Long Time No Blog

You can tell I started working properly again last year. I thought it time to write a new post and lo and behold I had not written one page in 2015.  I suppose the thing is really that I had a baby when I first arrived in Australia, but my creative side needed an outlet (and the quiet listening ear) which was my blog.

That side of my brain is now completely absorbed by choreographing, dancing, teaching, paperwork and then other lesser, housewifely tasks, probably fall to the other side of my brain.  And there is a little bit left for the party girl in me of course.

So I am making it my mantra this year to blog at least once a month, as it is really all I can promise myself.  And whoever is left reading this after one year of blogging drought.

Hello and welcome back readers!  I will upload some recent photos to make the blog a little more colourful.  As soon as my bloody iPod will behave itself and talk to my laptop, whereupon I can retrieve the pictures.

Ta ra!  And Happy Christmas, New Year, Easter, Birthdays and Anniversaries I have forgotten.

Mountain Girl

Had a little family jaunt to Mount Dandenong.  Stayed from Friday afternoon til Sunday in a little house perched on the side of the mountain.  Heaven.  Log Fire.  A balcony with a view of just the forest and NO BLOODY NEIGHBOURS.  Loved it.  Revelled in it.  Smelled that fresh air and all those lovely Eucalyptus trees.  The boys played "army" in on the grass, in the forest, on a walk.  Henry and Rufus smeared their faces with charcoal from a blackened tree to get in character.  It was rather embarrassing.

Jonty was not feeling well.  Still reeling from the flu a couple of weeks ago.  So I took him on a drive.  Ended up at a Real Estate Agency - "just have a look" - I thought.  Before I knew it the agent was my new best friend (along with the hairdressers and the lady in the teashop). We had sorted out all my housing needs and I had booked our family in for a viewing at a property up the road at 2pm.

What the ….?

I had to literally drag the family kicking and screaming to the viewing (that was just The Accountant really).  And when we got there it was…..nirvana.  Paradise.   I even knew where our bookcases would go, how I would position the fridge, which bedrooms for children and which for guests.  1.5 acres of a country retreat, surrounded not by brown countryside and farmland, but trees and rhododendrons.  Not one entertaining deck outside, but two.  Chickens.  A stable.  A bloody ride-on mower!

So now the hard work starts.  Do we uproot the children from their amazing school?  Their friends and activities?  Our own new friends and activities?  Social life?  Or do we scrimp and save and forever shop at K-Mart and spend $1million on a 2-bedroom unit on a main road with no garden?  Hmmmmm…..

Trivia Night Part II

Deciding to attend the annual Kindergarden Trivia Night is like some nightmare ritualistic ceremonial test for adults.  It is right up there on a list of have-to but don't-want-to.  Like doing a tax return or booking a dentist appointment.  You don't want to, but you know you have to join the normal people and grow up sometime.  The funny thing is the last time I went to a Kindergarten Trivia Night, the adults were acting like teenagers.  Like caged animals who had not been let out for years and finally went on party safari in the wild.

It might be a bit like that.  Or it might be OK.  We have a very busy weekend ahead but all of it revolves around the children.  Football Saturday morning.  Gymnastics Saturday afternoon.  The Accountant taking the boys to watch an AFL match.  Me attending the dreaded Trivia Night.  Sunday morning I am taking part in the school Working Bee.  This is not a comedy script this is really happening!  Followed by taking Jonty to a party in the afternoon.  The bigger boys are going to a scouts show (like the Gang Show only Australian).

And then tonight the boys are going to the school disco!  Not me dancing my pants off, but the 7 and 9 year old.  Unbelievable.  I think there is time on Sunday between 9:10pm - 9:20pm where I will have time to have a cup of tea and read my book right before it falls out of my hand and on to the bed and I drift off to la-la land.

Spirit of Tasmania

The trip did not start well.  The night before we were to embark on the Spirit of Tasmania, The Accountant and I went to a wedding.  It was a lovely wedding, but as the Accountant was busy counting, he could not arrive until the reception.  There were the usual speeches, toasts and dances but the Accountant kept elbowing me in the ribs to leave as he was concerned about not finishing his work before the family holiday.

A few hours later I woke up in a fever feeling ill and dizzy.  I promptly fainted in the hallway and woke up lying diagonally on the floor with my head jammed up against the wall.  The Accountant looked slightly concerned as he pulled me up, and went to get ice for the back of my head and a cool flannel for the fever - all the time muttering that he was not getting his necessary rest….

I awoke feeling not great and spotted the blood stain on the wall from my head on my way to the kitchen.  I was feeling not so great as I took the boys to school and even less human as I worked with the dancers in the studio.  There was still packing to do and last minute washing.  We had to get to the boat by 6:00pm.  Who organises a family holiday on the last day of school, the day after a wedding, where both parents are working and one of them has a bump on their head?

Over a quick dinner in St. Kilda The Accountant regaled me with stories of 20 foot waves in Bass Strait and other ferry disasters.  He knew I was nervous about the voyage.  Luckily the Korean ferry disaster had not happened before our holiday, otherwise I would have gone to the airport.

The family cabins were very cosy and comfortable, and whilst I looked on enviously at people quietly enjoying their wine or tea, our family headed straight for the games room.  After that ordeal was over it was straight to bed for everyone and a very easy night of putting everyone in their bunks.  I did not sleep so well, even though it was very comfortable, as I woke with my bunk tilting sideways and the ferry creaking ominously.  The engine speed was determined by the huge waves pounding the ferry.  And I spent the rest of the night making sure Henry did not fall out of the top bunk.  He kept rolling toward the outside rail (about two inches high - who designs these things?) and I kept getting up and pushing him back (whilst trying not to look at the foaming water outside).

The last words The Accountant offered me before he went to sleep were: "If you see the waves above this porthole - then you know we are really in trouble.  Goodnight".

The Bad Book

Had a pretty easy walk to school yesterday morning.  It was a lovely sunny day, Jonty was on his scooter and Henry and Rufus were busy firstly shooting lasers at each other and then secondly being on hotted-up motorbikes.  These are all imaginary of course.  Not the scooter - that was real.  At the traffic lights they were discussing in great detail the dimensions of the smoke-pipes on their bikes (exhausts).

I did get some funny looks as I was trundling along with one pram, two backpacks, two school jackets (thrown off during the heat of the game) a library bag and occasionally a hand on Jonty to stop him going pell-mell on to the crossing.  The pram is for when it all goes to pot with Jonty on the way home. Which it frequently does when tired.  That's me, not Jonty.

Normal families walk along nicely.  Ours is like some sort of travelling circus freak show.  After a day in which a great deal got done, I had prepared dinner, bathed Jonty and everyone was playing nicely.  I therefore settled on our porch with a glass of wine and current book The Great Gatsby.  THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.  It was the best ten minutes of the year so far.

At bedtime I read to Henry and Rufus from a book I had got from the library that day - The Bad Book.  It is literally a book with illustrations about everything bad.  Hilarious.  I highly recommend it for anyone with children aged between 6 - 10.  The last story in the book is about how everything was bad.  Once upon a time everything was bad.  It goes on to say how it got badder and just when things couldn't get any worse they got very bad indeed.  The last ten pages of the book just get badder and badder and badder and badder and badder…….

Photo is from recent picnic on the river with some friends.  Rufus and Jonty not looking at camera.  Henry is not good with dogs but got quite attached to this one for the entire day.

Portrait

My new boss at the ballet school asked me if I had a professional head and shoulders shot to put up in the lobby.  (I didn't want to tell her that I had wondered why the previous contemporary dance teacher's portrait was still up there - but also had that unnerving feeling when starting a new job that they are just waiting for you to trip up - and therefore no need to get rid of the portrait. I must have passed whatever test was in store.)

Apropos of this it occurred to me that I have been 25 years in the business, and I have never once had a head and shoulders shot to use for publicity etc.  Lots of dancing shots.  Lots of me pretending to teach people dance.  Lots of ugly photos of me in the theatre/studio in the middle of rehearsals.  And one very funny picture of literally just my head which went into the Oxford Times, Banbury Post and Buckinghamshire Herald - unbeknown to me - until DH and I bought some copies at the petrol station. How he laughed!  Three weeks of non-stop laughter.

Anywho, at the grand old age of --, I need to get a proper professional portrait taken to put in the lobby of the dance centre for all to see.  I will need to wash my hair and get some bloody good lighting going.

If it is any good I will post it on my blog in a couple of weeks.  So you too can laugh for about three weeks.

Future Music Festival

Went to a Music Festival.  It was nothing like Glastonbury unfortunately.  The Chav/Bogans who turned up should have been told that denim shorts showing much bottom for the ladies and singlets with logos for the gentlemen are so passé.  It was OK.  Things I did not like:

1.  No wine, sparkling or otherwise.  Instead we were offered only canned pre-mixed drinks.  Yuk.

2.  Seven stages of dance music/DJs or live artists - all completely the same!  No variation whatsoever.

3.  No ambient tent/stage.

4.  34 degree heat and not much shade.  Not very well thought out by the organisers.  People were being carried off everywhere by ambulance workers.  But perhaps they sniffed something they should not have.

5.  The price - a whopping $170 for what?  So-called International DJs and bloody Pharrell Williams (more of him later in the blog).

Things I liked:

1.  Hanging out with Karolina and Jo - thanks girls!

2.  Tinie Tempah.  Fantastic stuff.

There is something very odd indeed about drinking a G&T at one in the afternoon in the baking sun and listening to dance music.  It is meant to be like you are at a club. But you are not.  You are at Flemington Racecourse trying to find some kind of ambience or atmosphere, and hopelessly despairing at the lack of creative genius as well as any kind of dress sense.  Kate Moss and her little dresses and wellington boots with bohemian plaited hair are another universe away (and 24 hours as well as completely the wrong season).

We had lovely greetings from the DJs/live acts "Welcome fucking Melbourians!  You mother-fuckers!  You are fucking awesome!  Fuck me!  Yeah!"  And then they would pretend to sing.  How inspiring - it turns out they know how to swear and everything.

Poor old Pharrell Williams must have thought 30 minutes of work was 30 minutes too long.  He couldn't sing, couldn't perform and could not muster any kind of stage presence.  What a disaster.  His backing track sounded so much better than he did, and the audience knew the lyrics - so he did even less.  Perhaps he should have been having a cup of tea somewhere and then the price of the tickets would have been about seventy dollars less for the rest of us who really didn't give a fuck.  Look I can swear too!  Perhaps I will take up DJing…..