Misrule - Personal

Goodbye, and thanks for all the Apples

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:52:02 -0500

I'm writing this on a Mac.

Pretty much everything of value I've ever written, I wrote on a Mac. Book reviews, articles, blog posts, aborted attempts at novels and short stories and picture books—written on a Mac. A book proposal I'm currently working on. My Masters thesis: perhaps the hardest, certainly the longest thing I've ever written, written on a Mac. (This Mac, in fact.)

All the rubbish I've written, too—Made on a Mac. All the hours in chat rooms and on Facebook and Twitter, reading blogs, searching for links for this blog, uploading photos and downloading videos—all on a Mac. Reading the news. Reading gossip. Emailing friends all over the world, sharing ideas and arguing about books and education and politics and love and family and all the things that matter to me most. All on a Mac.

I've used PCs as well—several times over the years in the course of work, and I've always tried not to be too much of a Mac bore (although I have always appreciated that joke: What can a PC user do that a Mac user can't? Shut up.) but your first love stays with you and my first, and I'm guessing last love, as far as technology goes, is the Apple Macintosh.

I learnt how to use a computer on what may have been a Mac Plus in an empty classroom at
Lurnea High School, where I mocked up worksheets and quizzes using what
must have been the most basic, original Clip Art library.

And yes, look, packrat that I am, I still have one of those early Mac-generated documents...

I'm not so
good on remembering model names of Macs (although with John Birmingham's
#myapplehistory hashtag trending on Twitter, maybe I need to go and do
some research...), but it was one of those small, boxy early models
where you had to eject the floppy disk that contained the software in
order to insert the floppy disk to save your work. Tell the young folk that
today... (I guess it was an Apple II—this was 1987.)

The first Mac I owned—or co-owned—was a similar early model, although perhaps by then it had an internal memory drive. This would have been around 1991, when I was a newly-wed, because I remember it was the recipient of my first attempts at my MA thesis, and I can picture its spot in the flat on the top of the house in Gladesville perfectly, just as I recall writing essays for the MA coursework by longhand in the bedsit downstairs in the same house. Somewhere I still have printouts from those early thesis drafts (the topic was temporality and the young hero in Diana Wynne Jones's Time of the Ghost, A Tale of Time City and the Chrestomanci novels) and they were on tractor paper. (Remember those bastard printers, how they always misfed?)

I don't remember buying that Mac, but I do remember buying the next one. By that time, Voldemort and I were in our lovely semi in Marrickville, and his elder brother was working for Apple, and we managed to get a new model—the LC 520—at a staff discount. I recall that, for the time, it had pretty much all the bells and whistles you could hope for, and also that my ownership of it was almost as shortlived as my marriage. (Voldemort, in a spectacular display of entitlement, took the computer with him when he went, despite the fact that I was no longer teaching full-time and was trying to build a freelance writing career as well as finish my MA. What's that old expression about leaving the world as you entered it...? )

Anyway, ancient history, and it must be remembered that the next Mac—an LC 475—was bought for me out of a great act of love and kindness and a gesture of practical support. I'm told this kindness made my father cry, and not even the Leaving had done that.

After the 475 came the huge, outrageously heavy clunker Power Macintosh, which I bought just before I moved to the north coast in my own post-marriage Leaving. I remember being so excited about it that I made my dad bring it down to me at those same friends' house the night before my going-away party, and I still feel guilty to this day for that—it was so heavy for Dad to move alone, and such an imposition on those friends. Oh, but who could resist the siren call of the fabby new Mac!

That Mac lasted me about 6 years, but overlapping that came my first laptop—a graphite blue shell-shaped iBook SE, which I took with me on my Churchill Fellowship. I nearly left it in a telephone booth on my first night in London, but fortunately some very kind people who came in after me saw it and returned it to me—lucky, lucky me! And I kept that gorgeous thing until the mid 2000s, when I upgraded to the machine on which I type this personal history of the Mac—my 15 inch shiny silver MacBookPro lappy.

Well, it's not so shiny now—this is the keyboard after five years of my finger nails tapping away:

and the truth is, she's slowing down quite a bit and I think soon it will be time to upgrade again. And in the way of all those previous Macs, I'll find a welcome home for it, and so it will go on.

And yet for most of this quarter century of Mac lust (which has also included 3 or 4 lovely iMacs I had at The School Magazine, 2 iPods, an iPhone [soon to be upgraded] and an iPad), I suppose I only really heard anything much about Steve Jobs in the past ten or so—and only really knew anything substantial about him in very recent years. I suppose I first heard about him when he lost his job and then during his time with Pixar, but I wouldn't have paid much attention.

I'm not one for hero worship (except, I suppose, for writers and activists, and writer-activists I admire). I don't know much about Steve Jobs the man, nor even much about him as a businessman. He strikes me in all I have read, in the videos I have seen today, that he was a decent man with his fair-share of hard-won wisdom; clearly, he was touched with genius, and not just a genius of intellect, but also of imagination and aesthetic. And for that alone, I mourn his passing.

But it's more personal than that. Quite simply (and eventually), the man brought me the world in my pocket. I know he didn't invent the internet, and perhaps it's true, as Hugh Riminton suggested on 702 this afternoon, that if he hadn't created all that he did, someone else would have. But honestly, I don't know about that. Someone else might have invented something else that more or less does what the Mac computer does, what the iPod and iPhone and iPad do, but the point is, no-one else did what Steve Jobs did and now he's gone. And I am unaccountably sad about it.

Voldemort used to marvel at how unafraid I—a girl who could barely count—was of the computer. I used to say, well, it's not going to blow up on me, is it. (I was a bit surprised myself, to be honest.) I realise now that it was the genius of Steve Jobs—and his partner Steve Wozniak, and all of their creative and technical teams—that made a computer system so seamless and approachable and practically usable that there was nothing to be afraid of, but much to not merely use, but to enjoy. (Also—pretty!)

Computers are a huge part of my life and my Macs have given me great pleasure over the years. They've been my workplace and my entertainment and my travel companions and my conduit to the world. I'm not overstating that. My life and work and leisure are all the better and easier and more pleasurable for them.

And so farewell, Steve Jobs, far too soon. We'll never know what that brilliant mind of your might have brought our way, but I for one thank you and honour you for the great things you achieved in your 56 years.

This quote has been doing the round today, but it's just so damn apposite that I repeat it here.

Vale. And thanks for all the Apples.

The Library at Medlow

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:21:53 -0500

Well, hello. Remember me? I didn't think it would take this long to get back to the blog after moving into my gorgeous new house—Medlow—six weeks ago today. Six weeks! Is that all? And—Has it really been that long?

I feel so at home here—I did from the moment I arrived on Moving Day (24 August) with a truck and a half full (long story, summarised by the phrase "we're gonna need a bigger truck") of my possessions, some of which had been packed away for 15 years, when I packed up my lovely and long lamented house in Marrickville at the end of my (short) marriage.

It may have helped that I had visited the house a number of times before I actually became its owner. The previous owners, Lynne and Diane, and I struck up a nice friendship (and in the way of these things, turns out there was only one degree of separation in any case—Lynne is an artist and has won awards in the past at the Blacktown City Art Exhibition) and they were very welcoming of me coming over, measuring spaces and so on. (I also bought a few pieces of antique furniture from them, and they very generously left some bits and pieces, like the cane furniture on the front verandah, as well.)

But even so, I felt as if I were home from the moment I pulled into the back yard. In the six weeks I've lived here, I've never once felt strange about being here, I've never once accidentally started to drive "home" to Ashfield—and given I lived in that flat for 11 years, longer than I've lived anywhere in my life, I think that's quite remarkable.

I unpacked most of my china and everyday things fairly quickly, and it's been lovely to have space to have all my things unpacked and to show my china without worrying that the kittehs will break things. (Oh, and the kittehs are ECSTATIC about their new home and very large garden, as you can imagine. I think they miss the flat even less than I do, and I haven't missed it for a moment—which is kind of odd for me as I am usually ridiculously sentimental about these things.) I've had heaps of fun buying things for the house—new bed (and mattress and linen) for the guest room (already had my first house guests, my nephew Peter and his wife Emelia), a bedroom chair, CD cabinet, and I've ordered a TV cabinet so I can get the TV and Foxtel thingy off the side board I bought from Lynne and Diane. Things for the garden (plants, of course, and an outdoor deck chair and entertainment trolley that nearly KILLED me to put together). New washing machine and mattress for me. The odd bit of china (Ooh! Sylvac Jug!) I feel like I've spent a LOT of money, and I suppose I have, but it's all been lovely and practical stuff.

I love having a house after being in a flat so many years. I am a bit of a nester, and I love all that stuff, but what I hadn't really counted on was how differently you live in a house, compared to a flat. How differently you move around your own space—well, especially when you have more space to move around in! And it's not just getting home and pottering around in the garden—weeding, of course (I have oxalis, dandelions, thistles and numerous other lawn weeds running rampant—Louis is becoming quite the fearsome dandelion hunter!), but when you have a house, a house with lots of rooms, you actually have to walk around that house. Hell, you even have to walk around the rooms. I was telling a friend how, back at Alt St, in the kitchen, I could stand in one spot and open the fridge, reach for a knife, put something on the stove and do the washing up. Now if I want to, say, dry my hands, I need to actually walk, quite a few steps in fact, in order to do that. And if I wake up and need the loo in the middle of the night, I have to walk the full length of the house (and around the corner), rather than just stumble next door.

And I love it. I've said a few times to people, I feel like a grown-up. I think living in a house—in this house—is going to be very good for me.

But what I haven't done yet is finish unpacking my books. And that's as expected, even planned for.

I own a lot of books. And for the last quite a few years, I have lived among teetering piles of books I ran out of shelf space for. I really hated the look of it, and the lack of organisation, the kind of jumble that having your books all over the place makes in your mind. Perversely, when you (OK, I) have too many books for the shelves, it's kind of easy to just keep accumulating them, adding them to the pile somewhat indiscriminately. Packing, I did some culling, have done a (very) little more since starting the unpacking, but the main thing—the glorious, frustrating but most marvellous thing has been the organising.

Here's what I wrote (as a comment) on Facebook early in the Great Book Unpacking (the Maria I refer to is my Facebook friend and leading children's literature academic Maria Nikolajeva, and I think the reason I say, at the end, that I was in agony was because moving is so damn
PHYSICAL! I did some damage to muscles in my neck and shoulder and
needed some physio—found a great one just near work.):

It's very challenging. Because my main work outside my day job at the moment is teaching a class in writing for children, I decided to put all my writing books in the shelves nearest my desk, along with all my language reference books. Along with my writing books it seemed to make sense to put books by editors, and then I followed that with biographies of children's authors and then authors in general. My children's lit reference are in a different bookcase , followed by books on education then feminism. After that comes general English lit and other writer biographies, then pop culture reference, and then because memoir and writers' essays are back under the writers' biogs, but letters are with general English lit. It all seemed to make sense when I was shelving them but I am wondering if my own wandering logic is working... and don't even get me started on history and historical biographies, music, film and TV (and relevant biogs), my Buffy (and Whedonalia) collection, which could just as easily have been in pop culture except, no room...

I think the real problem is there is too much cross-over in my interests and although compared to my flat I am quite spoiled for space, it's still not exactly the Mitchell Library in here!

And I haven't even BEGUN organising my library of children's novels and picture books (apart from folklore and fairy tale collections, which led to all my thesis reference books—including a couple of yours, Maria!—which leads me to wonder do I put all my fairy tale retellings (Napoli and the like) with my thesis reference or just stick 'em back in the general children's fiction library.

It's actually all a lot of fun, really, when I'm not in agony!

So, that was a few weeks ago, and as I predict, I have indeed moved things around a fair bit since then. The Buffy (et al) books are now in the guest bedroom, along with my books about cinema and other popular culture. (I put my slim collection on books about masculinity in there as well, because I couldn't fit them with my feminism collection, and I'm still not happy about that bit of organisation.) My kids books remain largely unpacked, although I am slowly putting personal classics (my Diana Wynne Jones books, for example) and other books I want close to hand on the big double shelves in my study. The rest will go out into the studio. I've bought new shelves for my adult fiction, also in the guest room, but I am already out of room and have had to put the Winton and Vine books temporarily on a small set of shelves in the hall. (The new shelves are 3/4 size and look really nice on either side of the window, but just aren't big enough.) And I have my eye on an antique leadlight-fronted bookcase that will go in the hall if I can manage the $850... that should sort me for a while, but I know that my kids' books are going to need new shelves out in the studio... and so it goes on.

I haven't taken photos yet of where the books are, because the study and guest room are still pretty messy, and anyway, it's still a work in progress.

Ah, but what fun it is!

A lot has been going on in the children's book world while I've been playing house (and I have read some terrific books as well), so I'll do my best to be here more often now I am a bit more settled in. Mind you, there are still those picture books to unpack and sort, and those ugly window security grills to get rid of and then the windows underneath need repairing, and that patch of garden is desperately in need of a good weeding, and while I'm out here, I might as well play with the cats...

Yeah, I'm a happy home-owner, all right! Come and visit! I have a new bed for guests and a bunch of boxes I need help with...

Donations—Victorian Bush Fires

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:23:39 -0600

You've probably read the news; the death toll stands at more than 130, and we are warned that this number will rise. So books are obviously not the number one priority—blood and money are needed, and I'll be giving blood (I'm O-) later this week.

Even so, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) are coordinating book donations and will continue to do so over time as the need arises for material objects to replace that which has been lost. At this point, email for more information on: ra@scbwiaustralia.org

The real stories out of this tragedy are simply unbearable.

Victorian bush fires

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 02:26:50 -0600

Like pretty much every feeling person in the country, I'm devastated by the deaths in the catastrophic bush fires in Victoria. 65 known dead, with the expectation that the number will rise significantly once burned out homes and cars can be investigated. Children and teenagers are almost certainly among the dead. An entire town has been wiped off the map. It's unfathomable, especially with the knowledge that many of the fires were deliberately lit.

We've been making a lot of flippant comments (and posting cute photos of thirsty koalas) around the web about the heatwave here in Australia, especially given our northern hemisphere friends are still digging out from under the snow, but there's nothing funny to be said here.

There's an appeal fund been set up—I'll be donating what I can. But I'm wondering what we in the children's book community can do. Marysville Primary School is almost certainly gone. Someone on Facebook wondered about the town's library; I imagine it's suffered the same fate as 98% of the town. I'm useless at coordinating these things, but there must be some way we can, when the immediate needs of those who have lost homes (and more) have been met, that we can help restock the family and school and community book shelves of towns right across Victoria. Any ideas would be most welcome.

Edited at 8.25pm: Author Penni Russon, who lives in the path of the fire storm but who was not home when it all happened (and whose house is safe), just tweeted to say "It's raining and I'm crying". Indeed.

Edited at 8.33pm: 76 dead.

It's my birthday and I'll bludge if I want to!

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:45:12 -0600

OK, yes, it's my birthday (45, holy crapola) and so the obligatory What I Got for My Birthday blog entry.

I have seen no-one but the cat so far today, as I am not working*, and I had my birthday dinner with the family last night. My brother and his youngest daughter Lucy were in Sydney—Lucy starts at a music camp this week and David drove her up, so with my sister Alison and Mum and Dad, we had a nice dinner at the Italian we tend to go to for family birthday dinners and I opened presents over frozen cheesecake (a Ridge family speciality as my brother-in-law Dave will attest).

So, on the book front, Mum and Dad gave me two requested historical biographies:

Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox and

Katherine Swynford by Alison Weir

Katherine Swynford was the mistress, then wife of John of Gaunt. I first read about her when I was in about Year 7 in Anya Seton's novel Katherine. (Ooh look, I'm not the only one.) I read a heap of historical fiction as a child—mostly English history from the mediaeval and Tudor periods, although I also read anything by Jean Plaidy*** and she covered most periods in English history. My friend Pamela** reckons we actually absorbed a lot of research detail from these books and that's why we can pick it when the costumes or whatever are off in period TV shows, although it must be said that Pamela's phenomenal memory and eye for detail makes her a better candidate for such observational skills than me!

Anyway, so I know I am on the record saying I have a bunch of historical biographies I haven't actually read, but I do dip in and out of them, and I am very pleased to have these books about these fascinating women. One day I'm going to take a whole year off and read the lot, cover to cover.

Also received a lovely 1927 edition of Through the Looking Glass (one of those red bound Macmillan miniature editions) and The Original Alice, an edition of Carroll's original handwritten and illustrated story. (This from brother David and family: Lucy observed she'd never read Looking Glass, so I imagine she'll take care of that problem sooner rather than later. Big readers, my Canberra nieces, and very, very easy to buy for. Lucy's birthday was last week and I have her Son of a Witch, as she'd recently borrowed my [signed] copy of Wicked after having seen and loved the musical.)

OK, so from Alison and her kids (off in LA with their dad at the moment)—yippee! Season 5 of Northern Exposure. The obsession continues...

That's it so far—if there's anything else of particular bloggable interest, I'll let you know.

Anyway, I had about 90 million kind birthday wishes on Facebook, so thanks everyone! 45 might be hard to face, but it's better than the alternative...

*As for the bludging bit, I have swapped my days around at work this week so I could have the day off on my birthday. Only I'm also totally broke until the final pay from a part-time job I recently resigned from—they owe me several weeks leave that is to be paid out—so I didn't go to the movies or anything, but continued my sofa sluggery by watching the rest of Season 1 of Dirt and reading blogs. So, pretty much like any other day, really—only tonight I am having dinner with **Pamela and Liz, so that will be fun.

***One of the great disappointments of my adult life was discovering that Jean Plaidy had become entirely unreadable by me.

A Merry Misrule Christmas!

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 04:38:26 -0600

And what a lovely day it's been!

I was given:

Breath by Tim Winton (A first printing, after all these months!)

Doc Martin Season3

A Dymocks (bookshop) voucher

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

A beautiful earthenware jug

A calendar with a gorgeous piece of artwork by my young friend Raffy

and from Santa:

This delightful piece of Sylvac:

Thanks, Santa!

I gave:

Lots of books. Lots and LOTS of books! Books by: Kristin Cashore, Bruce Hale, A.J. McKinnon, Maggie Beer, Hugh Lunn, Kate Grenville, Natalie Babbitt, Lemony Snicket and Chloe Hooper. (Plus some others that haven't been given yet, so can't mention in case the Canberra nieces are reading.)

plus freshwater pearl jewellery, chocolate, DVD, girly things for niece Heather (as requested), a journal for Lina, an iTunes card...

Loved giving, loved receiving. Watched The Sound of Music. (Plus: bonus! Ever After is on the telly tonight. Only classics and fairy tales should be screened on Christmas Day!) Ate well. Here's the beautiful table setting at Mum and Dad's:

Here's our very own Christmas elf, Grace, and her Christmas cluckin' friend Noel:

And this is my lovely new tree!

And Bridie, the Misrule blogcat, had a good day, with two big helpings of tuna. It's her 19th Christmas!

I hope you all had a lovely day too. What books did you get or give? Tell me in the comments.

Merry Christmas!

That's more like it!

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:02:02 -0600

6 Christmas cards in the mail today and only one from the mechanic—(oops! the car's overdue for a service)—the rest from family and friends. Lovely!

And now for the last Christmas party of the year—will we all be wearing red shoes? Plus I've got a super-long post to put up when I get home tonight: all written, just needs links. So, I'll be back soon!

Refinancing

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:15:45 -0600

In an effort to be a grown-up (Paperwork! Blech!), I have just refinanced my mortgage to get a better deal.

Guess who with?

Yes, they really do give you the slippers!

(Bridie has been studiously ignoring them. I thought she'd snuggle up to them, but to date she has Given Them Her Back.)

Curious Christmas Verandah Missive

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:09:00 -0600

Here's a funny (peculiar) and slightly disturbing thing...

Each year, for most of the nearly 10 years I have lived in my little flat in Ashfield (PS Lord Wiki: I have NEVER heard anyone call Ashfield "Little Shanghai"), I have done my best to contribute, in a low-key way, to the neighbourhood Christmas cheer by sticking up some lights in my living room window. My flat is on the ground floor at the front of our block of 16, and so I have thought it would be a nice thing to do to hang some lights in the window for my neighbours (whatever their cultural or religious affiliations) to enjoy on their evening constitutionals. This has involved many metres of sticky-tape to hold the fairy-lights in place, and the Sydney summer sun has usually meant that I have spent some considerable time re-taping the lights to the window, as the sticky-tape has lost its sticky... if you know what I mean. (My poor window has bits of accumulated adhesive all over it. I really should clean more often...)

Giving up on the fairy lights, this year I bought a very inexpensive Christmas tree light that only required one heavily sticky-taped hook to hang in said window. It's been up for almost 3 weeks now. (No decorations before December 1!)

See? Nothing flash, fancy or particularly carbon-heavy... Actually, pretty pathetic, really, even despite the kinda classy Victorian Santa cut out you can barely see in the bottom right-hand corner. (Don't I have the ugliest windows in Sydney? Sigh...)

Anyway, on Tuesday I found tossed onto on my verandah (which is also small but with lots of plants in greater or lesser degrees of health: geraniums and succulents mostly) I found this envelope. Cute, I thought:

Ooh, Lovely! After all these years, someone has sent me a little recognition of my Christmas lights and my sadly neglected but heartfelt verandah garden. Oh, and how exciting, to have a hand-delivered and decorated letter in this age of electronic communication! And it was sealed with one of the little fruit stickers: cute!

Not so.

Instead, inside was this ambiguous but slightly troubling and sadly racist missive:

Oh Damien. Do you object to my lights because they are nominally Christian, or do you object to objections to nominally Christian displays? I can't quite figure it out (and the reverse side of the letter has some even more puzzling references to the nightclub entrepreneur Justin Hemmes, which hasn't helped me understand your cause).

But all that anti-Catholic, racist rhetoric—sigh. It's hardly in the spirit of the season now, is it? It made me really sad reading this. We have a number of halfway homes for people with mental illness in my suburb, so maybe that explains the oddness of the letter—but mental illness doesn't cause racism.

So, bummer. But kind of intriguing, all the same.

Oh, and on the actual legitimate Christmas Card front? Corporate greetings are currently outweighing the personal by about 5 to 1. Bummer again! (Where are you people?!)

Mum's turn!

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:21:00 -0500

Two weeks ago it was Dad's 80th birthday, and today it's Mum's turn. Happy birthday, Mum!

And here's a lovely photo of Mum (Edith) and Dad (Barry) from last year.

Happy Birthday to my dear old dad

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:39:16 -0500

My Dad turned 80 today. 80! It sounds so much older than I can ever think of him. He said to me today that 80 sounds like someone with a walking frame. Dad's a long way from a walking frame—he and Mum (who hits the same milestone two weeks from today) still live in their own home, and are likely to do so for some time.

Here's a photo of Dad (Barry John Ridge) taken by me at Easter at Katoomba Falls. We lived in Katoomba from 1965-1971, and Dad was very happy there (as were we all). This was one of his favourite spots, and he and I braved the rain and mist to take a turn there on Easter Saturday (Mum sensibly stayed at the house and did the cross-word puzzle). It's a lovely photo—and that's an umbrella Dad is holding, not a walking stick!

Happy birthday, Dad! I love you.

Thrilled me, silenced me, stilled me...

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:16:24 -0500

As I was leaving work today, our fabby young admin support guy, Ben, was playing—get this—Boz Scaggs on his computer. So I stopped for a chat and a groove (come on, Boz was pretty groovy in the day!) and it turned out that the CD belonged to Jean, one of our colleagues who is, I suppose, about the same age as my older sister, Linda, who owned a copy of Silk Degrees back when, well, Boz was groovy.

Jean started reminiscing about listening to Boz Scaggs when she was travelling around after finishing her HSC and we talked about how music comes to mean something more than itself when it becomes attached to a certain time in our life.

And then tonight, 20 years after I first heard "Mandinka" and bought a copy of The Lion and the Cobra, I heard Sinead O'Connor in concert.

I didn't take my eyes off her for an hour and a half.

She's tiny, and a little round these days from her four babies, and the top register of voice showed the wear of a year-long concert tour (this was the last concert) but, oh, when she opened her diaphragm and that voice came out... Oh that voice! It filled the State Theatre and it filled me up too.

I have always loved Sinead O'Connor, her contrariness and rage and compassion and feminist faith—and her songs. Her voice.

She started with "The Emperor's New Clothes" and went into "I Am Stretched On Your Grave" and I don't remember what else after that, except she played lots of old songs (some I had forgotten, like "Fire On Babylon") and a few from her new album, Theology (which I bought last week and listened to over Easter). Lots from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (which I am playing as I write this)—"The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance" nearly killed me, as it always does (as does "Three Babies", which I hadn't realised was a waltz, which somehow makes it even more sadly beautiful). Oh yeah, and of course she did "Nothing Compares 2 U", which has never been a particular favourite of mine (not compared to "Troy" or "Jackie" or "Mandinka"—which she didn't do, alas—or "Acquaintance"), but it was fabulous live.

She had a wonderful band—the feedback was obviously bothering her at times, but they sounded great most of the time. I hadn't realised how tricky some of her rhythms are until I heard and watched the drummer. The violinist brought that amazing Irish sound to so many songs. I love that. And it was astonishing to me how Sinead would pull away from the mic and her voice was just as full and powerful as if it were still up close.

There was a young Irish couple sitting next to me. I did wonder what they made of the middle-aged single chick grooving away in her seat (you're not allowed to get up and dance in the State Theatre, you see), but what the hell—maybe they didn't really notice.

And then, during the encore, during "Black Boys on Mopeds" to be precise—I was leaning forward and singing along without making a noise, if you know what I mean—the woman of the Irish couple touched my arm and handed me a pair of binoculars. And so I watched Sinead sing the last verse of "Black Boys" close up. And burst into tears.

Me, not Sinead.

It was a little embarrassing, I admit. I did that waving-the-hand-in-front-of-the-face to indicate "sorry, I'm crying!" when I handed the binoculars back and they were so sweet. When the lights came up I was still all damp (well, she finished with a song that was a goodnight prayer for godssakes!) and I turned to them and said "thank you—I've been waiting twenty years for that!" "You looked like you were enjoying it!" they said, which was hilarious because I was in fact this weeping mess. I had to duck my head all the way out of the theatre so as for people not to see me all teary and ridiculous.

I don't know why I got so emotional. It's not even as if I've listened to her all that much in recent years, apart from the new album, but listening to her tonight, live and now at home, I realise how much those songs, her voice, have got into my bones. That voice is so familiar to me—so is that face. Thus the weeping binocular moment! She wore a blue scarf on her head—a bit like an old-fashioned nun, actually—and seeing her face close up, she's still so very beautiful, and so familiar—and in her daggy old jeans and unflattering t-shirt, how "ordinary"!

I guess the thing is when a musician (as opposed to a celebrity) is important to us in some way over the years, and especially one whose life and lyrics have been laid so bare, we do feel like we somehow know them. (I'll talk but you won't listen to me. I know your answer already.)

And how contemporary are the lyrics to "Black Boys", even decades after the Thatcher era:

These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
'Remember what I told you
if you were of the world they would love you'

I'm not going to read over this or I'll be too embarrassed to post it!

Happy Birthday Captain Book Boy!

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:41:13 -0500

My young friend Rafael turned seven today! He's in Year 1 and has recently graduated to confident reading of chapter books—Captain Underpants being the choice du jour.

Here is Raffy with his birthday books (sans a book about Vampyres, which kind of freaked him out). His Captain Underpants gift books are obscured behind his head, and his Captain Underpants underpants are obscured by his clothing. (This is not that kind of blog!) The three books on your right are the ones I gave him: Eoin Colfer's The Legend of the Worst Boy in the World (illustrations by Tony Ross), Terry Denton's Wombat and Fox: Summer in the City and Richard Tulloch and Terry Denton's Beastly Tales.

On your left is The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl, a Captain Clawbeak and the Ghostly Galleon (by Anne Morgan, illustrated by Wayne Harris), and Yin's Magic Dragon by Lau Siew Mei, illustrated by Lak-Khee Tay-Audouard. Also the first Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi—and you can see the big books at the back.

And here's Raf with his Captain Underpants cake and his sister Carolina. (If you can't quite see it, the madeira cake—Raf's favourite—is decorated with icing undies.)

More photos at my flickr account.

Only on a Sunday

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 05:11:18 -0500

I went to church today for the first time in I don't know how long. It was the 120th anniversary of the Auburn Uniting Church, where my dad was minister from 1971—1977, so for me that was from when I was aged 7 to 13. And very, very happy years they were.

The parsonage we lived in a was a beautiful Federation house with a huge backyard and an empty block next door. I attended great schools (Auburn PS and Berala PS in the OC class in Years 5 and 6), and I had wonderful friends at school and at church.

I have so many memories from those years—my treehouse, watching ants crawl through the patterned bricks in the backyard, coming out of the outdoor loo to find a rat our (male) cat Susie had killed (and locking myself back into the loo until Dad disposed of the body). Reading books in the Mulberry tree (and getting stains on Berala PS's library copy of What Katy Did), my brother pushing me into the hydrangea bushes at the end of the verandah (hang on, that might have been at Katoomba...). Climbing onto the garage roof, in defiance of Mum's anxieties, and seeing our Granddad's car get hit as he turned into our driveway.

My eldest sister Linda's boyfriends (especially Niko, the Dutch one that smoked cigars). Linda's friend Joy melting her handbag on the foootwarmer on her pew. Sitting on David King's motorbike and pretending to rev the engine. Eating fruit bread toast after Sunday evening youth services until Dad would appear, saying "I'm going to bed now so all you good people can go home". Chucking catoniasta berries at Andrew Cummings after church (alas, the bushes are long gone...).

The Victory Hall, which famously burned down a few years ago—my blog entry on this was on my old, sadly unavailable blog, but some memories are worth recounting. The ghost house set up by the older kids at the church fete. Buying a "chain of hearts" plant and Women's Weekly romance novels for five cents a piece at those fetes. The tie-dyed parachute on the ceiling of the youth group's meeting room. Playing sardines with my Friday night youth group. Acting on stage as the cow in "The King's Breakfast". Rehearsals for a failed production of "The Pyjama Game". So many performances featuring my father and his lovely singing voice.

I could go on and on and on... and maybe I should, for my own sake if no-one else's!

But on to the service today.

Back in the 70s, Auburn already had a significant Middle Eastern population—quite a difference from white-bread Katoomba, from where we were transferred. (Yes, "we"—a transfer for a church minister means a transfer for the whole family, in every sense!) Even so, the congregation back then was almost 100% Anglo, even if the shops were starting to show demographic change.

These days, the Auburn UCA congregation is largely Tongan; in fact, the church is now known as the Harold Wood congregation, after a Methodist missionary to the Kingdom of Tonga in the first half of the 20th century, and the current parish minister is a wonderful Tongan woman, the Reverend Doctor Mele Fakahua-Ratcliffe.

The church today is physically reconfigured since our day in the 70s. There are, I believe, many more pews—and 2/3rds of them were filled by the Tongan members of the congregation. And I guess a good 2/3rds of the Tongans made up the choir! (The remaining third pews had a good many Anglo folk who returned for the anniversary, although certainly some of them remain as members of the congregation to the present day.)

The service was a dual language one—in English and Tongan. And that choir! For the second time in two days, I was privileged and moved to be standing, in the cultural minority, amongst the strong, powerful voices of a culture not my own. The harmonies! The high notes, and the basso profundo.

It was also so moving to be sitting inside a building I spent so much of my childhood in. I was a bridesmaid in this church twice—first, at 13, for my eldest sister, and then in my early 20s, for my oldest friend—both brides called Linda!

The leadlight windows were plainer than memory allows, but the commemorative plaques, the WWI service board, the battered Australian Hymn Books, the pulpit (although in a different position), the backlit cross—all just as I remembered them.

Two young women were confirmed into the church during the service—one Tongan, one Anglo-Australian. I don't mean to oversate the metaphor, but this did bring together for me my (very) new and (rather) old experience of this congregation.

My dad was acknowledged by Reverend Fakahua-Ratcliffe at the end of the service (our attendance was otherwise unannounced), and he was asked to say Grace over the plentiful morning tea/lunch provided in a marquee in the church grounds after the service (oh, how it rained!). So much food! Sao biscuits and taro root. And so many old friends to meet again. My Sunday School teacher, Ruth Pegler, whose car I "bumped" into her house after inadvertently letting the handbrake off. Olwyn Hendy, our organist. Wilma Cummings, mum of my nemesis Andrew—my sister Alison used to do Wilma's ironing. And my dad's cousin, Catherine, daughter of my beloved Great Uncle Jim and Great Aunt Sarah, now one of the church's organists.

I was also so impressed that the service (and catering) were attended by Federal Member of Parliament Laurie Ferguson (jnr), Le Lam, Lady Mayor of Auburn Council, and State Member Barbara Perry. Turns out my (midwife) sister Alison attended Barbara during the births of her first two children, and we all had a long and very friendly (and very non-political) chat about health, education, family, society... Good to get to know a pollie (all-but) off duty. I first laid eyes and ears on Ms Perry at a seminar for refugee students at the NSW Parliament House some weeks ago—she impressed me them, but how much more so in person. (And she's the same age as me—that always freaks me out!)

My niece Grace accompanied us to the service—poor chookie, she was in the final throes of the World Vision 40 Hour Famine, and very patiently sat through the service, only to stuff herself silly on cake afterwards. (And even more patiently waited while her mum and aunt and grandparents caught up with the afore-mentioned old friends...)

As we drove away after the service and lunch, I couldn't help but slow (dangerously) down as I drove past the house we used to live in (despite the driving rain). The house is more beautiful than I remembered, and the garage remains, but the rose bushes tended by my mother are gone, the patterned bricks replaced by pavers, the bottle-brushes and the oleander bushes my darling grandfather over-pruned absent, my tree-house and that staining mulberry tree cut down. The vacant lot and the service station next door that I used to play in and buy my lollies from is now the Alfaisal Islamic and Arabian School—as it should and must be.

My Auburn childhood is long gone, even though I have so many more memories than are recorded here. My personally poignant memories remain safely held, even as that childhood hometown suburb has grown and changed, as shoud we all, as has my nation, as have I (I can but hope).

Call to worship:

Be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness, and come before His presence with song.

(Psalm 100)

(From your friendly neighbourhood lapsed but not entirely unconvinced UCA confirmee.)

I've got a new drug

nospam@example.com (Judith Ridge) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:16:27 -0500

facebook.