This is Woodroffe, navel-gazing.
This is Woodroffe reminding me, sternly, that geese and ganders do not have navels and that, even if they did, they wouldn’t waste time gazing at them.
I got tagged
I don’t know how to tweet, or text, or play tag but I just got tagged by Susan at http://susandanielseden.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/i-am-actually-taking-a-tag-because-this-one-is-cool/
Now, she knows I have an aversion to awards but she still tagged me! Her punishment is the Hot Potato Award which, if you read her above post, is something she has been craving for some time.
For those of you who don’t know, the HPA is an award I created some time ago as my way of avoiding award nominations, not because I am ungrateful or ungracious, just because I was too lazy and inept to understand all the rules! The HPA is an award that comes with no rules – you just get it (if I give it to you – hahahaha!)
Susan’s blog is brilliant – check it out!
Okay, back to my texting lesson.
I am not a vulture
Bubble: My feelings are a bit hurt, Julie.
Me: Why, Bubble?
Bubble: Well, Ming’s friend said I looked like a vulture.
Me: Oh Bubble, don’t worry about that. You don’t look anything like a vulture; you look like a turkey.
Bubble: Are you sure, Julie?
Me: Of course I am, Bubble. You are much too kind to be a vulture.
Bubble: Thanks, Julie. That’s a great relief because I am not a vulture.
Payback
It was the Mother’s Day morning tea at kindy. I’d never been to one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
All I knew was that Ming was excited about a “poortrit” he’d done of me. “It’s deesplayed,” he said, twinkly-eyed.
Well, five-year-olds are always twinkly, aren’t they? Never devious, surely. Or so I thought.
The day arrived and I wandered through the classroom, searching the walls for an image of myself. Having given me a general tour of the room, Ming had abandoned me to go and play.
We were all given a cup of tea and asked to sit down while the children passed around plates of scones, cake, timtams and twisties.
Once everyone was comfortable, the kids were summoned to sing their Mother’s Day song. By then I’d found Dillan’s and Danny’s mothers and we all got a bit choked up when those twelve five-year-olds sang the last line – “Mum, you aaaarrrre the best.”
Once the performance was over, we were then allowed to roam free once again. Mrs Segal told us all to take special notice of the wonderful portraits drawn by the children.
“Have you found yours yet?” Danny’s mum, Heidi, asked me, grinning strangely.
“It’s a real winner, Julie,” said Dillan’s mother, Sandra, giggling.
“No, I haven’t found it. Ming never stops drawing – he’s become very accurate,” I said, pleased they were impressed.
“Oh, it’s definitely very good,” said Heidi, with what seemed decidedly like a smirk.
“It might not be quite accurate though,” said Sandra.
Were they being sarcastic about my little Picasso? How dare they! But all I managed was a defensive, “Oh, well, he’s really keen, he’s trying hard. Maybe he just didn’t get exactly what he was supposed to do.”
Their laugher still echoes.
Heidi and Sandra took me by each arm and led me back to the portrait wall. Suddenly, several of Ming’s friends surrounded me. One of them whispered to me, “It’s the next one, Mrs Goyder,” then ran off, laughing. I looked around to find Ming behind me, pointing and smiling proudly, but somewhat sheepishly.
I looked back at the drawings, still unable to find me, until Dillan grabbed my hand and took me directly to Ming’s ‘Mum’ portrait.
The shock of it! The freckles were exaggerated, but I put that down to the Ming’s artistic immaturity. The slash of red lipstick was crookedly accurate though.
It was the thick, arrow-like eyebrows that struck me most. They were like backwards ticks. I’d seen Ming do this a thousand times when he was drawing his monsters.
That evening I tactfully complimented Ming on his superb portrait. “You made me look extremely cross,” I mentioned, pretending to be light-hearted.
“You got cross with me.”
“When?”
“When I was ownee two – with the pillow.”
“That was ages ago!” I couldn’t believe he was bringing up the incident when I had banged my head against the wall and told him to put the stuffing back into the pillow.
“Payback,” he said smugly.
A gaggle and a giggle
With my cousin from Sydney the other day. She and her beautiful daughter have now gone back home.
Little licks of laughter and love
When Ming was a baby I used to call him ‘my little beautiful’. I would accompany this with tickling so that whenever I said ‘my little beautiful’ he would giggle and gurgle with the delight of anticipation.
I love laughing. I LOVE LAUGHING! Lately, though, there hasn’t been much to laugh about so my thirsty sense of humour seems to be grasping at the tiniest little things and latching onto them. Yesterday, for example, Ming and I were in a shop choosing birthday gifts for three of his friends – one girl and two guys. Ming had decided to buy perfume for the girl and cologne for the guys so we were examining the contents of the locked glass cabinet when he pointed to a tester bottle (you know, so you can test if you like it or not by spraying it on yourself). He said, ‘That looks like a good brand, Mum – Tester.’
I looked at him, thinking he was joking, but his expression was serious. ‘That’s a tester, Ming.’
‘Oh, do you know it?’
‘It’s a tester – it’s not a brand.’ By then I was nearly hysterical with laughter and Ming was blushing as the shop assistant opened the cabinet.
This incident keeps leaping, unbidden, back into my mind and making me laugh all over again.
A bit later on in the day, we met my mother and our visiting cousins at a restaurant overlooking a bay. As my mother and I stood at the counter ordering our food, she said the strangest thing to me. She said, “Where’s the water?” I pointed to the bay so she headed back to the cousins and Ming who were seated almost on top of the bay. I wondered if perhaps my mother might be losing the plot. Once I was again seated at our table, she asked me again and I suddenly realized she meant drinking water. Again, I became nearly hysterical with laughter; we all did.
I guess you had to be there!
Then, last night, when I rang Anthony at the nursing lodge to say goodnight and he said, ‘Hello, my beautiful,’ and my heart grinned.
Nightmares
Last night I had one of my adventure nightmares. We were all in a big ship – Ants, Ming and me – on the way from London to Paris.
Inside my dream I recognized the fact that (a) we don’t live in London and (b) Paris is too far away.
We all boarded the ship – Ants, Ming and me – but then I remembered that I had forgotten Anthony’s pills and my wallet, so I asked the ship’s captain to wait a minute and he said yes.
But when I got back to the dock the ship had gone; it was way out in the ocean and I stood on the edge of the dark water, helpless and frantic, with Anthony’s pills in my hands and a hamburger for Mingy.
I was too late and they were gone.
Do you ever trash your own blog posts?
I just trashed a rather sarcastic post I wrote yesterday because when we saw the skin cancer surgeon today I felt a little abashed. You see, I had wanted him to go see Ants in the nursing lodge, make a judgement about the skin cancer and schedule the operation; after all, his rooms are only a few streets away from the nursing lodge. Instead, Ming and I drove into town, picked up Ants, took him to the appointment and then back to the nursing lodge. Ants was fairly mobile so it wasn’t too much of an ordeal but I get very nervous taking him anywhere now due to various offshoots of Parkinson’s Disease that can happen suddenly.
This surgeon has operated on various of Anthony’s skin cancers before but not for several years. He is rather delightfully eccentric and so is his wife, who manages the practice, but I am a little uneasy with them because we had a bit of a red tape kerfuffle years ago and I got a bit cross. This time I decided to be polite and accepting of the red tape because the system requires it and perhaps my previous sarcasm should have been directed at the system? Or maybe I have a teensy anger problem at the moment, as does Mingy.
The internet is an interesting space in all its complexity but, due to the lack of censorship, it can also be a place of extreme havoc and a space in which the weaving of hate is possible. This happens on Facebook, on WordPress and on all sorts of websites. Sometimes I write something that I might not actually say; this is cathartic but also maybe a bit cowardly. For example, I wrote about my BNDN (Best Next-Door-Neighbour) yesterday more effusively than I actually spoke to her. Conversely, I have written to, and about, the unkind people in my/our life because if I tried to say these things, the door would be slammed or the phone hung up.
A beautiful relative tried to censor my blog a few times until I told her off because self-censorship is my speciality. I guess that’s the trouble with having friends and family reading your blog. You have to be so bloody careful what you say. One blog friend told me that none of her family or friends know about her blog and I think she was very wise! When I taught Creative Writing at the university I would always devote a lecture to the self-censorship conundrum because it is such a huge dilemma when you want to write something but you are scared someone will disapprove. I used to say, “Just pretend your parents aren’t looking over your shoulder. Write bile, write rage, write blood – write passion!” It seemed to work but it had its drawbacks because when it came assessing those assignments, it was like being hit by lightning in good and bad ways.
I am sometimes too honest for my own good and this week my anger has leaked into my posts because I didn’t know what else to do with it. That’s okay and I am fine with that. Nevertheless I did feel a little lighter trashing that post. Does anyone else do this?
Michael Terren – my great nephew
He launched his CD yesterday but we couldn’t get to Perth. I am so proud and honoured that Michael did some of his work here at Bythorne.
http://soundcloud.com/flaming-pines/cureakling-michael-terren-out
I will try to provide better links once I figure the sound thing out. Luckily Michael is an understanding musician!
jmgoyder 