Magpie's Nest

TGIF at long last!

Hubby's retirement day - woohoo!! It's been 36 looooooooonnnnng years getting to today, and I don't know why the Douglas Adam's title "So long and thanks for all the fish" keeps ringing in my head. Perhaps it's just that I'm overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted by just how much my man is valued by a huge network of colleagues and contacts. And here I was just thinking that it was just the dogs and I who knew exactly how nice he is!

It's the veterinary scientist's last day at work. From today he's on long service leave until he actually retires in August. Who cares about the technicalities!! He will be home with me! Mega cause for celebration when one married ones best friend since the age of 16.

I'm glad he wore a good shirt to work today, and not one of the ones worn out at the collar, or fraying at the waist that he has been saving because I get so busy writing that I forget I'd promised to iron something, and he's been away and hasn't ironed anything himself. It makes for a better photo opportunity.

Here he is - the vet,  intently gazing into the bin, sure that the answer the caller needs is located deep down there somewhere, searching for the meaning of life and wondering if it is really 42 or some permutation involving the 10th rubbish bin of paper that he's spent the last month decluttering. Perhaps he's thrown out the meaning of life inadvertently?

The phone didn't stop ringing with people who'd just heard that it is his last day. And he kept quoting the wise words on this piece of paper.

Moi, as you know I've already done the retirement thing. For some odd reason this particular retirement moment feels far more momentous. Thank goodness for transition rituals like the farewell morning tea. He wanted me to join him there and I willingly went along. After all, I felt married to half these people myself - they actually saw more of him during the work week than I did.

If you've been a couple for as long as we have then this moment is like giving birth and getting married all on the same day. It feels as though we are rededicating our lives to each other and to doing our separate things together somewhere in the same house with the dogs choosing who to sit with with the one who offers the best treats until forever, or  the next stage, a farewell to life, hopefully in the far distant future.

It's at times like these that the Baby Boomer New Age Retirees really appreciate having a His and Hers study each with their computers and Wifi.

And I'm also wondering what effect it will have on my stress levels to know when to expect someone home or for tea, and not to worry myself constantly about the management of welfare needs in floods and fires and abattoirs and circuses and Skippy and koalas and Horse Flu and ... I'd better stop.

The future is all unknown as it has ever been, but it will be nice to have him home. Perhaps I can email him downstairs at his computer and get him to make me a cup of tea and bring it up to my office. What bliss!

Now, I'm glad that you suggested it. I do 'need' to buy myself a little extra retirement present ... I was thinking a small bottle of Chanel No 5 should mark the occasion nicely. What do you think?

Happy Birthday Mr Dickens!

Charles Dickens, born on the 7th February 1812, celebrates a significant birthday in our shared virtual library. Snuggle back into your comfiest reading chair with your spiritual tipple of choice, and  a tale of an aborted doctorate I'll unfold.

It was about the year 2000. I can't recall the exact details and they don't matter. I had enrolled in a doctorate in English literature through the University of New England and under the inspirational supervision of Dr Catherine Waters, herself a dickens of a Dickens scholar. Dr Cathy went on Sabbatical and I was Head of English at a large, dynamic independent high school. I lasted 13 months. My research topic was something along the lines of commodities and Empire as revealed through Dickens' writing. I was really enjoying tracing references to Chinese cultural artefacts and practices, but life all became way too busy and I collapsed under the weight of marking and possibly a few health issues. However, it was a fun ride while it lasted and I still get a residual thrriiiillllll so maybe as I enter my fifth year of retirement I'll look deeper into some of the Dickens issues.

My point of comparison is looking at what was happening in the central west of New South Wales at the same period that my beloved English classic writers were churning out their Victorian novels. Bark slab huts on the NSW goldfields side by side with stately homes and London tenements.

And of course one of my more inspired forays was to teach Peter Carey's 'Jack Maggs' to a class of Aussie 17 year olds who were unfamiliar with 'Great Expectations'. With an emphasis on postcolonial-postmodern rewriting. You had to be there. Or not. Perhaps it means something to them now?

This is my beloved study and my Dickens bookshelf is still significant. It bleeds down to the one below. I know that one of Cathy's books resides there at the side. My parents and in-laws bought me the complete edited letters of Dickens. You can see them all lined up there. No, I haven't read them all, but that is one of my reading projects.

One of my former English teacher colleagues and I are going to see Miraim Margoyles in her performance of 'Dickens Women' in a few weeks. I've just ordered the book. I think that I'll probably agree with the stance. His biographers haven't helped to change my mind. I love his writing. I'm not sure about the man.

My father recites the whole of the first page of 'A Tale of Two Cities' on the slightest provocation. I have his father's copies of Dickens. My favourite Dickens is the description of Oliver Twist as he walks towards London in the early hours of the morning as the working class set to work. Wonderfully evocative. Each time I read it I hear the sounds, smell the smells and delight in the sights. Such rich writing. Perhaps I might have to retrace those very steps on our trip to London in May this year?

Happy birthday Charles Dickens. Regardless of your private life, your creative life fuels our imaginations, still.

How Will I Recognise You?

No, I'm not attempting an assignation with an old lover or a new online friend.

It was a mishmash of family reactions to the changes to a loved one in extreme old age that got me thinking about appearance more so than I usually care to.

On Christmas Day we four visited Grandma in the nursing home. My daughter lasted 15 minutes before she quietly dissolved into tears and she and I withdrew to explore the issue of the 'loss' of a grandmother before death has actually claimed her. Her brother and father knelt on the floor beside Grandma each holding her hands and talking at her in some semblance of their former conversations. She noted that I had gained weight. Or did she say that I had lost weight? I couldn't quite tell, but it was at least consistent with who she was before. At least she seemed to know who we were.

For my daughter and her father, some key aspects of appearance disturbed them. Grandma is now very thin. Grandma's hair is cut in a blunt style that she would never have countenanced in the distant past. Grandma now has bright pink lacquered finger nails; startling to relatives who had rarely seen her wear make-up and lipstick, let alone nail varnish. Who was this little old woman who appeared to recognise them?

Appearance matters at any age. Psychologists tell us that self-image is essential to who we think we are. Experience tells us that some of us will go to any amount of trouble and any amount of pain and expense to shape that appearance to one that we at least we can cope with ourselves.

Physical appearance is a marker in just about any human social contact you care to name. And like life itself it is subject to change.

I was shocked to see how much some of my former colleagues had aged when I visited my old workplace recently. I hadn't seen some of them for three or four years and it disturbed me how much they had changed.

Keeping in touch with former students also means that occasionally I get the odd rude shock when the lack of compulsory sport and cooking for themselves reshapes their outlines.

And no, I did not seek out their response to the shock of sighting me. Some things are better left unsaid and unheard.

It was an article on hair style and the aged that got me thinking much more about this whole issue of ageing and physical appearance. The writers were arguing that when governments calculate monetary allowances for care, that personal grooming should be included as appearance is so closely tied to identity. The article is by Richard Ward and Caroline Holland. It appeared in Volume 31, Part 2, February 2011. The title is: 'If I look old, I will be treated old': hair and later-life image dilemmas.

The Cambridge University Press publishes The Journal of the Centre for Policy on Ageing and the British Society of Gerontology. It is called 'Ageing & Society'. It is seriously a great read if you're interested in academic studies on a multitude of aspects of how ageing is accommodated in human society. It's not a journal for institutionalised carers. It is a journal that explores the extreme end of life. I subscribed to it last year when I was still searching for my post paid workforce purpose in life. I've found that purpose now and I'm using the journals to enrich it.

I have  the complete set of journals for 2011 and they are proving a fabulous resource as I near completion on my first novel. It's actually a novella and I'm submitting it in April, but I'm guessing that once the competition is done with it then I'll keep on tinkering with it as there is a lot more to say on the subject. Writing about old age in a fictionalised context is helping me deal with the pain of visiting my mother-in-law in the nursing home. I keep trying to suppress the Black Humour that keeps seeping out of me, but it won't go away.

One week to go before Mr Magpie retires and I keep wondering how I'll cope with him home. I've been leading a very focused life during the working week, spending large amounts of morning time on writing and attempting to become very disciplined in my approach to creative output and energy. I simply forget that the rest of the world is there!

Mr Magpie tells me that he is going to get us fit, and we are awaiting the arrival of two old-fashioned scooters, but that's probably a tale for another time.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of a first novel by an author my age. He's Australian Peter Twohig and 'The Cartographer' has just been published in 2012. It is proving an engrossing, amusing, poignant read. Anyone from inner city Melbourne reading this novel would get a special thrill as the geographical and sociological references are beautifully evoked.

I'll blog more about it, but basically it's about a young eleven year old boy growing up in the fifties in inner city Melbourne. He witnesses more deaths than a kid has a right to expect and his passion for creative forays into the jungles of suburban Melbourne is fueled by fear and hope.

I was so inspired that I thought I'd create yet another blog where I only reviewed the first novel of various authors, mainly Australian. Then I thought of all that work and energy that I'd rather be pouring into my own creative output so I decided to create a new category for just that purpose - I'm calling it 'First Write'. Catchy eh?