play with your feet.

(Yes, that would be soccer)

I haven't played comp for a number of years (I think it has almost passed the counting on both hands stage, actually) and college hangover soccer doesn't quite count. I was most disappointed that a city the size of West Bubblefuck doesn't have a women's comp!!!! Incredibly annoying.

So I settle for coaching. Attempting to obtain myself Yet Another Alter Ego... Supercoach.

I have a lovely little team of Under 13 football players, with a wide range of experience (from the rep players to those who have only chased sheep before) and an equally wide range of fitness.
I have been given the gig by myself and so enlisted the help of a Y12 kid - who very soon after was long term suspended for like 2 month and so had to be replaced with another (more reliable) Y12 kid, who shall hence be known as Sidekick (though I'm sure he would hate that moniker (if he even knew what moniker meant)). Sidekick is great with the boys, with just the right amount of carrot and stick (more with the carrot and less with the stick), and it is fantastic when I have taught all day for him to run the Thursday trainings and sort out the team on Saturdays.

Yes of course, I am the most unfit person involved in the team, but they are 13 year old boys, and I am more than twice their age and have more vices than they could poke a stick at, so I am not self conscious about it at all (can't you tell?). They have some wicked skills amongst them, with some kids seeming mild and meek off the field but fiesty demons in shiny shorts on the grass. So their fitness. Needs work.

Those who know me will realise that a Morning Person I am not. And yet. I organised to take the boarders from The Boy Factory on a morning "run" (while I walk the dog) on 2 mornings a week. It started last week on Wednesday. It was fantastic.

Then we went to The Other Boy Factory in Slightly Further East Bubblefuck, and totally trounced their soccer team 5-1, with the boys playing like a proper team, even if it was in teeming freezing rain, with the goal mouth more like a lake than a park.

Saturday's game was a different story, with them NOT listening to game plans. NOT listening to instructions bellowed from the sideline (Alter Ego Supercoach draws heavily from Alter Ego Little Voice). Kicking high balls into fierce winds and failing terribly against the West Bubblefuck Rep Side.

Sidekick gave their arses a good kicking in the half time rant. "I know youse are tired, but if youse aren't going to listen to me, there is plenty of other things I could be doing on a Saturday". The arse kicking worked, and they lifted their game.

And to this morning. I hauled my sorry self out of slumber to take them on a turn around the grounds. Naj (the dog) was delighted as ever. And 2 kids showed.

Disappointment. If it was a colour, I think it would be mustardy. And pale.

I still walked the dog through the autumnal dawn. All the while rehearsing my own arse kicking for tomorrow. Ungrateful little smurfs.

Most of my favourite words are only Four Letters

2001.

My first year of the working world, out from the comfy blankets of a BA. My second year of the heady days of Astolat Manor. And it may have been the greatest year of television I can recall.
It was the year I discovered Spaced. The year of weekly Buffy gatherings in Kensington. And this.
Love Is A Four Letter Word.
In an Inner-West of Sydney, post-Olympics. In an era of nasty pokies laws and the death of live music venues. Set in a pub, following the dysfuntional and lovable pub crew (at the time when my then-amour was one such pub person) through expulsion and addiction and planned accidental pregnancies and the most vivid and beautiful image of a man destroying a pokie in the middle of the street.

It was simultaneous frantic and rambling (a bit like the Inner-West, I guess). It felt like Albie and Larissa and Angus were my life long friends and I wanted to spend more time with them than the half-hour on Tuesday nights on Aunty that I got. This show was a shining beacon for what was possible in the creation of Australian television, highlighting the incredible musical talent that Australia (and in particular Sydney) had on offer at the time.

The reviews I have found online universally slam it. Considered to be only for those with minute attention spans, thought to have too much explicit language, too much flash, too many close ups, too much fast motion. Too much style. Not enough substance.... Well that is just bullshit. These nitwit reviewers seemed elated that the show was canned. Baby Boomer Arseholes.

I found it entirely addictive television, and I have been desperate to get my hands on a copy of the DVD, pretty much since I bought a DVD player.

The ABC site for the show has been archived, which means that nobody there has cared for it since 2001. And it makes me sad, because it is such a rich tangled site. Impossible to navigate, but that is pretty much the point of it. And in 2001 the web WAS still tangled, and sites were meant to engage and take dedicated exploration. And the

I don't really know if this post is a review, or a plea to the universe for other believers, or something I have just needed to opine about for years. I guess I feel better now.

As Per The Title

I love a mixed metaphor. Hence the title of my blog, here.

I love it when people accidentally squirrel about with common idioms because they forget what the real ones are, or because they never knew. I also like it when people do it on purpose, but not quite as much.

My brother is a killer. He is the kind of guy who loves to seem like he knows everything about everything, and can talk a whole lot of crap without actually saying anything at all. When he was going to an interview at a Catholic university, he mentioned he should try to "find some rosemary beads" to show how religious he is.

And when attempting to be frank and deliberate, he claims he doesn't want to "butter around the bush".

Rowdy recently said that she had to be "up at the crack of sparrows" and had no idea what I found so funny.

Jase's acquaintance from days of yore was fond of pulling them out of the air:
"It's not all roses and cream you know!"
"All ships aboard!"
"You wouldn't know a hammer if it was blue!"

And on the Famous Mixed Metaphor Mountains weekend a few years ago, some more were coined too.
Revenge is a Fish. (best served cold)
That's a taken. (as opposed to a given)

Yesterday I stumbled across another. A kid at school said to Davo:
"I'm not the brightest chocolate in the box, sir"

No, buddy. No you aren't.

A Bowral Of Laughs

The 4th Wedding of 2009 was a total hit. John & Soph slammed the whole thing together in 6 weeks and it was a resounding success, with good food, boutique beers and roaring fires.

She looked stunning (he scrubbed up well too) and from the first hints of 'Moon River' by the quartet, I felt like there was a finch fluttering behind my epiglotis. A reading about love as a garden is PERfect for a landscape gardener's wedding day, and the autumnal leaves floated down right on cue. It was just like a bought one, really.

Bowral makes West Bubblefuck seem like a tropical escape, and for the first time in years, I came home with my clothes smelling like smoke. But it was from the fireplace rather than cigarettes. Bill, Robyn & I hit the Royal on Friday night - 18 year olds in Armani tshirts with shiners dropping vodka into each others beers and dealing coke in the toilets. With brand new Suzuki Swifts lining the carpark. CUB central!

I love the fact that weddings are a chance to catch up with people who I feel were pretty formative in who I am today, but who I never get to see, separated by distance and the insanity of life. Robyn asked me if it was weird seeing the friends from the past, and my response astounded me. Mostly because I hadn't conciously thought it before, and also because I had been (gently) drinking for a number of hours, and wasn't aware I was capable of such insight at such a juncture.

Such occasions that allow us to reconnect with the peeps from our past are rarely awkward. In fact, they feel like comfort. Making new friends at nearly-30 is harder than it used to be. The friends that feel like old jeans, that feel like eating soup, that feel like a nanna rug, they are the ones that know all the stories. The ones about skinny dipping in Coogee, the ones about the rats in the kitchen, the ones about sinking into the floor, the ones about cheating on the Playstation and using the hose through the bathroom window. They are the ones who are effortless and easy. These kinds of friendships don't need much maintenance. Maybe a once a year catch up, an occasional text and an invite to a wedding! I love these friends the most.

Solemny

sol⋅em⋅nize 
–verb (used with object)
1.
to perform the ceremony of (marriage).
2.
to hold or perform (ceremonies, rites, etc.) in due manner.
3.
to observe or commemorate with rites or ceremonies: to solemnize an occasion with prayer.
4.
to go through with ceremony or formality.
5.
to render solemn, serious, or grave; dignify.
–verb (used without object)
6.
to become solemn; conduct oneself with solemnity.

Advice to all prospective brides and grooms.

Do whatever you can to avoid the word SOLEMNISE in your wedding ceremony. All 4 weddings I have been to this year have used it. It is a silly word.

Plus it sounds a great deal like SODOMISE. Which evokes a fairly hilariouse image as the flakey/dowdy/overly made-up celebrant says

"We are here today to solemnise the union of HIM and HER"

It is MORE than enough to spark off a giggle loop (Warning: To Know about the Giggle Loop is to become A Part of the Giggle Loop.)

Congratulations John & Sophie!!!

Back To The Big Smoke

That highway between West Bubblefuck and The Big Smoke is getting tire marks in it, in the shape of Henry's wheels.

I was down there this past weekend to go to a Creative Teaching conference (party time! excellent!). Catch ups with friends, revisiting old haunts. The usual.

But it puts me on the back foot all week at The Boy Factory. And already Term 2 looks like one that needs a snorkel, what with being in WAY over my head and not feeling at all in control. Plus, there is Dooty shift tomorrow, the mountain of marking, that just never seems to get smaller, and another trip to Sydney at the end of the week with The Boys.

On the up side, another weekend without a car crash! Hooray!

Stinkfist

HG Nelson once wisely said that everyone hates Manly, except a select few people who grew up in the Brookevale area.

I am one of those people. I love my soaring sea eagles. (My sightings of eagles has actually tweaking a bit of an inner twitcher (that would be a bird watcher, not a tourette's sufferer) But that is another blogpost in the making).

That is not to say I think the Blokes from Brooky are faultless. There have been dalliances in arrogance, wife beating and alleged rape.

And then there is Hoppa. The man who liked to rile his rivals by ramming a digit into their date.

He's BACK!

And looking tougher than ever.

If a girl crashes her car on a dirt road and doesn't take a photo of it to put on her blog, does it really happen?

Generally I am a good driver. Sure sometimes I text while speeding while hungover. Or take selfies while I am doing the New England Highway. Or do a uey over double lines.

But the only crash I have had (until this weekend) was when I got rear ended in the 'Sham when I was only there to return the keys, having moved back in to Baxter. Not my fault.

This weekend I was heading to The Coast. To Forster. Not to Laurieton, which is only 1 hour down the road and FREE... (and also on a road that I know very very well, and have never crashed on before... sorry, I digress)But to a lake house that Jase had organised. And I was so very excited.

Sure I had to wait until I had coached the U13 Soccer Dynamos. And they always play at midday, which sucks arse. And then there was a supermarket trip, and getting petrol. It was about 1.30 before I left.
And I also didn't really know where I was going.
But I was heading in the right direction on the Forest Way Road. It was just stunning. Apart from the parts where the Forestry department has left huge jagged scars in the landscape. The colour was so vivid and green, there were gorgeous bright rosellas, majestic black cockatoos and gently bounding (not near the road) kangaroos.

Not long after the logging road turned to grazing pastures, there was newly graded road. Looser gravel.
I was cruising along, possibly 60, 70ks an hour. Henry's wheels slipped off the tire tracks, onto the Even Looser gravel. And fishtailed.
He fishtailed again, and I felt my heart push against my chest, as if trying to evacuate the car, but first just had to get through the chest cavity. I felt the heat prickle in my fingertips as the adreneline reached the end of the line.
He fishtailed again.
The voice in my head, the voice of reason, the one that usually knows what it is talking about. It was speaking. Not yelling, but in a calm clear voice, much like a driving instructor.
This is what you are meant to do. You're just meant to keep fishtailing til your wheels hit solid ground again. Just keep swimming.
DO NOT touch those brakes. Keep your feet OFF the brakes. DO NOT TOUCH THE BRAKES

But my feet wanted the car to stop.

Honestly, I just whispered my toes against the brakes. No slamming. But it was the signal for Henry to veer directly for the right hand side of the road.
Hitting the dirt gutter.
Gliding over the ditch. There was a hardy looking bush just one foot to my right, and a dead woody looking thing two feet to my left.
Coming to an abrupt halt. Apparently in a reedy swamp. I've never been a huge fan of swamps in the past. They seemed to me to be the lowest in the heirachy of bodies of water. Lower than a creek. Less status than even a puddle.
Swamps have soared in my esteem. Keep your oceans, rivers, lakes. Give me a swamp down from Rubys Nob Road. That swamp? Saved my life.

The giant dead tree was close enough to the driver side door for it to touch the door frame when I opened it. The wire fence, with its vicious looking star pickets was just beyond the dead tree. And the burly black cows, casually chewing cud, looking at me like she was saying "What the fuck did you do that for? You dickhead"

For some reason, I thought I might be able to just drive on out.
There was a little too much water for that. Also not enough traction for reversing the way I came.

I thought about how Nana, at 65, got her giant Merc out of half a metre of mud on the way to Kioma. By herself. I couldn't think of how to do it. Obviously Poppa wasn't talking me through it like he talked her through it. Possibly because he had been doing the precision driving to get me into the swamp, rather than the tree. Or the cow.
So I thought breifly about pushing. And gave up pretty quick smart on that.

I was just at the point of considering what I had seen behind me by way of driveways and farm houses. Do I turn left? Or right?

And then I heard the motor. It has to be the most beautiful sound in the universe, an approaching car on a dirt road. When I hadn't seen ANYONE for about an hour and a half.

Charlie, the leathery angel in the greasy hi-vis jumper, slowed his 4WD ute to a stop.

"Ah. Looks like you've had a bit of trouble here?"

Yes, Charlie. Trouble. And I am a useless weak woman and I need your help. I didn't say those words, but I meant them. Without a hint of sarcasm.

Charlie told me to stop the engine, and get in to the ute. He had friends up the road. They should have some chains. He hoped they were home.

Most of the Ham family were not home, they were out with the steers. But Janette stayed home to do gardening, as it was such a lovely day. She called Arnold, but he didn't Answer. Then Aaron answered. He would leave the breakers (he is breaking horses in) and bring the chains down now.

20 minutes later, and I was thinking about how low Henry might be sinking. Then Aaron showed up, and he brought his truck. And Charlie and I went back in his ute.

The blokes hooked Henry up easy, and while Charlie towed, Aaron steered, and I stood around like a useless git. Which is not a poetic turn of phrase at all, I was totally useless.

We popped open his boot (with a little bit of difficulty), and there was nothing really cracked or busted open or shifted too much. But the radiator was leaking a bit. Charlie the Angel had some water, so we filled him up, enough to get us back to the Ham's place.

Aaron called Mitchy. Mitchy was on call for the NRMA, in Walcha. We were about 65 ks from Walcha.

Janette made me a cup of tea, and I sat at their kitchen table, feeling like a victim of my own stupidity. But an increasing sense of joy at my lucky escape. I decided that I probably wouldn't get down to Forster, but would be happy to turn back to Tamworth - the long way around - and cook the roast lamb for myself.

Mitchy showed up with the tilt tray truck. And Mitch, the Ham's nephew. They hauled Henry up, squinted in the twilight under the bonnet, and proclaimed the need for a new radiator.

"Won't be here til Mundy"

A sigh of relief, as the boys all lit up a quick smoke. Arnold Ham offered to drive me back to West Bubblefuck. But I felt like I couldn't possibly accept any more old school rural hospitality from the Hams. I have never liked ham as much as I like those Hams.

So I got into the cab with Mitch and Mitchy. Mitchy cranked up the country music (the first song was about getting stuck in mud) and we hooned along the dirt road toward Walcha. Mitch got a phone call from the fire brigade. Another accident was up ahead on Topdale road.

By the time Mitchy's tilt arrived at the scene, the commercial towey was there already ("That Stewart cunt always undercuts me!!!"). And the ambos. And the cops. Mitch went down to see what the story was.
Mitchy told me (as he snuck another quick smoke) that if the cops came up and asked, I was to tell them I overheated. They did ask Mitch. He told them it was a breakdown.

The last bit to Walcha was jubilant to the point of silliness. The fellas were young - 21 - with sailor mouths and rural attitudes. The kind of guys that if they were shown on a film would be deemed as caracitures or cliches. They kept joking about not having a license. About Henry falling off the back. About it all being a bit too Wolf Creek.

They took me to their local pub, where they were on first names with the bar staff (the bar matron kept them in line. I could take classroom management lessons from her). I got a room in the motel, and returned to buy my knights in greasy armour a round of beers.
And more beers.
And a few more beers.
And I met some more locals, and I ate some dodgy chinese, and I laughed at the two Mitches, who were more like a married couple than mates.

And so I am still here. And so I am still alive. And my car (at this stage) is not written off. I think it would be acceptable for him to have a bit more damage than just a radiator.

And sure, I didn't get a fix of 500, red wine and coast time. But my big night out in Walcha was actually quite fun.

And I just might be the luckiest human I know.

You're lucky lucky, you're so lucky!