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.

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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?”

living and dying

I feel like unloading; take or leave with no hard feelings…

Since my mother and grandfather died within 3 weeks of each other around Christmas ‘06-January ‘07, I’ve been visiting my grandmother weekly, first at her retirement village apartment, then in her aged-care hostel room, and lately, twice weekly, in a series of public and private hospitals. It has been warming (and wearing) to be able to help, but it’s painful watching my beloved Granny, alone in a way she has never been in her life until now, endure bravely and more or less stoically, as her once-active body and lively mind fall slowly apart around her wretched, unfailing, steadfastly beating heart.

“I wish the good Lord would take me now!” she has said to me, leaning forward on her walker with subdued but defiant fierceness – and other words to similar effect on several other occasions… and here is where I go into a good solid ptooey of a dummy-spit about the health system and the, ahem, ‘medical industry’.

Granny, who as a war widow (Grandad was TPI) has all her medical costs paid by the DVA, has entered the age and condition in which one is constantly monitored and assisted through the day’s basic functions – there being little else you can manage, and you manage basic functions by no means well either – while your pain levels, though constant, are minimised and your general health is kept at its medicated best. The little declines common at this age – which if left to accelerate might lead to merciful release – become an administrative issue: when the patient slips from Level X care needs to Level Y care needs – from, say, being able to go to the toilet without assistance, to needing help – she must be moved from the hostel to the nursing home. You can’t flip back and forth over that line, even if medical policy actually contributes to your seesawing health. Besides, already you’re a mere husk, wretchedly disabled, eating without relish, shitting without control, decaying without privacy. No-one wants to end up bedridden as well, condemned to total dependence on overworked staff who (though many of them are absolute saints) cannot really respect you for what you used to be – but cannot help you towards death either. So you must be maintained at Level X as long as possible, until eventually you slip from their loving pharmaceutical clutch. It’s hardly surprising you’ll likely start to go batty in the process.

There is no way out of the extended wait, for her or me. She is soon to have a hip replacement – at 90 – because although at first she said no, I’m too old, it’s a waste of resources, a surgeon convinced her it will lower her pain levels – though he couldn’t guarantee it would enable her to walk and so stay semi-independent. She tells me she’s hoping the anaesthetic will kill her, though the doctor has assured her that doesn’t happen any more. A modest but staunch old-style Protestant, she lacks the courage of her more nihilistic convictions – in the face of her lifelong upright obedience – and probably didn’t make her wish clear to the doctor. Sadly, even if she did, that was the wrong doctor. She needs to tell her GP, not the surgeon, but such refinements are beyond her understanding these days. And I, of course, can do nothing but ease her daily (or rather bi-weekly) way until time wins or desperation gives her courage to tell every medico she sees.

But how long, forgodsake, how long? This vapid, industrial catering to the basest instinct – shared by the lowest of animate organisms – demeans us all. And not just when we reach decrepitude: frankly, I can think of about a million better things to do with my forties than spending them caring like the family spinster for someone who, to tell the godshonest truth, would rather not be here any more anyway. Poor Granny – Mum was so much better made for this task than I; she would’ve buoyed Granny in her faith, and she wouldn’t have been oppressed by the stupid, purposeless, bureaucratically perverse pointlessness of it all – and the gloomy awareness that one sterling reason Granny is still alive is that people, industries and corporations are making good money out of her misery.

The rabid right claim euthanasia – by definition a ‘good death’ – is a crime. How ironic. I think the lack of a clean, simple, properly counselled, supervised and legislated option to end your life is a crime.

for christ’s sake

I’ve been out tonight watching Geoffrey Robertson (bless him to his inspirational boots) give an excellent lecture on the need for an Australian Bill of Rights – more on this as I read the book. But at supper with my father and sister afterwards – the conversation lurching characteristically from dietary matters to clergy abuse to marijuana, the stolen generation, and the link between sugar and vision impairment, and back around to the immediate menu – Clare happened to mention this:

Washing machine more liberating than Pill, says pope

which brought forth such a guffaw from me that I nearly sprayed my nachos. Clare and I agreed that he was right, up to a point – but only with regard to women who are not allowed to use the Pill.

But really, shouldn’t there be some sort of law preventing dimwit reactionary religious leaders from, er, pontificating about the emancipation of women? I know, darling Geoffrey wouldn’t approve – robust democracy, free speech etc etc. Well, perhaps just a little charter then…

northern animation

Quote of the week, from Shiara, who is moving out of home and into a nice new flat with her boyfriend:

“I don’t need a TV; I’ve got Jason.”

Too true; he is a one man comedy channel. But they do have a TV.

trooly fablous partay, dalling mwah

Other accounts of Friday’s party may already be online – I know there are some entertaining visuals on Facefuck (which I’ve seen but can’t access because I haven’t joined), and god knows what where else. Most probably went up today: Saturday was the kind of heavy, dark, broiling day that makes for exquisite paralysis when you’re hungover… I (preens virtuously) don’t get hangovers, but I did feel pretty seedy, and I reckon there were a fair few corkers after Friday night…you should’ve seen Mirj. I dragged her off to the beach late Saturday afternoon.

The thing was, it having been so hot all Friday and there being somehow SO much alcohol, everyone was amiably trashed by 10pm. We never even got to broaching the absinthe. Nor did we sing, play or otherwise do any numbers as such, as had been planned – though there were fine performances all night in every space. Details, of course, must be omitted to protect the innocent, but we talked and argued and flirted and danced and people explored the house and asked questions, and the music jumped all over the place from Mirjam’s iPod through my great big speakers. Hilarity, outrage, seduction, sugar, sparklers, you know the deal. At least two people passed out on M’s bed – at different times – and as the night went on there was the fascinating asshole enthroned out the back and, out the front, the requisite tragic scene of a lady dissolving in drama, which I actually missed but am still pleased about. If the inner release a party is designed to create is to be effective, you should see a little negative energy here and there.

I say let it out – let it go, bro…

Stars of the show included Mirj and her lush rum’n'icecream punch diffused with fruit juice and peach spumante no less, which was all gone all too soon; the revolving shell collection (“this too shall pass”), Maximushka and the ladies, the fairy lights in the shade umbrella, and my dear eccentric androgynous Uncle Harry.

And a veil of discretion shall be drawn over the rest. You had to be there.

All in all and in short, the house was well enjoyed, and has been splendiferously rechristened. Thank you with happy heart to all involved :) – there will be more before long.

the usual

I have been remiss – I am overdue to blog, and to respond to comments. If you knew how hectic this year has been already… I’ll tell you, but not tonight; it’s too late. But soon.

Meanwhile, I caught most of Obama’s inauguration concert on SBS tonight, and I’m moved to the pooter thinking three things:

1. Humans, and particularly Americans, are weird.

2. African-American culture is the bomb right now, and will be for the next four years at least.

3. The way Barack Obama talks, the way he looks, the way he smiles… would anyone flinch if I suggested this man might be better for the world than the Second Coming?

Whatever that is. Maybe he is the Second Coming.

noel noel

Christmas is such a volatile time of year. In Los Angeles a disgruntled ex-husband dresses up as Santa, goes to his ex-in-laws’ Christmas party, massacres the guests and incinerates the place, while in the UK Channel Four TV broadcasts a Christmas message from the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sticks the boot into Christian hegemonic hypocrisy most lovingly and respectfully.

I’ve got time for that bloke Ahmadinejad. Must be a hell of a job that, and he’s smart as a button and straight with it. Not bad looking either… I know, I know, he’s a 50-something politician with disputable attitudes. But I like disputable attitudes. I’d sure rather see him on my front door step than an ex in a Santa suit with a gift-wrapped gun.

the lost art of beachobatics

On a tangent while doing online research for the Bonachela interview, I came across this gem of art news. Have a look at a bewitching bit of Bondi history.

And before anyone comments on the excruciating neologism in my heading, I lifted it straight from the SMH story, which implied it was in use back in the day. The art of amateur beach acrobatics may be lost but we’ve retained the more dubious art of contracting two unrelated words into one etymological slashfest.