So this month, while I have been largely ‘Stephen Yates, analyst of this parish, and Christina, his wife,’ we’ve had a bit of a week led by my social schedule! Which has done much for my sense of self, and meeting people who don’t ask ‘what do you do,’ leading me to confess my unemployed immigrant status because it’s obvious – here I am a dancer, a writer, a singer, is pretty good for the frustrated little feminist in the corner.
I am sure Andrea will be overjoyed to know that I have joined a writer’s meet up. It’s a crit meet up which is helpful, but Yates laughed at this, chuckling something about ‘you’re great with criticism…’ I don’t know what he means. At least five of the fourteen were vocally positive, (never mind the pointedly silent nine), adjectives like ‘beautiful,’ and ‘great world building’ were lavished upon me, as well as helpful things like make my sentences more balanced; too many long ones, then an inconsistency in the plot. See, I’m great at taking criticism. So I’ve now been hastily writing to get it finished by bloody Saturday in time for the next meet up. The thing is, all these guys are actually published. Which is either intimidating or encouraging; their criticism might help me get somewhere. If nothing else, they’ve got a list of publications they’ve all successfully submitted to that I could try, so we’ll see how it goes.
That was invigorating. The rest of the day we shopped, I bought a ridiculous lamp, Yates bought trainers, everyone’s happy. The next day was the cricket! Now I have always found cricket cripplingly dull. Any sport that has built in lunch and tea breaks, apart from being incorrigibly British, is also quite obviously not a high-tension pursuit. And no, I am not entertained by the inane chatter of the slightly racist old Yorkshire commentators about the landing of pigeons near the pitch or building cranes in the vicinity. Not even when polishing brass tables or my boat’s air vent mushrooms. But actually sitting in the sunshine, with a beer and a faint buzz of excitement around you fuelled by whole-stadium Mexican waves and your choice of what bit of the game you want to look at, well it turns out I can get behind that. It was quite a pleasant day, and when I’d had enough of thirty five degrees, I retired to the shade with Pickwick. Poor Yates, despite slathering on factor fifty literally every twenty minutes, took some damage and had pretty red legs. Turns out the effect of the pore-clogger brand is to just make inevitable sunburn less bad. So it didn’t hurt him, nor did it last long before fading to brown, and it’s not peeling. In fact, in the words of Enid Blyton, he is ‘brown as a berry’ and I must say, it suits him rather well. The gentleman is looking very fetching in this climate.
By late afternoon I’d had rather enough of cricket, so I went Morris dancing. Mother dear, with the power of google, found me Surly Griffen Morris (it’s a hilarious pun on Canberra’s lake – Burley Griffen. The American architect who won the competition to design the city of Canberra. The fact that Surly Griffen practise next to another lake entirely is just an interesting aside) back in the summer, and I sent them enormous letters of introduction, including earnest questions about feathers. They had spotted by this ‘ere blog that I was in town and had the goodness to get in touch with me to let me know when practice started. So I went! Obviously after all day in the sun, I was overjoyed to learn there is no air conditioning at the scout hut; but they managed to get a bit of the old Bernoulli’s Principle going with all doors and windows flung wide, which gave a pretty lovely view of the lake to inspire you.
So how does Antipodean Morris compare to English? Well. It’s pretty much exactly the same really. Which is highly reassuring ten thousand miles from home. The side had representatives of the whole range of ages; the youngest are a ‘young miscellany’ nostalgia of ten year old twins, there’s a young millipede-ologist who is in her early twenties, then me, then everyone ascending tunefully up the scale. There are melodeons, played with deliberation. There are even English people. We learnt a new dance – a sword dance. Those things are long and bloody heavy – it’s not wrapper dancing, that would be easier. I forgot the figures as we went. I made huge learning progress by not decapitating anyone and god knows what happened when we made an arch in a circle, then weaved through it; I think I did something different every time. I can’t remember the dance, I don’t know its name so I can’t look up the figures, but I’m sure I’ll pick it up in a few repetitions! Then, because this side hold practice on Sunday from five thirty till seven, I went and SOCIALISED with my new side! Which was wonderful and what I’d always missed out on with New Moon, save those perhaps no more than three occasions when we had practice during a half term and I would turn to you all with a dreamy, benevolent smile, all radiance, asking ‘who’s for the pub!’ Ah, happy days. But they are all kind and generous and cheerful and I can’t wait to learn all the dances, collect me ‘cockie’ feathers (now how’s that for an abbreviation!) and perform with them at Easter.
And then the next night was sea shanty night! There is a splendid old pub in Canberra called The Old Canberra Inn. It pre-dates Canberra (which was only finalising the designs from the competition in 1912) by a good thirty five years and we’ve been going there for ‘Trivia’ (pub quiz, it’s a pub quiz) with a great bunch of chaps every Tuesday. But Sea Shanty night (first rule of sea shanty club: tell everyone about sea shanty club) was amazing. It’s sort of like a folk session, but no melodeons 😉, only it’s been running for a while so everyone knows all the songs, and the first half is sort of led by a group of (wait for it) YOUNG chaps. About six people who have stonking great voices, they sing filthy and hilarious songs, get everyone to join in and it’s just fun. After the interval it seems there is more of the anyone-else-want-a-go sort of thing but there were so many people, so perhaps I’ll have a go another time with that good ol’ crowd pleaser Whitby Maid. Anyway, the most surprising and wonderful thing about Sea Shanty club is that Yates came with me and freakin’ loved it, laughing through all the filthy sentiments and taking the whole song to just about nail the chorus by its final iteration, just like me. Then the heavens opened and we all had to finish singing the last song standing really close together in the middle of the room as the pub completely flooded, swamping two rugs, drowning several handbags and we were all singing while hastily stacking chairs onto tables. We, er, sang up a storm.
Another brand new social phenomenon we have taken part in together is Eurovision. Yeah, Australia loves that shit and it took a lot of edging round the elephant in the room to get to the bottom of that one. Basically they love it so much and begged so often that Eurovision just let ‘em in. Now every year I always know someone who is putting on an ironic Eurovision night to watch it and laugh and get drunk, but this was a very earnest evening. We all voted! Even me! This ridiculous opera singer won dressed as fucken Elsa from Frozen with a bloody woman in black on a giant stick throwing herself around behind her like a sinister incongruous metaphor. I was not a fan. But before all this we started with HIGHLY civilized drinks and snacks, and I have met some bloody good cooks. This one lass Brooke, not only cooks a killer Ottolenghi recipe. She freestyles Ottolenghi. And it’s magic. We made ourselves pretty welcome with our first ever stab at arancini, and Sinead made sausage rolls with FENNEL in them which were wonderful, and Jamie back home can take his ‘secret ingredient’ sausage rolls and go home.
I’ve also beguiled the time with a cycle over to Ainslie to enjoy a spiced hot chocolate with a lovely Morris dancer, been over to another ‘wife’s’ house for a cheeky lunch time drink and a giggle, visited the National Museum and had about seven encounters with delivery/tradesmen. So these are the things that wives do when their husbands are at work. Tomorrow I’m off out with some girls for pizza and dildo racing. Crack on!