Bec and call...

Back.

Yeah, so, I've been away for a bit.

Again.

Want to make something of it?

For part of the time, at least, we went North.

It was warm and the air was soft.  The moon waxed to full while we were away.

I felt rich and ripe and strange and free.

There were very old rocks.

Some of us thought dinosaurs had been there first.

Others, that aliens had had a go.

The sun rose out of the foot of my bed every morning. Rain or shine.

In seven nights, I slept a grand total of about 25 hours.

Then we decided to drive home in one  day. 

1000 kilometres.  Three children. No biggy.

I was, as you can imagine, a Goddess of Maternity and a Nymph of Nuptial Bliss.

Not to mention, a navigator and a driver of professional calibre.

And patient! Lord, while the rest of the family narked away, I was a freakin' paragon of patience.

Ask them.

They'll tell you all about it.

Make the little one get out from under the bed if she's still not speaking.

Threaten her with violence if you have to.

I find that works.

Next Root, Shoot, Marry will be about chefs.

Because I do like to eat.  And to lick my fingers.

In case you hadn't noticed.

Also, and be warned, Nigella is one of only two women* I know on the face of this planet who could make me turn.

mtc

Bec.

*there may be bonus points, come Friday, for guessing the second. Experts in the field have previously tried and failed - but it's really quite obvious if you apply yourself.

Things I would like my children to know, when they're too old to remember I taught them

That there is such a thing as moral fibre, and that it can only be applied to those who apply themselves.

That gainful employment is to be cherished.  It can save you from yourself.

That duty is a valuable burden.  That duty denied is a moment of reprieve against a life of regret.

That courage does not exist without pain.

That some pain is worth it.

That bliss is possible.

That you can love more than one person at a time, or consecutively.

That there is joy. There is joy and it is just waiting there.  Waiting to be picked up, almost off the ground.

That there is always, always someone worse off than yourself.

That broken hearts never fail to heal, given time.

That scar tissue is stronger than the flesh beneath.

That their uncle didn't really mean to kill himself, even though he certainly tried.

He just lost hope for a while.

mtc*, maybe.

Bec

*Because I owe Suse some hats.

Of things that come out in the night

It didn’t hurt: the tiny metal stub poking out of the flesh between thumb and index finger.

Traced over it, and it grew longer, stretching out of the flesh like a seedling.  Took the longer tip and pulled gently, watching, fascinated, as two-thirds of a sewing needle slid out.  Top end blunt, point snapped off.

The needle’s eye gave a tug against my skin.

Put the broken needle on the black stone of the kitchen bench, turned my right hand so the palm was facing up and looked across the horizon of my lifeline.  There was late afternoon sunlight. Glow across the palm, light and shadow.

There. At the base of my index finger. Two more tiny metal stubs poking through.

Pulled them out, faster now.  One was a bright piece of straight needle, the second was curled and slightly pocked – more like old fuse wire.  Put them on the bench next to the first needle.

Something new.  Glass.  A short line of glass protruding from the side of my hand, below and parallel to the index finger and before the curve of flesh up to my thumb.

Clear glass and very fine.  Expensive looking.  Reidel.

Still no pain.

Lifted the glass and the palm opened in a long, dark slit.  More glass inside, different colours like broken bottles.  Longer sticks poking up now: timber?  Like thick chopsticks. Pulled them out, some longer than my hand.

Look at this - said to the husband, who’d appeared in the kitchen just then.

It’s all coming out of my hand.  

He peered into the slit.  Does it hurt?

No, but the more I take out, the more there is in there.

And pointed at the kitchen bench, to the pile of glass and debris as big as a loaf of bread.

The dog was asleep further along the kitchen’s counter.  This was odd.  She’s rarely allowed indoors, let alone on any furniture.  Let alone on the kitchen bench.

Still, the poor old thing looked very comfortable, I hadn’t the heart to move her.

There’s no end to this, to the husband, what should I do?

Doctor.  Decisive.  You’ve got to see a doctor to get the rest out.

It hadn’t occurred to me that any medical help was needed.  No pain, no blood, no harm… but maybe a doctor would be a good idea.  The glass, in particular, seemed to be endlessly replenishing itself and I gave up trying to get more out.

Went to the next room for the camera, thinking this would make a wonderful picture for the blog.

Got back to find husband closing the lid of the bin and the pile of hand glass, timber and metal was gone.

What have you done? 

Got rid of it, of course.

But I wanted to take a picture.

Well you didn’t tell me, and now it’s gone.  I had to clean up, didn’t I?

I half woke then, still cross at missing the photo.  Fretting, the way you do with a dream still moving through your mind.  While I knew my hand was fine I’d never be able to prove it had happened without the photo.

A few seconds later I knew it properly for a dream.  I went back to sleep.

Waking an hour or so later, with the radio alarm, the dream troubling me still.  Said to the Prof: what could it mean?

I have no idea, he said.

Thinking aloud, I wondered if it was a good dream: getting rid of sharp things that had cut and hurt me inside. 

Hmmm, he said, but you still found a reason to be cranky at me, didn’t you?

I can’t let go of this dream.  I had to write it down.  I haven’t been aware of a big dream in months and I feel there was a purpose for this one.

I think it was about removing hurt.  I think it was about how simply one can start to take away the deep buried hurt.  Just pull it out of your right hand and lay it on the breadboard.

I think it was right for dream-Prof to tip all that sharpness in the rubbish, although my wish for a record obviously continues well past that first waking.  I think the old dog sleeping up on the bench must mean something too.  I thought I had it, yesterday, but the idea has drifted off now.

Peace, maybe.  Rest. Comfort.  And there was something in the way the body of the black dog merged with the black stone counter that meant something too.  But I don’t know what.

The scene is obvious: the kitchen, the heart of my home.  Place of making and disposing, nurture and dispatch.

I think too, of the endless quantities of broken glass inside my dream-hand.    Layer after layer of sharp edges, fragile surfaces.  Brown, green, clear, all kinds.

As much as I could remove, there was always more there. And that’s life.

mtc

Bec

 

Of Desks and Nongs

Don't you just love the way blogging lets you have a good old stickybeak?

I do.  I was going to write this up as a confession but realised we're all just the same or we wouldn't be here, reading other people's journals.  So, my fellow Nosey Parkers, I'm offering up a very minor treat in honour of my new banner:

Behold the beating heart of  Bec and Call.

But is this enough to satisfy the truly curious among us? Nay, no blogger worth the name is going to be content with this snippet.

How about a bit more?

Getting somewhere now... but where does it fit?  And where does the Nong come into play?

All excellent questions, gentle Interwebber.  Maybe this will help:

My Great Aunty Do owned this desk.  I've searched in vain for a photo of Do (short for Dorothy and pronounced Doe - not a nickname that's survived past The Simpson's generation) but came up wanting.  I think I'll pay Shula to come dig through my boxes of family photos and Flickr them all - it's probably the only way I can get her to Sydney anyhow...

Back to Aunty Do, as we called her. 

She was involved in the very early development of free kindergarten in NSW, when much of the motivation was saving children's lives by a) educating mothers in basic hygiene and b) watching over littlies when mothers were working and would otherwise have left half a dozen younger ones in the charge of a 10 year old who probably had imperfect control of the gas jets. 

She worked in slum areas in Sydney - and Sydneysiders can insert a property-savvy chortle here - like Paddington, Balmain, Surry Hills and Wolloomooloo.  I often thought of her stories when I moved to the city and rented expensively renovated terrace houses in  inner city suburbs like Paddington and Newtown.  Her views on Balmain were best left unsaid - if she'd been alive I suspect she'd have sent me off for typhoid shots.

Aunty Do really deserves a post all of her own, and she might get it one day if Shula pulls her finger out and helps me sort my photos... Meanwhile I work at Do's desk, which is oak and still has the original key to lock the drop front back up if I want to.

The oak is a beautiful dark rich gold when it's properly waxed, a job I've been intending to tackle ever since it arrived at my front door last year after being stored up at Dad's for way too long.

I vaguely remember this desk  in the hallway of Aunty Do's Chatswood bungalow - in the days when Chatswood was still desperately Anglo Saxon and everyone in Violet Street had pink roses along the front path. 

Thanks to our 1920s house, the desk is perfect in this corner of our bedroom where the simple angles and planes match our tall window frames and the fireplace surround and mantlepiece.

It is also the Home of the Nong.

Have you spotted him? He is (in my best Richard David Attenborough voice) a colourful little character but surprisingly quiet for all that decorative appeal.  Let's see if we can get a little closer...

Whispering now, we don't want to startle the little chap. 

Given a warm, safe den like this one, Nongs have been known to sit motionless for years at a time.  Frightened Nongs, however, can move at lightning speed and a farmer in southern Queensland has claimed a fleeing Nong left a hole the size of a pineapple in his tractor's windscreen when he disturbed its nest in his canefields.

Let's back off a little now, my Attenborough impersonation is starting to hurt the place where my wisdom teeth used to be.

Nobody really knows where Nongs are from, but a major source of Nongs is the home of an Adelaide barmaid of remarkable generosity... We found her here with a batch of Nongs in winter garb.  Nongs prepare for winter by dropping all their colourful hide and donning sensible woollens, preferably fastened with a toggle.

Nongs have no arms, no feet, random ears, bright and intelligent eyes and an extraordinary sense of style in vintage fabrics.   Once heard, the gargled melody of a Nongish love song will never  be forgotten.

I love my Nong.

Thank you Leah.

mtc

Bec

Root Shoot Marry : The Great Adventurers

You know what?

There's just not enough adventure left in the world.

I mean, yeah, like Peter Pan said: "To live would be an awfully big adventure" (or was it, "to die"?) and every day on public transport is an adventure, and a change of supermarket is an adventure and three kids starting school is an adventure and buying a new CD is increasingly an adventure as I get olderer and olderer and the Virgin megastore gets biggerer and biggerer...  But that's not what I mean, and you know it.

What with satellites and Google and jet planes and (ugh) Starbucks and Youtube, it's easy to forget there was a time when it would take a week, or a month or six months to travel from England to Australia.  It's easy to forget there was a time that someone had to imagine that journey - and then make it happen.

So, for what Joke would have you believe is my quarterly effort at Root Shoot Marry, I bring you some adventurers.  Settle into your armchairs folks, and imagine climbing a new mountain with one of them.

Then imagine pushing them off the peak.

Rules are here ('cause, agreed, it's been a while).

The Adventurers:

1. Odysseus

Okay, he may look a lot like Sean Bean but trust me, it's really Odysseus I want you to think of just now.
He of the "lash me to the mast to resist the Siren song"...
He of the "I'm sure my crew are here somewhere, let's just clear away these pigs..."
He of the "Eureka! We'll sneak past the Cyclops by killing all his sheep, leaving the stinking guts lying about conveniently outside the story line and trot past him in their carcases with the blood still dripping a trail as we go..."

Hmm.  Maybe it would be better to picture him as Sean Bean after all.

2. Thor Heyerdahl

No naughty Norse jokes required.

You all know Thor? He's famous for being the first man to pack a bunch of Australians and Canadians into a bus and drive them across Europe so they could have sex AND vomit in every cathedral and gallery toilet in the EEC in just 14 days!

Eh? What's that? It was the other Kon-Tiki voyage Thor's famous for?

Who knew?

3. Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet

Doesn't sound too adventurous, does he?  More like a bit part in a Saki story; someone Jeeves might find in the potting shed in a Wodehouse play.

But check him out:

Travelled from Pole to Pole with surface transport alone.  Discovered (rediscovered) the lost city of Ubar in Oman. Removed his own frostbitten dead fingertips by fretsaw in his garden shed (Jeeves, is that you?) -

And still scrubs up ok for the off-Ascot season.
Third cousin, in case you're wondering, to Ralph and Joseph.

Moving on, the Adventuresses

1. Jane Goodall

Oh go on, you might as well say it.

I know you're all thinking it.

"Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?"

An adventurer in both space and species.  Not bad legs, either.

2. Mata Hari (and didn't this one cause some contention in the House of Becandcall?)

Murderer? Spy? Certainly exotic dancer and married matron.  If this chick didn't adventure her way through life I don't know what else to call it.

The Prof disagreed.  He may be right.  I'll leave it to RSM players to make the final call.

Fabulous headgear.  Only surpassed by...

3. Amelia Earhart

First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, eventually lost somewhere over the Pacific in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

Hard to beat, in adventuressing terms.  And besides, can you go past that hat?

So there you have it: the starter's gun on the first Root Shoot Marry for 2008 has just been fired.

And there will be, almost certainly,

mtc

Bec

Of families, rocks and toads.

Strange things: families.

You are born into one, generally, and live with the consequences ever after.

You can make one of your own - a very satisfying hobby the Prof and I have been enjoying for several years now.

You can build one, with a friend who should have been a sister; maybe even was in another life.

And you can break them - not easily though.  Isn't that strange?

You'd think that families would break as easily as couples might, as easily as friendships might, as easily as the brittle glass from which they seem to be blown.

But they don't.

You can hate a family and still be part of it.  You can reject a family and not be rejected by it.  You can see there is no real family there... and yet feel you are within it, all the same.

How is that so?  What is it that makes family so different to anything else?

Odd.

And what brings on this wee flight of fancy?

My dad's coming to visit on Sunday morning.  With his girlfriend.

Neither of whom are granted any contact with either of my brothers.  Even when one brother recently married and had a baby. Neither of my brothers will have anything to do with them, and I can't judge that.

If my children didn't already have an attachment, I might be on the other side of the wall of silence myself.

But for now, it's me doing the talking, dodging the "have you heard from your brothers" questions, taking on the bits of dad that still remind me of mum and trying to ignore the rest.

My brothers are free, and I like them like that.

And yet - my father still uses his possessive terms to refer to them.

"hope to be introduced to my grandchild one day" a recent email to me said.

"expect more from my children"...

"what happened to my family?"...

***

Families.

You think you can walk away from them.

But they're always there.

Waiting.

Sometimes like a parachute.

Sometimes like a toad under a rock.

mtc

Bec

Maybe time for a change of scene?

Have been footling about with new Typepad and Flickr toys. Trying out everything, which of course does not make for good design.

Still like the shell the Pea Princess found in the estuary off seven Mile Beach, though.

So, not ready to change headers yet, but maybe soon?

Everyone else seems to be doing it...

Tell me, what's most important to you when you're making your header?  I knew exactly what I wanted with my rocks from Hotel Honeymoon last time, but this time I just know I want to change - not sure how.

mtc
Bec

ps - Root Shoot Marry back on next week.  Theme: The Great Adventurers.

So, you wanted to know what I've been up to?

A lot of work, as you guessed.

Too much. Even for me. The expected lull after Christmas failed to arrive, my boss and my most senior staffer went on three and four weeks' break respectively and before I finally took leave two weeks ago, I was, well a bit ratty.

Not sure how well that word translates elsewhere in the world.  Say it out loud, you'll get the picture.

The upshot was that just when I could perhaps have spent some time blogging, I
couldn't face the computer screen.  Nor the Blackberry.  Nor even a landline.

As I may have mentioned to one or two folks lately, I've even been dodging purposeful looking pigeons.

Instead, we went south -

and set up an unwired home, right near the path to the beach

which isn't to say there weren't a few luxuries,

like this gift from a grateful CEO.  And don't act all shocked at drinking Moet from plastic cups, Joe, it's not like they're disposable...

Best of all, we spent a lot of time together in the water.  The Pea Princess discovered the joys of body surfing, and the even greater - and less crotch-sand-attracting - joys of inflatable surf mats.

After watching her for a morning the Gorgeous Boy and Sparkle employed twin pester power to get surf mats too.

We first took them down when the tide was way way out, but the low waves were still travelling fast.

 

Perfect for  an easy take-off and a loooooong smooth ride into shore.  The Pea Princess, meanwhile, got adventurous and started riding her mat like a horse.  (By the way, there are no surfing pics because with three kids and two adults, you don't get to be out of the water when they are in it - and my camera itches when I wear it under my rashie.)

She got dumped again and again, until a really big one took her out just as she finally thought she'd mastered the new move. 

That's when a really big Dad comes in handy.

 

 

Enough chat: more pics -

 

And it was good.

A perfect end to their holidays and perfect start to mine.

Because this week?

We've been doing this:

And (sniff!) for the very first time, this:

And quite a bit of this:

And for now at least, that will have to be your bloomin' lot.

mtc

Bec

Root Shoot Marry: You Gotta Love The Buff

Be warned, RSM could be considered to be one for the fans this week - if you're not in that category you should feel free to indulge in purely carnal judgements with no regard to character development.

Where to start?

You might remember them like this:

or like this:

or you might not remember the Scooby Gang of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at all.
 

For some of the 1990s and a bit of the Noughties, television viewers of the world could be divided broadly into two categories: those who loved the Buff, and those who had no taste, intellect or sense of humour.

In Australia, thanks to the usual appalling programming decisions on commercial television, there was a third category of those who could have loved the Buff, if only she hadn't been screening at 11.05 on a Monday or Tuesday night.

To them I say PSHAW! That's why we all used to own VCRs, people!

At one stage, the Professor and I were faced with some very tricky VCR programming in order to catch both Buffy and Angel on one channel and West Wing and Six Feet Under on another.  It wasn't easy, but we knew it was a dangerous job when we signed up for it and I'm proud to say we both rose to the challenge, week after week - at least until Six Feet got way too neurotic.

Where was Foxtel IQ when we really needed it, hmm?

Now, you either know what I'm talking about, or you don't.  It.Doesn't.Matter.

Root Shoot Marry this week gives you eye candy like it's never given before.

If you didn't love the Buff before, maybe, just maybe, you'll think about lovin' her now.

And all her little friends, of course.

The Rules are here.

The official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Wikipedia entry is here.

And this week's game begins right down here:

The Slayer Men

First up:

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon).  Original Scooby Gang member.  Did anyone see him Kitchen Confidential?

By the way, don't expect to be regaled with tasty trivia tidbits like the fact that Nicholas Brendon's identical twin brother would occasionally appear in the Buffy series as his on-screen double.  I might know that shit but I'm not willing to look like a complete fucking  geek in order to share it.

Next up - take a deep breath ladies:

Angel. Oh Angel.  (David Boreanaz).  Tha Vampire with a Soul.
Mmmmm.  Tall, dark and broody, just how I like 'em.

Last but not least:

Riley Finn (Marc Blucas).  Agent of a secret military force, post-grad psych student, all round wishful hunka hunka burning love.

Moving on...

The Slayer Women

Let's start with the witch, shall we?

Ah Willow.  Geeky, bookish Willow Rosenberg (Allyson Hannigan).  Pictured here in her Hot Lesbian Sorceress phase.

Next, a bit of rough trade:

Faith (Eliza Dushku).  The Slayer from the wrong side of the tracks. Liked a good bonk to round off a night of 'dusting vamps'. 
I miss Faith.

And finally, finally:

Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Geller).  And what can I say?  You gotta love the Buff.

Or do you?

Slip into something slinky and sharpen your stakes, ladies and gentlemen - your choice is now to shag, to shack up or to send into eternal shadow each of these fine characters.

mtc

Bec

Apparently, only one-third of mothers say they use snacks to bribe their children

And I'm thinking that two-thirds of mothers will lie to researchers who ask them if they bribe their kids with food.

Yes?

Meanwhile, I went looking for something to illustrate the notion of junk food as a jaunty treat, and I found this:

But I think I might like these boys even more.

mtc

Bec