That’s just clawful!

You may or may not know that I’m a vegetarian.  I just don’t enjoy the taste of meat.  I also don’t enjoy the taste of fish or seafood of any kind.  So when my husband decided - for reasons I can’t yet work out - to take the girls to our dam for a spot of ‘yabbying’, I was pretty hopeful that they would return empty-handed.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

They returned with a bucket of filthy, slimey yabbies with claws that were almost twice the size of their entire body.

Now I’m not an outdoor girl.  I don’t like camping, fishing or even hanging out the washing.  So it stands to reason that I also don’t like crustaceans that belong at the bottom of a muddy waterhole, being inside my house.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“Eat them!” they all said in chorus.

“You’re not cooking them in my kitchen” I said.  Even though, as a failed cook, I have no right to call it “my” kitchen.

But cook them, they did.  I can’t give you any details of what happened next because I promptly left the kitchen and barricaded myself in the bathroom, feeling a sudden, urgent need to wash my hair, or paint my toenails or apply a face pack.

When I returned, the three of them were seated at the table, digging happily into the catch of the day.  I’m told the meat is very sweet and tasty, but let’s just say I’ll have to trust them on that one.

Garden? What garden?

I’m not a garden person.  I like to look at gardens.  I even like to sit in them.  But I do not do gardens!  Why then, we chose to live in a place that is surrounded by grass, trees and plants of every description, I still do not know. 

I’ve had my moments of inspiration.  Unfortunately, they are just that.  Moments.  A bit of clipping here; a touch of raking there, and that’s about it.  Most of the time, my “garden” is merely a sea of green, interspersed with fallen autumn leaves and flowering plants fighting for their lives amongst the weeds.

So it was with some trepidation that we decided to hire a gardener.  My impression of gardeners is that they are people who love gardens, and the moment one of these people saw our ….. garden, they would run screaming up the driveway, declaring that we were bad people and had no right to have a garden in our care.

However, this wasn’t the case.  He was really very nice.  He looked around our yard.  He remained calm.  He even smiled.

“How long have you had that apricot tree?” he asked.

Daniel and I looked at each other.

“Which one’s the apricot tree?” he whispered to me.

The gardener laughed.  We figured that was good sign.  “So I take it it’s never had fruit?”

Correct.

He moved on. 

“So we’ve been pulling these weeds out every time they come up” said Daniel, pointing casually to a green, trailing plant.

“That’s not a weed” said the gardener.

“Oh?”  We looked at each other, not really knowing what to say next.  “Then why does it just seem to grow a bit wild, like a weed?”

“You need to prune it.  You think plants look perfect if you just let them go their own way?”

“Well …. yes.  That’s kinda’ what we hoped.”

“Wrong!  Plants need care, nurturing, WATER!” 

I felt he was about to report us to the Department for the Protection of Unloved Plants.

“So, when can you start?” I asked brightly.  “As you can see, the garden needs a little …. care.”

 He reached into his pocket.  I half expected him to produce a walkie-talkie and request backup.  Instead, he pulled out a small diary.

“How does next Tuesday sound?” 

“Great!” we said in unison.  From somewhere behind me I think I heard some plants clap excitedly.

Get well soon, little Koala

We have a lovely gum tree just outside our front door.  Today, as I glanced out of the window, I saw a small koala sitting on the grass, just under the tree.  Immediately, I thought this was unusual.  We get a fair few koalas around the place, but they’re normally snuggled on a branch, either sleeping happily or munching on gum leaves.  This little koala was just sitting there, quite still.  It put its little hand on the tree as if about to climb up, but dropped it again.

We sneaked over to take a closer look.  It just looked at us, and made no attempt to move.

We rang the local wildlife rescuers.  Within 30 minutes, a man arrived, got out of his truck armed with a cage and a blanket, and skilfully loaded the little girl into a cage.  (He identified her straight away as a girl.  Some people are good like that.)  She made a tiny screeching sound.  He looked at a piece of her poo which was nearby.

“I’d say she’s got a problem with her teeth” he said. 

We wondered how he worked that out by looking at her poo.

“It’s not digested properly.  She’s not getting enough nutrients.”

Oh.  Well that made sense.

He said he would look after her and bring her back when she was well again.  I hope that’s soon.  She was so beautiful.

Thank heavens for little girls….

I knew there was a good reason I had kids.  They come in quite handy at times.  Like this morning, when something out of the corner of my eye grabbed my attention.  It was a spider.  A BIG, dark brown, hairy, ugly, designed-to-scare-the-living-daylights out of me, spider.   I don’t like spiders.  They don’t like me.  Why they even bother to venture into my house is beyond me.  Don’t they know what will happen to them if they do?  Isn’t there some sort of spider alert that tells them to stay the hell away from that house, unless you want to end up flattened with a boot, sprayed with fly spray, or sucked up through a vaccuum hose to spend what little remaining time you have in a bag of dust and fluff?

This morning I walked out of my bedroom, turned around for some reason, and saw it sitting on the wall directly above the doorway, like some hideous wall decoration. 

 ”Oh my God, I just walked under it!” I yelled.  Instantly my nervous system started to break down.  I called to my husband to come and kill it.  He just yawned and continued eating his Nutri-Grain.  What could I do?  I couldn’t leave it there.  I have this totally irrational belief that if you leave a spider unharmed somewhere, it will find it’s way into your bed or into one of your shoes or into the sleeves of your favourite jacket.  I cannot allow this to happen.

I knew what had to be done.

I went into my daughter’s bedroom.  She was sleeping soundly with a beautiful, angelic look on her face.  She abruptly woke up.  I think it’s because I was screaming “Maggie, Maggie, wake up!  Wake up!  There’s a big spider on the wall!”

“Go away Mum” she mumbled into her blankets.  “You’ll be alright.”

“But Maggie, you know how much I hate spiders.  Please get up and kill it for me!”

“Why can’t you kill it yourself?”

“Because the fly spray is in my bedroom, and the spider is above my bedroom door.  What if it jumps on me and attacks me while I’m walking through?”

“Oh Mum” she said, pulling herself out of bed.  She took one look at the offending intruder, walked casually into my room, and came out with the fly spray.

“Thanks honey” I said, watching the spider fall to the ground as it was bombarded with millions upon millions of tiny particles of - whatever’s in fly spray that kills spiders.

As it hit the ground, it seemed to get a new lease on life, and began running around in a frenzy, probably looking for the nearest door.  I moved as far away from it as I could.  From somewhere, I heard the words “It’s still alive!  Quick, kill it someone!”  I think it was me.

“Mummy, I’ll get a shoe” said Alice, who obviously didn’t want to see the episode continue any longer.  She ran into her room and came back with a pink, fluffy Barbie boot.  Bravely she tottered up to the now-writhing spider and hit it with all the force a 4 year old can muster.

It stopped moving.

“You’ve done it!” I rejoiced.  “Girls, you’ve both done it!  The spider is dead!”

“Yes Mum it is.  Can I have breakfast now?”

I gave them breakfast and sent them off to school.  I came back to the scene of the crime and to my absolute horror, the spider had gone.   I began to believe in the idea of spiders having the ability to raise themselves from the dead, when I finally saw it on the floor, not far from where it had been.  It had made a last-ditch attempt to crawl for the door, but it was no match for the combined skills of my girls.

Aah those kids.  Their mummy’s a big chicken but they love me anyway.

A Chorus Line

So Break a Leg has decided to move away from our traditional theatrical offerings of drama and comedy, and venture somewhat timidly into the arena of musicals.  For months now, the what-ifs and wherefores have been bandied about behind closed doors; emails have gone back and forth between producers and directors, and countless alcoholic drinks have been consumed, all in preparation for our production of …..

….. wait for it ……

…..”A Chorus Line”!

Auditions were held and all roles but two have been cast.  Last Sunday was the first official gathering of cast and crew, in a meet and greet fest, designed for people to get to know those they’ll be totally sick and tired of by the time the curtain goes up in June!

The day began with a fun warm-up exercise, and continued on with a speech by the Director, and a singing and dancing exercise, run respectively by the Musical Director and the Choreographer.  As I watched, I realised why I never took up music or dance.  It’s too much hard work.  Give me a hobby that involves sitting still, and I’m happy.  I could have sat and watched them all day.   Eighteen young, fit bodies with beautiful voices on one side of the room, and me a 41 year old with stretch marks and a voice that couldn’t find a tune in a music store, on the other.  But I’m sitting still.  I’m happy.

I was there in all my administration glory, handing out scripts and scores and wishing desperately that I had worn my glasses instead of my contacts.  (Okay if someone’s contact details are bamboozled, it’s my fault, but it’s hard to increase your font size and still look like you know what you’re doing at the same time.)

We finished up the day by socialising with a few drinks and nibblies.  I’m sure a chocolate biscuit here and there won’t make a difference to the fit, young things.  As for me, I’m trying to fill out my stretch marks.

Playwriting Competition

I guess if you run your own theatre group, you’re allowed to advertise your own competitions!   Details below:

Short Play Competition

The Gippsland Theatre Festival is now accepting submissions of short plays (no longer than 20 minutes) for the Gippsland Theatre Festival Writer’s Competition.  All submissions must be original works that have not been produced.  5 winners will be selected, and each winning entry will be produced and directed professionally, and staged during the Gippsland Theatre Festival in July 2008.

Please include your name, the name of your play, your email address and contact details on the cover page.  Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you would like your script returned.

Entry is on a voluntary basis.  Plays are assessed anonymously.  Please do not include your name or address on your script.

Submissions should be accompanied with a $15 non-refundable entry fee.  The closing date for submissions is 15th May 2008.

Please send your submission, along with a cheque or money order made out to Break a Leg Theatre Group, to:

Break a Leg Theatre Group

P O Box 152

Traralgon  Victoria  3844

Australia

 Get those entries in!   Good luck!

Best laid plans….

I had my day all planned.  I should have stuck to it.  My plan was to concentrate on getting the inside of the house all clean and tidy.  That was enough.  I could handle that. 

Well today, as I stood by the kitchen window and contemplated which room I should begin with, I looked out into the garden.  I use that term loosely.  It’s not a garden.  It’s grass with a few unidentifiable, but fast-growing  weeds.   Usually, when I contemplate this area, I just look away.  But not today.  Today, I was held, transfixed, unable to escape the lure of the “garden”.  As I looked at the weeds lovingly encircling the flowers, I thought “That’s it.  I can’t take it anymore.  I’ve got to get rid of it.”

Resolutely I walked toward the back door.  I could feel a strong force trying to hold me back.  But my power over it was too strong.  There was no turning back.  I picked up the yard broom and started sweeping the leaves off the walkway and back into the garden.  With each push of the broom, my determination became stronger.  I was going to make this beautiful!  This was my calling!  This was what had to be done!

The giant size secateurs were nearby.  (That was lucky, wasn’t it?)  I reached for them.  I began cutting.  Something took over me.  I cut here and I slashed there.  I was gonna’ give this backyard the biggest haircut it had ever had!  In between the cutting, I pulled weeds up.  They were everywhere but they were no match for me!  Cut, slash, pull!  Cut, slash, pull!  Cut, slash, pull!  Now my back is starting to hurt.  But I won’t stop.  This garden needs a hero and I’m it!

I looked around for the wheelbarrow.  Damn!  It wasn’t conveniently nearby.  It was in the woodshed.  I ran; I powered; I arrived; I went to grab it; I stopped.

“Oh my God, what if there are spiders in it?”

My determination didn’t extend to spiders.  All my good intentions can be squashed mercilessly if there are spiders involved.  What to do?

I carefully took hold of the handles.  I slowly pulled them towards me, peering cautiously into the main part of the wheelbarrow.  Nothing.  No spiders there.  No spiders underneath, about to crawl up and send me into a catatonic coma for the next two weeks.  Thank God.

“How would you like a wheelbarrow ride, Alice?” I asked.

“Yay!” she yelled.

“I hope I don’t fall” she said.

“I won’t let you fall sweetheart” I said.  Of course, had there been a spider between her and me, I would’ve dumped the whole thing with her in it, and ran away faster than Cathy Freeman.

We made it back to garden central.  I took her out and loaded all the weeds and cuttings into the wheelbarrow.  We took it down to the area where we burn all of our garden scraps.  Alice walked behind me the whole way, hanging on to one of the handles and causing me to swerve several times and lose my balance.  It didn’t matter.  I wasn’t stopping.  This pile was headed for death row.

As we arrived, I pushed the wheelbarrow, and everything plopped out into a highly decorative pile. 

“Can I have a ride again please Mummy?”

“Of course honey.”

I picked her up and we raced back up the hill.  Yes I did have to stop at the top and restart my heart, but on we continued.

We’d done well.  For one day.  More tomorrow….

Jane, Jane and more Jane…

So I went to see “The Jane Austen Book Club” last night.  Having read the novel again recently, I was eager to see how it adapted to film.  Would the characters be how I’d imagined them?  How would they handle the characters telling stories from their past?  Would I end up loving the characters on film as much as I loved them in print?

To answer the last question, yes I did.  On paper, the characters are lovable, quirky but fairly typical human beings.  Their personalities and mannerisms jump out at you until you wish they were standing in front of you and you could give them a big hug.  On screen, I wasn’t disappointed.  The characters are totally lovable in their own ways.  Bernadette, the gregarious, slightly eccentric older woman with a huge heart and a passionate love of Jane Austen; Sylvia, who begins the film as a deliriously happy wife and mother, only to suffer a cruel disappointment, but comes out better at the other end; Allegra, her gorgeous lesbian daughter who learns the hard way about trust; Jocelyn the stubborn, but adorable dog breeder who - in the words of another character - “works with dogs because she needs to be obeyed”; Prudie, the cute-as-can-be French teacher who learns that you can get a man to read Jane Austen, and Grigg, the male of the group who provides lots of laughs and finally works out which woman is right for him.

In the novel there are many instances of events which happened in the past.  In the film they are re-told as quick stories between characters; a technique which brings the stories vividly to life.  Who could forget the story of Billy and his basketball, or Prudie’s mother and her imaginary birthday parties?

This was the best film I’ve seen in a long time.   There are so many uplifting moments, and so many that are just plain funny; from the looks of horror and disgust on everyone’s face when Prudie refers to Austen as “Jane”, to the hilarity of Grigg carrying a “Complete Works of Jane Austen” and believing them all to be sequels.

My one disappointment was that during their discussion of “Persuasion” Bernadette said that Captain Wentworth and Anne Eliot hated each other.  As a true Janeite, let me tell you, they never hated each other.  They just didn’t realise that they still loved each other.

Four and half stars!

Tasmania - Days Eight and Nine - Ships and fish

Today was our last day in Swansea, so we packed up our stuff early and headed back to Devonport for one day’s sight-seeing before jumping back onto the Spirit of Tasmania.

First stop - the Devonport Maritime Museum.  As a ship lover, I’d been looking forward to this for the entire trip.  Everyone else, I think, just came along to keep me happy.  The museum was set up in the former Harbour Master’s Residence, and was a fascinating place.  Everything you ever wanted to know about any ship that had ever been near Tasmania in the last 200 years!  There was even a model of the wreck of the Titanic, with a note saying that if you were to travel directly through the earth from where you stood, you would come out at the other end, approximately 20 miles from the wreck!  I was rather impressed with that (but then I am a bit of a ship geek).  There’s also a display that shows the comparative depths of water at various points around Australia.  It seems that Bass Strait’s really not all that deep.  There was even a letter from Captain Cook to the King of the time, saying that he was ready to set off in his ship and sail to faraway lands for the good of the Commonwealth (or some such navigational/historical/ maritime language).

After we left the Maritime Museum, we went to the Imaginarium Science Centre, a fantastically fun and interactive place.  Here we learned about Antarctica, air pressure, echoes, optical illusions, explorers, and so much more!  It was fascinating, although Alice just wanted to go and play with the little plastic sea creatures.

As evening drew near, we wandered down to the pier and watched the Spirit of Tasmania arrive from Melbourne.   We seemed to be waiting for so long and finally it appeared.  It came up so fast, and I couldn’t take my ship-loving eyes off it!  Maggie and Alice got a touch bored, but compensated for it by watching a man who was fishing off the pier.  He caught a big salmon and let them touch it.  They were pretty thrilled with that.

Next day, we packed quickly and drove down to the pier.  I have to say, I was extremely sad to be leaving Tasmania.  The holiday had gone far too quickly and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.  Sailing away from Devonport was a dismal experience, a far cry from the excitement I felt on the way out.   I wanted to cry, but I thought people might think that was a bit of an over-reaction, so I bit my lip and soldiered on.  We filled in the 10 hour trip much as we had on the journey out, although the sea was a touch bumpier.

When we arrived in Melbourne, we drove straight off and straight away.  No security, no quarantine.  We were gone.  I kept looking at the ship from the rear window of the car until I could see it no more.  Just like a sad movie.

Now our holiday was over.

And we never did get to see a Tassie Devil.  Unless you count the one on the side of the road, but that wasn’t exactly what we’d had in mind.

Tasmania - Day Seven - Spikey Bridges and frightened Fairy Penguins

The next day, we decided to go and see the infamous “Spikey Bridge”, a bridge said to have been built by convicts in about 1841.  It has lots of amazing looking spikey stones and rocks on top of it.  No-one seems to really know why the spikes are there, but it’s certainly something you don’t see every day.

I was standing there feeling a bit amazed by the history of it all, when Daniel walked up to me. 

“Just imagine how old these stones are” I said, in that voice I get when I’m looking at something old.

“They’re not old” he said.

“They are” I said.  “This bridge was built by the convicts.”

“The bridge may have been built by the convicts” he said, “but those stones were probably put in by the local council 20 years ago.”

“How can you even think that?” I growled at him.  “This is a genuine, historic bridge!  How can you possibly say that?”

I still don’t know whether he meant it or whether he just said it to upset me, but I made up my mind not to talk to him for the next couple of hours.

That night, we went to the “Bark Mill Tavern” for a counter-tea.  This area has a huge timber and bark industy, and the pub has huge wooden beams across the ceiling.  I decide that these beams would probably make quite a suitable area from which to hang my husband from, but realise that a disagreement over a spikey bridge’s authenticity is probably not worth the attention such an act would have drawn to our table!

Afterwards we decided to go to a local beach, where we had been told, fairy penguins come out at dusk.  Unfortunately we arrived at about 8.45 pm, still quite light, but the girls amused themselves by running away from the waves as they came up onto the sand.  Being overwhelmingly sensitive to the cold (some would say sooky), I took shelter in a tiny corner between two of the biggest rocks I’ve ever seen, and was silently cursing myself for not bringing my triple-layer woollen jumper.  At last, the sky grew dark.  And there they were.  Eight little fairy penguins, waddling out of the sea, up the sand and into their burrows.  They were the cutest things ever!  After a few moments, one last straggler came up by himself.   On seeing us, he hesitated, a little alarmed at seeing people hanging around outside his home.  He made a little squeaking sound, which we think meant he was scared, so we quitely walked away to let him continue on his quest.

At last, we could go back to our cottage and snuggle up, dreaming of waddling penguins or spikey bridges or husbands hanging from wooden beams.

Aah, sweet dreams.