something this foggy day

A couple of un-ordinary days

2009-11-10T17:10:00.002+11:00

Well, I gave the plumber until 5 minutes after 8 yesterday morning, and then had to bolt to get to my great First Aid Course by 8:30. I raced into the building all hot and sweaty and who should I meet waiting for the lift but Warwick de Jersey (the rector of St Matthias Church), and it turned out that we were doing the same course.

So I wasn’t so late, which was good. It was nice to see a familiar face and we sat up the back like rebels. But you’ll all be pleased to know that St Johns has a policy of girls working with girls and guys with guys, so I didn’t practice CPR or rolling people into the recovery position on him!

The morning went along fine and we all did a “great job” on our CPR assessments and everybody asked “a very good question”. We got a break to head for the nearest coffee mid-morning and then I found myself eating lunch with two girls who work for the Sydney Festival, and an interesting chap who did a spot of shopping on Oxford Street and bought himself some shoes, in a pink bag, then explained to us how he was going to alter them.

After lunch I just wasn’t feeling so fabulous, so during the afternoon tea break I thought I’d race down a level to find the vending machine and get a coke. All I could get out of it was Coke Zero, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind (I wanted sugar with my caffeine!). I opened it outside the course room, because you weren’t supposed to be in there with drinks, threw my head back for a sip (I have never enjoyed trying to drink out of cans!) and the first one started going down with that horrendous pain that sometimes happens when something goes wrong during swallowing (does anybody else ever get this?). I remember leaning on the wall to wait for the moment to pass, and then I woke up slumped at the bottom of the wall with coke all over me, and coke all over the floor and a squashed can nearby. Unbelievable. I mean, what sort of person faints in the middle of a first aid course?! My facebook status yesterday said "Alison Payne fainted in a pool of coke today. In the afternoon tea break of a first aid course. You wouldn't read about it". But you, dear readers, just did.

Warwick kindly hung about till I was back in my chair, while others mopped up the coke and made situational first-aid jokes, and I sat against the wall trying to comprehend it and feeling like a very big idiot. One girl came by and matter-of-factly gave me the name of what she thinks was my problem. She might be right, because of course I did the obligatory google search, and it adds up a few things, but what sort of person would faint in a first aid course then do a google medical self-diagnosis and blog it?

So that was a curious little episode in my day. I came home and ate a few handfuls of sultanas, and then went for a jog, so I think I shall live.

Today we had more complicated and grisly scenarios and did a lot more acting out and then the big theoretical assessment: 20 multiple choice questions. You'd have to be very inattentive not to get the required 80% in that test, but I guess I should wait for my results before I spout such things (and there were a few trick questions, really). All up it was a very instructive two days, and I met some really interesting people - today it was a woman who lives in community and teaches interactive drumming, a long haul flight attendant, a mother married to a fellow who runs a gourmet cheese business ...

You also realise that some seemingly obvious first aid ideas are a long way from helpful. I feel semi-ready to be of some use in the event of disaster now, so long as it's not a mangled person caught in a piece of machinery - somebody else can deal with that. I've just got to find out where the first aid kit actually is in my office.

A first aid course and a plumber

2009-11-08T20:44:00.000+11:00

Some time ago, after a visit to the physiotherapist renewed a passing interest in biology, I volunteered to be the person on level four of my workplace that they were looking for to be the new first aid officer. Consequently I now need to spend the next two days on a St John’s Ambulance first aid course. So you never know when I might be of some life-saving use to you.

It is, however, a total bother because I temporarily forgot about this course when I told a plumber last week that I could be home on Monday to let him in. I even brought work home to work on. (My working life is usually so predictable that I don’t need to think about it.) So now I am facing an as-yet-unresolved Monday morning logistics problem, and need to take two large towels with me for I know not what in the next two days.

Literary Calvinism in Marilynne Robinson

2009-11-06T12:45:00.001+11:00

I have previously mentioned reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson on this blog, and how much I enjoyed it. I haven't yet read her latest award-winning books Gilead and Home, but they are on my highly anticipated list! So, the other day when I stumbled across this article on the Literary Calvinism of Marilynne Robinson (H/T Justin Taylor), I read it out of interest. It's a good read for those interested in any sort of concept of "faithful writing" in fiction (and has a nice little analysis of a fine piece of writing).

The Great Divorce movie

2009-11-05T09:29:00.005+11:00

Apparently CS Lewis's The Great Divorce is being made into a movie. That is going to be interesting. From here:

Beloved Pictures has secured the film rights to C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce." This is from the bestselling author who gave us "The Chronicles of Narnia" series.
...
"The Great Divorce" is an adventure tale about one man's journey from the post-apocalyptic world of Grey Town to the outskirts of heaven.

Beloved has hired director David L. Cunningham ("To End All Wars," "Seeker: The Dark is Rising") to helm.

The cardinal and the darkling thrush

2009-11-04T08:00:00.005+11:00

There is a poem I somehow learnt by heart as a teenager, just by realising one day that I could recite it (and still can, to my own amazement - where is that place that things stick?), called The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy. It is also the poem with which I launched Poetry Friday on this blog, way back here.

I have always loved the poem, for what it symbolised to me, and I am fairly sure the poet intended it to be so. Then, I have already mentioned downloading the new Sara Groves CD, and on it is a song that immediately called to mind Hardy’s poem, and is now one of my favourites on the album (maybe Sara read the poem - I won't know till I get the actual CD!). I shall give you the poem, followed by the song, and I don’t think you’ll have to join many dots.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

And the song:

From this one place

I was about to give up and that’s no lie
Cardinal landed outside my window
Threw his head back sang a song
So beautiful it made me cry
Took me back to a childhood tree
Full of birds and dreams

From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else

I don’t know what’s making me so afraid
Tiny cloud over my head
Heavy and grey with a hint of dread
And I don’t like to feel this way
Take me back to a window seat
With clouds beneath my feet

From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else

He just threw back his head and sang a song
It was beautiful

Sara Groves

* The top bird is not a thrush, just a bird in the snow, but the bottom one is a cardinal.

Happy Birthday Eli

2009-11-03T08:00:00.000+11:00

My nephew Eli turns 1 today. He is such a smiley little sweetie. Here are fews pictures. He is opening his first birthday present ever in the bottom one, not so long after his first haircut.

Shiny new thing

2009-11-02T20:11:00.004+11:00

By the way folks, I did the deed and bought a new computer over the weekend. And I did the bigger deed and bought a Mac - a cutting edge one that's only been out a week (for no other reason than because all the new Macbooks have only been out a week). So I am very cool.

Once you decide you're getting a Mac it's a whole lot easier than deciding between about three million PCs - the choice was paralysing. I may become a Mac person for no other reason.

It seems I have to relearn lots of little things, but I am getting there.

Overcomers Outreach in the Briefing

2009-11-02T10:21:00.001+11:00

I have an article in this month's Briefing on the story of my friend Penny and her journey through alcoholism to the work she now does with Overcomer's Outreach. My opening line is:

"Oh Alison, if I thought I could just go and play golf I would."

If you read it you'll find out why Penny doesn't just go and play golf ...

Poetry Day - Emily Bronte

2009-11-01T16:35:00.005+11:00

Well, the new version of Wuthering Heights is screening, and so even though I didn't watch it last week, I thought I give you a poem on Emily Bronte, by Ted Hughes (hope you've all noticed a few more modern poets about here lately, even though often they don't exhibit the skill of poets long dead, in my humble opinion). The truth is, little me doesn't actually think this is a great poem. If I wrote a poem containing the line "but his kiss was fatal" I think I'd screw it up. But there is actually something comforting in reading a poem by a famous poet, and finding it not that great. It gives me hope. So here you have it.

Emily Bronte

The wind on Crow Hill was her darling.
His fierce, high tide in her ear was her secret.
But his kiss was fatal.

Through her dark Paradise ran
The stream she loved too well
That bit her breast.

The shaggy sodden king of that kingdom
Followed through the wall
And lay on her love-sick bed.

The curlew trod her womb.

The stone swelled under her heart.

Her death is a baby-cry on the moor.

Ted Hughes

It's me - and Sara Groves

2009-10-30T10:35:00.004+11:00

For our road trip to Daylesford we were given a music assignment, which was to bring two CDs that would take each of us on a musical journey, and we were to be guest DJ. Fun! I had already been tempted by an email letting me know I could download the new Sara Groves CD, five weeks prior to the release date, if I bought it with a bundle of other paraphernalia. I wasn't particularly interested in the other stuff and told myself to wait. That is, until I got this music assignment. We are all big fans of Sara Groves, and one of those on the trip was my Sara introduction, so I decided to get the download and make it the soundtrack for the holiday to Daylesford.

What you have to appreciate about Sara is her honesty, her refusal to do 'smiley-button-for-Jesus' music, her efforts to share her own reality in ways that encourage others. And so here is the video for one of her songs on the upcoming album that does just that:

More of the white house

2009-10-26T19:55:00.005+11:00

Here's a few more pictures of quaint things. Everywhere you looked there were quaint things, but it was elegantly done and not at all "tizzy".

My accompanying friends jokingly told me that their pictures weren't released to blogs or facebook, but fair enough (it's weird the way people's movements can be so public between the two, and nice to know that they don't have to be). And I'll wait to tell you more about the project we were working on, as it shall hopefully be published, and there is wisdom in not discussing things on the world wide web before they are. (It's also not my personal project, so not mine to divulge - and I am not a believer in breaking news that's not your own on blogs.) But stay tuned because I will make a big noise when it is!

A white house in Daylesford

2009-10-26T19:26:00.004+11:00

Here are some of the snaps I took on my happy snap camera (I can't control the aperture - or anything for that matter - so I was pleasantly surprised by the second one down). One of these days I am going to splash out on a digital SLR, hopefully a Nikon. My film SLR packed it in after a fall in WA, and is not worth fixing, but I do enjoy photography. Something that this blog probably doesn't know is that my Dad was a cinephotographer (for his job I mean). He didn't live long enough for me to learn anything but camera bits and pieces hung around and I like to fancy it's in my blood.

Googling on

2009-10-26T13:17:00.002+11:00

I've come back from holidays and google reader is out of control (over 1,000). I have decided that I don't need to be OCD and feel the compulsion to scroll through everything, just incase I miss that one amazing thing (especially through about 453 Apartment Therapy posts - though I almost feel the need when I think about those gypsy wagons). Sometimes you just have to hit "mark all as read" and move on. It's most "unhoarder" of me, but I think I can do it!

Sharing the wisdom

2009-10-26T12:29:00.001+11:00

If you venture into the world of crafty blogs, there is a month of give aways happening about the place. My friend Ally has joined in, and if you go over here and leave a comment, two sweet owls could be yours. (And if you order from her shop before October 31st there are more owls involved!)

A country writing holiday

2009-10-24T15:50:00.005+11:00

This past week I went away for a few wonderful days in Daylesford Victoria (Tuesday's post was just a scheduled decoy). Back in August I joined the Penguin Books Australia facebook page, just because it came up somewhere and I thought, well I like them so why not? They happened to be running a competition to see who could guess how many popular penguin books there were in the library featured in this photo. So I did some sophisticated counting and multiplication, and I won!

What I won was two nights accomodation in the White House (worth a look), which contains this library. Initially I wondered what I was going to do with two nights accomodation in one queensize room down in country Victoria, because it didn't include transport and I didn't really fancy going by myself. But it looked like a lovely place to go and write (if you clicked through to the website you will see why) so I decided to do something crazy and ask a little group of people I have been getting together with semi-regularly this year to work on a writing project of sorts, and see if I could pay extra for the use of the other rooms (there is this queer set-up where you have the house to yourself, but pay for the use of each bedroom). So I asked them and to my great delight they were all keen to come and even suggested driving down.

The house was booked out for weekends for the rest of the year and I thought we wouldn't actually do this for ages, but when I asked for available dates this week came up, and to my surprise again it worked with the others to go midweek, so off we went on a random little road trip.

Of course, all of this happened before I was aware of any sort of marketing campaign for Daylesford, or the advertisement that prompted this article by Phillip Jensen. It seems there are often two responses to such controversies: you either boycott something about it and never holiday in Daylesford in your life on principle, or you engage in "culturally relevant" research and go right in to be informed. We opted for the latter in this case (albeit unwittingly). If there is going to be a hoo-hah about a lovely little town in Victoria and somebody needs to go and see what all the fuss is about, then it might as well be us! :)

Over the next few days I might tell you more and post some photos of the trip, but for now I thought I would give you the opportunity to test your Bookshelf IQ and see if you can guess how many books there are in this library. (No digging back through facebook and cheating!)

Poetry Day - A coke with you

2009-10-24T11:03:00.003+11:00

Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara is a wonderful poem. The formatting came out very badly here, but do yourself a favour and click through.

Catch some blackbird's wing

2009-10-20T09:00:00.006+11:00

I came across this video of Dave Matthews and Emmylou Harris singing Gulf Coast Highway (they don't actually start singing till about 1:30). I do love this song. And here is the original from Nanci Griffith, which is every bit as good and gloriously 1980s Texas. (And of course one thing lead to another on Youtube, and I found this, which is beautiful, and then you can listen to this duo sing Long Black Veil, or an older version with Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell.)

Lunch in the city

2009-10-18T18:51:00.002+11:00

I went in to the city today to have lunch with a friend who lives there. And I mean in the city. This is the view from their place! (That's the young Endeavour going past the Opera House in the top - at least I think it's the young Endeavour - and the bottom is Government House in the Botanic Gardens.)

Family cuteness

2009-10-16T15:20:00.004+11:00

My niece and nephew, all under control and behaving at the shops (in a photographic moment!).

I will have to show you some more pictures sometime of the little man in my life - he is super cute.

No-one to hug at night?

2009-10-16T09:56:00.003+11:00

This is rather weirdly sad:

German designer Stefan Ulrich created a shape-changing object, not a pillow, using artificial muscle technology. The concept? To help relieve loneliness ...

It actually moves and simulates breathing. You can watch a video of how it works at the site, which is a little odd.

(And this photo gives a new meaning to "a lump on the couch".)

Abortion addiction

2009-10-15T10:50:00.002+11:00

No doubt this news item will prompt a lot of discussion. Right now I'm speechless.

Poetry Day - Filling Station

2009-10-15T08:00:00.003+11:00

I've been letting the poetry readers down I know, so here is another Elizabeth Bishop. You need to read to the end of this one, with it's sweet ordinariness.

Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Picture from: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/nc/county/beaufort/

Computer dirge

2009-10-14T13:40:00.002+11:00

My computer is well and truly dying. Lastnight it just kept stopping. And then I had to start it from scratch and go through this business of how the files weren't shut down properly so now it has to check them for errors and then it went through my whole email archive folder and so on, and then asked me did I want to restore the last IE session etc etc. Meanwhile unrecoverable minutes of my life were going by.

So then I had this brilliant idea that I could do some DIY cleaning, since a good clean out seems to be one answer (according to google) for your computer overheating. So I got out the vacuum and stuck it on the vent on the side of the computer for a while, thinking I might suck out some dust. Then I ran the vacuum cleaner over the keyboard and sucked out some fluff. But then there was that ominous-sounding clinking up the pipe and I discovered that I sucked up the O key. So then I had to go rummaging through the vacuum cleaner, in my own little dust storm, looking for my o. Then I couldn't get it back on properly - that is a delicate business and I sat there fiddling about with the tweezers in frustration, because all I really wanted to do was type something up to finish it.

So now I have a computer that works for about twenty minutes before it spontaneously shuts down and types an o about every third go. I think it's time ...

Chocolate for meat-heads

2009-10-13T15:10:00.004+11:00

I have to say, I think this sounds gross, but apparently the men from the Meat Industry Association are loving it.

Ethics and the Bible in Shakespeare

2009-10-12T13:19:00.004+11:00

If you want to read something a little more thoughtful and stimulating than my sob stories, Tim over here has begun a series in ethics, which looks like it's coming in accessible, manageable chunks! I did the evening lecture course in Ethics at Moore Theological College once, and really enjoyed it, and went to Oliver O'Donovan's lectures when he was out here a few years back for the New College lectures, and enjoyed those too (but I haven't read his signature book). Here is the post which will be updated with all the links as they go up, but for now they are all there near the top of the blog.

Also, Dr Laurel, wife of Justin, has written an article on the importance of the bible in understanding Shakespeare, which I haven't finished yet, but looks very interesting!