hip, hip…

As you may have caught in the ever-shifting flow of news on Facebook, the date is now set for the surgical replacement of my right hip  – 29th January. I’m pleased – that’s less waiting time between the deciding and the doing than I expected. I actually could’ve had January 4, but I enjoy the swimming/sunbathing/partying/relaxing traditions of a Sydney summer too much to so incapacitate myself at the height of it. I’d rather spend January limping and grumbling in the sun than under fluoros doing physio – and hydrotherapy is a long way short of surf and sand – so the end of January is perfect.

My surgeon is Dr Michael O’Sullivan, who does all the ex-dancers and athletes, and pretty much only does hips. We’ll be at the Mater, according to their website “the largest and one of the most respected orthopaedic surgical hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere, performing over 1,500 joint replacements every year”. I’ll be checking in on the 28th and staying 5 or 6 days. Do come and visit – I plan to be an exceptionally lively patient.

adventures in solitude (forthcoming noir zombie vs vampire film)

adventures in solitude pt 1: fact

A little after dark I am driving a pale blue Kombi down an unlit country road and suddenly I come to a barred gate. Damn, not such a good shortcut. I swing the Kombi into a three-point turn and while I’m facing an open field my lights go out. The darkness around me is immense, shadowy and silent beyond my little engine. I have the parkers, which on the Kombi are negligible, and I can see only by holding the high beam on. I check my phone: no reception. Steering while holding the high beam against the wheel and trying not to turn the indicators on, I head back to the point where I took the wrong turn, remembering houses there. On the way, I see a house I hadn’t noticed before and pull over. I knock repeatedly on the front door; no answer. I step back down into the yard and walk round one side, dodging bits of farm junk. There’s a light on inside, but no-one’s home. Suddenly I can hear my own rough accelerated breathing above the anxious orange clicking of the hazard lights, and the rustling quiet of the surrounding night. This is how horror movies start. Hn. Better get back on the road.

adventures in solitude pt 2: fiction

She stood at the black dresser in the lamplight, twirling a toothpick round the cone and gazing darkly into the mirror. Casey appeared in the doorway, looking insomniac. ‘Casey,’ she growled, low, slow and husky. ‘Go back to bed. Don’t come out here tonight. Forget anything you see or hear, and don’t come near me till daylight. I’m -’ her upper lip curled slightly ‘- dangerous… I’m in a mood to do some damage; hell, I’m in the mood that will do damage if I’m anywhere near anyone! Please, go back to bed. And shut your goddamn door.’

she do da mash/she do da monster mash

I am singing this weekend in front of a festival-size crowd for the first time. I’m in the chill zone at Monster Mash – a 45 minute set ending with a strip to tiny shorts and halter, more-or-less ironic self-flagellation with blood-soaked cat, and a bit of stagediving… leading up to the finale in fuck-off big boots and khaki chocolate-soldier jacket.

Should be a hoot ;)

coming home to strangeness

I’m home, but I’m in a strange state. It’s 11.30pm, the plane got in after eight but it took me a couple of hours to get from the airport to Redfern.

That was fun… not. Just under a week ago my bank got wind that my debit card details “may have been compromised” and cancelled the damn thing. My financial lifeline in Europe, you understand. I survived on friend credit (fredit? A froan?) as far as the boarding gate, and I had AUD$10 in my wallet.

Not enough for a cab, though I thought I might be able to share one. But the first cabbie I approached with that plan demanded 75% of the fare, which is his right by law, but he was unpleasantly aggro about it and I hadn’t, at that point, the resilience to keep trying. I was hoping to avoid the train because it meant changing at Central and hauling my bags up 30 steps at Redfern. So I investigated the bus. ‘Investigated’ in this context means queued for, since signage at the airport bus/coach stops is minimal and information non-existent, and after 15 minutes along came a bus whose driver said I needed the 400, which would be along in another 15 minutes, and I’d have to change at Mascot shops and cross the road for the 309. I reconsidered the train, in case it came sooner, but it turns out the train fare on that rip-off private line is over $15. Back to the bus.

A journey by car, planes, and buses that began at 9.30 GMT yesterday ended sometime after 22.00 EST tonight with me collapsing into a chair on the terrace, crumb of herbal anaesthetic in hand. No-one was home, but the new presence is everywhere evident in little differences, someone else’s stuff. Where is Casey? Is he coming home tonight? Is he hiding out? Does he even expect me? I really should’ve Facebook messaged him, I realise after a while, because I don’t have his phone number. This is a little weird.

And so I unpack my laptop and set up, but though it tells me I’m connected to my wireless network, Firefox can’t find anything; Skype won’t open, I’m just not online. I plug in, but it’s not that. A problem with my ISP? I don’t know if I even have their phone number, and I’m too sore and tired to go look for it. Worse, I’ve put my Australian SIM back in my phone but my credit’s expired, and I can only top up online. Worse still, like an idiot I months ago let myself be booked to model tomorrow afternoon, and of course with no phone credit the SOS texts I tried to send this evening to organise a replacement wouldn’t have gone. I’ll have to call the models tomorrow morning, because at the moment, my only means of communication is the landline and it’s a little late to be making calls.

Suddenly, I’m strangely isolated. I can’t even call the people I should. All I can do is write – offline – about coming home to strangeness. And try to reassemble the thoughts I had while away, about coming back.

It’s 1am. I’ve cooked and eaten a bowl of noodles, by my calculations my sixth light meal in about 32 hours. I’m tired and buzzy; and I’ve finished the chocolate. I should try to sleep.

Oh yeah. Don’t worry, I do plan to write about the trip, the whole trip (though don’t expect ‘nothing but’) – but at the moment I just have scattered notes, so bear with me while I construct and reconstruct, over the coming days and weeks. Each section will have its moment, backdated to its time. Do backdated entries show up on an RSS feed? Keep me posted.

sissinghurst castle gardens

We cruise through the hedgerowed English countryside, village to village, till we pass picturesque Sissinghurst and turn in along the track to the castle. Well, to the gardens, actually, since the castle, though it has enjoyed various incarnations since the 1100s, is now little but a gloriously solid Norman-style tower holding two writing rooms in which some of 20th-century Britain’s boldest words were written.

Vita Sackville-West and her family bought the ruined castle – a tower, a decrepit Victorian farmhouse and some outbuildings – in 1930, and turned the tower into studies and the farmhouse into a home – surrounded by what the National Trust calls ‘one of the world’s great gardens’. Within a couple of acres, enclosed by a wall on one side and a moat on the other, there is a series of ‘rooms’ – the white garden, the rose garden, the orchard, herb garden, yew walk, lime walk, nuttery, and so on. It’s a wanderer’s paradise, a place of grand gestures and exquisite detail, colour and shadow, encompassing both ancient stability and constant change. Vita was an intimate friend of Virginia Woolf and the inspiration for the central character in Woolf’s extraordinary novel Orlando, and the romantic, heroic atmosphere of that fantastical tale can be felt around the estate.

Besides the garden there is also, among other things, a working Elizabethan barn, a fine restaurant, picnic and parking areas, cafe, plant shop, etc. The restaurant looks out over the fields, including the organic vegetable plots from which diners’ plates are filled. I’ve promised myself that on my next trip to England, I’ll eat there.

Strangely, though I adored the gardens, my greatest pleasure was the tower – the spiralling climb, the individual writing rooms of that fascinating couple, the view from the parapets. And those exceptionally bold words? Vita’s diaries, published according to her wishes after her death by her son Nigel Nicholson in Portrait of a Marriage, give a frank and searching account of her personal life, centring around her bisexuality, her relationships with women and her passionate devotion to her husband. By allowing for publication, Vita did both the women’s movement and the sexual revolution a significant favour.

Driving away in the scented, tinted late afternoon we chose to linger in the High Weald, and stopped at a pub in Goudhurst. A great many pubs in England are almost psychedelically picturesque; this was one of them. The Star and Eagle is all 400-year-old oak beams and leadlight casements, crooked corridors and quaint but scrupulously modern facilities – gorgeous. We had the place to ourselves; ordered coffee and the local apple cake, and sat gazing out a window over soft green, gold and purple hills, the middle distance dotted with sheep.  Across the valley the contours of the weald gleamed under the slanting late summer sun, and in the pale distant sky four hot air balloons rose lazily, one after the other, and floated westward.

time flies, and so shall i

The new – now newish – love affair has (as they are wont to do) driven all before it, drowned much in its briny rush, and generally spread chaos and glory all around. I’m now amid a couple of weeks’ respite before being reunited with the Troublemaker Himself in his home country for a few weeks. The man known herein as Knowledge (for the sake of his online modesty) is from Surrey, more precisely the village of Ewell – now (I gather) pretty much swallowed up by Greater London. I’ll be joining him there before we take various trips into the English countryside and through the Channel tunnel to France, Spain and Germany. I’ll be away six weeks altogether, from September 2 to October 20. If you’re in Europe, plan to see me. If you’re in Australia, catch up before and/or after. More details soon.

snap up a much-wanted present for jaqi now!

I know you love these rare opportunities…

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With thanks to my inimitable research assistant Susan

necessarily cryptic

Woh… this ride is wild

Talk about Knowledge: I did it – I got it. I was there. In my body, in the room – I could feel myself. I could see myself…

:) Hallelu Jaqi

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from an old diary, circa 2003

I arrived at the bus-stop and took a seat on the bench beside an elderly gent. He was immaculately dressed in an old-fashioned suit, blue-striped shirt and a gold satin paisley cravat. He turned to me with what I believe was an amiable grin, but it was hard to tell: his teeth were brown and broken, his face cracked, scabbed and warty, and the underlying muscle structure seemed to have collapsed lopsidedly. When he spoke, his tone was cultured, but he said everything at least twice.

“Dog’s colour was buff, so what did they call her? Buffy!” Some of his speech was incomprehensible, but I played along, being friendly. He chuckled wetly, or maybe it was a cough.

“Dog raisers, they were. Dog was buff, so they called her Buffy!” I touched his shoulder.

“Is that your bus?”