On Close Encounters

Now that the parental unit have returned from the depths of Eastern Europe and I am back home, ostensibly safe, I can explain one of the reasons why I disliked London so intensely for so long.

On 6 o’ clock on a Friday evening in early January 2006, five days after I’d returned from my first trip home after moving to London, I walked down the street from the local Costcutter with a bottle of milk.  M, with whom I was living with at the time, was out at a housewarming party of a mutual friend of ours and I, as usual, was too tired to go.  I was going to have a cup of tea, cook dinner, read a book and go to bed.

I was daydreaming as I walked, as I was in a good mood after all the sunlight in Oz, and I was actually pleased to be back in London.  As I walked, I sensed that there was someone behind me and I glanced around.  There was a man behind me.  I also looked across the road and noticed a girl walking on ahead.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

I turned left into the paved area between our block of flats, which held the recycling and garbage bins.  There was a covered way between this paved area and the grassy space surrounded by the flats.  I sensed the man following me but still didn’t think much of it.  I thought, almost unconsciously, that if I could get into the grassy space, I would be fine, as it was in the open.

As I passed under the covered way the man grabbed me.  I screamed, or roared, rather, as soon as I felt his arms coming around me.  A wave of adrenalin flooded my body and it felt as though I was waking from a nightmare, except of course was real.

The man put his man over my mouth to stop me screaming and his little finger got caught between my lips.  I bit down hard, and didn’t let go.  His grip, which had been quite soft anyway, loosened further and I twisted out of his grasp, still biting.  Then he just let go and walked away.  The whole thing was over in less than a minute.

The man didn’t run away, but walked, which suggested to me that he had done something like this before.  He also smelled bad, like he hadn’t had a shower for a month, so it seemed to me that he didn’t have a home.  Also, he couldn’t have known the area as there was nowhere he could have taken me unless he had a flat there, which was unlikely.  So I think he had a screw or two loose.

I stared after him, to try and get a description of him that I could give to the police, but all I could see that he was tall and black.  I remember the pinkness the inside of his hand as it closed around my mouth.  His bad smell was on my skin and his blood was in my mouth.  I spat it out in the sink once I got home, which in retrospect was a stupid thing to do because even if I had spat into a hanky they would have been able to get it analysed.

Then I dialled emergency services and they sent the police around, but they took more than an hour to arrive.  I was desperate to have a shower to get the smell off my skin but I couldn’t risk not hearing the police arrive.  As I sat on the stairs waiting for them, I decided that I wouldn’t allow myself be defeated by what had happened.  I wasn’t going to let some mad fucker ruin my life.

When the police finally arrived they apologised for being late, and said they hadn’t been able to find the flat.  They’d looked for CCTV footage but the camera didn’t reach under the covered way.  They asked if the man had said anything to me and I said that I was deaf but I didn’t think so.  Then they asked if he’d tried to grab my bag and I said no, his grip had been quite soft.  The only unusual thing I could remember was that his hands smelled of sex, but perhaps it was just that they hadn’t been washed for a while.    I asked about the possibility of AIDS because his blood had gone down my throat and the policeman said it was unlikely because it would just pass through my digestive system, where as there needed to be a cut for the virus to get into my bloodstream.  I had an AIDS test anyway and it all came up fine.  Then the policemen said it would be better if I was with someone than on my own, and offered to drive me to the party that M was at, but it was too far away.  When they left I had a very long shower, called my brother who, to his credit, didn’t freak out too much, and got a taxi to the party.  M and Wtk gave me a bit hug when I arrived.  I was wearing a new perfume, by Nina Ricci, and ever since that night I haven’t been able to wear it without qualms.  Recently, however, I gave it to my mother as I’ve since found ones I like more (Prada and Agent Provacateur, of course) and now that she wears it the unsettling associations it brings up have gone.

For the whole time the attack was going on I acted purely on instinct – there was no space in my head  for any thought at all.  I have my brother to thank for that: the many occasions on which I beat him up gave me a chance to practice my fighting spirit.  And as my father pointed out, when I told him, such was my nature that I would never allow anyone to get the better hand.  I would always fight back, every time.

However, the actual incident wasn’t what upset me most.  The reason why I came to hate London so much lay in the two men unloading a van, four metres away, who would have heard me scream but didn’t come to help.  Nor did anyone in the surrounding flats come out.

The police rang me up sporadically in the weeks that followed that to say they hadn’t found anything.  They sent me a victims’ compensation pack but it was too much bother to follow it up and I figured some poor bastard would need it more than me.  I didn’t expect much of the coppers (it’s London, they’re all overworked), though I didn’t appreciate being patronisingly told to calm down on one occasion when I wasn’t even agitated, I just couldn’t hear what I was being told.

It took about a year to get over it and to feel relatively safe walking on my own again, though I rarely went out after dark.  It is to my mother’s credit that I didn’t turn into a racist bitch.  She always said to me, ‘Never use the word “hate”, and never hate other people.’  I remained suspicious of black men, and physically they intimidated me because they’re so big and I’m so small, but every time there was a negative thought I tried to reason it away.  It gave me some insight, however, into hatred, and visceral it is, and how easily it wipes away academic arguments for peace and fairness.  A friend, to whom I described what had happened, said he couldn’t help but note that I had referred to the man as black, and that poverty and discrimination had a lot to contribute to the high incidence of violence among black men.  I replied that I was aware of that, but under no circumstances should a man have the licence to hit or attack a woman, no matter how bad their life is.  He conceded pretty quickly that this was true.

H also paid for me to do a self-defence course (as I was too povo to afford it myself), which I highly recommend, by Debi of Premier Self-Defence. It also, I was delighted to find, had the added bonus of the self-defence moves being demonstrated by one of the hottest Asian men I have ever seen.  I also bought a Weeble from them, a tube of hard plastic in which you can keep your emergency numbers and a pound coin for a phone call, and which can be used to take a urine sample if you think your drink had been spiked, and also to bash someone over the head if they attack you.  As I chose one in pink, M began affectionately referring to it as my ‘personal device’, much to my amusement.

It was indicative of the emotional maturity of the man with whom we were living (ie. 40-going-on-4) that the first thing he said to me, when I told him I had been attacked was, ‘Well, nothing like that’s ever happened to me.’  I thought, Of course it hasn’t you fuckwit, you’re a man and you’re twice as wide and twice as tall as I am.  I moved out after a year, as H was moving to London and I moved in with him, and it was with a sense of relief that I walked about in Stepney, which was a predominantly Muslim area.  Although I have a lot of difficulties with the way Muslims treat women, the atmosphere in the area was far less aggressive than in Hackney.

Ultimately, if I had been able to hear how close the man was behind me, I would have been more alert than I was.  I was immensely annoyed that I could no longer have the luxury of daydreaming, but had to be alert at all times.  However, I was also extremely lucky that nothing worse had happened to me.  It was a wake-up call, and I always tried to be very aware of my surroundings from that point on.  I am still nervous when people are behind me and I can’t hear them, which explains my overreaction in this incident (which also demonstrates I am very far from being a lady at times).

Suffice to say, one of the nicer things about Brisbane is that I don’t have to be so neurotic and nervous whenever I walk about, not least because the abundant sunshine means I can see what’s going on around me, unlike in the dark where I’m at an added disadvantage. The place is just generally less threatening than London – there isn’t that dystopian sense of pent-up anger and hatred, and the brooding, overcast sky, and the buildings stained by acid rain.

On Cycling

Often when I am cycling on my Pashley Princess, albeit under a baking Brisbane sun rather than the dappled shade of an English laneway, a phrase from ‘The Windhover’, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, comes to mind: ‘the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’  Hopkins was writing about a bird (in a marvellously onomatopoetic and slightly incomprehensible way) but the sensation of wind blowing past my cheeks and the freedom of wheeling along the paths seems the same.

Riding in Brisbane is bliss compared to London.  There are bike paths that aren’t too busy, I can ride on the footpath when the traffic is threatening, the sun shines and there are lovely parks and rivers for scenery.  The broody magpies have been something of a problem, as are the testosterone-driven men who barge into pedestrians and never say thank you when I give them right of way (and nothing infuriates me more than a want of manners), but on the whole it is altogether very pleasant.  I especially like putting my and the children’s library books in my basket and cycling to the local library, and pinging my bell to make people jump out of the way and make the bush turkeys run like mad.  It is a very satisfying bell.

Cycling attire has been something of a problem however.  Naturally I abide by the laws of the Copenhagen Cycle Chic Manifesto:

So, when looking at the ugly helmets in the bicycle shop I said to the man, ‘Don’t you have anything remotely feminine?’ and he handed me a pink version of the helmet he was holding.  This wasn’t very helpful.  I solved this by asking H to get me a Bern helmet from cyclechic.co.uk for Xmas.  I also wanted to wear my kitten stilettos, but after losing one of them in the middle of the road in one instance (fortunately, there was no traffic, and I daintily retrieved it), and tangling them in the pedal and nearly falling off in another, I had to abandon this idea.  I found some more practical shoes from childrenoftherevolution.com.au but they don’t go with many of my outfits, which of course is an excellent excuse to purchase some additions to my wardrobe.  And then there is the difficulty of one’s dress flying into one’s face, as I found when I set off in a silk frock.  I had to dash back home to put on a pair of bike shorts underneath so as to avoid flashing my knickers to the world.

Unfortunately, I fail on the point ‘I will endeavour to ensure that the total value of my clothes always exceeds that of my bicycle.’  To remedy this, I shall need to find a string of pearls to wear as I ride.

On Little Girls and Boys

What are little boys made of, made of?

What are little boys made of?

Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails;

That’s what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of, made of?

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice and everything nice;

That’s what little girls are made of.

I remembered this rhyme when I put Niece and Nephew to bed last night, after reading the requisite four books (one of which must have been a translation of a French book because the rhymes and meter were so off; even with kids’ books one can’t help being a literary critic). Niece, who has a hair obsession, called me to her bed so she could play with and stroke my hair. Then Nephew called me over to his.

‘What for?’ I asked, bending close so I could hear him.

‘So I can fart in your face, Auntie.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ I told him, and promptly went back to Niece’s bed, while he laughed at his own joke.

On Being Militant

One of the drawbacks of being a fairly articulate deaf person is that you have a duty to speak (or complain, as more often is the case) on behalf of other deaf people.  Once, I told my audiologist that when I encountered broken loop systems or other malfunctioning hearing equipment, that I just couldn’t be bothered mentioning it because they were never going to work anyway, and she pointed out that if I did ask for them to be repaired, it would benefit the next deaf person who came along.

A loop system is a piece of wiring that is put inside the walls of cinemas, or inside telephones or FM hearing systems.  When I put my hearing on a ‘T’ switch it picks up the sound, makes it clearer, and cuts out background noise.  Alternatively there are headphones you can wear which have this signal built into them.  In the entire 28 years of my deafness I have found about two loop systems in cinemas that work – at Roseville and at Fox Studios.  At a Shakespearean play at the Sydney Opera House the system they gave me created so much static I couldn’t hear a thing, and when I complained to the woman at the desk she didn’t appear to believe it could possibly be faulty (despite the fact that it literally looked ten years old).  After much arguing she let me see the play again, but when I went back the magic was gone because I had already seen it (I certainly don’t know how she expected me to hear it again).  At Belvoir Street Theatre the loop system failed time and time again and eventually the manager said they literally couldn’t afford to fix it.   She did however give me a free drink and that made me feel much better (naturally), which is an awful lot more than most other people have ever done.

In London, although theatre and cinema organisers were much more aware of disability legislation and of ensuring that deaf people can hear, the loop systems generally didn’t work.  Two startling exceptions were at the Museum of London at an exhibition of the Great Fire, where a small room showing a documentary had a loop system installed that was incredibly clear, and at an exhibition at the National Portrait Galley.

These were unusual, however.  When H and I went to ‘Enduring Love’ at the Trocadero, the system didn’t work after the previews, as anticipated, and H had to rush back to the ticket desk, whereupon he found that the bimbo hadn’t put in any batteries.  He then missed the beginning of the film, which was the most dramatic part.  At the local cinema in Stepney I complained three times about the loop system and they never fixed it.  Eventually I only went to films that were blockbusters and didn’t require hearing because I could work out what was going on from the pictures, or to foreign films with subtitles.  For the rest I had to wait until they came out on DVD.  I was also so tired and stressed with writing my thesis that I gave up on complaining; I simply didn’t have the energy for it.

However, on returning home and having had more sunlight and rest, I have found myself feeling much more militant about these things than previously.  And thus it was that in cinema at Bulimba I found myself raising my voice at the manager because the staff had given me a set of headphones that, once again, delivered nothing but static.  Another problem with being faulty equipment in cinemas (apart from the obvious fact that it’s supposed to be working in the first place) is that you never know if it’s going to work until the film starts; for some reason the ads don’t come through the same sound system.   This means that you only have a few previews to get up and go and collect another piece of equipment, or to move around trying to find another seat which picks up the sound better.  I have always refused to do this due to public embarrassment, and, as I pointed out to the manager, it isn’t my job to make sure the equipment is working.

In the whole of this time I have never been offered a refund for the inconvenience of faulty equipment.  As I said to the manager, who was no longer making eye contact by this stage, if you offer a service, you make sure it’s working.  It’s basic customer service.  However, I now have a new tactic.  I’m ringing in advance and letting them know I’m coming so that they have an opportunity to test the equipment.  If it doesn’t work, I will get angry and demand a refund.

Meanwhile, I am wishing that magpies would give me such a warning.  It’s spring, and they are aggro and broody.  As I was walking my bicycle across the road the other day (I dismount because I can’t hear the cars coming very well and I’m not an aggressive cyclist), I inadvertently entered their territory and there was much batting of wings about my helmet and squawking, and I jumped back on my bike and peddled furiously.  I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do about militant magpies.  My boss told me she’s seen cyclists’ helmets with spokes on them like they have in the stations in London to keep away pigeons, but I’m not sure that would be such a good look, while my sister said to put my sunglasses on backwards to confuse them, or I could whip out my bicycle pump and beat them off.   On looking on the internet for remedies I found a bloke who suggested an orange flag, but again this fashionista can’t cope with that.  I also found reports of magpies in specific Bris Vegas areas which had attacked, and they made for amusing reading:

Auchenflower

Particularly vicious magpie, swoops between cnr Mackintosh Street and Torwood Street, Auchenflower, all the way down Torwood, across Milton Road, down Eagle Terrace, round to Camford Street even under the railway bridge.  Seems to give up by the time you get out the other side of the railway bridge. Attacks riders going in both directions. Is relentless, drawn blood, on two separate occasions. (reported 21 Sept 06)

Camira

Old Logan Rd, 100m before the Caltex Servo coming from Springfield. The bird has been recently harassed by Council works on the foot path and has changed its behaviour. It used to give a simple tap on the helmet once or twice, now it hovers by the side of your head and continually bashes the helmet. Attacks the ears and eyes if you don’t wear sunnies or spectacles. (reported 22 Sept 06)

South Brisbane

Magpie in the poincianas on the South Bank side of the Goodwill Bridge and attacks about Sidon St near Memorial Park between Grey St and the Goodwill Bridge. The bird has drawn blood. (reported 14 Sept 05)

And here are a few more from Melbourne:

1.11.02 Harp Rd Kew along bike path / walking path – might be called Valerie Rd in this section. A well known hot spot for vicious magpies for many years.  I think ’son of magpie’ is possibly even more vicious.  Have been known to peck face.  Avoid by going down side street if possible.  Seem to be bad around path leading up to hill.  Once half way down hill to chandler hwy you have made it!

1.11.02 Byron St Canterbury (this is the continuation of Maling Rd). Particularly terrifying as tries to peck through helmet holes.  Placed sticky tape over holes and stuck on eyes as suggested.  Still terrifies me when it swoops.

11.10.02 High Street Extension after Stud Road on the way to the Burwood Hwy intersection just after the school crossing. This magpie is a real Stuka but without the dive bomber siren!

7.10.02 Maroondah HWY and Deep Creek Roads. As most cyclists are aware, most swoop, but this one “connects”.  The best it has achieved off me is rip a chunk out of my Limar F107 helmet and removed the “L” as well.  Bloody Pies….

7.9.02 Frankston-Dandenong Road near the Springvale freeway overpass. Got bitten on the nose and then repeatedly swooped by the most savage magpie ever seen. Only my bike pump saved me!

It’s like something out of du Maurier’s The Birds.  Ah. ya gotta love Austraya.

On Finding One’s Feet

The last three months, while nothing compared to the two years it took to feel even moderately happy in London, have been choppy. Within a fortnight of getting to Bris Vegas I found a part-time job as a research assistant for a not-for-profit organisation, which is enough to keep my head above water while I write. As I expected it’s been difficult to manage the disparity between my taste for luxury and the reality of being a povo writer but, as I keep telling myself, it’s only temporary. It was also a shock to come back and find my friends firmly ensconced in bourgeois coupledom. After all, there is a reason why people go to London, and it’s not to settle down and have sprogs. However, I am adjusting, even to the chaos of my sister’s house with Niece and Nephew and Dog and Puppy. I even confess to being very fond of latter (though he has been banned from my room in case he eats my shoes) because he is fluffy and fun to annoy. I don’t, however, appreciate his enthusiasm for humping soft toys.

My stuff arrived from England last week and now my room is full of girly pink crap again. It is a little cramped but it has finally dispelled the nightmarish feeling that I will have to pack up and head back to London at any moment. Better still, my beloved Pashley Princess bicycle also arrived, so now I can ride along the river and ping my bell at the tourists.

I’ve joined the local library and am catching up on the Australian literature I haven’t had time to read for the last four years. I read Gail Jones’ Dreams of Speaking on the plane on the way home, which, having left H behind, was poignant with its descriptions of brothers and sisters. I consumed Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones which was an intricate and clever book, gentle in tone until the end, which came as an unpleasant shock. I will never get used to the brutality of which men are capable.

I skim read Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant which was very disappointing. Andrew Rimmer referred to the ‘restraint’ of her style in his review in the Sydney Morning Herald, but I think the term ‘blandness’ more accurate. While the work had some wonderful lines, such as ‘[the governor] favoured him with one of his squeezed smiles’ (p. 99), the concepts were unoriginal and it would have been richer as a short story. I expected more of Grenville; it certainly lacked the pungency of her earlier novels, although not The Secret River which I found similarly underwhelming.

I also read Karen Foxlee’s The Anatomy of Wings which was a wonderful surprise. It pipped me in the Dobbie prize for new women writers, so I was prepared to hold it at arm’s length as I read it. However, I found myself caught up with the story of a girl in a country town who wants to sleep with men because she thinks she can save them, which leads to the perception that she’s growing out of control. Needless to say a boy sleeping with as many girls as possible wouldn’t be labelled a slut. The double standard is nicely illustrated when she is expelled from school for an unclarified sexual act on school grounds and she says, “What I don’t understand … is why the boys didn’t get expelled for as long?” (p. 175).

Aside from reading, I have also been writing madly and am now two-thirds of the way through the first draft of my second novel. Unfortunately I now have to return to my thesis to attack it for the last time and then get it ready for publication, after which time I can return to the novel.

I also presented on my research at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference in Canberra, a painful affair because it reinforced my ambivalence about becoming an academic despite having forked out thousands of pounds and however much mental grief for a mere two letters before my name. Fortunately however, my beloved supervisor was over from England and he told me not to worry about it just yet, but to concentrate on writing. Amanda Lohrey also gave an excellent address on her novel Vertigo and I thoroughly enjoyed her intellect and biting humour. I subsequently read the book and was impressed by her skill in packing so much into a deft, compact novel, not least the drama and danger of bushfire.

Away from the conference, I caught up with some very good friends, and even sampled some excellent coffee, which was unexpected as I was of the opinion that Canberra had a good art gallery, museum and library and that was it. Coffee notwithstanding, I was pleased to get back to Bris Vegas, and to leave the surreality of Canberra behind.

On Cousins

One of the nicest things about being back home is the chance to catch up with all my cousins. We grew up on a property of 5400 hectares in northwest NSW, which meant there was always someone to play with, and one was never unpopular at one’s birthday party because one could always guarantee that there would be eight other kiddies there. When our mums and dads went off for their booze-ups at country parties, we stayed at grandma’s and raided the dress-up box and played charades on the front lawn in the evenings, and the cool grass pricked our feet. If it was winter, we played indoors, while grandma’s old daschund lay before the fire and farted.

Making a modest workforce of nine, we were recruited to round up sheep at shearing season, which often involved chasing the buggers down the creek when there was a breakaway, or catching lambs at marking time to have their tails docked and to pick the grass seeds out of their eyes to stop them getting cataracts. We spent the summers in each others’ pools and played Marco Polo, a game I hated because I could never hear where the voices were coming from and thus could never win.

We caught the same bus to school, and with nine Whites aboard, it was cacophonous. The boys played cat’s cradle, CousinG picked on her sister CousinV, CousinAl coerced Sister into sawing through the plastic headrest with a nailfile while the boy who lived down the road showed me his penis behind the back seat. The rest of the time I turned off my hearing aid and read my book.

As we grew up we gradually dispersed, so it’s always tremendously exciting when we get together again. Christmas last year was the first time in about six years, since Sister’s wedding, that we were all in one room. A vast amount of alcohol was imbibed, rude presents were distributed, and crackers were pulled, releasing their plastic hair twisties and magnets and poor jokes. When the kiddies ran amok and fought over toys, we put them to bed and CousinA pulled out his guitar and BrotherH played some chords on the untuned piano and we sang songs from Les Mis, then played charades again. To my immense satisfaction I was able to call out most of the answers before anyone else.

When I returned from England, CousinA kindly picked me up from the airport and I was astonished by his resemblance to my father.  I stayed with him for a night, but was then promptly evicted as he was expecting female company, which was fine (at least someone was getting some). He  introduced me to female wrestling on payTV and some awful cop show (in fact I don’t know why I’m discriminating, it was all mildly horrifying) where a cop tasered a woman who’d been speeding and she curled up on the road like an insect sprayed with Mortein.  However I also got to watch tons of video clips, which was excellent jetlag recovery material.

Two weeks later (after I’d holed up with a friend), CousinA drove me and 2ndCousinD to Bathurst for CousinC’s wedding celebrations, whereupon 2ndCousinD thought it would be amusing to release noxious fumes into the car. I will never understand men and their basic humour.

The party was lovely, despite a tooth asbscess which meant I was living off painkillers, and I wore my black and white frock from FCUK which was beautiful when I twirled, and drank six glasses of champagne which was four times my limit. Cousin Al inexplicably lifted her skirt to show her pantihose, my godmother saw me talking to 2ndCousinD and promptly interrogated him to see if he was marriage material (never mind the fact that I’ve published a novel and have a doctorate), then 2ndCousinD bought me a rum and Coke which I knew would make me spew if I drank it. So CousinE, who is training to be a doctor, put his arm around me and said I didn’t have to drink it if I didn’t want to, and gently took it from me and drank it himself. We then stumbled down the street to the local nightclub, where a girl with curly hair danced for an hour by herself until CousinA approached her and CousinE told me she was in love with a transgender person on the other side of the world and what did I think CousinA’s chances were, CousinC and his new wife had a spectacular dance-off, and CousinE turned around and called his girlfriend a skank and she promptly left. When CousinA enquired of his brother as to why he had done this, CousinE replied that he had no idea. We staggered back to the hotel at 3am, pausing by the greasy food stall to buy hot salty chips which tasted positively gourmet at that hour.

On the Queen’s Birthday weekend we all met up again for Grandma’s 90th. This involved a 19 hour return journey for Sister and I, and two kids and two dogs. We were almost running on empty on the freeway and I, hyperventilating at visions of breaking down and waiting for assistance by the road with said kids and dogs, urged Sister to find the nearest exit. We found a very rustic service station, and Niece urgently needed to wee so I had to approach the woman manning the counter who was heavily accented, but on the third go I figured she was saying ‘Eet eez an outseede one.’ ‘Oh, that’s fine,’ I said, relieved that I’d finally got it. Niece wrinkled her nose in the toilet and said it smelled funny and I felt like saying, ‘Get over it, girl,’ but I held my tongue as she hadn’t grown up on a farm, then I cooed appropriately over the chooks she saw in the garden.

Grandma’s party started at 11.30am. By 12.30am someone had already asked me if I was married and I replied that no, I wasn’t rushing into that. UncleRi approached me as I was dishing out punch and told me that his brother (the youngest) had arrived and he had been very good, he hadn’t even said anything nasty about UncleRi’s hair loss yet. I couldn’t hear most of the old biddies so I drank too much champagne again and when that ran out I gasped, ‘My coping mechanism!’ But Sister kindly went to the bottle shop and got more.  Everyone asked after parental unit and I said I had no idea where they were; in Eastern Europe somewhere and I hoped they weren’t dead. There was more singing, but alas no drunken dancing, and I stayed up late talking to CousinA and CousinG.

The next day the others played tennis and I went back to bed on account of the champagne, then we drove to AuntM and UncleRo’s farm, where they had a neurotic kelpie that chased its tale until it tired and a boisterous Labrador that jumped on the kiddies so he was whacked with a rolled-up newspaper. CousinAl asked UncleR if he’d take the kiddies for a ride on the tractor and he made a face and CousinAl said, ‘You’d rather stick pins in your eyes, wouldn’t you UncleR?’ However CousinA got out the Case tractor which made Nephew wild with joy, and BabyA was taken for a spin on the quadrunner, and we climbed into the back of the ute and unrolled the hay for the cows, just like when we were kids.  In the afternoon CousinA whipped out his guitar and there was much singing and dancing with cousins and kiddies, and Nephew crawled under the coffee table and curled up.  When his mother enquired as to what he was doing there, he said he was a bit tired and was just having a rest.  When this was relayed to me I said I wouldn’t mind finding a table to crawl under myself.

Is it any surprise, then, that our partners are often unable to cope with our shenanigans, or that we are more like brothers and sisters than cousins?

On Feminist Jokes

At the dinner table the other evening, we started telling jokes. I only have two in my repertoire, the first one being thus:

An English man, Irish man and Australian man are sitting around a table having afternoon tea with their wives. The English man says to his wife, ‘Pass the sugar, sugar.’ The Irish man says to his wife, ‘Pass the honey, honey.’ And the Australian says to his wife, ‘Pass the tea, bag.’

I know, it’s side-splitting stuff.

My sister wanted to know the only other joke in my keeping. ‘Oh, the children won’t get it,’ I said. On being assured this didn’t matter, I told my second joke:

A female brain cell was implanted into a male brain. She looked around and found it very empty.

‘Hello,’ she called out, ‘is anybody here?’ There was no response.

She tried again. ‘Helloooo? Is anybody in here?’

Again no response, so she shouted, ‘Hello! Is anybody in here?’

Finally she heard a very tiny voice crying out, ‘We’re all down here!’

My sister started laughing and said, ‘Ah, that’s a very feminist joke.’  My niece, all of five, piped up, ‘What’s a feminist?’

‘Well,’ I began, exultant at being able to impart this vital piece of information so early on in Niece’s education, ‘a feminist is a person who believes in equal rights for men and women. That means both men and women should work, and men should help with the washing up, and bringing up the babies. But equality isn’t happening very fast, so we need feminists to help make change.’

Niece paused, then said, ‘Auntie Jess?’

‘Yes?’

‘Tell me another one.’

I just about wet myself laughing until Niece, who is frightened by excess, implored me to stop, and I duly did so.

On Leaving London

Finally, I am home. It’s Autumn, and the days are warm but the breezes chilly. I’m soaking up the sunshine and haven’t really thought about London properly until today, a week after I arrived.

The last few weeks have been something of a rollercoaster, albeit one plunging largely downwards. ‘The important thing,’ my sister explained when helping me appeal my visa decision, ‘is to make sure you feel that it hasn’t been done to you.’ Well, the application was rejected and out of my hands, and for a woman who likes very much to be in control of her own life, I was fairly pissed off.

Then, about a fortnight before leaving, it began to dawn on me that I was actually going home. That, after four years of plodding along, waiting for each summer, for the next trip to Australia, for an end to my interminable thesis, I could get on the plane at Heathrow and never have to come back.

I realised just how easy it is to become a rat on a treadmill. I wasn’t unhappy in London, at least after the first two years: my brother made me laugh and kept me from destitution, I cherished the days on which sunlight filtered through the clouds, I loved the blossoms fizzing open each spring, my job was dull but I enjoyed working with my colleagues and the students, my friends cheered me up when I became too gloomy, I learned to ignore London’s poverty and harshness, I was a member of a bookclub, I could see exhibitions at the Tate for free on the rare occasions I was motivated to go, I expanded my boot collection exponentially and I was studying at a world-class institution that allowed me to write my thesis the way I wanted. However when I went home to Oz for three months, I realised how much happier it was possible to be. It alarmed me to think that I, who thrives on challenge and strives for perfection, could become complacent in a city that didn’t suit me. I’d become like a creature in a cage, continuing the circuit in a confined space without realising that the door had been opened.

Then the rollercoaster soared upwards when I passed my viva. It was a fairly harrowing experience, not because my examiners, Gail Jones from Western Sydney uni and Mark Turner of Kings College, were cruel, but because they pushed me to think of things I’d never thought of before, and I was under so much pressure that I had a complete mental blank in response to some of their questions, which in turn stressed me out even more. However, I passed.  Afterwards I wandered up to work in a complete daze (stopping very carefully at the traffic lights, as per M’s advice, as she had nearly got run over after her viva) to tell people, and then had drinks at the lovely Albert and Pearl that evening with my wonderful friends, and sadly had to say goodbye to them.

Coming back home hasn’t been seamless. Saying goodbye to H at the airport was an experience I have no desire to repeat and I couldn’t stop crying until I got on the plane, then plane journey itself was worse than usual because I fell hard on my arse at rollerdisco in Vauxhall the week before (not, alas, from running romantically into a handsome stranger) and, two weeks later, I still can’t sit down. I have returned to find my overachieving friends moneyed, housed, partnered and reproducing which, for a disgustingly independent woman in complete denial about her ovaries, has been something of a shock. And, on some days, despite the friendliness of the bus drivers, the abundant sunshine and the quality of the coffee, I feel a bit lost.

But … I’m home. I’m doctored. I survived London. And, as the plane flew above the lights of the city I realised I’d achieved all the goals I set myself in the last ten years, and that now I’m completely free to do what I want. Which, of course, is to write.

On Conserving Energy

I began this entry on my charged-up laptop in the darkness of Earth Hour, having had a bath in the dark because I couldn’t find the candles, then staggering around trying to find my PJs without any light. Fortunately, one of the few advantages of deafness is a heightened sense of touch, which clearly proves useful during Earth Hour, as I was able to locate said PJs.

Given that the bureaucratic bastards at the British Embassy have given me six weeks to pack up my life instead of until the rest of the year, my head has been in an unpleasant spin lately. I have found myself saying that my life feels like a deck of cards thrown into the air, and I don’t know which way they’ll land. I have to decide which city in Oz to live in, what kind of job to get and how I’m going to fit in my writing around everything without getting so stressed that I give up on it completely.

Everything in my life is geared towards creating enough time for writing. This means as much space and quietness as possible. It means I have to have a job that is part-time, doesn’t stress me out and yet also keeps me mildly stimulated. It means I can’t make myself tired by drinking too much or eating chocolate. It means I would rather stay in and write or read than go out (although dancing for hours in high-heeled boots or sparkly shoes, preferably in a gay bar, is always permitted). It means I must run in the mornings to make myself sit still and write for the rest of the day, or to swim in the afternoons to help myself unwind and unknot problems. Some would argue that it’s an ascetic life, but it’s one that allows me to write, and therefore keeps me satisfied.

Consequently, my decisions for the future are to be guided by the need to maximise time and money to write my current novel. Of late, I’ve begun to realise just how firmly writing and money are yoked together. Because the former is drying up, I am desperately thinking about how to sustain the latter. The only job I could consider doing full-time would be to teach creative writing, as this would allow me to develop my craft as I crammed my practice into any spare corners of my life. Failing finding one of these, I’d have to get a crappy admin job to cover the bills. And thus I have finally reached the realisation that I am never likely to be wealthy, but rather that I will fall into the cliché of the struggling artist, who only lives for their art. Sometimes this worries me, because of my addiction to shoes and frocks, but at other times I can dismiss my fears for I’ve realised that I was put on this earth to write, and as long as I can sustain myself for long enough to do that, money doesn’t matter quite so much.

Moments like Earth Hour (despite the naysayers’ grumbles about its uselessness) are important for reminding us of the need to conserve energy and to reassess our obsession with materiality. As I stumbled in the dark, feeling my way through soft cashmere and fiddly bits of silk lingerie until I reached the sensible flannel of my PJs, I realised that luxury was nothing if I could not write.

On the Lack of a Stamp

I’m back in London, working through three months of mail (largely cashmere catalogues and bank statements: a delightful incongruity), drinking cup after cup of coffee to stay awake until the evening (mandatory for overcoming jetlag) and contemplating my cankles.  The house is empty, as H has flounced off to the West Country and I don’t know where the other two boys are.

Almost all Holiday Objectives have been achieved (you know you’re a workaholic when even your vacations have agendas), as I am tanned, lithe, reasonably fit and dying to get back to work, however dull my job is.

I had intended to stay in the UK until December, but this was on the condition of getting a working holiday visa, or Youth Mobility Visa as they are now termed.  It shouldn’t have been difficult: I had a reliable job, enough money in the bank and I hadn’t yet turned 31.  However, the application was rejected because the bank statement I sent in, which mum had printed out for me at the bank, lacked an official stamp.  You’d think the embassy could have contacted me – after all they had emailed me about my student visa four years before, and it takes two minutes to pick up a phone – but no, they sent it back, and kept their 250AUD application fee for the pleasure of it.

Under ordinary circumstances I would have reapplied, even if this meant forking out an additional $250.00.  However, because I turned 31 while they had the application, reapplying was impossible.  Instead, I had the statement stamped at the bank, indicating that, at the time I sent it in, the funds were in my account, and appealed the decision.  I was also tempted to say that I could probably kickstart the English economy with my shoe, cashmere and handbag proclivities, but instead I argued that the stamp didn’t constitute additional evidence (which wasn’t allowed).  Rather, it was a verification of what had been an accurate statement.  They didn’t allow this, and maintained that the tiny red stamp, 10mm in diameter, represented additional evidence.

On finding that my application had been rejected, I burst into tears, but then M said that given I was the most relaxed I’d ever been in the last four years, and that I wanted to get my life underway, what was the sense in coming back to London?  I recognised she had a point, but it wasn’t until I began working out options and calculating how long I could afford to stay on a holiday visa that I threw down my pen and gave up.  I’m sick of being in penury, and of constantly scraping and budgeting, all for so little reward.  I’ll be broke back in Australia too, but at least I’ll have sunshine, my family and friends and the outdoors to compensate.  I’m tired, too, of constantly saying goodbye, and packing up my things, and never having enough room in my suitcase for all the shoes and frocks I want to wear.  I’m fed up with the dreariness of London and its unhappy people; I’m just not designed to flourish there.  I need sunlight and space, and as if in evidence of this, most of the poems I’ve written since being back home have been about light.

Also, my detestation of British bureaucracy is reaching hitherto unimaginable proportions, particularly as, when I came through Immigration today, the rejected visa was like a red flag to the Immigration Officer and I was grilled in detail about my intentions in the UK.  It seemed that he was trying to trip me up and wasn’t really listening to what I was saying.  I didn’t get flustered because my student visa doesn’t expire until the end of April, but it was an unpleasant experience all the same.

More and more it seems to me that England is becoming a dystopia from an Atwood or Ishiguro novel, and although, when I stepped out of the Tube at Tower Hill and waited for the bus, I felt a sense of satisfaction of coming back to a home and a routine, I’m uneasy about staying in a place that treats its inhabitants with such suspicion.  I have never felt safe or relaxed in London, and I’m tired of being on my guard, and being so oppressed.  So I think that, after four years of unremitting, intellectual and emotional hard work, it’s finally time to go home.