What to Wear?

I’m slowly beginning to realise that there is such a thing as having too many clothes. Last Friday was V’s party and after wrestling with my velvet Fanchulla dress for ages (moving buttons, sewing and unpicking illegal seams, swearing a great deal) I finally had to concede that it was obviously made for someone with a much longer torso than mine and would never do grace to my curves in the way that I wanted. And so, feeling bereft (for it would have gone splendidly with my red boots), I pulled everything else out of my cupboard and tried to find something else. Several hours later I decided on my bottle green top, asymmetrical black skirt and the boots, and then I reflected how appalling it was that, even though I my mind was slow with exhaustion and I’d been cooking hors d’ouevres in between, one could waste so much time trying to work out what to wear.

I know that I have too much stuff because the only recurring dream I have is of being late for something because it takes me hours and hours to pack everything, or hours and hours to find something before I can go somewhere. I think I have only ever once successfully got to where I wanted to be before I woke up. But this won’t stop me from buying more clothes; there are just too many pretty things in this world that must be possessed.

And speaking of not reaching one’s destination, it seems that every time I try to get to the Orangery in Hyde Park, I am late. Last time it was daylight saving: as was my wont, I wound my watch back instead of forward and left H to read the paper for two hours until my arrival; however that was the last time I ever get it wrong, because a friend has since taught me the very useful maxim ‘Spring forward, fall back’. This time I left my bus pass at home, and being an impoverished student (in theory, at least) I can’t afford to travel without my Oyster card. I was already cutting it fine, having taken too long to get out of bed, which then left less time for the crucial activities of applying one’s makeup and doing one’s hair to one’s satisfaction. Then of course, the Tube was fucked, and it stopped, as it often does, in the middle of a dark tunnel. This is why I tend not to take the Tube. When it stops in dark tunnels, my heartbeat vaults and I start hyperventilating with claustrophobia. I marvelled, this time, that the woman next to me could read so calmly, and take out a packet of rice cakes and munch on them.

On recounting this to H and R over coffee and cake (‘This one is low-calorie,’ said the waiter as he placed a berry tart in front of us.’ After he’d gone, I took a bite and said, ‘Low calorie my arse.’ But I appreciated his efforts to make me eat it, which I did, as calories tend not to bother me), H said that if I ever do have a panic attack, I should go all-out, and scream, ‘I’m going to DIE!’ and that would set off everyone else in the Tube who was on tenterhooks. A bit like the kid who vomits on a bus, and sets all the other kids off barfing.

And just like the last time I was late to the Orangery, there were gale-force winds to contend with and the ground was soft with rain so my stilettos insisted on aerating the soil and the wind blew my hair into my face so that it got stuck to my lip gloss, and I was in a right strop by the time I got there, esp as H and R had not arrived after I walked so fast to make up (however slightly) for my lateness. But in the five minutes it took them to arrive, I calmed down, found a bench, combed my hair and tried not to squint against the light, as one needs to get as much light in winter as possible, to regulate one’s circadian rhythms.

The next day as we walked along the canal, we told B about the swans clustered around the man feeding the birds by the pond, and how they came up to his waist, and B in turn told us of some trashy newspaper like the Sun that had the headline ‘Asylum Seekers Eat Swans’ and I thought how interesting that was (regardless of whether it was true, which I doubt it was) – it would be like someone coming to Australia and eating all the koalas. The asylum seekers were eating the swans that were protected by the queen – they were eating the heart of the empire, so to speak. Though I doubt the Sun shone that particular light on it, except subliminally.

At work, a wall overlooking over the quadrangle is covered with leaves that are slowly turning red. But they’ve started turning on the outer edges of the wall, for what reason I can’t understand. So the centre is greenish, but the rest of it is red. In summer, when all the leaves are fresh, the breeze makes them ripple like a green ocean.

Mum said that yesterday it snowed at home – in mid-November! And also in Ballarat and other parts of Victoria. The weather is seriously fucked. I’m not complaining that it’s warm here – I loathe the British winters – but it’s disturbing when you see blossoms coming out on the trees at the Barbican in Autumn. What will they do now when Spring comes, and they’ve already flowered?

At last ....

…. the novel is done. Seven years of thinking, writing, rewriting, drafting and editing, the blasted thing is finished. 'A Curious Intimacy' will hit the bookshops in Oz on 8th January. I’ll also be talking at the Midsumma festival in Melbourne on the 25th Jan, and then the launch will be on the 31st January at which, of course, I’ll be wearing my Collette Dinnigan dress. I was looking at the scar on my knee this morning (acquired whilst trying to escape from stingrays when snorkling in January), wondering if it would disappear in the next two months, but given that it has only slightly faded in 11 months, I don’t think that’s a goer. I half-heartedly apply Palmer’s cocoa butter scar serum to it every now and then, but the stuff has shark liver oil in it and reeks to high heaven, so I’m not fond of using it.

Scars aside, I keep expecting Penguin to send me more proofs to tweak, but at the moment they only want more info for publicity. It won’t feel really finished until all the publicity is done and I’m back in the UK, staring glumly at my thesis again. Why did it take so long? I had various degrees to finish and start in between, and money to be made to get to London, and I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing and had to rewrite it twice before I found the right voice. Then there were agents and publisher to be found, and so many drafts to complete before it could become a reality. A few months ago I was so fed up I wished I could burn everything, but now all the work is out of the way I’m getting excited about it again.

So I have two months to get back to my previous Sydney skinniness, so as to look brilliant for the publicity. But given the shitty weather in this country, it’s hard to get motivated. In Oz the light would wake me up, I’d bounce out of bed and run around Centennial Park, then sit down and write for the rest of the day. Here it takes forever to get out of bed then it’s so fucking cold outside. However, complaints aside, I still love running. This morning along the canal there was a woman sitting on a bench reading, all the hairs on her legs standing up because it was so cold. A little further along in the alcove that stinks of urine was another woman reading music and playing on a guitar. And in the park were the usual dogs bounding around and chasing the squirrels, and a pack of men fishing, all kitted out in their green camouflage/army gear. I always laugh at them to myself as I go by, and wonder why they don’t go out into the country instead of staying by some pissy little pond in the middle of the city, trying to feel like a hunter.

I’m so homesick. I miss the sound of the palm trees clacking their leaves in my mother’s garden on windy days.

The Red Room

It’s apt to start with yesterday, for yesterday I was in the Starr Auditorium of Tate Modern, wearing red boots and a red skivvy, almost camouflaged among the red chairs and the red walls. My hair was a different shade to the chairs though. I was listening to a conference on ‘Ways of Dying’ and it was excellent.

Marina Warner, lucid and elegant and wearing the same dull pink shawl with a brooch that she had the night before (at a talk with Steve Connor on spookiness in cities; it was so hot in the room I almost fainted), spoke eloquently of zombies. Rosa Braidotti was in conversation with Donna Harraway, although it wasn’t a conversation as such, just one saying their piece after another. Donna H was dressed like a man; she had a good sense of humour and was lively and expressive, and her piece, a kind of eulogy for her father, was moving. Rosa Braidotti was also cheerful, but I didn’t like the way she spoke; it was hard to get a grip on what she was saying. But then, that’s what I hate most about academics – their inaccessibility. Before this conversation spoke Iona Heath, a GP who was factual, precise and refreshingly down-to-earth amidst all the talk of bio-engineering and mythical creatures. She talked about the need for people to construct a narrative of their lives before they die, for to live is to tell a story, and that while a sudden death might be good for the bereaved, it isn’t necessarily so for the person who has died for they had no time to reflect. She also railed against the medical profession for their practice of keeping people alive at whatever cost, for the body, when in pain, is adjusting the mind to the idea that death is coming, just as a woman suffering the discomfort and heftiness of the late stages of pregnancy is becoming used to the discomfort and sleeplessness that comes in the first few years of a child’s life. And then in the question time a woman put up her hand and said, ‘I’m dying,’ and I didn’t hear the rest.

What is it with kids and pigeons? As I was early for the conference (having been almost-late for every other function this week, I decided to make an effort), I bought a latte from Starbucks (it was unhappily very weak, and this morning while running I wondered if it were a conspiracy by Starbucks to dilute their coffees so you say ‘Yes’ whenever they ask ‘Would you like another shot of espresso?’ I wouldn’t put it past them) and I sat beneath the spindly trees on the black rubbery seats covered with spilled somethings and bird shit, while a little Asian kid ran around in circles yelling ‘Waaahh!’ over and over at the pigeons. And some blonde tots followed suit, after one of them had picked up my empty Starbucks cup and thrown it on the ground (good work, lad: his anti-capitalist streak was already present, something I cannot admit to possessing). His father had hurried over because I had caught his eye, but that was because I had no idea what to say to his son (I never know what to say to kids, and it worries me), not because he was trashing my coffee cup. The kid’s sister picked it up and gave it back to me and I thanked her clearly. Then around and around they ran, until the girl fell down the steps and landed on her cheek on the concrete. I didn’t like to look; it already felt painful. Instead I read my book, Chloe Hooper’s ‘A Child’s Book of True Crime’ which was very good, but the ending was totally obscure.

After the conference I tottered home over Millenium Bridge, which always makes me think that I might quite like London, and tripped on the uneven cement.