Beyond Selidor

I was going to wait until the dust had settled slightly — at least until we knew the full shape of the results, but counting continues. As of this evening (26th May), we still don't know if we're going to have a Labor government with a slim majority, or a minority Labor-led government with some form of coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement with independents and minor parties. The former is more likely, but any result is honestly fine by me.

( Long, long post-election musings )

Well, 2021 certainly was a year.

( Questions and answers behind the cut )

I was talking to my mother and sister via FaceTime this morning and Mum was telling me all about her radio programme this week (she's a radio broadcaster who does a programme which takes events that are making headlines and does a deep dive into the history behind them, interviewing historians, economists, commentators, activists, archivists etc). The progamme this week is all about studies into using psychodelic drugs to treat mental health conditions. After a while, Mum fell to reminiscing about the '70s, and my sister and I were sitting there in amusement at a number of anecdotes that began 'and that time [ex-boyfriend] and I were taking magic mushrooms/acid/etc'.

I had the dual realisation that a) my parents had a way more adventurous youth than I did (I'd known about most of this stuff already, but it's not exactly something I think about actively) and b) if I wanted to obtain illicit drugs in the UK, I would have no idea who to ask, whereas I know at least twenty people in Canberra and Sydney I could ask, should I want to do so. My social circles in Australia are as equally filled with high achieving nerds as they are in the UK, so I'm not really sure how to explain the discrepancy. I should make it clear that I have zero desire to acquire illicit drugs, I just found the contrast amusing.

*

On a completely different note, the complicated Australian bureaucracy thing I was dealing with last week led me to another bizarre realisation. I remember when I met lowercasename for the first time, he told me that his parents (who emigrated from Russia to Australia in the 1980s and spoke only Russian to each other, and him, at home) had left Russia before various technological things were invented, and as a result of being isolated from other Russian-speakers had no idea of the Russian names of such things. Therefore, his family basically invented their own Russian words for various pieces of software and commonplace computer hardware, and no other Russian speakers use the same terminology.

My situation is slightly different. I lived in Australia long enough that I had a tax file number, did paid work and filed tax returns, and had to contribute towards the rent and bills of a shared house — but I did all this at a time when everything was entirely analog, and on paper. My wages were paid directly into my bank account, but I never had internet banking, I filed my tax returns on paper and got my tax refunds as cheques which I had to deposit physically in the bank, and when I needed to transfer rent money to my housemate I withdrew cash from my bank account and filled in a paper deposit slip and deposited the money in person at a branch of her bank. I existed entirely on paper.

And of course, since I've lived and worked in the UK during the years when such things were increasingly done online, I know how to navigate all this stuff in a UK context, I know the UK terminology, and I am as close as it's possible to be to a 'digital native' ... in the UK, and its various pieces of bureaucracy. But in Australia, I have no idea! I don't even know the names for government web platforms, or technical terminology (someone over the phone was like 'you can pay it via BPay,' and I was like 'what's BPay?').

It's as if I'm a time-traveller from an age of paper. It's not an insurmountable problem (I can eventually figure out most of this stuff via context or Google), but it is an oddly disorienting feeling.

It was warm, it was sunny, the farmers market in the centre of town was flooded with far too many people, but I can't bring myself to get too worked up about it because I just feel so relaxed and happy. We flung open the curtains, and filled the house with flowers.

I come bearing a few links.

The more observant among you may have noticed that I no longer live in Cambridge. This is (sadly) a product of the ridiculous housing market in this part of the world. When Matthias and I decided we wanted to buy a house, we basically had the option of either living on the very outskirts of Cambridge in what would probably be a house needing a lot of work, and have to spend hours every day commuting by (slow, unreliable) bus into work, or moving to one of the surrounding villages on the trainline and buying a much nicer house that would not need to be gutted and renovated from the ground up. Add to that the fact that both of our workplaces are basically not going to return us to full-time work in the office even after the pandemic is over, and the decision was obvious. We moved to Ely, which is fifteen minutes away from Cambridge on the train. While I miss some things about living in Cambridge, it was definitely the right decision.

All that by way of preamble to say that the house was finally in a presentable enough state for me to do a photo tour. I've posted three batches of photos over on Instagram at ronnidolorosa. Batch one, batch two, batch three.

Also via Instagram, a link to a wonderful photo essay (in a rather pretentious travel magazine) about the gorgeous ocean baths of Sydney. I miss the sea — and specifically the Sydney sea — so much!

Via a convoluted sequence of links in Dreamwidth, I stumbled upon this Tumblr post, which argues something I've long been struggling to articulate — my frustration and discomfort with anti-intellectualism on the left. It comes from a different place to the right-wing equivalent, but it's just as misinformed and damaging. It being a Tumblr post, I find it a touch on the polemical side, but it summarises a lot of things I've long felt, and gave me a satisfying jolt of recognition.

I also particularly enjoyed Amal El-Mohtar's newsletter this week, not least because the ritual she describes (Friday evening walks, take-away, and WandaVision) closely resembles my own Saturday evening pandemic ritual (take-away, and films), and because she is so overwhelmed with love for WandaVision, like me.

Edited to add the link to the first trailer for the Grishaverse Netflix show! In terms of the original books I only really love the Six of Crows duology (the ending of the original trilogy makes me incredibly angry, and the new series mainly focuses on characters in whom I'm not hugely interested), but the trailer is reminding me of all my intense Darklina feelings (because of course I've never met a heroine/villain ship I didn't like), and I'm very much looking forward to the series!



I hope your Saturdays have been filled with light, both physical and metaphorical.

Today is 'gravy day': the day on which Paul Kelly's beautiful, poignant, bittersweet, brilliant Christmas song 'How To Make Gravy' takes place. This song — which has always been my favourite Christmas song — is beloved by Australians. I've always loved it, but it took on a special resonance after I emigrated, because the song is about what it feels like to be cut off from the baking summer heat, innappropriate northern hemisphere winter food, warmth, messiness, and chaotic loving family that is the secular Australian Christmas celebration.

This year, I imagine the song has a resonance for many more people — Australians familiar with 'gravy day' who never imagined they would experience its sentiments during their own Christmas celebrations, and those of you from other countries for whom this song is absent from the Christmas mythology. May the song's simplicity, compassion, and humanity bring you the hope it brings me, this year, and every year.

(I will also make the obvious point that those of us who celebrate Christmas in culturally majority-Christian countries are grieving the same thing that people of other religions have already had to endure. I know Jewish friends had to have their Passover seder over Zoom, and all other holidays since then as well, while Muslims in the UK were told at 9pm the night before Eid that there was going to be a national hard lockdown and all festivities had to be cancelled. Christians, and atheists like me who come from a culturally Christian background need to acknowledge that, and recognise that we are not being uniquely hard done by.)



This year, a bunch of Australian artists also made a cover version of the song, sung over Zoom, which really gets to the heart of what Paul Kelly's original intentions, translating it to the newer, sharper grief of the pandemic.

It's rained! It's cooler! It's continued to rain, and I am so happy!

The cooler weather cleared away the brainfog which was preventing me from being able to focus on anything, and as a result I read all five of the Hitch Hiker's Guide books in a few hours.

I've been really enjoying a series of videos posted on Guardian Australia, where children's/YA authors answer questions sent in by readers (or in some cases parents). They've only done a handful so far, but two of them are authors whose work I love, and whose books I've been reading in some cases since before I could actually read.

The first is Alison Lester, who started out as an illustrator, and then went on to mostly write and illustrate her own picture books. These are massively popular and beloved in Australia (and in fact I discovered that, in the past week, my mother — who linked the videos to me — had bought a couple of Lester's board books to give to the newborn baby of a school friend of my sister's). She answers questions mostly from young children, and some of the videos are really adorable.



The second is Garth Nix. I was reminded in his video of how friendly and warm a speaker he is. Back when I was a newspaper reviewer, he was the first author I ever interviewed. I was only about nineteen or twenty, I was extremely anxious, and I showed up at his office in Clovelly in Sydney as a complete bundle of nerves. But he was wonderful to talk to — we went to a cafe, the interview was basically just like having a conversation, and the resulting publication read really well.



Highlights for me from this video include:

The anecdote about hanging out with Philip Pullman in Oxford

The story behind how he came up with the lore/mythology of the Old Kingdom books

His response to a question about LGBT representation in his books — where he basically said he had been bad with all kinds of representation in the past, because he had felt it was sufficient for him, the author, to know everything about a character's (marginalised) identities, but never spell it out. He had not originally understood (perhaps because he, himself, had always seen himself in his meaningful childhood stories) that people need to see these things stated clearly on the page, and that if a character shares their marginalised identity it can be extremely powerful.

I'd also forgotten that he was a Canberran, like me, and actually let out a little exclamation of happiness when I remembered that! With prompting, I remember that he had spoken with me about the same things re: his Canberran childhood when I interviewed him, namely that his favourite place was a public library no longer in existence. Since one of my favourite places in Canberra growing up was also a public library that closed,* I can relate.

He's from the wrong side of the lake, though.

This started as a post about books, and ended up on a long rambling trip down Canberran memory lane. I'm feeling quite emotional about Australia, and the distance between it, and where I live now. I'm generally quite happy with the fact that I migrated, and that I live so far away. But the fact that I won't see my mother this year, and probably won't be able to go back at Christmas as I planned suddenly hit me like a tonne of bricks recently. The two videos reminded me forcefully of how much I miss hearing other Australian voices, particularly when they are the voices of people who are good speakers and really clear communicators.

*Amusingly, next to this very old online news article is a link to a fiercely raging debate in the comments section of an opinion piece about whether private school in Canberra is 'worth it' — the author of the piece having gone to all three state/public schools that I also attended (and being roughly in my age group, so I'm wondering why I don't recognise her name). This is one of those perennial Canberra arguments, and I'm kind of dying with laughter that the comments section could have been time-travelling from 1985, 1995, 2005, etc and it would still be exactly the same, with people making exactly the same points about the exact same handful of schools. Canberrans gonna Canberra, is all I can say.

I was watching a documentary about Australian film last night, and George Miller appeared on the screen, and I was overcome with emotion all over again. I made Matthias pause the show, because I had to give words to what I was feeling: this overflow of relief and gratitude and astonishment that this white, boomer male filmmaker had understood, and depicted — mainly without words — how angry so many women are all the time,* and why we are angry.

(Incidentally, I met George Miller, decades ago when I was a teenager at some New Year's Eve party in Sydney hosted by one of my mother's friends. And there were moments of connection like that throughout the documentary, whenever various talking heads appeared: Sigrid Thornton, who once overheard my mother, sister and me talking loudly in English, with Australian accents, in a clothes shop in Paris, and advised me as to which winter coat I should buy out of the two over which I'd been deliberating. Gillian Armstrong, whose daughter? stepdaughter? was at school with my sister. Paul Mercurio, who danced with my aunt back when she was a professional dancer. Said aunt is now an economics lecturer. I don't move in particularly exalted circles. It's just that the arts/media/journalism circle in Australia is extremely small, and was even smaller and more incestuous when my parents and their generation were establishing their careers.)

*I mean, when I say 'all the time,' I don't mean I'm brimming with rage constantly, but it's buried there, and can be summoned at a moment's notice by a news item, an interaction, an anecdote by one of my younger sisters, friends, or a stranger, and back it comes.

I have no words, and I must grieve.

For me, it is memories and feelings that burn, a sense of childhood place.

The city where I grew up, that surreal, planned, charged landscape, is so filled with smoke that its air quality is the worst in the world. An elderly resident died due to the smoke-filled air.

The city where I last lived, where most of my family came from (as much as any non-Indigenous Australian can claim to come from), where most of them live, was over 48 degrees Celcius in places yesterday. It's surrounded by a ring of fire. It's dangerous to use air conditioning as it will bring smoke into the house. Fires furher out have damaged power stations, meaning power outages.

They are not just dots on a map, they are friends marking themselves safe (Bega, Batlow, Tathra), relatives who lost their home to fire two years ago on the verge of losing it again (Falls Creek), my homes away from home, where I learnt to swim and learnt to live in and with the ocean, where my whole hometown decamped every summer, gone in minutes (Broulee, Mossy Point, Batemans Bay, Moruya, Ulladalla, Tilba, Lakes Entrance/Lake Tyers, on and on and on, down the south coast of NSW, with forays into East Gippsland), where my paternal grandparents built a home among the trees and lyrebird song (Picton), where my aunt and cousins swelter in the blistering heat, watching the fire front creep closer (Blue Mountains), where I hiked and learnt my smallness (Kosciuszko National Park).

And I am inordinately fortunate compared to most others. I am not one of the half-billion animals killed or billions of plants destroyed. My home is not under threat. Almost all of my family live in inner-city Sydney or Melbourne, and most of my friends and relatives live in urban areas. They are safe — for now.

'My' prime minister (though I did not vote for his government) spent this national catastrophe frolicking on the beach in Hawaii. Then he returned and spent New Year's Eve drinking champagne at his Sydney Harbour waterfront residence with cricketers, claiming, on more than one occasion, that the 'feats' of the cricket team would be sufficient to lift our spirits. (A cricket match in Canberra had to be cancelled due to smoke, way back when Scotty From Marketing was still frolicking in Hawaii.) Former fire chiefs begged for help and damned the government for showing 'no moral leadership' when it came to climate change. Finally shamed into doing something, the government announced emergency measures in the form of a party political ad, which initially had a prominent Donate button. These donations did not go to the fire services, nor to any other charities doing vital work — instead they went to the governing Liberal Party's coffers!. (I have to admit this was the point at which I was truly lost for words.) Instead of taking a shred of moral responsibility, government ministers have contemptuously mocked victims of the fires ('they probably voted Green,' 'they're just unemployed meth addicts') for not showing proper gratitude and deference to the prime minister when he finally graced their burnt-out towns with his presence. There is a concerted effort in the right-wing press and among other, darker corners of the internet to generate a conspiracy theory whereby arsonists, or 'greenies' and red tape from environmental policies have caused these fires, because they lack the decency to examine their own souls, to walk back three decades of climate change denial, coal-fondling greed, and their own contempt for both Indigenous and/or academic expertise.

(I am fearful, in fact, that when — if? — these fires are extinguished, those responsible will walk away with no culpability. I want to hang the shame of it around their necks like an albatross that they can never be rid of. I want the journalists and voters of Australia to haunt them like a Greek chorus, crying shame, shame until they are hounded out of office. They should be forced to wander a wasteland of ruined buildings and blackened treestumps, covered with ash of penitence and shame that can never be removed.)

My words are all burnt out, dried up, ash in my mouth. Read the words of others, who say what I cannot: 'Quiet Australians', a poem written last night, through tears, choking through smoke, by my beloved lowercasename. Read First Dog on the Moon's most recent piece, The pain and terror of these bushfires cannot be held in a single human heart.

Witness us, in the wasteland.

I returned to England yesterday, after two weeks spent back in Australia, visiting friends and family with Matthias. I spent most of that time in Sydney, staying with my mum, although I made a flying visit to Macedon (in rural Victoria), where my dad, stepmother and three youngest sisters have recently moved.

It's hard for me to really capture the emotions that I feel whenever I go back to Australia. My trips back there are at once an exercise in nostalgia (dashing around eating, drinking and doing all the things I can't eat, drink or do in the UK) and a stark reminder of the passage of time, of change, of loss, of the person I could have been, had I stayed. This time the reminder was even more tangible: my grandmother was alive the last time I visited; my friends have babies who did not exist the last time I was there; shops and restaurants that had stood for years in various suburbs of eastern Sydney have closed or moved to new locations, disorienting me. I always feel both less like myself, and more like an earlier version of myself, whenever I go back. I always feel like the space I used to occupy has closed up behind me, and is unreachable. I always get that little voice pointing out the things I miss about Australia (the sea, the beaches, the food and coffee culture without the sneery accusations of pretentiousness and snobbery that seem to be levelled at anyone who cares about food in the UK, my close-knit, matriarchal family, the birdsong, the sense of common childhood cultural references), accompanied with the certainty that I was right to leave and that I never, never want to live there permanently again. I always have fun when I visit, but every visit is bittersweet. That's probably the simplest way to explain what it feels like to return.

It was bakingly hot -- over 30 degrees Celcius most days (although the nights in Macedon were freezing), and I swam almost every day, twice in eastern Sydney beaches (Bronte and Clovelly), and the rest of the time doing laps with my mother and one of my aunts in Boy Charlton outdoor pool. This is a saltwater pool located in a beautiful part of Sydney Harbour. Two of its walls are completely transparent, so you have the impression of actually swimming in the harbour itself, and it's a lovely place to swim. I was out of practice, but managed to build up to swimming a kilometre after two days. My mother and aunt (both in their sixties) were faster than I was, though! Here's a photoset I took of the pool, to give you some idea of what it's like.

I could not stop photographing the sea and the sky. suzemetherell, who has just returned to Australia after several years in London, told me she was exactly the same when she first got back: Britain is good at vivid green colours, but its blues leave a lot to be desired. Here are some of my sea/sky photos:

Sydney Harbour as seen from the roof of my mum's block of flats
Sydney Harbour as seen from the balcony of my aunt's flat
The trees in the early morning, outside my dad's house in Macedon
A photoset of burning blue skies and gum trees in Castlemain, an old mining town near Macedon
A photoset taken in Rushcutters Bay, where I met with my Sydney friends for a picnic
Rough waters at Bronte, taken from the Bondi to Coogee cliff walk
Waves rolling in at Clovelly
The sunset over Sydney Harbour, taken during a party with my family on the roof of Mum's block of flats

You get the idea.

As well as catching up with friends and family, and hurling myself into any available water at every opportunity, I read a lot, went to a bunch of craft beer bars with Matthias (I don't drink beer, but he does, and always looks up new places to visit whenever we're on holiday), and took advantage of the fact that my mum lives a short walk away from all the main sports stadiums in Sydney to watch a football (i.e. soccer) match.

It was wonderful in particular to hang out with my three youngest sisters, who I don't see all that much as they're still children and can't travel overseas very easily. My youngest sister, three-year-old Maud, is obsessed with painting and drawing, and spent one evening drawing portraits of everyone in the house. The picture she drew of me was apparently the first picture she'd ever drawn of a person, and I love it to bits. The last time I'd seen her, she was only one-and-a-half, and couldn't really talk, so it was amazing to actually be able to have a conversation with her, and just hang out with her and my other sisters.

The trip was, as always, too short, but I'm glad I went. It's always a very emotional experience for me, going back, but those connections and roots are important to me, and every time I return to Australia I feel them being strengthened and reaffirmed. I'm someone who has a very strong sense of place, of my past, of the landscapes of memory and how they have shaped me, and although I find it confronting, I also feel it's necessary and essential that I return to them and keep them a part of my life.

By a strange coincidence, the Guardian has been running a series on Australian cities. I'll leave you with some links to the pieces in that series that I found most resonant and/or interesting:

The radical plan to split Sydney into three (I'm not entirely convinced, and I think the planners' attempts to connect their proposed division of Sydney with Indigenous ways of demarcating and dividing the region to be disigenuous and appropriative)

The best in the world: a love letter to Australia's public swimming pools (one of the pools mentioned, Boy Charlton, is the place where I swam all my laps during this recent Sydney trip, and, incidentally, I have swum in literally every Sydney pool mentioned in the article)

First Dog on the Moon's guide to Australia's urban stereotypes (This is a cartoon, and is painfully true. I'm a weird kind of Sydney-Canberra hybrid - I grew up in Canberra, and moved to Sydney when I was 18, and always felt like a Canberran when I lived there, faintly horrified by the conspicuous consumption, obessession with real estate, and over-the-top concern with physical appearance, while always feeling somewhat dowdy, staid and suburban in comparison - and let me tell you, this cartoon gets Canberra and Sydney stereotypes spot on)