anyresemblance

Home again

I've just got back from Melbourne where I have been for the last couple of days at a conference.  The conference was so so but I wisely avoided the late night bar hopping that some of my colleagues indulged in but did go for a walk along the Yarra instead of attending the morning sessions.  My colleague, S, and I noticed that the NGV was hosting an exhibition of Old Masters from the Reijsmuseum in Amsterdam so we detoured in there.  It was a very soothing experience.  The Rembrant portraits have so much humanity in them and the luminosity of the Dutch interiors was quite stunning.   I have a memory game of paintings from this museum that I bought in Amsterdam some years ago - my children love playing it.    It was a good antidote to the dreariness of many of the presentations we sat through.  I was talking to my boss about a paper that had been put forward on improving proposal writing skills.  It's not proposal writing but thinking skills we need to work on,  I would argue.  The capacity to advance a coherent, logical argument is sadly lacking in our business.

I had the best taxi driver home tonight.  Smart, funny, thoughtful about his passengers and the world around him.  Quite the best antidote to the long journey home. 

My new favourite thing

Happy Birthday to my dad who is 82 today.  I bought him malt whisky which he will savour and then allow my siblings to drink.  I am perhaps surprisingly the most teetotal of my brother and sisters who all have a taste for fine whisky whereas I have several bottles of spirits that go untouched until I have to make a fruit cake.  I don't think I have drunk whisky since being in Ireland  many, many years ago with this person.

I am so intolerant of other people's illness but I have been sick as the past few days however I think I am recovering.  Last night, younger daughter and I went to see this.  It was charming without being cloying and younger daughter completely identified with the main character.  Jesus would have liked him, she said approvingly.  I remembered how much I like going to the cinema with her, in fact, how nice it is to spend time one of one with my children.

Older daughter went to a dinner with her father.  She was pretty grumpy when she got back but I think it was just tiredness.  The girls are currently out to lunch with their brother and dad.  He is staying here tonight as I am going to Melbourne tomorrow to a conference.  I'm a grown-up and I can deal with him in my space even though my inner child is pitifully whining "you said all those nasty things about me to your girlfriend and now you are trying to be nice to me"

Now ain't the time for your tears

Tonight I had a call from a friend who is also a close friend of my ex's current girlfriend.  I say this advisedly since it's been a bit (according to him) on-off lately.  Anyway, we had a long call (since this friend can talk at length) about her daughter and some logistical plans involving my daughter and then she turns to the topic of my ex which I don't encourage since it's a conflict of interest for both of us but she relays some stuff to me which my ex has told the girlfriend which is hurtful.  The girlfriend has confided in her since she is uncertain of my ex's intentions.  And my there are some huge economies of truth there.  And since I have no intention in confronting him with what is, in effect, hearsay, I am completely pissed off.  I know that it is easy to demonise a former partner to a new partner - oh, I am so perfect and he never understood, please feel sorry for me and agree that he was nasty - but this has left an unpleasant mood.  I try to remember the teaching of the Dalai Lama - "sometimes silence is the best answer".

Having said that, allow me to whine a moment longer.  On the weekend, he told me some of his travel plans and it turns out he is in San Francisco when our daughter has her first communion.  Oh, I'm not coming to that, says he, I don't like all that catholic stuff.  Never mind how important it is to her or how he didn't say this 3 months ago when the subject was first raised.  Never mind that he is making a special trip to Sydney this Saturday to go to older daughter's father-daughter dinner at school so younger daughter will, again, feel second best.   I have to remind him of another lesson of the DL "judge your success by what you had to give up to get it".

Don't think twice

Since I bought an album of reggae covers of Bob Dylan on the weekend, it seems appropriate that he's back, if only for a short appearance.

I am so over not having broadband access.  It makes my usual leisurely weekend updating a distant memory.  I'm only doing this as I am working on a Sunday night.  I haven't done this for a while but lots of deadlines approach this week and I feel the need to get ahead.

My children spent this weekend with their father.  He had just come back from San Francisco and sent them back with a bag of duty free face products and perfume for me which demonstrates that in spite of my complaining he is not all bad.

As a consequence I had a grown up weekend, ie, stayed up late, drank wine and lay in bed listening to radio national with no-one to ask me to make them breakfast.  I do find I have little time for myself though.   We went to the Fox Studio Farmers Market which, in my opinion, is a big sham.  I got cat grass for the cats which they love with a passion but nothing else of interest.    And cat grass does not make gourmet meals for humans.

An unexpected visitor

Another unscheduled sleepover last night which was very rewarding but reckless on a school night when I am up to ears in the annual planning cycle.  My boss is even more distracted which means I have to pay more than the usual attention and has meant I have been working tonight.  I spent much of the day trying to stay focused and invent new ways to describe what we need to do to improve.  So much effort for so little point.

It's blowing a gale on top of the cliff tonight.  I am taking a hot water bottle to bed.  Delicious as the sleepovers are, I love having my big bed and white cotton sheets to myself.

I like this gentle meme which came from her.  I love her own list which includes being punctual.

Here are the rules: List five little things which make you happy/satisfied/give you pleasure. Don't go for the obvious ones like second-hand bookshops, warm baths, icecream, wanking, seeing a band live or whatever. Odd little things, which give you a little frisson and make things better, even if just for a moment.

1. Drinking tea from a bone china cup and saucer

2. Ironing white cotton pillow cases
3. Plaiting my daughter’s hair while she reads a book
4. Buying a new pen

5. Writing on the first page of a pristine notebook

At random

A helicopter scanned the cliffs with its search lights last night for around 15 minutes.  Then it landed on the oval, not 200 metres from our apartment block.  We decided it was a training exercise and not a serious attempt to repel islamic fundamentalists scaling the cliffs of Vaucluse.

We are watching Season 2 of Charmed.  I'm not as in to it as before but it's still a familiar ritual.

My daughters behaved appallingly in front of  my visitor on Saturday night.  I was embarassed at their horrible, brattish ways.  I realise, however, that I react to it and it's a reaction they are trying to provoke so I have to alter my behaviour.

I tried to buy plants for my windswept roof terrace on Sunday but the garden centre was horrible and I couldn't think of a thing I wanted.  I need a more inspiring locale and a set of books and pictures.

I had a surprise sleepover visitor last night.  I liked that a lot.

My mother, the lap-dancer

A friend of mine, T,  is getting married in September.  She has been engaged three times but at the age of 40 she is getting married for the first time.  Her secretary, who is devoted to her, has organised a hens’ night.  I have never been to one of these.  On the eve of my own wedding, ganching and I went to the Ivy in London for a grown up girls dinner.  She gave me a marriage guide from the 1930s which advised me to train my stomach muscles by wearing a girdle from an early age and other useful pieces of advice.  Pity I didn’t pay enough attention.  When my friend, Dr I, got married we did go for a good dinner at the Atlantic but I recall the evening ended shortly after midnight.  This is a more raunchy affair and involves learning to pole dance somewhere in the Cross.

Since T has been a good friend to me it would seem churlish to refuse on grounds of dignity so I have accepted.  T came round on Sunday afternoon to deliver the wedding invitation.  It was in a bottle filled with sand and shells and reflects the beach side wedding they have planned and quite beautiful.  After she left, the conversation turned to weddings again and I told the girls I was going to her hens’ night.  There followed some discussion on what was involved in these and what pole dancing was.  As avid viewers of pseudo sexy music videos and the like they were familiar with the concept.  I was, however, a little taken aback when youngest daughter came home yesterday to say that the boys in her class were really impressed that I was going to learn to pole dance.

The harder they fall

Today is my birthday.  I got beautiful cards from my girls, “Mummy, on this day you are not to lift a paw” and a “Sealed with a loving martini”.  Gifts and cards from friends and family.  I had the day off work since it was a bank holiday here but not a school holiday. I spent the day with my male friend but I did not tell him it was my birthday.  I couldn’t.  And the longer I left it the harder it got. People kept phoning me all day to wish me happy birthday and ask what I was doing.  From my side he must have heard, “Thank you.  Yes, lovely thank you.  Oh, not much, having coffee.  You are so kind.  Thank you for calling me” Five times.  Then the florist calls trying to deliver flowers.  I’m not going to get home in time so I have to pick the bouquet up tomorrow.  I ask her “can you tell me who they are from?”  She tells me, they are from some dear friends.  He asks, “Did you forget to collect something”.  “Yes, some flowers” but I still don’t tell and he doesn’t ask and maybe he thinks they are from another lover or maybe he’s just not interested.  What am I doing?