Question #187

I recently did an online personality profile, one that was linked from a reputable daily paper. I know the go, I know which way the questions tend, I know what kind of person I am. This one had lots of questions about humour and spirituality which led to my two strongest personality traits - I like humour, and I don't believe in God.

But what really startled me was Question #187: "Do you take risks when establishing new relationships?"

Publish Post

Sweetpeas 25 weeks 3 days later

About time! Thank goodness I didn't make this a weekly update, as I'd anticipated!

I have three types of sweetpea in my garden - a light blue and a dark blue, both from Mrs Broad in Queensland; and a white one called Mrs Collier. Every year I plant them, and they flower and die, and I collect the seeds to plant the following year. Mostly I plant the same colour together - all dark blue, all white - but one end of the sweet-pea patch is better than the other, and last year dark blue was at the shady end. That's why you don't see any dark blue here - I only got a couple of vines this time. It's also why there are only 3 types - I used to have a fourth, Painted Lady, the original variety, an intensely scented pink flower (like all ladies that paint are). I miss Painted Lady.

Tomorrow is my birthday

When I imagine the march of time, I think of one of those typical one-page calendars that has 3 months across and 4 down. When it's February, I'm there in the middle of the top line, May I'm floating in the middle, September I'm 3 down and 3 across - it's how I place myself in the flow of time. Which is why October is so trying, the dark dingy bottom left-hand corner, tucked away, dusty and dim, the beginning of the last row, cramped and awkward, the weight of all those other months on top and still a whole row to traverse before the end. It's an exhausted  month, a dispiriting month. After spring days promising sunlight and warmth, it's  wet and cold and windy. If a year were a lifetime, October is mid-retirement when, no matter how healthy and happy you are, you can start expecting to die any second.

Which is probably why I never plan anything for my birthday.

The Jasmine Thief

One Monday night in early September, I go on what looks like my usual run. But this is a ploy. I am not going for my usual run. I am casing the Inner West for blossoming jasmine vines...

Jasmine gelato, gelato di gelsomino. I read about it in "Midnight in Sicily"; searched Sicily for it before lighting on it in a gelateria in Trapani; Michael-my-ex got a recipe for it on the net and makes it every year. Except this year he was sad for he had no jasmine flowers.
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I jog, I sweat, I negotiate busy roads, I keep an eye out for jasminum polyanthum. Not just any - they must be almost in full bloom, large, and hidden. There's one in Forest Lodge: front fence on a busy road - too open. Here's another in a garden on a quiet lane-way in Annandale - bit small, may do in a pinch. This one on an overgrown bank below some flats, on the same lane - perfect.

Next Sunday morning, just after six, I take my shopping bags and scissors, and head to Annandale in my car. On the way I see more jasmine, in Camperdown: a front corner fence hidden by bushes. Is it too out-in-the-open? Does that old man going for a walk suspect what I'm up to? I do U-turns and crawl along the street, and cross the intersection again, looking for a place to park that's close (for a quick get-away), when I see the perfect froth of jasmine, cascading over a back fence in a quiet lane. I boldly stand there, snipping off full heavy bunches of the flowers but I find using my fingers is easier. No time for plucking single unbruised blossoms - I grasp the blossoms with my fingers and drag them off the vine.

The Annandale laneway is productive too, the blossoms here bigger and sparser. The smell is divine on the cool morning air. I don't take too many, and I cull from all over the vine. There's plenty left to scent the lane-way, and please the eye of passing joggers.

I wonder if I have enough, and hope I can get some more out West, where I am heading to visit my Dad. Maybe Rookwood, that vast glorious necropolis, might have some. Maybe around my old suburb, though so many of the old weatherboard bungalows and their gardens have gone. Maybe if I can find no more, what I have will be enough?

But on my way out west I pass the biggest bank of the stuff I have ever seen - on a busy road out the front of some flats in Stanmore.

I stop. I am bold. I also calculate that the traffic goes by too quickly to take an interest, and that people in the flats are still asleep. Plus there is so much. Pluck, pluck, pluck. My hands are sticky with flower-dew and my car smells like heaven.

Later that day I got to Michael's and surprise him with my mornings work. "Yay!" He is so happy - he'd given up hope of jasmine gelato this year. I plan my next hunt...

Sweetpeas at 16 weeks 1 day

Disappointing, frankly.

Thrift #1

Last night I sat in front of a DVD, drank cheap red wine, and darned socks.

I darn well... never said I darn well.

A wry smile played on his lips.

Last week an ex (I have 2) - let's call this one X  (the other one is "Michael") - sent me a Facebook friend request. We'd defriended ages ago because his husband worked in a high security job and they weren't allowed social media accounts (plus... there'd been jealousy) but I'd noticed a while back that X was back on, so it was nice to get this request. I clicked Accept, and wrote a short message saying thanks, nice to hear from you, but haven't had any communication back from him. That was a few weeks ago.

On Monday, on my News Feed, this update from him:

X would like to wish his husband a wonderful and happy 2nd wedding anniversary. xxxx

2 years! 2 years he's been married, THREE years since I was still involved with him, 3 and a half since we met!! I couldn't believe it'd been so long! [Or that that part of my life had been dead ever since - but, another story.]

Anyway, I was watching Good News Week that night, and that young indie singer Megan Washington sang a song as a clue for part of the quiz they play - and it was Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, which was "our song".

As I listened and watched, a wry smile played on my lips.

Spring

The bunch of clivea in the Vice-Chancellor's Garden, the soft warm air, a good night's sleep, a couple of deadlines met - was it one of these?

The reed-warbler in the pond, come south to nest; the run I did the other night, the first in ages; the new scent of jasmine on the air that night; the gazes I met of runners and bikers as we passed: one of these?

Or is it just Spring? Today I feel like I'm young again and I don't know why.

Messages

I went to the gym at the pool early one morning, the first time in weeks. After 15 minutes on the treadmill I thought, "What in blazes am I doing!? Surely there's something better I could be doing?" So I had a shower and headed up to the office for an early start. On the way up I saw a feather on the grass. It was an ibis' flight feather, long and narrow, white with a black tip. That feather has been sitting on that patch of grass for maybe six weeks, maybe longer, hasn't blown away, hasn't moved. How, why, what does it mean? I thought when I saw it today "If it's a message it means flight, take flight," but I don't see messages in things, and imagined beings on another plane looking down, trying to send me portents, and despairing.

When I got to the office, another message: online Scrabble was down for maintenance for the day. So much for doing something better... I suppose that ibis feather could also have meant "Eat garbage" or "mow the lawn". It's difficult to know.

Mid-winter

It's the middle of winter, which means the leaves have finally fallen, and camellias are in bloom.

Things I have learned this week

• Children don't listen.
• when swimming freestyle, pull your arms out by the elbow once your hand is directly below you - it makes for a more powerful stroke.
• I feel bad when I don't give the barber a $2 tip. And worse when I spend it on a pain-au-chocolat instead of eating my muesli.
• Kipfler potatoes are delicious when chipped and deep-fried.
• How to turn a pictClipping file into a jpg.
• Someone at the Sydney Theatre Company spells Atreus wrong, and that they correct it when told so.
• How to pronounce Jordi.
• Jordi is George (Jiri is George too, how come English has the stodgiest George?).
• 23 year-olds haven't heard of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
• 8 year-olds haven't heard of Gwen Stefani.
• Cornflower-blue eyes and guinea-gold hair DO exist outside the pages of Georgette Heyer!

Near the coffee cart

Please rotate computer screen.

At the Paragon

larus novaehollandiae

The late 31 May

Today I got the newsletter out on time! Unlike these last 31 posts, each of them meant to be posted on the corresponding date in May. I think maybe 3 actually were. I was posting in solidarity with my friend jaci who had undertaken to do it. She has better reasons than me - an audience, for one.

Now for June.

Eurovision

Colette's in town for the weekend, to watch Eurovision with Jason, her Eurovision date for the last 15 years. She invited me along too when our breakfast-date was hijacked by a hangover.

The apartment was elegant, in a modern interior-design way, spacious and uncluttered, everything white, grey or dark, stained woods, expensive. I hadn't seen Jason since he was a shop-assistant at DJ's - now he's some high-powered exec at DJ's, who owns a swank apartment. He and his partner of many years also split a few months ago, in Melbourne, and here Jason was, in his flat, with his job, and a beautiful, simple, sweet young neighbour leaning into his side on the comfortable white leather lounge, while we marked our scores for Belarus, Cyprus and Germany.

As Colette sat next to me, eating Maltesers, I wondered why I wasn't Jason.

Sweetpeas: Two Weeks Later

Tintin au Congo

King Ottokar's Sceptre was the first Tintin I read. One of my little brothers, I think, got it out of the local library.  But they didn't have them all, so on my visits to the City library, catching the train into town every few Saturdays, I would keep an eye out for them too, as well as new Asterix books.

Hergé was still alive and writing them in those days, and once we'd got through the back catalogue, we had to wait for Tintin and the Picaros, his last one. The Broken Ear was an old one that was translated about the same time.

We had three more to go, I knew from the back of French-language editions. Le lotus bleu, Tintin en Amerique, and Tintin au Congo.

Tintin in America was the first, and it came to our place from the library. Years later, much lusted-after, The Blue Lotus came out, and I bought it, to add to this collection. It was actually very exciting, even though we were all teenagers by now.

I stopped collecting these before Tintin au Congo was translated into English.

Collection #2

How many Weet-Bix does this collection represent?

It would have been more if I hadn't let my brothers collect/lose most of the car/truck sets.

In the early days I used to get rid of the doubles once I'd filled the project posters - crazy!

Ruthless.

Ruth finished up at work today. Smart, beautiful Irish woman temping with us, but going home in a couple of weeks. We had chocolate cake and red wine for her, and gave her a jar of vegemite with a red ribbon on top. People from the other office came in, too, which dampened the atmosphere. We don't like outsiders in our office.

Ruth often worked in the other office but she still drove us mad these last two weeks singing Abba's "I have a dream" I believe in angels...  I bought it off iTunes and played it while we ate and drank today. I liked how she talked, everything was mad or savage or deadly. We used to amuse each other speaking cod German and Italian, too.

I was fond of her and she, she announced at her farewell, was glad she didn't have to deal with my moods any more.