Well, that was unexpected. By 'sometime' I just meant, you know, it would take a while

'I don't think it's any coincidence that cleaning the bathroom was followed by four days in bed with the worsest virus I've had for years. It's your turn next time.'

'Yes, I'll mark it on the calendar now,' he said, flicking through to December the twenty third.

If it's not one thing

I am off to scrub the bathroom. I may be gone sometime.

Is that the time?

It is that time of the day at that time of the year.

It brings on dreams of assignments that followed you around and menthol cigarettes you hid under your bed; of afternoon feeds and your baby asleep on your chest; of the CD you played on the road trip you couldn't afford but will never regret; of the one unrequited love that haunts you still; or of the two hangovers that really were worth it for the night before.

And then you dream of all the things you could still get done. Before tea, before bed, before life ends. But because it is that time of the day and that time of the year, it won’t really matter if you don’t.

a week in the hall

On its own, a vacuum cleaner can't do anything except trip you over and piss you off.

White sauce

To make a really, really crap white sauce you should first spend the entire day shouting at your children. You should take care in particular to shout such things as ‘I said don’t shout at me’. This last should be done in the backyard so that you can be sure you sound like a complete idiot to people you have never met. Your hair should be at the exact length and at the exact time in the washing cycle where it hangs in your eyes but can not be brushed away. You should be wearing clothes which did not have one last wear in them, and should have been put in the washing last night.

Take your saucepan out of the sink and wash out the guck from two nights before. Use the dishcloth which is starting to get that certain feel and that certain smell. Don’t make the saucepan sparkling clean, just clean enough so that you can be fairly sure you won’t get botulism. Leave the cloth in a wet mess on the bottom of the sink to be dealt with later on.

Just before you are about to pour in the milk, answer the phone even though no one you know or love would be ringing at this time. Let the person on the other end make you feel badly for cutting them short. Have another glass of wine, even though you have told yourself that this is the week you will not drink, of course you do not need wine to get you through the night.

Return to the saucepan, add the milk, watch the lumps form, make a half-hearted effort to squeeze them out, pour a bit more milk in. Rinse the spinach while the sauce overheats. Give a half-hearted stir with a metal soup spoon. Let the sound grate on you, but do not stop straight away. Allow every black thought you have ever had about yourself to swirl between your ears. Invent a few new ones. If you have trouble with this, you aren’t trying, and your white sauce will not be truly crap.

This white sauce will destroy your lasagne. To end the evening, curse yourself for ruining a dish which takes a fair amount of time and a large portion of your week’s best vegetables.

On the other hand, to make a good – a very good – white sauce you should take the perfectly-sized saucepan which you will find washed and put away exactly where it should be. As is the lid, although you do not need it tonight. Turn the radio down. Further down. Just a little bit more.

Do not worry that the children are being exceptionally loud. They are enjoying each other’s company and spending the kind of time from which they will one day draw their motivations to succeed or otherwise, the strength they will need to mend their first broken heart, and the odd dinner-party laugh.

Heat the saucepan over a gentle flame, and scoop the butter in at exactly the right time. Watch its colour change as it melts. Take in the smell. Close your eyes if you wish, but only for an instant. That is all you need. Sprinkle in the flour, and although you have not measured either the butter or the flour, you will get it exactly right. The flour does not have the maggots of pantry moths. Pour in half a cup of milk and watch as no lumps appear. Feel it thicken. Add a little more milk, and then a little more. Listen to the gentle rub of the spoon against the bottom of the saucepan and watch the trail of the spoon through the sauce. Stir and watch and stir and watch and stir and watch some more. Listen to the sound of the flame and for no reason at all think of camping trips.

Remove from the heat at exactly the right time. Use to make a tuna mornay. Pay no attention to the parts of your brain which normally tell you that the oceans are over-fished and that tuna have dangerously high levels of certain heavy metals which you would prefer that your children didn’t ingest.

Enjoy your meal.

Back to the wall

Oooh.

Chrissy Amphlett on Andrew Denton tonight.

Chrissy Amphlett beats Grey's Anatomy, but someone needs to bring this house into the technological age, because apparently there's this way you can watch two shows even if they're on at the same time.

Melancholy wallow

Because the chocolate cake at her father's house is made by the same person who, thirteen years ago, brought the first lasagne around, she goes home, and she wallows in melancholy.

She sits in the corner of the couch, the sound of her knitting needles and the feel of the wool for company. And she thinks of the lasagne again. She knows that time and her mind have made the lasagne much bigger than it ever was. But still, she thinks of lasagnes, curries, stews. Biscuits, cheese and fruit. And two days later the birthday cake. Vanilla sponge, iced in blue, and her brother's name on top.

She thinks while she knits and she knits while she thinks. She is teaching herself to knit socks. She finishes the light blue stripe, the dark blue stripe, the green stripe, the red. Her mother left patterns for cardigans, jumpers, ponchos, mittens, hats. But not a single pattern for socks.

She thinks while she knits. She thinks of grief which rolls through life in waves. She thinks of all the years that have been and all of those to come. She thinks of the people she hasn't met and the people who won't meet her. She thinks and she knits.

She puts her knitting down, climbs into bed and wishes the sheets had been changed. And then she hopes for one of those nights. A night when spirits haunt, when dreams are real, and a mother gives strength to her child.

Florablogging

'Hey, they look like the sunrise.'

And out of the mouth of a five year old boy, it's not such a naff description. Sunrise or not, they're glorious.

Rainy day fun and games

Based on the morning's experience of trying to be a good mother of children home on holidays and playing firstly snakes and ladders and then trouble, it can be stated with absolute surety that monopoly will not ever, never, ever, never be a feature of this family's family activities.

Now that the lights are (nearly all) fixed

'The floor's very grubby, isn't it?'

'Yes, but I do like being able to see the dust dance again.'

Not purple

When I look at the small pile of things I have bought myself this week - a pencil, a pen, a notebook, a brooch and a cardigan - I'm surprised to see that they are all one colour.

Red.

It is not a colour which has ever been mine.

Lavender Lady

The Lavender Lady at intensive care has silver hair done in large waves too big to be curls. Her badge is purple and gold and her tissue box is blue.

She says and you are his daughter with a question mark, but and you are his son with something more of a full stop.

It's doing the job

The man down the street with the thin alsation dog has a sign on his door. It is an A4 sheet in a plastic sleeve and it is written in arial bold.

PLEASE
DO
NOT
DISTURB

In the two years we have lived here, I have never seen anyone open the gate or walk down the path or knock on the wire door.

The unasked questions

Chanel Ten, Big Brother, Gretel and those two guys would have a lot more credibility, and the story would be fuller had there been some extra questions. Just a few for starters:

So, do you think you have a better understanding of why those dratted rules might have been developed in the first place?
Oh, and do you (Gretel, scriptwriters and those removed from the house) see no inconsistency between throwing yourself into Big Brother and then banging on about how poorly you've been treated by an evil media that takes a story and runs with it?

Youse would have done well to be watching Boston Legal last night.

And another point of interest: hold up a sign saying free the refugees and incur the wrath of Gretel and even Rove; carry on in a manner such as this and let the waves of sympathy wash over you.

and just as the takeaway guy appeared, another globe blew

'These lights are really starting to give me the shits.'

'It's called mood lighting for a reason.'

We know who taught them that

They went down to the back fence to practice the words they weren't supposed to say.

Mummy's poo-poo.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Shut the fu*k-ing door.

who teaches them these things?

Neighbour to youngest child: where's your mum?

Youngest child to neighbour: she's inside, because she's a wife.

If you drop a stitch and don't see it drop, did it really drop?

'Right, so we're agreed: now that only 4 out of 13 lights are working, something has to be done.'

'Oh, yes. We agreed on that when we had 5 out of 13 lights working.'

The knitting needles clicked.

'They're a bit of a pain, aren't they, those halogen things?'

'Yeah. I certainly wouldn't have put them in if it was me did this room up.'

'Mmmm.'

And they passed the evening in the almost silence of an ageing relationship. The knitting needles were clicked. The milk rock was scoffed. The cups of tea were slurped.

And tomorrow the glasses would need to be found. And possibly a torch.

my own personal challenge

10 am and I still don't know the soccer result.

Out of sight

Stupidly, she has eaten all but the yellow snakes.

He will know that she has been sneaking them, and has eaten significantly more than her share.

If she eats the lot, there is a chance that he will never remember they didn't finish the lot in one sitting last night.

Eating the yellow snakes is punishment enough.

3.30 pm (more or less) again

The tram doors gas-whoosh close, the computerised bell dings. She is still surprised by trams that glide and don’t rumble as they pull away from the stop.

The pedestrian crossing is ticking out its quick metallic pitch, so she moves quickly to catch the green lights. The water in her bag glugs.

The small white car waits for her. It needs a new muffler and that squeak can’t be good.

Her cough is turning into a bark, but her sniff is still dry.

The native grass in the median strip whispers trendily.

She turns right. She imagines that when the architect presented his plans for the eco-village, there were children on the lawn, but she walks through here four times a month, and she has never seen a child.

There is the sound of a kettle boiling and a student on the phone. Four essays due in the next three days and I have to work tonight. Someone is eating, the metal repeating itself against the ceramic. Quickly. She imagines it is a silver spoon and the dish is white. Soup is a perfect meal for this time of the day, when the shadows are already long and if your back is not facing exactly the right way, the sun doesn’t give enough warmth. Someone is drying their hair and someone else is vacuuming. They do not need to hit the nozzle so hard against the wall.

The leaves on the Japanese maple rub together. The rustle makes her wonder why it is that this tree still has all its leaves, and the others have nearly none.

A garage door right at the end is whirring, but it never opens. She turns back to check, but it is still closed.

The next shoes she hears make a loud clunk on the footpath, but they are light pink and made of soft leather and carry a small woman. The woman almost smiles. Her lipstick suits the dark of her eyes and the colour of her skin.

Three of the cars at the front of the school have their radios on, all tuned to the same station and not the one you’d expect. None of the windows are down. One woman is reading a New Idea. One has her head back and her eyes closed. One is a man, talking on a mobile phone and with the radio on like that she wonders how he can hear himself think.

A teacher says now when we go up the stairs in a voice which shows she says the same thing day after day, and day after day at least one of the children – a different one to the day before – will push, and another will yell, and another will pull the hat from another who will in turn retaliate.

If school is nearly finished, then she is nearly late for her meeting. Her trousers rub together as she walks. The fabric is heavy and makes a small snap with every second or third step.

She can not tell whether that it is the sound of air or water coming from behind the wall of the Car Detailers Garage.

The phone in her bag beeps the arrival of an SMS. She hopes the news is good, but she won't look until 5 o'clock. Just in case. It is a big meeting, and she will need to concentrate.

The man on the bike is wearing a helmet which doesn’t fit. His shoes are canvas and worn. He has a cardboard box strapped on to the back of his bike. He says hello in a voice which grates in his throat as he speaks.

She says hello, but he has already gone.

It is an eight minute walk and she is not quite late.

Recipe for fritz

From the Green and Gold Cookery Book, forty fourth edition, 378,000 copies sold

Fritz sausage

One and a half pounds of chuck steak, 1/4 lb. bacon, 1 1/2 cups (large) of bread crumbs, one teaspoonful of salt, one small teaspoonful of pepper, one dessertspoonful of Worcester sauce, pinch of thyme and one egg.

Mince the steak and bacon very finely, add bread crumbs and the well-beaten egg; mix well together; make into a roll and tie in a floured cloth. Put into boiling water and boil 1 1/4 hours. Turn out and roll in bread crumbs and serve cold.

- Edith F. Rutt

'So,' the mister asked, 'if fritz really doesn't have pig p*n*s, does that mean a snot block isn't made of snot?'

The Grand Old Duke of York

'The good thing about getting so worked up about stuff and worrying so much about the finer points and trying so hard not to upset anybody even when you know you can't make any of them truly, properly happy, is the incredible up you get when it is off your plate,' she said. 'If I didn't get so down, then I couldn't be this up.'

'Yes, I suppose,' the mister said picking his right foot ever so slightly off the floor and shifting it two millimetres to the right thus maintaining his ever-even-keeled-ness.

I will survive

If you got selected to go on Survivor, would you not, as soon as you had put down the phone to the producers who were telling you you had won, go straight to the WEA or the Scouts or whatever appropriate place you could find, and enrol in a quick course in firelighting?

3.30 pm

What is it that makes Justine such an ace PlaySchool presenter?

The warmth. It oozes from the television whenever she is on the screen. If you invited her around for the afternoon, you wouldn't feel like you had to do the dishes before she arrived.

The body. She is not at all angular and she looks like someone's mum (especially in those ones you still see every now and then where she is pregnant). She is someone you might come across in these particular years of pre-schoolness.

She can sing. Which means she does not have to make up for out-of-tune-ness and/or mono-tone-ness by droning above her co-presenter.

She is having a good time.

And Rhys is to PlaySchool what Tony Jones is to LateLine.

beyond adelaide

create your own visited countries map

Very unrealistic map of places visited by Adelaide and the mister. For example, a visit to Shanghai, Beijing and a couple of places in between, splashes red across a huge swathe of unvisited territory. Likewise a week on a train and a few nights in Moscow translates itself into remarkably large splotch of red.

Particular points of note: no visits to India which completely destroys potential backpacker cred.

map not expected to change within the next twenty years

first spotted by dogpossum

Big Questions continued

And at 5 o'clock:

a final cup of tea or the first glass of red?

still on the Big Questions

And in the afternoon:

smarties or M&Ms?

Asking the Big Questions

First hot drink of the morning:

coffee or tea?

Queen's Birthday Honours List spurns ThirdCat

Of course she wouldn't have accepted a medal anyway.

Does it come with age?

She thinks this time last year I was in Changi, waiting for my connection flight to London.

She remembers how humidity makes her feel. Almost like it is always holidays, but something even better than that.

There have been choices to make. Choices of no degrees. Choices of either-or.

She pokes into the corners of her mind, the layers of her soul, the curves of her heart. She pokes. Then she prods.

But there are still no lurking regrets.

blogopera update

Despite the injustices heaped upon her by the universe and some mortals, she has found time to update the blogopera

We can't all be wrong. Can we?

Even after spending the afternoon in a corner contemplating her actions, she was still filled with righteous indignation. No doubt about it, she had been wronged. And both her father and the mister agreed.

Injustice is a terrible thing.

Slow and steady wins the race. Doesn't it?

Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

And she wasn't even dressed yet.

she scrubbed out one last thing on her list of things to do

and before she knew it, it was time to write the cover letter

surprise

coffee and cream

Even after two rounds of scones, there is enough King Island cream still in the bowl, that it is worth putting it on the top shelf of the fridge as soon as it is obvious that no one is eating any more. The popcorn, the figs and even a small piece of cheese are still out after the last person has said goodbye. The figs stay out all night.

During the week, she uses the old, larger teaspoon. She scoops the cream from the bowl, heaped teaspoons they would be called, always two and sometimes three. She does not stir, and before all of the cream can melt, she lifts the cup carefully to her lips. She sips.

The rest of the cream melts.

She has three cups of coffee instead of two and each is as good as the last.

The cream slides past her lips and through her body and folds itself onto the curve of her hips.

Unlike apples, which are fibrous, and travel through the small intestine, resting only briefly in the bowel.

TGIF

'You look even more tired than you did this morning,' the teacher said in a voice and a tone which was not rude.

And thus could her week be described.

blogopera update

the latest blogopera episode has been uploaded

Novels in my life: part one

Remains of the day


















Dedicated to the year ten English teacher who set an assignment 'design a book cover', and gave a B to the girl who designed the back cover because of course I meant the front cover, thus punishing the girl for her (complete) inability to draw, although the subject in question was English, and wasn't having compulsory art lessons suffering enough for a person like her? And also that B completely ignored the fact that in choosing to design the back cover, the girl demonstrated excellent creativity and insightful analysis of the book in question as well as a good understanding of all that there is in a book as object (isbn etc etc etc) and even her mother agreed that she was not being a smart arse and praised her creativity. And yes, that was the same teacher who taught Shakespeare by assigning a part from Romeo and Juliet to different students in the class and making them read it aloud day after day after week and stretching into a month, and NEVER NOT ONCE EVER giving the girl in question a part to read. Bitter? Yeah. And twisted too.

Birthday candles

The candle burns not for us, but for those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who 'disappeared'. That's who the candle is for.
Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International is 45 years old today

eye of the beholder

WTF and OMG

'Do I look funny in this?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'And gorgeous too.'

'I hope so.'

Adelaide is off to stand up on a stage in front of people and try to make them laugh.

And what's the one thing you don't want to hear at your second-to-last rehearsal?

'Erm...what did you do with your funny stuff?'

WTF and OMG indeed.

torture and the hypotheticals

The Hypotheticals replayed last night on Channel 9 ended in a most disturbing way. Too many people around the table - including the new people's hero Bill Shorten - were willing to consider transporting someone (who may or may not have information about Osama bin Laden) off to Egypt where there is some new torture method to do with teeth.

Amnesty International says this:
Torture and other ill-treatment that is cruel, inhuman or degrading is repugnant, immoral and illegal, and always wrong...Torture or other ill-treatment not only harms the victim, it brutalises the perpetrator and the societies that allow it to happen. It is cruel, inhuman and degrades us all.

To add your name to 11000 candles to stop torture, visit the website here.

And Bill Shorten: you've got some thinking to do (IMHO)

odd choice

Say you were a bit shorter than most other people you knew. And say a couple of years of child-bearing plus too much red wine plus genetics had left you with not insubstantial hips and a bottom that makes sitting quite comfy really.

Would you buy something from a label called wombat?

Sunday shopping in the Mall

The day is grey and they are knocking the tram barn down. She has never known a time that the tram barn was used and the tram she gets off now spends its nights down at Morphetville.

There is a road, a barricade, a man with a reflective jacket and a radio. She can’t get close enough to take a photo. But because of the way the wind blows, she gets a light spray from the hose they are using to keep down the dust.

She leaves Victoria Square, walks along King William Street, and it must be the day for it.

They are knocking The Criterion down.

She is not one to huff and puff about things that aren’t the same and she tries not to say too often we all used to and isn’t it a shame? And did she mention her family’s income depends on the fact that when one building goes down another goes up in its place.

But they are grace-filled buildings, and when they get knocked down, no one even bothers to watch.

She reaches the Beehive Corner. She would be cross if Haigh’s got knocked down. She starts her shopping with a packet of dark frogs. She has earlier promised herself that she will not, but she does not berate herself for the chocolate slip. Perhaps she should have chosen peppermint today.

On Sundays in the Mall, most of the good shops are closed. She never comes in, so she hadn’t known.

She is here now, and has to make do. She buys the present first.

There is a school band, playing under the canopy. They are lucky, because the forecast was for rain. Some of them wear uniforms and some of them do not quite. Their uniform doesn’t include a tie. They make her think of her boyfriend who played a trumpet and her brother who played the trombone.

The teacher is not young. She imagines that he thinks, in February every year, can I do another year of this?

And then he thinks: but if I didn’t, what would I do?

branching out

The adelaide blogopera experiment is here

This school would be perfect if...

It was her introduction to the phenomona known as pupil-free days.

Once upon a time

It's true: if you eat enough chocolate frogs you will look like one.

She could only hope that the mister - a prince of the handsomest kind - would take the time to kiss her before he scoffed her down.

Moroccan Rose

The cream is Moroccan Rose and new.

It is thick and rich and coloured gently pink.

She scoops it on after she has towelled her hair and before she brushes powder on her cheeks. Left arm, right arm, left leg, right.

The lid and the label are black and after only a week, they are showing her fingerprints.

It has the kind of smell which wafts in and out of her day and makes her reach for memories that haven't been made.

boxing rules

She heard on the radio, that after the fight between Anthony Mundine and some dude called Green, a bunch of stoushes broke out in pubs where the fights had been showing on the televisions.
And isn't that the kind of world you want to be bringing two little boys up in? she thought to herself.

It was an imperfect sentence and technically flawed, but she knew what she meant.

today at a large and soul-less shop

'No, sorry, it isn't worth fixing this camera you've only had for three years...anything to do with the batteries and it's a whole new motherboard...nah, it's not even worth sending it away...we don't sell these anymore...pity your warranty has expired...let me show you this new one it's got face recognition, it's really cool...'

Avert eyes from all ridiculously appealing consumer goods including televisions you don't need binoculars to see and dvd players which would mean you could start watching movies again.

Trudge, trudge, trudge, mutter, mutter, mutter...yes, we're going home now, please don't jump on the lounge...no daddy does not let you bounce on the lounges in shops...nor does your granny...please don't yell at me.

Standing in the doorway, checking everything is back in bag after accidental spill.

Overheard: 'yeah, look, mate, can't stop now, get your missus to give mine a ring...yeah, look, I'd better leave it with you, you know what my missus is like it'll never get done'.

Get in the car. Leave the car park without running anyone down.

Is it bed time yet?

It doesn't matter what time you go to bed, the planes and the wattle birds all start again at dawn.

Final footy post for the week

Dear Chocko

It's a poor workman blames his tools.

Love, Adelaide

Instead of listening to Phillip Adams, I listen to..

Note to KG: it is rarely ironic, and never ironical.

Also, could you be a little less partisan, and a little less parochial.

elevenses

No one ever achieved greatness sitting their kid in front of the CD player.

Silence from the child (or as close to it as you can expect from a three year old), but you try concentrating with they might be giants, bananas in pyjamas, or dinosaur tales in the background. Even quality stories and tunes burrow themselves into your brain and leave no room for original, or even lucid, thought.

'Come on, let's go for a walk,' she said. At least she could exercise her body if not her brain.

'I'm listening to my CDs,' he said with that particular tone in his voice.

May as well fold the clothes then, she thought.

morning person

They needed to work on their morning routine.

'See you when I get home, I love you, don't forget to wake Mum up at eight o'clock' just wasn't cutting it.

whoops

Oh. She did, in fact, have somewhere she should have been on Saturday night. And while she could offer all manner of excuses, they would sound undergraduate, and in the end it came down to this:

'I forgot.'

'Perhaps,' the mister said, 'a little less of the red?'

Port plays the Bulldogs

She was no expert, but she had some advice nonetheless.

Kick it to Cornes.

Do it for your jumper.

And if you can't think of your jumper, remember your mum is watching.

Update: thrashed. Glad it was the mister's turn with the season ticket.

wasabi peas

The wasabi peas were not what she had expected, but she would be buying more next week.

Another Saturday night in begins

The desk was positioned so that the fire warmed the back of the chair and for no reason at all (that she could think of) she remembered the smell of perms.

The wine was not her favourite, but it was cheap if you bought it by the case.

The boy who looks nothing like her knows that four plus three equals seven and eats fresh asparagus stalks for tea while the other one plays they might be giants for the millionth time that week and even where do they make balloons has started to give her the shits.

The skeleton pyjamas have not dried in time to be worn tonight and neither have her favourite pillowcases.

But she does all her worrying during the day and thinks she will use the night to sleep. She swigs again at the red just to make sure, and she is sorry that at the very moment she was standing at the cheese counter today she had remembered that she does not want to put on any more weight, so there was no camembert or blue vein to be had for another week.

google again

Apparently, if you google mister dishwasher adelaide, you will be led to this blog (yes, no 1 out of 3740 search results).

That's the kind of stuff you can't make up.

PS If you, or someone you know, have swallowed a metal marble, seek urgent medical advice. You will not find such advice here. If you are thinking of doing it: don't.

Don't look for lanky here

The whole family had the kind of legs which meant they were always making, or paying for, cuffs.

You'd miss a night at home watching Tony Jones for this

When Adelaide were a wee a bit younger than she now is, she had looked at the people sitting in the seats at Hoodoo Gurus concerts and thought to herself why even come if you're just gonna sit in the seats. What's the point if you're not gonna dance?

And now, having spent the night listening to the wondrous, the glorious Ben Harper from the seats, she understood.

There are times when you want the music to keep you still.

Can't concentrate

There are days when there is nothing you can do but fold the towels, wash the floors and turn the music up.

On the stairs at school

This morning, at the bottom of the stairs, they bumped into one of Adelaide's favourite little girls. An intriguing soul she is, with a beautiful coat and a mother who delivers babies or something like that, so quite often at the end of the day, the receptionist calls out you're going to out of school care, but your mum's gonna get here as soon as she can.

'You see this?' the little girl said. She was wearing her beautiful coat with the buttons all done up, and she was holding a small, shimmery purple ball. She shook it, and the ball made a dull tinkling sound. 'I found it on the road. It means I win the competition. We said the first one to find one of those on the road wins the competition.'

Her boys looked at Adelaide, because we don't have competitions and winners in our house

'One of Santa's reindeers dropped it,' the girl said.

Her oldest boy, a Santa Claus agnostic, looked again at Adelaide.

'Did they?' Adelaide said. She smiled and wished that she could put her arm around the girl's shoulders, rub her hands down her hair. 'We'd better start going up the stairs.'

'Do you know what I wished for?' They all walked on the left side and held the rail. There were no parents coming back down. 'I wished that a reindeer would drop this on the road. And they did.'

Her oldest boy looked around at Adelaide. Adelaide shook her head.

And then, when they got to the top of the stairs, everyone's favourite school support officer was there.

'Oh, hello,' the little girl said to the SSO. She did not look back at Adelaide and her boys. But even as Adelaide took the lunch box out of the bag, held the reader folder while the reader was painstakingly exchanged, Adelaide was watching the little girl.

'This is from my cat,' the little girl said showing the SSO the little purple ball. 'We got her put down, and this is all that's left.'

'That's very sad,' the SSO said.

'It was my dad's cat,' the little girl said.

'Oh,' the SSO said. 'Do you think you need a hug?' And that SSO was the kind of friend who could walk into your house at exactly the right time, and do the dishes for you, and you would like that she hadn't asked, and then you'd let her make you a pot of tomato and lentil soup. And when she left, you'd realise you hadn't cried for over an hour.

The little girl shook her head, turned and walked towards her classroom.

The SSO caught Adelaide's eye, smiled.

'How about those miners?' she said to Adelaide.

Retail therapy

On Saturdays, she thinks of the days when her mother and her brother always slept in.

Dad did the dishes and if they had lived in the city, she would have watched cartoons. When the dishes were done, she followed Dad to the green moke he drove, and they did the shopping down the street.

Her mother and her brother were still asleep.

She wore her netball uniform and Dad knew everyone. She stood nearby while he talked at some, nodded at the words of others. She pushed small stones into small piles with her feet or jumped around cracks or wrote monologues of things she should have said. Later on, she would ask for a dollar and go into the newsagent to buy a new book.

When he is listening to someone, Dad still folds his arms like that.

At Morrell's, the girls behind the counter stuck pencils behind their ears and Dad said 'a kilo of unwashed'. They added rows of numbers by whispering under their breath. You could pay by cash or cheque, the new Coles hadn't opened yet and Tom's didn't sell much in the way of fruit and veg.

The butcher gave her fritz and talked to Dad about the pigeons he was racing that week. The butcher mumbled everything. She remembers the silver rail she would lean on and the mirror behind the meat.

By the time they got home, the washing machine was on. Was the laundry floor always flooded with clothes and suds?

They carried the shopping in and put it in the corner, just inside the kitchen door. Every now and then, when no one was looking, the cat got into the meat. Someone had to clean out the fridge every now and then. Their freezer was on the bottom, and it was something that everyone noticed. They said our freezer is on the top.

In the afternoons, she went to netball, her father went to hockey and her brother did whatever it is that younger brothers do. Her mother stayed home to sew houndstooth jackets and plant Chinese money trees.

In those days, they ate tea together every Saturday night and these days, when things go arse-up, it’s the Saturdays she thinks about.

The washing is urgent now

The jumper fell on her hips in a most unflattering way, but at least it didn't smell.

before things get too serious

Q: What did the 0 say to the 8?

A: Nice belt.

Christmas cards in May

The Christmas cards from her best friends were still on the mantlepiece. One of the cards had come in November, and here we are in May. She saw the cards every day, but she looked at them only every now and then.

This morning she picked them up, one by one, but she did not put them down. She held them in a small pile in her hand. The dust from the cards brushed against, then settled in, her fingertips. It was a sensation she had never liked and when she was young she used to lick the tips of her fingers then rub them against her thumb. It was something that had annoyed her mother.

She used her other hand to rub her eyes then scratch her hair. She had showered as soon as she got out of bed, but there were nights which could not be washed away.

Now that she had them in her hand she did not know what to do with the cards. She could see the dust on the mantlepiece, and it felt wrong to put them back.

The window rattled in the way it had started to do. The top window pane was still cracked and had that small, inexplicable hole. It was old, thin glass. And rattling like that. It was the kind of thing you should fix.

It was a good place to put the cards though. Over there on the window sill. She could move the rocks and the broken cup. And the paint was light, so you couldn't really see the dust.

If the cards were there, then from her desk, she would only have to turn her head a little and she would be able to see them. All lined up.

And she could remind herself to be the person her friends thought she was.

good news

Adelaide lifted the lid of the toilet seat only to find that it had already been cleaned.

And people say romance is dead.

Mrs Hubbard

After checking all the normal hiding spots, both hers and the mister's, Adelaide wished the mister had either:

a. bought more chocolate when he did the shopping over the weekend

or

b. not eaten it all while he was home by himself over the weekend.

It would be good when the children were old enough to be sent off to the shops.

Shopping list

The best thing about the mister's shopping was that it always contained generous numbers of not-bad dips; a good quantity of a good class of blue vein cheese; olives toward the better end; and a packet of soy sausages for the nights no one wanted to cook.

All of which Adelaide had now consumed. And she'd barely been back in the house one full day.

Wallowing

Adelaide opened the letterbox to find that her genius remained unrecognised - in fact, rejected - by all but her children. And a few others who were highly supportive, but lacked influence outside their own spheres.

And anyway, this wasn't about genius. It was about skills and knowledge and experience, her possession of which she had most clearly demonstrated.

She took a deep breath, walked out of the post office and looked both ways before she crossed the road.

untitled

Adelaide sat. Waiting for things to change.

It seemed not to matter whether she crossed her legs, uncrossed her arms, smiled or scowled.

Nothing changed while she sat.

Please don't play in the dust

She had not noticed that there were towels in the hall; glitter and pancakes all over the floor; a cushion on the bookshelf; a cereal box on the lounge; a pile of sticks with string strung around; coffee cups galore; a line of brown apple cores on the bottom stair; a wine bottle with the cork off; and pyjamas in the sink.

Until her neighbour walked in.

The advice still stands

It was the kind of day made Adelaide think of the university lecturer who had written, on every one of the essays Adelaide handed her, generally lucid, but occasionally diffuse.

Evening meal

Having reached a significant milestone by working freaking hard at it for three full days - and one of them a public holiday - Adelaide opened a bottle of wine before she started the tea.

One glass later, she thought they might have pizza tonight.

She took another gulp of the red, then waved - not unkindly but without nostalgia - at the woman who had believed that every meal she fed her children should be a nutritionally balanced one.

Vacation care

'I still feel a bit shy about this,' her little boy said. He used one hand to wipe quickly at his eyes, the other to squeeze her hand.

They were only half way across the playground and the door was closed. Either of them could still change their minds (except for the pile of work she simply could not put off for another single moment).

'But I'm going to give it a try, and I'll get used to it, and then I'll have fun,' he said.

And it was good to know that you weren't getting everything wrong.

Cover it in hundreds and thousands

'It's not so much that you've got a finger in too many pies,' the mister said, 'it's just that none of them is made of chocolate.'

And indeed it is

'Mrs Gray who has (sic) organising her first David Jones parade, taking over from Mrs Vial, says: 'People place a lot of importance on being on that VIP list. For some people, it's a very important part of their life. If they're not seated at the DJ's parade, they feel it's a reflection on their standing in society.''

Devlin, Rebekah and Rhiannon Doyle
'It's your party but we'll come if we want to, say the A-list gatecrashers'
The Advertiser. Saturday April 22 2006, p 48

The melancholy settles in

She wishes she had picked the underwear up. He is probably used to it. But still.

‘Do you want normal tea or would you prefer herbal?’ she asks. It is a household joke made before she can think.

‘I’m not usually too fussy,’ he says. His voice is soft and leaves a trail across her soul. His hair is blonde and he leaves the tap running as he walks back and forth to his truck and he wears boots which look like they have never been cleaned.

She will joke about him at dinner parties in months to come and say he’s the kind of boy would make any mother proud. She will use her own mother’s inflections when she speaks and two of her friends will know exactly what she means.

To go or not to go

On the one hand, this lecture about atrocity crimes and global indifference sounds really interesting.

On the other hand, that photo of Gareth Evans pretty much sums up why I'm not sure whether I'll go. People reveal the strangest things about themselves, do they not?

trashy magazines

In exchange for the two gorgeous children, Adelaide's mother-in-law had given Adelaide five Woman's Days and a New Idea.

Adelaide had allowed herself a momentary break from her other worthy pursuits to wallow in the glorious magazines. But it's funny the places your brain will race while you are reading about Lleyton and Bec and Angeline Jolie.

Adelaide remembered, for example, that on a visit to her own grandmother's many years ago, her grandfather had given her a similar sized stash of magazines.

'Hide these from her until she's finished her jobs,' he said. 'But not behind the television, she'll know to look there.'

And here's the thing: Adelaide did it! She did as her grandfather asked. And then she got them out again when he had left for his very important job.

And here's another thing: Adelaide knew that this was something should not tell her mother.

And here's the final thing: when Adelaide's grandfather came home that day he felt the back of the television to make sure it had not been on. It was something Adelaide had not known.

Adelaide believes she was six or seven at the time.

Google is weird

Adelaide lives a pretty much anonymous life in the city of her birth. In truth, she does not know someone who knows someone, and she has no influence over anyone of import.

She does not know:
when Jimmy Barnes will next be in Adelaide;
how much INXS tickets are likely to cost;
when Chloe Fox and Leon Bignell will wed;
Lleyton Hewitt's address.
These last two she would certainly keep to herself even if she knew.

There are much better sources of information on Chris Schacht, Angus Redford and KG.

Why anyone would be looking for that kind of stuff here she really can not understand.

The sasmee railway park is open one Saturday and one Sunday per month, but she can not remember whether it is the first Saturday and third Sunday or vice versa or even whether it is the second or the fourth.

There are no patterns for child's coathangers here and Adelaide offers no medical advice. She is not even really sure what an aorta is.

Who knew there were so many people on the hunt for an ecological dishwasher. Adelaide really doubts that there is such a thing. Depending on your definition of ecological of course.

Yes, success is the best revenge. Or at the very least you will be doing something productive, even if your motives are less than admirable.

Adelaide extends her apologies to disappointed googlers, but it isn't entirely her fault.

In the afternoon

Grace, Jeff Buckley

Seemed like a good idea at the time

Unencumbered by children, but carrying one piece of recent Very Bad news from a friend, plus that bloody phone call had come, Adelaide and her lover went out.

'I can't quite decide.' Adelaide looked up from the cocktail menu and, quite accidently, straight into the eyes of the Lovely Waiter. 'Perhaps...'

'The lychee martini is very good,' the Lovely Waiter said. And quite coincidentally they were the very next words on Adelaide's lips.

'I just need to tell you we don't have the mint. But that's really just garnish,' the Lovely Waiter said.

'That's okay,' Adelaide said, 'mint just gets caught in your teeth.'

'You're a shocking flirt,' her lover said when the Lovely Waiter had gone.

And at the moment when her lover said I'll have a coffee now please Adelaide should not have said and I'll try the mango daquiri.

Good intentions come to nowt #onezillion

Adelaide has studied Chinese in China, Spanish in Guatemala and French in Port Pirie. And just this afternoon she has uncovered her copy of Winnie ille Pu bought ten years ago with the sincere intention of teaching herself Latin.

She has scrabbled through her endless store of mental to-do lists and scrubbed teach self Latin off.

Roadhouse rendez-vous

Because she remembered how much she loved the days she'd spent at her grandmother's, she made the drive.

They would meet half way, but still it would be a four hour drive (return).

She packed bags and bikes and helmets into the car. She packed snacks. Apple, dried peach, cheese and a freddo frog.

‘Are they for us?’ the children asked when they saw her packing the frogs, but they would not stop for a hug.

She took no notice of the roadside markers as she drove because if it can happen once it bloody well can happen again. She flicked the windscreen wipers on then off, on then off again.

One of the children slept.

The other one said ‘are we nearly there’ and ‘what does soon mean’. He picked up his books and he asked ‘what does w.h.e.r.e. spell’ and when they played I-spy she couldn't convince him that drink doesn't start with g. She remembered her own mother telling her that ceiling doesn't start with a 's'.

They got to the roadhouse first, so there was time to kill, and the children said 'you said kill you said kill'. She said to them ‘no, you can’t have an ice cream until you’ve finished your chips’ and killing time cost twenty dollars all up.

She said ‘we ate one Christmas tea here, because the car broke down,’ but the children didn’t understand.

She saw the people in the road house smile when the children called ‘Granny, Granny’ and ran to wait at the door. And nobody cared that the children squealed when their Pop turned them upside down and tickled them under their arms.

Her mother-in-law smiled at her and they hugged. She was sorry now for all the times she had scoffed when her mother-in-law said goodbye, thanks for coming, drive safely, ring me when you arrive.

They moved the things from her car to theirs (let me get that, love) and they buckled the children in.

Her little boy wiped his eyes when he said goodbye and that was something he'd never done before. She brushed his cheek with the palm of her hand. And then he looked at his Granny and smiled, and she remembered the days she had smiled that way, and that’s why she was here.

And when she drove away, out of the roadhouse and onto the road, her head thumped and her arms ached. It was Lucky Oceans on the radio and she drove all the way home at 95.

Go Dizzy

'Although I am still mourning the loss of his mullet,' Adelaide said.

The day after Easter

Welcome back from Easter everyone.

Did you read any of the 27 kilos of books and papers you insisted on taking?

No? Nor did Adelaide.

Botanic Gardens, Easter Saturday

If I had to be anyone at a wedding, Adelaide thought, I'd always be the sister-in-law.

She walked towards the ball she had accidentally-on-purpose hit just a bit too hard so it flew over the heads of the boys, left their circle of grass, travelled along the path and landed not too far from the fountain where the wedding had just begun.

At weddings, Adelaide thought, sisters-in-law are unencumbered by expectation. They can wear a sensible frock (in autumn even brides should wear sleeves). Sisters-in-law are not forced into shades of green which make them feel dizzy or shades of red which make them look sickly pale. They do their own make-up and no one pushes their hair into shapes that immobilise the head.

There is nothing important that a sister-in-law can forget.

Sisters-in-law stand to the side with a child on their hip and a flute of champagne in their hand. They can taste the champagne and it does not rush straight to their knees in a dangerous way.

In photographs - including the one that's just her and her husband and their child all of them looking relaxed and well-dressed - sisters-in-law wear glorious smiles.

Adelaide picked up the ball, pulled her jacket closer around herself. Someone really should have thought to bring jumpers for the boys.

there's no critical analysis here

'Is it just me, or did Dalziel and Pascoe get worse?' Adelaide asked the mister. She was trying to lose weight, so she took the wine, but declined more chocolate.

'No. It's always been this shit,' he said and scoffed another six blocks.

an afternoon constitutional

If Adelaide had not turned the corner to avoid the dog, she would never have seen the woman in pearls rummaging through the playground bin.

'Was she wearing gloves?' the mister asked.

Another question, but no answer

Question: How many lovers does it take to ruin an unexected opportunity to watch Survivor (the greatest reality show ever made)?

Answer: Just the one. But he has to be running around putting children to bed, clanging the dishes a bit too loud, then walking past with another load of washing ready to be hung out.

'Guilt is such an unproductive emotion,' Adelaide said when they were seated quite close together on the lounge later on. She was happy, but she was still frighteningly close to a snarl. 'I wonder whether that's what it feels like to be a more...traditional man?' Adelaide said. 'Maybe it's not that great just sitting on the lounge at the end of they day letting people wait on you.' She sniffed, then took another bite of the chocolate rabbit the mister's PA had sent home for the kids. 'Or maybe it's something you can push through.'

'I'll ask around for you,' Adelaide's mister said. 'I'll try and find out.'

They gave each other a tender look before Adelaide took the remote and turned the television up. She wasn't going to miss that little tinkly piece of music they played when they extinguished the flame for anything.

Q & A

Adelaide's youngest child was one of those three year olds who was constantly asking why. Endearing in small doses, it drove Adelaide and her husband, and her father and her parents-in-law around the bend. But if Adelaide's little boy didn't ask why, these are some of the things Adelaide would never have known:

1. the man in the post office was a soldier who had indeed flown in the helicopters which occasionally circled Adelaide's house. His combat fatigues were often mistaken for pyjamas and if you looked at the patterns carefully you would see love hearts and Mickey Mouse ears.
2. the woman looking at the toothpaste in the supermarket cleans her teeth twice a day. Her toothbrush is red and does not have pictures of Winnie the Pooh. She does not use a cup to rinse the toothpaste from her mouth. She eats toast for breakfast and is intending to lose weight.
3. the young man at the bottle shop has a silver thing in his tongue because he likes how it feels. You have to be an adult to get a silver thing in your tongue. You would have to go to hospital if you swallowed it.
   
4. the man behind the counter at the newsagent eats sandwiches for lunch. He buys them from the bakery down the street. He has juice with his sandwich and coffee in the afternoons.
   
5. the man in the cafe wearing white socks and brown leather sandals got the cuts on his legs from diving for abalone over the weekend. He gave the abalone to a friend who is sick. His friend did not go in an ambulance, but he has had x-rays. When the man goes to work he does autopsies.

At which point, Adelaide stepped in.

Drats

Adelaide returned to her computer after a glorious week across the seas - Kangaroo Island - to find 102 emails in one inbox, 13 in another.

And not one of them likely to change her life.

it's a hard life

Adelaide had the kind of husband who was giving her bunches of tulips one day, then casting nasturtiums on her housekeeping skills the next.

and in news just to hand...

Like John Howard, Adelaide is completely reassured by the Chinese premier's statement that the uranium China buys from Australia - indeed, South Australia - will be used only for perfectly peaceful purposes in perfectly safe facilities. As uranium always is.

And even as you read, Adelaide is sitting on a plane to New York with her children, hoping they can be included in the asthma vaccine trials and be given daily doses of dust mites and cat fur.

dear dad

Dear Dad

Isn't it funny that being a Sturt supporter for all those years has stood me in such good stead for following the Power from Port?

Love, Adelaide

PS Pass the message on to my brother too.

please explain the uranium mines

Adelaide was the kind of vegetarian who wore leather shoes and snuck pieces of Christmas ham.

She was the kind of person who knew about carbon credits, but washed her dishes in a machine.

She was the kind of partner who didn't want to know that her beloved clipped his toenails, but didn't care where she clipped her own.

She was the kind of anti-poverty campaigner who paid sixty dollars to get her hair cut and another sixty to get it dyed.

She was the kind of feminist who vacuumed before her mother-in-law arrived.

And still she failed to see how Mike Rann could be fighting tooth and nail against a radioactive waste dump one year and championing the expansion - the doubling - of uranium mining the next.