this week

A favourite corner of my living room, especially around 4:30pm this time of year, when the light is fading, necessitating candles and fairy lights.

Didn’t I just do one of these?! Does anyone else feel like the weeks are flying by at the moment?

Let’s get to it!

Favourite experience/s of the week

A pre-paper selfie I took for my friend in Melbourne sending supportive “go get ‘em!” texts - I don’t look nervous but I was!

Despite all of the nervousness leading up to it, I actually loved giving a paper to my UTAS colleagues and fellow HDRs at lunchtime today. It’s so funny, I know that I know my material and I always feel such a buzz afterwards. I even enjoy it while I’m doing it, dry mouth, racing heart and all. But the lead up to giving a paper is always excruciating for me. What am I so afraid of, that I’ll go completely blank and be rendered speechless? Or that there will be a technical malfunction that my peers will use as an excuse to tease and humiliate me? In my brain’s defence, that has happened to me before, but only once and I was 13 years old at the time which was the best part of 30 years ago now (what?! That can’t be right). It was a very scarring experience, but perhaps it’s time I stopped giving those memories so much power. I find giving a paper regularly is the best remedy for getting over my stage fright. I also discovered an excellent podcast this week that really helped (see the Listening section).

My darling husband also bought me some flowers because he was proud of me, which was so sweet. I love having flowers in our home.

I also loved seeing my family on Sunday for a belated birthday gathering - which felt very strange, because my birthday was at the end of May (while we were in the UK) and now it’s the middle of July! But whatever, it’s been a weird year. Mum made my favourite dip (hummus) as the centrepiece for her usual amazing spread and a delicious cake, and my nephew and niece helped me blow out the candles. It was lovely!

Reading

Bedtime reading is The Bloomsbury Cookbook which I’m finding fascinating. If time travel were possible, one of my choices would be to attend a pre-WW1 Bloomsbury Group meeting - what a bunch of characters they were. Though I daresay I would have become infatuated with the wrong person and had my heart broken - it seems to be a common theme so far!

Also related is Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between The Wars which I am loving - it’s both a pleasure read and very relevant to my research, because I too am exploring ideas of female subjectivity and self realisation in relation to place. I’m focusing on colonial Hobart and Sydney, but I really admire how Francesca Wade has structured this and it’s given me lots of ideas. It’s absolutely fascinating so far!

I finished The Missing Ingredient by Jenny Linford, which was a birthday gift from a dear friend in London. It was such a thought-provoking book about the role time plays in creating great flavour in food. And you might be surprised by the kind of food that responds well to a bit of extra time taken - jam, for example! It was a really interesting read that I enjoyed dipping in and out of. And it made me wish I had read it before we went back to the UK so I might have sought out some of the products mentioned (not that we had much time for shopping in the end!) - but there’s always next time!

The Village by Matt and Lentil Purbrick - I borrowed this from the library as I’m missing my vegetable garden (which is currently asleep for winter) and wanted to get some inspiration and ideas for spring planting. I’m excited to plant some companion plants this year, like marigolds and Queen Anne’s lace, which will hopefully distract the pests! I have also learned my lesson and will PLANT EARLY this spring! I can't wing it here like I used to in my London courtyard. If you want some inspiration for your home veggie patch and living more sustainably and in a more community-minded way, this is a great book to get you started!

The Guardian: Growing up trans in country Australia by Candace Bell

Open Book (State Library of New South Wales): On literary merit by Kerryn Goldsworthy

The Offing: Fourteen Ways of Looking by Erin Vincent

BBC News: We found a baby on the subway - now he’s our son - get tissues for this one!

The Audacity: Knee Deep by Sandy Silverman

Listening to

My “writing beats” playlist which is perfect for client work, editing, writing emails, writing blog posts and also getting psyched up before giving a paper! It’s also great “getting ready to go out and party” music, not that I do much of that these days!

Lots of affirmations this week too on Insight Timer, the meditation app I have used for the last six years. I hit 1900 consecutive days this week which is a bit scary…in terms of how many years that is, but in days it doesn’t seem like that long.

My inner autumn playlist was on repeat.

WILD with Sarah Wilson: You are weird! Here’s the scientist who can explain why

The Imperfects: Glenn Robbins - Listening To The Voice In Your Head - I loved this interview with Glenn and the message felt particularly resonant for me this week. Glenn spoke candidly about how he has battled performance anxiety and nerves for pretty much his entire career, and how he has learned to listen to the encouraging voice in his head rather than the one that tells him he isn’t good enough. It got me through this week and the nerve-wracking thing I had to do! This is my new favourite podcast, all about resilience and vulnerability, and I can’t wait to listen to the back catalogue!

The Full Vegan

Eating

Have I introduced you to The Full Vegan yet? This is a brunch meal that Tom and I started making in January when we accidentally went vegan and enjoyed it so much we’ve kept it up (like many things I decided to do over the summer!). It’s avocado toast, hash browns made in the air fryer, baked beans, sautéed mushrooms - those are the Big Four (even though Tom isn’t a fan of mushrooms, their vitamin B12 make them a great vegan food so he has a few!) and then we usually add some seasonal greens, maybe vegan sausages if we have them in. A blob of ketchup, a glass of orange juice and The Full Vegan is complete. It is absolutely delicious. And so hearty and filling, I honestly don’t miss eggs, halloumi or any of the other things we used to have for brunch at the weekends before. This week’s Full Vegan had no avocado but extra mushrooms and sautéed sprouts (very good!). We also got a new air fryer at the weekend because our old one completely died the weekend before, which I was very grumpy about - but all the grumpiness dissipated when Kmart suddenly got some stock in of the one I’d had my eye on! It’s an upgrade every sense of the word!

Spinach, risoni and lemon soup - recipe here

Bread in the bread maker!

I also made a giant pot of my favourite soup which was delightful - I hadn’t made this soup for ages, possibly not since last winter. It’s so comforting and tasty. Alas, my local grocer was out of fresh dill so I made this batch with tarragon instead. It wasn’t quite the same and I missed the dill (in my top 3 favourite herbs for sure) but it was still amazing!

We had a friend round for dinner at the weekend and we had a vegan cheese platter to start (delicious) and for main course I made the fennel, walnut and sun-dried tomato pappardelle from Special Guest by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe, a book on whose brilliance and delicious recipes I have waxed lyrical before. I didn’t have pappardelle so used orecchiette instead, and it was just as good as using long pasta! I have also made my own vegan Parmesan which is pretty delicious too - I’ll write up the recipe soon.

I also dusted off our old bread maker and made a loaf in it for the first time in a while - and the house was filled with that utterly divine smell of bread baking. It was a lovely loaf with good structure, it held up well for toast all week. I enjoyed it so much I might set it going tonight so I can wake up to the smell of fresh bread! I also bought some more of my favourite Maggie Beer Seville marmalade this week….so I don’t see that I have a choice but to make more bread, frankly.

Watching

Not much this week. More Parks and Recreation (Netflix) because after some long days, I just needed some escapism and I so enjoy this show. And also The Babysitters Club (Netflix) - the last pure thing on earth. Wonderfully entertaining, enough nostalgia for me to enjoy it but updated to be inclusive, fun and modern. I adore it!

I can’t remember if I mentioned it - jet lag is real and I’m only just feeling back to normal - but we rewatched Frances Ha (we bought it on iTunes and also own it on Blu-Ray) a few weeks ago, and I adored it as much as I did when we first watched it. Greta Gerwig is one of my favourite directors and writers, and I think her work has only got stronger in recent years. I can understand why some people might find Frances Ha overrated or frustrating to watch...especially in 2022, a film about privileged 20-somethings trying to get to grips with adulthood seem to be ten a penny. But in 2012, I think it captured something. I loved it and still love it, even though my twenties were quite some time ago now! I think the film spoke to me because I was a bit of a late bloomer myself and, as long time readers will know, my own twenties were a time of great transformation and flux. I was both Frances and Sophie in some ways - I floundered for many years, and then steamed ahead and people felt like I'd left them behind. I think the movie captures that melancholy and resistance to change quite well.

Quote of the week

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Thank you Jo for inspiring this weeks’s quote!

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Stay warm, or cool, wherever you are, and I’ll look forward to chatting to you again next week…which I’m sure will be here before we know it! xx

this week

A few of my favourite books by First Nations writers!

This week has been NAIDOC Week in Australia - a week to celebrate and amplify the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It’s something I have started to really look forward to over the last few years. As someone who spent over a decade away from Australia, the small changes are very noticeable to me. When we were catching a connecting flight on our way home from the UK a few weeks ago, the Qantas boarding gate in Perth had “Naarm, Wurundjeri Country” as the destination as well as Melbourne, which made me quite emotional and proud to see. I’m not suggesting for a moment that there isn’t far, far more progress still to be made but I have noticed many changes in the time I was gone, particularly more acknowledgements of Country, which makes me feel hopeful that things are moving in the right direction.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I like to mark NAIDOC Week with literature! I have many favourite books by First Nations authors, as pictured above, so I always make a point of rereading some in NAIDOC Week, and discovering some new ones. Anita Heiss, one of my favourite writers, has an excellent recommendation list on her blog and my personal recommendation is Anita’s book Am I Black Enough For You? which I think is essential reading for all Australians. It’s not only funny, wise and insightful, it makes you challenge and think deeply about your own assumptions about what it means to be Aboriginal in Australia today. She has just released a tenth anniversary edition of the book too which my friend Kim has just reviewed on her blog (side note: Kim is an excellent reviewer and I have bought so many books because of her reviews!). But in short, if you have not yet discovered Anita Heiss and her brilliant books, I am envious! I’ve been a fan for about 20 years, since she was a guest lecturer in one of my undergraduate units. Fabulous then, fabulous now! I’m so excited to see what she writes next.

I was also excited to see that Clothing the Gap have an Ally Friendly section - as someone who wants to be a good ally, I often wondered if it was appropriate for me to wear clothing like this and most certainly didn’t want to cause offence if it wasn’t. I’m grateful to Blak businesses like Clothing the Gap who make it easy for us to show our support. In their words: “when we see Aboriginal designs in the world, it means we’re not invisible in the landscape. It makes us feel seen and heard.” I’m looking forward to wearing an Always Was, Always Will Be shirt and hope it’s a starting point for some important conversations.

Favourite experience/s of the week

Apart from seeing all the NAIDOC Week activities? And Boris Johnson’s resignation?!

Starting a business with my husband, which we’ve been talking about for years.

Reading

To mark NAIDOC Week I started another read of Larissa Behrendt’s novel After Story, one of my favourite books of 2021. Beautifully written, with so many wise and insightful observations about life, loss, trauma, connection and family, I think it’s just fabulous.

Sydney Review of Books: Re-Mystification: Adele Dumont on the Writer Laid Bare by Lee Kofman. Such a great article about a book I have been savouring slowly and enjoying very much. Dumont writes: “One of the things I love most about Kofman’s writing is her suspicion of fashions. She questions popular writing maxims, such as ‘show don’t tell’, and is critical of students’ over-use of dialogue, which she attributes to the influence of film. She believes social media is damaging our brains: ‘when not petty or nasty then nice, saccharine, friendly and chit-chatty daylight of our online interactions encroaches on the silent, dark spaces within us’.” OH GOD YES. I have so much I want to say about this. On Sunday it will be six months since I last used Instagram or Twitter. Six months. I have so much to say, mostly about how I feel I have my life back. It’s extraordinary.

Also from SRB - Snail Trails: Jessica White on Gentle and Fierce by Vanessa Berry - two writers I love! I also attended a writing workshop with Jessica White a few weeks ago which was so refreshing and fun. It got me thinking about nature and sensory detail in my writing, and being more conscious of which of the senses I automatically tune into when I write (sight and taste, interestingly).

Eating

Dave Grohl’s bad-ass lasagna got made and eaten for three dinners - I screwed up the homemade pasta dough so it was a bit chewy, but I didn’t mind! There’s no such a thing as a bad lasagna, am I right?

Chilli non carne from Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen cookbook that I picked up in the UK - delicious!

But everything pretty much had lentils and beans in it this week…if you are a vegan or vegetarian, you’ll understand what I’m saying here.

Nigella’s vegan gingerbread is still going strong, by some miracle (though we are down to the last few pieces now). It has only got stickier and more delectable with the passing days. A friend came round for a chat this afternoon and I served her a slice. The look on her face after she took a bite was of utter bliss. “This is so good it’s almost sexual,” she said. I wholeheartedly concur.

This is the film poster I remember being everywhere when I was a child! [source]

Watching

Parks and Recreation (Netflix) - enough said. The perfect comfort watch. Ben reminds me so much of Tom! And apparently, I have Leslie’s sweetness, quirkiness and ambition but not (too much of) her scary intensity, haha!

Strictly Ballroom (Blu-Ray) - OMG, where do I start with this film? My friend Nigel Marsh has a wonderful podcast called The Five of My Life and one of the five things he asks his interviewees about is a film that has profoundly affected them. Nigel, if you ever interview me (sorry for the spoiler!), this is the film I’d pick.

I have seen this film so many times but on this viewing on Saturday night (of the Blu-Ray Tom surprised me with for my birthday), I sobbed in a way I’ve never done on a previous watch. Perhaps I just needed a good cry, I don’t know. But for a film that is 30 years old next month, it has lost none of its emotional punch. I still think it is so powerful, moving and relevant. Some critics may deride its simplistic, predictable story and Baz Luhrmann’s style of filmmaking, but Strictly Ballroom (his first) is a masterpiece.

I may write more about it to commemorate its 30th anniversary, but in short, Strictly Ballroom is a beautifully-realised film about wanting to express yourself and follow your creativity, rather than get lost in the world of external validation, awards and “shoulds”. “A life lived in fear is a life half lived,” Fran tells Scott and that is the thread that runs through the entire story, as it slowly becomes obvious that so many of the characters are ruled by fear and how diminished they are as a result.

I saw this film when it was released in the cinema in 1992, age 11, and I just loved the costumes and the romance of it all - the deeper messages were possibly lost on me. Only when I rewatched it in my early twenties did I realise that my own life was entirely governed by fear. All my decisions had been made from that place. Like so many characters in Strictly Ballroom, I was so afraid to be myself and take chances. I can’t tell you what an influence this film has had on my life, albeit probably subconsciously, in giving me the courage to go after things I really wanted and, instead of half-living, to start creating the life I really wanted to live.

The story of how Baz Luhrmann struggled to get the film made in the first place (go to the Production History section) is also very inspiring.

Quote of the week

This is a poem from Ellen Van Neerven’s marvellous collection Throat, one of my favourite books of 2020. The image is from Jonathan Shaw’s excellent blog. Jonathan wrote a wonderful review of Throat and analysis of this particular poem which I highly recommend checking out.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post with me, please do! Stay tuned for another exciting weekly update soon xx