Magpie's Nest

A 'Magpie' is not a 'Magpie' by Another Name

My friend at 'Whispering Gums' commented on my last post that there are some cultural differences that we don't expect to find when travelling in countries in which we share a common language. Australian newsagents was one example. Fences in rural New Zealand was another one.

Now I find that I have been sadly mistaken about the shape of 'magpies' the world over and as I have chosen the Australian magpie as my online blog avatar and metaphor, this was also thoroughly disconcerting. 'Magpie' seems to be 'generic small black and white bird'. I guess. I'm certainly not an ornithologist.

We were staying with old friends in Larkfield, Kent when I delightedly saw a black and white bird. To my surprise, my friend called it a 'magpie' in a disparaging tone. My friend conceded that it could be viewed as attractive, but it seemed to be the bully bird of the domestic garden, a very assertive little thing.

 

I loved the bird's overall plumpness, the long tail, and the beautiful bold patterning, quite different to the ones I see in my front garden amongst the gum trees. 

In the garden of other old friends who live in the Thames Valley, I photographed this small sparrow at their feeder. Many people in Australia regard sparrows as 'flying mice', introduced pests like rodents. To see this little bird actively welcomed and encouraged to feed, was another novelty involving a tiny cognitive shift.

 

It is not just the palaces and museums that one finds enchanting about overseas travel. Much pleasure is to be found in the contemplation of small differences (unless you are looking for a glue stick).

Down and Out and Glueless in London.

Curious Curating Requiring Seismic Language Shifts. And the Glue that Binds Us.

Great Britain and Australia. Not much real difference.

Or so I once thought.

Staying in Kent with old friends, who we knew formerly as dislocated expatriates sharing our commonalities and living in the Asia that was Indonesia in the mid-eighties, I casually claimed that Australia and Great Britain were culturally much the same. My hostess showed visible shock and vehemently disagreed.

I was so disconcerted at her reaction that I didn't pursue it. And I started to wonder whether the difference was more than monarchy and a few mutually confusing words like 'supper'( Aust-cocoa and bikkie at 10pm-ish; UK- main meal at night) and 'tea' (Aust: main meal at night served from about 6pm; UK-light afternoon tea/meal at 5 pm-ish - still not really sure). Hint: if a Brit invites you for 'supper' don't eat 'tea' before you go or you'll be in serious difficulty!

And now for the really serious stuff. How can London not have newsagents? You know, the one stop places everywhere in Australia where you buy newspapers, pens, paper, cards, envelopes, writing magazines, snacks, lottery tickets, international phone cards and glue sticks.

Take the humble Australian glue stick available in various sizes from about $1 everywhere stationery is sold. Finding one in central London is as rare as hen's teeth. it is so very weird that it has unnerved me.

All I want is to be able to glue paper to paper. Is that a dying practice? 

I foolishly brought the small size with me, to glue the paper trail that is tourism in my travel journal. I am now out of glue, buried in receipts and tckets, and seriously unhinged. 

Sainsbury's? You can get super glue, but I don't want a squishable metal tube of glue that will stick my fingers to a brick. Ditto little shops what sell newspaper around Earls Court. Didn't expect to see any in Harrods' stationery, but I was ready to buy a gold-plated glue stick. No such luck. Still down and out and glueless in London. I'm hoping to find some at Heathrow unless that is banned from international air travel like cross stitching and knitting.

We share a common language and some obvious important cultural and historical connections, but  I swear that is in the curating of exhibitions where I experience the ground shaking sense of intellectual insecurity that is culture shock.

Maybe the exhibitions that Australia borrows are cobbled together and don't involve much reorientation in thinking. It was the exhibition about William and Mary at Kensington Palace that was almost totally inaccessible to me! I just didn't get it. I didn't feel enlightened by all the crafty birds hanging from the ceiling or the mismatched children's chairs, let alone the blocked out windows in the darkened room with humanoid bird houses on sticks. 

And I did want to understand because my little central NSW city is named for Prince William of Orange.

Maybe the Brits know so much about William and Mary that they enjoy fresh perspectives, but for this colonialist, I was just really, really confused by the link between these two royals and my home town.

Still, I do like the UK. It feels so much like home. 

Travelling by Stick

 No, I haven't turned into a witch, as tempting as that may sound. What I have turned into without quite realising that I had, is a frail old woman. And, as such, I am considering all the issues that being in such a state affects.

This may well be my last overseas trip.

I'm in London for three weeks. I had visions of cultivating my inner flaneur. The ugly reality is that mobility issues have loomed large.
I knew I had a leg problem. My physio and I have been working hard on it. This travel challenge has overwhelmed all that! 

The right abductor muscle that could be managed in my home environment is causing big problems in an unfamiliar environment with many, many stairs to climb, hard surfaces to stand on, and much walking to get somewhere. And doing all that in the biting cold rain is not my idea of a fun time.

So this is somewhat of an ode to my collapsible walking stick, the one that I bought at a local mobility store in my home town for about $35. It folds into about 6 pieces and easily folds into a small backpack. When the pieces are re-assembled, the stick is solid as a rock. It is also adjustable to about 6 height positions. It is highly decorated in bright floral designs.

I have nothing against my stick. I just did not expect it to be quite such a support before I turned 60.

Things I now have to consider include:

• Can I get there on one tube line or will I have to change lines involving stairs everywhere and long tunnels? Would I be better going by bus?
• Can I get a seat on the train, if not on the station? People are very kind to people with walking sticks and I get a seat most times. I need it. 
• Will there be seats where we are going? The National Gallery has the pick of comfortable gallery seats, but sadly not in all rooms there.
• Will there be a comfortable cafe so I can recover from the effort of getting to the venue? Sadly, cafes come with divine cakes. How far to the cafe? 
• How many things can I realistically do without collapsing in exhaustion? What do I drop? 
• How much work do I have to do to adjust to this, to get my head around all this? As my dearest first born says : "It is what it is, Mum".  

 I am not a person who would contemplate group travel. And the reality is that I could not keep up with a group.

My husband has been a tower of strength and it is hard to convince him to let me sit and for him to potter off and amuse himself. I am happy to sit and wait.

My blog motto of ageing gracefully under fire has certainly been put to the test.

Still, I am having a wonderful time, despite all! 

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is the selected book for the April meeting of our book group. Tomorrow we will front up in black, wearing our pearls and Chanel perfume for our monthly Friday Ladies Literary Luncheon.I have made souvenir bookmarks for the group members with diamante buckles, black ribbon and mannequins wearing quasi-Chanel.I loved Karl Lagerfield's sketches of Chanel illustrated throughout the book. The many photographs of Chanel and her circle are an important addition to the book.I didn't expect to learn so much about the enormous changes in society in the early twentieth century represented by the ideas that Chanel brought to fashion. I've tended to find fashion frivolous, yet the comments made by Chanel about comfort and classic style were insightful. I had never really given much thought to fashion as representative of intellectual and social movements. The author's presentation was balanced. Chanel's personality was very contradictory and Picardie doesn't attempt to minimise capriciousness. Chanel seemed to be a very precious princess personality, and Picardie makes a convincing case for a damaged psyche. I found Chanel as a personality quite unappealing, but my admiration for Chanel as a businesswoman and style guru has increased enormously. I found this compulsive reading.One of the most fascinating accounts in the book describes the violent reaction of the housewives of Paris to frivolous dressing at the close of WWII. And the account of the violence towards women who collaborated with the Germans was absolutely appalling.

View all my reviews

I Took Too Long to Say 'Thank You' so I'm Saying it Here and Sending my Thanks Out Into the Universe.

I rely on your digital footprints scattered on the paths of the internet so that I can find my way to you.

I am forty one years too late perhaps, but yesterday I went internet  chasing, looking for my favourite first year university history lecturer (1971) to say thank you for the positive impact he has had on my life.

Some people leave a much bigger internet footprint than others so I felt sure that I would find an email address where I could place these sentiments in a message of thanks.

The first reference I found was his Obituary. He died in September last year, and I grieved. Some people should be allowed to live forever, to be given a Ticket of Leave for Eternity.

It was at the University of Sydney where I  met Professor Patrick Collinson, and I was a callow young history student gob-smacked at the passionate pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake. The world was suddenly my intellectual oyster and I gorged myself.

Although three years of history was one of my majors at university, I was seduced by anthropology, and then fell into teaching as a default. However, the love of history has always been with me.

Listening to Professor Collinson's lectures was as if I was in the very presence of World History itself. The boundaries of my world stretched far and wide as I gobbled up all he had to offer. It was as if I was sitting in some wonderfully ancient library being encouraged to browse amongst the books and to take whatever I needed.

I had enrolled in a Reformation History course and Professor Collinson opened a gigantic door for me that has never shut since. But he did something far more important than that. He demonstrated to me that students could also be seen as whole people who had lives outside the lecture hall, and with whom it was convivial to while away a couple of hours. Perhaps it was a foreign thing.

In those good old days a tutorial group was a small group of no more than 8-10 students. It was not the ridiculous mini-lecture size that I encountered in the early nineties when I did my Masters, or those tutorial class sizes of today that I hear about. It was intimate. And I had the great good fortune to be in Professor Collinson's group. Yes, the Head insisted on having his own tutorial group!

Being British, he may have got the Australian ethos wrong. No Australian-born lecturer (or any other) then ever did what he did, invited mere students to spend informal time with him. At the end of our course with him he issued an invitation to dine with him at his home in Beecroft where his wife cooked the best Irish Stew that I have ever tasted, full of wonderful beans and flavours that I had ever been exposed to.

I had rarely ventured on to the North Shore and especially not up to the toffee-nosed suburbs up that end of the line. It was truly a foreign land to me. Thankfully he lived close to the station and the directions were precise and accurate.

 Upon my knock Professor Collinson opened the door and automatically reached out to relieve me of my very heavy university briefcase (I had not slipped into hippydom yet - that was to be 1972 when I took to wearing Indian cotton shoulder bags whose straps cut into my shoulders.) He fulsomely admired my briefcase as a thing of great beauty and as he placed it next to his own battered beige leather briefcase he commented that owning one such as mine would be a great joy. As my beloved Nanna had given it to me as a present for starting university (as the first person in both families to ever attempt higher education), I felt that the briefcase had been doubly blessed.

We had been encouraged to bring our own wine and our 'rough red' flagons were welcomed as if we had brought the fine wine that few of us had ever heard about. 

Professor Collinson's wife was equally warm and friendly as her spouse, and we sat and talked and ate and created memories.

I suspect that it was that simple demonstration of natural affinity for all ages that informed my own teaching practice. Opening up our own home, and giving my husband yet another glass of red because it seemed that dinner was to be delayed again, as someone else had dropped off a last-minute essay that simply had to be marked on the spot, was just what one did in the country.

And my briefcase will never be decluttered despite my husband unearthing it from his workplace on retirement and asking did I want 'this old thing'? Thank God he asked! It is a case full of treasured memories; empty, it is still full. Now that I am pursuing my own independent Australian history research I think I'll resurrect it and fill it with the stuff of pursuing an independent academia in old age.

You can get a wonderful sense of the man in this copy of his Trinity College, Cambridge speech in celebration of his eightieth birthday, and in his 'History of a History Man' here and here. I loved 'hearing' his voice in the style of his writing, and treasured the opportunity to 'connect' in that way one can when a person's writing is their legacy.

So, 'thank you' Professor Collinson. I'll never forget your kindness and your intellectual enthusiasm.

Acknowledgement: The photograph of Professor Patrick Collinson is from the Daily Telegraph Obiturary.

Employers offered cash to take on older workers - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Employers offered cash to take on older workers - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

I applaud this initiative. I don't care who suggests it! 

I get tired of the adversarial nature of Australian politics. I love the rhetoric of consensus that I hear from Obama's lips. Wouldn't it be fabulous if we heard Abbott say something like ' We are thrilled to see the sitting government agreeing that the older workforce needs affirmative action initiatives from government. An active workforce where people slot in and out as their life stages change can only benefit Australia.' Huh! Instead we see the focus on self-centred vitriolic verbal combat with scant regard for the welfare of you, me, our families and our friends!

Every so often I forget that the initial purpose of my Magpie's Nest blog is to advance the discussion around notions of healthy ageing, and this item is surely a valuable instance.

I've been so busy living my own fast life in the slow lane where my old workplace is relegated to the status of friendship network that I forget that many people still want/need the kind of fulfilment that the workplace feeds them. 

And of course, many, many women of my generation lack the financial security of a long term superannuation/old age finance provisions. We gave up employment and cashed in our Super to raise our babies. We thought short-term need over long term planning, and in the same situation we would do it all again in a heart beat. If we divorced then financial security in old age is looking very scary. The stats tell us that many of us will be widows for a long time as well, so there's another factor to consider!

Unfortunately, so many younger workers see the retirement of their parents as a chance to raise toddlers all over again for free baby sitting (how many of us are desperate to do that?) , volunteering for all the jobs that no one wants to pay anyone to do, and general exploitation.

So, if the government wants to pay business owners money to employ us long enough to work out if we're a good fit for the organisation, why not?  Some of us would leap at the chance!

Forget the Voices in Your Head - It's the Numbers that are Really Starting to Scare Me!

Writing about the loss of driving skills is one thing. It's actually the numbers that aren't adding up for me!

Numbers and I have never been firm friends. We have a tortuous relationship. I'm just plain scared silly of them really.

Does senility research differentiate between numbers and words? I'm comfortable with words. I love them a lot. And they love me back. Sometimes we can get quite passionate.

OMG! What if the numbers go first?

As I've aged the world has become subtly and increasingly and exponentially dependent on numbers. And The Number-Smug tell us that we should keep changing our passwords and never ever use numbers that are so predictable that even a toddler could hack into.

Why is this suddenly stressing me more so than usual?

I am entering two ten thousand word scripts  (OMG did you notice that I automatically used words to label the numbers?) in a writing competition. Each has to have a synopsis of less than 1000 one thousand words. I have worked solidly on them until I am bug-eyed as they have to be submitted a week before we fly out. I have had to have the word count for the synopsis written beside me as I meet the no more than 10,000 word script target. It's not intuitive. It has never been intuitive. It feels like I've just given birth to twins. It wasn't the writing that got me, it was the scary formatting requirements and the bloody word count.

All of this did not put me in good humour for this morning's bright idea that I should prepare for our next big adventure.

We are about to travel and I am linking cards so that funds transfers are easily achievable. I had to banish my husband from my office as he looked over my shoulder and tensely tried to help.

He doesn't understand any of it at all and he was starting to seriously stress me as I was intuitively feeling for what the hell I had originally given as a code for something I don't use all that often.

Thank goodness for password recovery emails but woe betide you if you have a number of email addresses and have failed to link them.

The twenty-first century numbers trail is starting to look positively Machiavellian! And the implications for we ageing Baby Boomers as we attempt to pay bills, access money and thrive in on-line communities is another nightmare of Orwellian proportions. Forget 1984, it's 2015 that we should really be scared of!!

The Maintenance of Old Lady Driving Skills - Don't Drive Yourself Crazy Out There!

I love living in rural Australia, but it has its implications.

A few years ago after I had just retired, my husband and I attended a superannuation and life after retirement seminar. The thrust was financial of course, but the message that struck us both with the greatest import was the one about the need for females to maintain their driving skills. That message was truly about independence. 

We have pondered and discussed that one many times since. It's a thing about confidence and courage and the need to make sure that if one is suddenly single, that the great loss is not exacerbated by a severe crisis in the ability to do stuff.

I'm sure you are aware that for many of us, when two of you go to get in the car, that it is usually the male on the driver's side for we Baby Boomer generation. And that can lead to a marked deterioration in driving skills.

Living four hours from Sydney as we do there are three areas of driving skills that I personally need:

1. I need to drive in my local town of 40,000 people. That one is easy.
2. I need to do long distance country driving on highways to Sydney or Canberra, dancing around with trucks breathing down my neck and people who think that  the 100kms an hour that I am doing is way too slow. Winter involves black ice and snow; summer means blinding sun and sometimes air thick with insects and locusts. All year there is the hazard of straying kangaroos.
3. I need to venture into the city and be capable of driving through the middle of Sydney with all the road aggression that happens there.

It can all seem like a big ask for an ageing Baby Boomer with the million and one attendant deteriorations that life throws at you, or takes from you.

All three contexts involve different road conditions and different skills.

Yesterday, in the spirit of maintaining my driving skills I drove us South-East from Orange to Medlow Bath, a pleasant potter of about two hours. I wore my prescription sun glasses. As I drove in the morning I commented that scooting down the hills outside Lithgow involved all the fun of the Big Dipper with the brake under your foot. I honestly had lots of fun and enjoyed it all immensely. There is much road work on the Victoria Pass. That didn't faze me at all really. Returning home was a different matter.

We left our dear friends at Medlow Bath at 4.30 pm after a wonderful lunch and conversation. I drove due West straight into the lowering sun. It was literally blinding. All the way to Bathurst, then dark for the forty minutes to Orange.

The highway has many twists and turns and ups and downs. Each moment was fraught. Will I be able to stay in the lane? God knows where the lane is? My shoulders ached. I felt physically sick. I refused to change drivers as I had said that he could drink. I drank iced tea only. He hadn't drunk that much but we had not measured his consumption, not thinking that he may be needed. And besides, he didn't really offer to change drivers as he was sticking to the plan that I should maintain my driving skills.

As dusk dropped I changed glasses. Could I see without them? Not really. I didn't need dark and fuzzy. I settled for dark. My other distance glasses were sitting on the dining table. I knew exactly where they were. Changing focus with bi- or multifocals can trigger a migraine. I need to carry a large case with all my glasses in. So I stuck with the bloody sunglasses at night. I must have looked like a Mafia moll.

We stayed safe. I was exhausted and strained.

As I turned off the engine in the driveway, he turned to me and said "Now aren't you glad you did that? You were fine."

I could have killed him. But he was right.

 

Wise Old Women of the Tribe - P.D. James at 90 - on Writing

"I have lived a very happy and fulfilled life" says crime fiction writer P.D. James at age 90, and still writing and publishing.

How I wish that was me at that age, and there is time yet. I've discovered that writing is my happy place at 59, so writing and publishing at 90 seems such a wonderful thing to be aiming for.

I've created a new blog category here in homage to the women who go before me. I call it 'Wise Old Women of the Tribe'. It's about looking up in awe at the greats, those psychic mothers who have battled ahead on the path so that we may tread more gracefully and joyfully, and dance in the light.

I feel a lot like a first former (GenY translation - Year 7) gazing in awe at the sixth form prefects (trans - Year 12)  and thinking that I'd never get to be where they are. I accept that I will age, but I am daunted and humbled by the achievements of some very special women.

I think I may have even created a whole blog based on that at some stage in my bloggy evolution. I have a whole list of women who qualify.Margaret Whitlam was surely one. Germaine Greer - definitely. Ditto Simone de Beauvoir. P.D. James is definitely on my list. Who would you choose?

To an aspiring-as-yet-unpublished middle-aged writer, P.D. James is simply and utterly inspirational. I have loved her forever. Now that I am nosing 60 I love her even more. If you view the video link below you will see that crime fiction used as a structural vehicle to explore the big questions in life amalgamates the joy of genre reading with the philosophical weightiness of life's more intriguing questions and issues.
P.D. James is such an erudite writer. Teaching her novel 'The Skull Beneath the Skin' after reading Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi' was one of the joys of my teaching career. She has done the same with Austen. Her intertextual links give the original texts greater resonance in a contemporary reading context. The pleasure in reading thus is exponentially increased.

I've just finished her crime fiction novel 'Death Comes to Pemberley' published in 2011. It has integrity. I fell in love with Darcy and Elizabeth yet again.I love it totally. I was blogging about it on my crime fiction blog called 'Lost in Crime' and thought that I'd blog out my enthusiasm here whilst carefully composing and drafting my literary analysis there. Keep popping over there if you want to read my literary thoughts when they appear; these are my unabashedly emotive fan ravings.

The UK paper, 'The Telegraph', has published any number of interesting articles on P.D. James. The beauty of these are that they are interviews where James herself reflects on writing. This video is delightful as is this article.

All hale Baroness James of Holland Park!

Fat is Not all about Fashion - It's All About Consequences and Long-term Health

I watched WIN's 'Girls on the Grill' segment this morning, a discussion about anorexia and our daughters. Two beautifully slim, well-groomed youngish women talked about how important it was to teach our girls about inner beauty. Such a mixed message!

The supreme irony of the mixed message is such a sad one. The very reason that these two gorgeous girls are up front and gracing our television screens is that they themselves fit the very slim beauty mould that they were railing against! Just being clever and articulate is not enough - they have to look the part.

By the time we see older women growing old naturally with wrinkles and grey hair as normalised television icons I think that I will be long dead!!

The visual message from the programme was in direct conflict with the intended verbal message. Now, if the discussion had focused on health and the long-term health consequences of poor food choices as it related to an individuals weight and society's medical burdens then we might have been going somewhere useful.

Combine this discussion with the food industry's inertia and reluctance to actually help us by cutting fructose from restaurant fare and packaged foods and beverages then we have a real recipe for unhealthy consequences.

Any rational person is all for building up the fragile self-esteem of young women, but we need to be very careful that we don't enable poor health choices in our young women by demonstrating poor health choices ourselves.

How many times do women pass around chain emails about the 'benefits' of chocolate indulgence. Again I ask: who are we kidding?

Perhaps it's time for a little tough love?

Whenever discussions surround anorexia and young women take place so often the emphasis is on appearance not overall health. We rush to reassure our thin AND plump children, teens and women alike that being overweight is okay and that it doesn't matter really, it's what you are inside that really counts.

Well, of course it is! But the thing we adults should be worrying about is what makes our girls think that they need to eat to the point of excess to feel good?The focus in the media seems to be way off the point.

The issue needs to be all about the long term health issues of our psychological battles with food. Reject the fat not the person.

And why do I wade into this battle with such authority? If you read my blog you'll already know. If not, then know that some of my health issues as related to excess baggage aren't pretty.

It's time we older women lead the way and stood up to be counted. As we rapidly age hordes of us are experiencing the consequences of excess weight on joints, Type 2 Diabetes, blood pressure and who knows what else. We know how hard it is to reverse the habits and poor health choices of a lifetime. Do we want our daughters to end up with our health problems? Is that what mother love is really all about?

Just stop and think! Start a blog yourself! Wade right in there and fight the fat!!

We need to help our daughters rather than reassuring them that fat is alright because it simply is not. We need to see fat as much a cry for help as we see very thin.

Come on girls, who do you think you are kidding in the long run?