As I’m writing this on a Monday, it should be called Last Week! I’ve settled for the title above, as you see. I hope to get back to my regularly scheduled posting soon. Things have been a little crazy but I’m not complaining.

We’re currently waiting for a new nephew to be born - today is his due date - and very excited at the prospect of baby cuddles again! Wriggly toddler cuddles are, of course, great too but there’s something so special about cradling a brand new human in your arms. Expect that to be my “favourite experience of the week” in an upcoming post!

Favourite experience/s of the week

Finding out I was successful in my application for a 2023 Residential Fellowship at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre in Western Australia! Next year I’ll be working on my novel there for two weeks. To say I’m EXCITED and THRILLED and HONOURED would be an understatement!! More details to come on this soon.

A quieter but no less gratifying achievement was looking back through my journal volume before last - written in April sometime, I think - and seeing a list of four things I wanted to do this year, in terms of my writing, career and PhD progress. As of yesterday, I’ve done all four. I’m very, very chuffed. I’ll write more about this at some point because there have been some pretty seismic shifts for me of late, but all four goals were only to do with my output. There weren’t to do with anything happening beyond putting my hat in the ring, or reaching a certain milestone. Surprise surprise, these things are achievable with enough discipline. And achieving them has given me confidence to set my sights higher.

And, far out, the lifestyle gurus and self-made millionaires might be on to something - writing your goals down is pretty bloody powerful.

Reading

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley - I read this at Tom’s insistence, as he thought I would get a great deal out of it. What can I say, he knows me!

I only knew Sarah Polley from her work on the Ramona TV series I watched and enjoyed as a child. I remember wanting to be an actor myself quite desperately as a child and lamenting that we lived in a part of the country where as far as I was aware there was no, or rarely any, call for child actors. I would read about stars of TV shows I watched avidly, children my age or a bit older, and about how the entire family was moved to Sydney or Melbourne for their career. I occasionally wondered why my parents hadn’t done the same - I had, after all, wowed audiences with my performance in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Having read Sarah Polley’s memoir, I am so deeply grateful my parents just let me be a kid and perform at school or in the backyard with my sisters!

Polley’s experiences are quite heartbreaking to read - how she was exploited and vulnerable for most of her early career, pushed to her physical limits, struggling with the tragic death of her mother when she was only 11, and how most of the adults around her, including directors, producers and her own parents, failed to protect her from, as she puts it, an industry that was built on exploitation. She writes with such fierce intelligence, and with the benefit of both hindsight and now being a parent herself, about these difficult years and experiences, creating a dialogue between the past and the present:

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

I think that’s what I found so admirable about the book - that Polley unpacks these painful “dangerous” stories in the present, advocating for her younger self and giving her the voice she didn’t have at the time. Polley doesn’t vilify (all of) the people who should have known better or protected her; she even questions and acknowledges the fallibility of her own memory at times. A side effect of trauma, after all, is selective memory as a form of self protection. But it is in the aftermath of a serious concussion that Polley, as she struggles to recover, is urged not to lie in dark rooms and succumb to her symptoms. Rather, in order to recover, she needed to “run towards the danger”. She would only regain strength by pushing through and doing things that were painful. It worked, and so Polley applied the same philosophy to other traumas in her life. The result is a beautifully written, moving meditation on memory, resilience, vulnerability, strength, and coming to terms with painful things. Highly recommended!

I also finished an ARC of Free to Go: Across the World on a Motorbike by Esa Aldegheri, which is out in the UK now and is being published in Australia in November. It’s a very cleverly written travel memoir that, a bit like Sarah Polley’s book, sets up a dialogue between the past and present. Trapped in lockdown in Scotland in 2020, Aldegheri finds herself homeschooling three children and lamenting her lost freedom, not just related to the pandemic but due to Brexit and the rising xenophobia associated with it. She remembers a wild, freeing adventure she and her now husband took some years earlier, riding a motorbike from Italy to New Zealand - a motorbike she was the primary rider of. Aldegheri ponders the idea that women are expected to ride in the sidecar of a motorbike (referred to as riding pillion) as well as in the sidecar of life; their desires and dreams often being secondary, especially once motherhood enters the equation. The book switches back and forth from the exhilaration of the open road, travelling through remote Central Asia, India, China and then Australia; to the mundane, stultifying reality of pandemic living. Though, Aldegheri wonders, how free was she in the first place - as a woman, a mother, a European who has made her life in a country that has left the European Union? Even on her incredible adventure, before marriage and children, there were still constraints and borders that were hard to cross. How do you navigate the world, literally and metaphorically, as a free-spirited woman? As you can imagine, I related hard to a lot of Aldegheri’s observations!

Listening to

The usual writing playlists - I have grown particularly attached to an old Nils Frahm favourite, Corn. I vividly remember standing on a platform at Moorgate station back in the day, waiting for a delayed train, and having it on repeat. I couldn’t find it on streaming for years and was delighted to rediscover it a few weeks ago.

I am also halfway through this amazing episode of Between the Covers: there is honestly so much to unpack here. I have long been a fan of “The Hero’s Journey” both as a narrative device and as a spiritual philosophy, but I had never appreciated how rooted in colonialism (and conquering) it is. This is a fascinating conversation and I am excited to write more of my thoughts about the “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” because I think it definitely applies to the novel I’m writing at the moment.

Eating

I’ve got to start taking pictures of every meal again - it’s a very reliable memory jog!

Monday: Chilli made with black beans, kidney beans, leftover mushroom and walnut ragu and leftover homemade salsa, served with brown rice, coconut yoghurt and pickled jalapeños

Tuesday: Pasta with sunflower seed pesto

Wednesday: Roasted tofu, carrot and pumpkin with satay sauce and rice

Thursday: Both of us worked late, so it was DUMPLINGS (ready in 10 minutes)

Friday: Beetroot quinoa burgers (I loosely used a Deliciously Ella recipe - I subbed the quinoa for leftover brown rice) and homemade vegan mayo with fresh basil - OMG both were amazing! The mayo is keeping well.

Saturday: Sweet potato mac and cheese

Sunday: Leftover sweet potato Mac and cheese, turned into a bake (with breadcrumbs and cheese on top), with cavolo nero on the side

I made a delicious homemade dipping sauce for the dumplings on Thursday based on the OTK bang bang noodles sauce recipe, which is equal parts tahini, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and a splash of maple syrup. There was plenty leftover so we’ll use that for a stir fry noodle dish this week.

I also made Deliciously Ella’s nut butter chocolate chip cookies - well, my version thereof! Added a few extra bits and pieces, and they were divine. We had no self control around them, the whole batch was gone by Saturday!

Watching

Thor: Love and Thunder (4K Blu Ray) - I’ve never been disappointed by a Taika Waititi film (or by anything involving him, his TED talk is hilarious!) and this one was no exception. You know you’re in for a wacky, laughter-filled ride. Thor Ragnarok is one of our favourite Marvels, and we wondered how on earth Taika would top that - the answer is with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) seeking inner peace; his ex Jane (Natalie Portman) coming back into his life in a very powerful form but hiding a painful secret of her own; a disappointing meeting with Zeus (Russell Crowe), “never meet your heroes",” Thor laments afterwards; a terrifying villain in Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) whom you manage to feel a little empathy for; and some screaming goats who made Tom and I lose it every time they appeared. The soundtrack is awesome - it’s basically 80s and 90s rock, dominated by Guns N Roses - and it just manages to be both funny and moving at the same time, like most of Taika Waititi’s work. There’s some wonderful symbolism, I thought, about children being at the mercy of adults when it comes to real crises that are going to affect them in the future (climate change, for example) and it also sets up a sequel that has the potential to be equally hilarious!

Best Sellers (iTunes) - Tom and I synced up our in-flight TVs so we could watch this together on the plane to London four months ago, and we really enjoyed it, so we were keen to give it another watch in the comfort of our own home and without the need for subtitles! It was wonderful to see it again and absorb its quiet brilliance and admire the direction and acting. Ambitious young editor Lucy Standbridge (Aubrey Plaza) has inherited her father's publishing house, and things are not going well. Every book she publishes is universally panned by critics and book-tubers and the publishing house is on its last legs financially. She discovers she is owed a book by Harris Shaw (Michael Caine), an utterly cantankerous, alcoholic, reclusive author who originally put the company on the map decades earlier but hasn’t published a book (or been seen) since. Desperate to save the company, Lucy insists Harris honour his contract and release a new book; she makes no edits on the proviso that he comes with her on what turns out to be the book tour from hell. Very funny and touching, and genuinely surprising in places, I enjoy any movie about a writer, even a washed-up, booze-addled old curmudgeon like Harris, who is played brilliantly by Michael Caine.

Grateful for

I just realised as I was writing that on this day in 2005 (SEVENTEEN years ago?!) that I published my first ever blog post. Seventeen years. I had only been alive for a bit longer than that at the time!

What seemed like a very small thing ended up being one of the most momentous things I’ve ever done. It changed the course of my life. Who knows where I would be right now without it. I am very grateful for that, and for everyone who has read and continued to read my work over the years, who continues to offer support and encouragement to this day. It is so very special to still hear from people who have been reading since the very beginning. You know who you are. I am so, so humbled that you’re still here. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Admittedly, I have had moments over the years where I deeply regretted starting that blog too - moments where I felt overexposed and attacked, frightened and vulnerable; when that world was very new and not very many people could relate to or understand some of the things I had to deal with. I’ve also sometimes wished that I had known how dangerous it can be to start a narrative about your body in public. But, as Sarah Polley said in an interview about her book, I’m very happy with my life as it is right now so it’s hard to feel regret about anything in the past. It’s also hard to regret the decision when, as I mentioned above, I still hear from lovely people all over the world who are still on the journey with me, people who have been some of my most generous friends and cheerleaders over the years. The good has far outweighed the not so good. There are things I’d do differently, with the benefit of hindsight, of course. But no regrets. Only gratitude.

Quote of the week

“You cannot use someone else’s fire: you can only use your own.” - Audre Lorde. The quote continues: “in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.”

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! I hope you find things to savour and ponder and that give you joy this coming week xx

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