a grand sense of achievement

Take paperwork to new workplace - done, a drag, but done
Write a review of the new Church album - done, ditto but ditto
Assemble the wheelbarrow (this is not a metaphor) - Mia did it on Saturday
Check PO box - done, empty
Do some washing (of various household clothing/bedding items) - done
Do some washing (of two filthy beagles) - done, most satisfactory.
Clean out the fridge - done-ish
Pick Mia up from airport - done with difficulties imposed by lack of green arrow from Centre road
Submit some invoices - oops
Submit some essay marks - um...
Make some bread - done, though not till yesterday
Do the other things that have to be done which I've forgotten already - done mainly.

new job

I feel sufficiently confident, having finally received the offer of employment, to confirm publicly that I will have a new job on a very different campus in a month or so and everything will change. No more teaching at least for the remainder of the year and possibly (in fact, probably) a little more interesting travelling. In a sense it's two jobs - I have a four day a week research position till the end of '08 and a shorter research thing for the second half of the year. Both of these might involve going to my favourite state capitals etc. (My favourites are all of them, so that's great). Hopefully there will also be the opportunity to work on a few other projects I am totally committed to, if not overcommitted to... well, of course, definitely overcommitted to.

Now I will make a list of things to do, and later I'll tell you whether I've done them or not

Take paperwork to new workplace
Write a review of the new Church album
Assemble the wheelbarrow (this is not a metaphor)
Check PO box
Do some washing (of various household clothing/bedding items)
Do some washing (of two filthy beagles)
Clean out the fridge
Pick Mia up from airport
Submit some invoices
Submit some essay marks
Make some bread
Do the other things that have to be done which I've forgotten already

da vinci code, donnelly river, dogs on a big rock

The Da Vinci Code is a book I had long wanted to read because it has obviously had such an impact on everybody, including whoever it was who wrote the article about American Christianity in Saturday’s Age A2 section (well actually it was Friday’s A2 section, because they put the section back a day for Easter). It is, I have to say, a page turner full of great twists and no-one is really who they say they are or think they are, in fact I think everyone does the twist at some point.

I know it’s sour grapes to say I don’t think it’s massively well written, because I couldn’t write a book like that, and if I could I think I probably would, even if it wasn’t a million seller; I’d just like to write a gripping fictional narrative. But I do think that the lack of realism of the whole thing, I mean in terms of dialogue rather than action, is a bit of a let down. For instance, the scenes where reporters and tv interviewers go in for obtuse interviews and react to everything said, which never happens on tv. I hate that stuff. One thing I do like about it is the way that almost all the action takes place ‘in real time’ so to speak. There’s no break until the last 50 pages or so, even then there may not be a break, it’s hard to tell. As for the central ancient mystery, I am pretty cool on it; I don’t greatly care about the Mary Magdalene stuff except in the abstract. I think Brown falls down on the question of the importance of the MM element. He mentions that it has implications for the perception of Jesus as holy or more than human but as with so many of these things I always feel that if you’re going to have faith you must surely believe that God can make anything happen; the ins and outs of Mary Magdalene are surely a side-story to the central issue.

My airport novel on the way back is going to be Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe (later: it wasn't. It was Ian McEwan's marvellous Atonement. I couldn't find Tsiolkas). For some reason I have suddenly got the big idea I really want to read this book. I am not sure why but I seriously do.

I love staying at Mia’s parents’ house, for many reasons including the fact that I really like them, and also the fact that they feed us very well and make us very welcome, and give us a lot of wine and so on, including the very nice South Australian one I’m drinking right now. They have a great house. It’s about twenty five years old, and on at least three levels – the front entrance is a long way down from the road, and there’s a kitchen/dining room. Then there’s another level, with a kind of sitting room arrangement. Then there’s a level below that, with a study. All of these levels are under the one ceiling. There are verandahs to one side and you can see Perth airport from the sitting room window. Out the back there is a creek which I don’t think I have ever seen running though I believe it does, in the colder months. And you can see the other side of the creek valley from the windows at the back. There are huge rocks everywhere.

This morning I woke very early (well, 6ish which is actually later than I usually wake on a weekday) to the sound of what I was later told was a telephone bird. Millie and Charlie had been completely quiet all night so I went down to see them. I also had a strong coffee. I felt wide awake so I spent some time clarifying various bits of crap on the study guide which I seem to have been working on my entire adult life and which was due a month ago. Or was it two months ago. I also had some muesli. Then everyone else got up and I had a second breakfast. We drove out to Mundaring Weir and looked at it from a distance, from something called I think the Golden View or Golden Lookout or something. It was tops. Then we went to Gidgiegannup Bakery where Laura and Greg were on duty. There was a big misunderstanding between Greg, Laura and an Ian Rilen type at a table there, who had ordered a pie of some sort and had been told that it was just about to come out of the oven. It was hard to gauge, from listening in from another table, what exactly had happened but the point was they hadn’t given him what he wanted and could not establish exactly what he did want. They said they had blueberry pies and he asked if they had a strawberry pie.

Donnelly River (April 21)

We have spent four days at Donnelly River Holiday Village in southern WA. It was built by Bunnings in the early 50s as a settlement for workers at a timber mill on the banks of the Donnelly, a river which doesn’t seem to flow. The town itself was known as Wheatley but it has since been changed to something a little more descriptive. There is no mobile phone coverage and certainly no internet. What there is is loads of kangaroos and emus who like to be fed and will come right up to you with this in mind. Some of the kangaroos are more docile than others and still the very tame ones will get a bit shirty – fair enough. Typing this I realise I have forgotten how to type. Anyway, so basically it is 39 houses that look very 1930s but are actually 1950s, all apparently on the same floorplan entirely, and every time you come back from being away somewhere for a short time they are full of lazy blowflies, but it is really pretty great. Presumably the houses once had fences around them but in the spirit of community and of letting the kangaroos get around, these have been taken down and the houses all just float in the dirt. Most of them are arranged around a central wooded park area. There is a ‘general store’ area and a few other huts including a tv room where a children’s film is shown every night. I did as much research as I could on this area when we were at the Nannup Historical Society the other day and I found that, when the place stopped being a mill (in 1978) it was either sold or let briefly to HomesWest, then it was taken over by a private developer, and by the early 80s it was a thriving holiday camp place. And as well as the general store building there was a shop called Crazee Ladies which sadly is no longer.

I feel now fairly familiar with the surrounding towns, the aforementioned Nannup, Manjimup where I got a way cool jumper yesterday which boasts of my support for the football team the Manjimup Imperials – you’ll be seeing me wearing this a lot – and two shirts, one of which purports to be a Pierre Cardin, and a TransPerth jacket. Another town is Bridgetown which is preparing itself to become the new Margaret River when Margaret River prices itself out of existence. We have spent a bit of time in all of these. Also, yesterday (which incidentally was also my birthday) we went to Pemberton and rode the tram which I believe runs on what was once a logging railway. Very scenic and the tram driver’s commentary ranged the full gamut from bottom humour to risqué front parts of a man humour. He looked a bit like Robin Williams the actor/comedian. He was also an apiarist and sold honey out of the boot of his car when we got back to Pemberton. Mia’s father had once lived in Pemberton in the early 1960s when he worked for the forestry department, he lived in a one-bedroom hut in the forest and chose a particular kind of wood to be used in the construction of the ceiling of Parliament House. He also went out on a few dates with the butcher’s daughter.

For my birthday I was given the first four books of the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. My sister lent me the first of these some time ago and I read it quickly but never got round to reading any of the others, so I was very up for it and in fact am close to finishing the fourth. Excellent holiday reading. I don’t know what I am going to do when I finish it but I suppose there won’t be much more holiday anyway, so that’s OK. Back to the grind which includes shepherding a few sleepy and miserable students along to the dawn service on Anzac Day at sparrow fart, myself having had four hours’ sleep. I am sincerely not looking forward to this.

I am such a fan of WA. I don’t know if I would be as much of a fan if I lived here rather than came every year or so but I do really love being here. There is a lot to complain about I suppose not least the ghastly attitudes to race, etc one encounters all the time but you could hardly say that Victoria was exempt from that or anywhere else in the world. In that regard I suppose WA gets a bad rap and in fact got one from me just a few sentences ago. I love the way WA looks, the guppy spark attitude which needs a special word which doesn’t exist, the way you sometimes feel like you’re in another country, and so on. I am right into it.

adam

Adam, K&D's 200-year-old mouse. Quality of life - excellent.

shadow and a wombat

Millie's older half sister. Is undergoing chemo, hence the hairloss on the back. I keep sticking little talks balloons onto the screen to make it look like she is saying witty things but I can't seem to get them into cyberspace.

We all know people who seem to have scored a rough deal in life. You know, chance and circumstance have left them with that slightly less rewarding career, or other aggravations that they just don’t need at the moment. Heck, sometimes you feel these people have a guardian angel who’s just a little distracted, or perhaps took their case on as a second job…

That’s what Charlie’s like. She’s always getting into trouble, with Millie or us or someone else in the park. Being told off, talked about, dissed. It’s not like she wants to be naughty, it just seems to happen.

Like when, as soon as we arrived in Perth, on being introduced to Millie’s half-sister Shadow, she somehow got into a vicious snarling altercation, and while she certainly didn’t mean Shadow’s claw to get stuck in her collar, it happened, and in fact the claw came right off. So this was probably not contrived as far as Charlie was concerned but I daresay she got some kind of satisfaction out of the whole thing.

So Shadow had to have her paw bandaged up, and Millie and Charlie had to be banished outside (poor Millie must feel she is being forever punished for the shit Charlie does to people, but the fact is Charlie goes spare if she is split up from Millie for instance if Millie comes in the house and Charlie is left outside, which happens very occasionally eg bath day, so what can you do) and Shadow banished inside. The paw bled profusely and it had to be put inside a plastic bag so Shadow (who cheered up almost immediately) had to prance around with a blood bag on her front left foot. Shadow has been undergoing chemo, etc and has a tumour in her neck and has lost a lot of fur on her back, so it’s only understandable that Charlie, being a child of the new millennium, would want to attack her violently.

Rohan, who is Mia’s sister Kerstin’s 10 month old son with her husband Andy, is a successful person who can already walk and say things, which is very impressive, he can also hold a saucer in one hand and bang it with a spoon and walk and eat simultaneously, which I believe is more than Gerald Ford could do at any age (is Gerald Ford still alive? I don’t care). He can also wave. I thought children were born and then just lay there for a couple of years and one day got up, so I was shocked that he was doing all of this so young.

Rohan is very attracted to remote controls and the like, so there has been comment on his technological abilities, I suppose in part something to do with being a child of the new millennium. I said something to Rohan along the lines of how he had such an active day, getting given toys and meeting new people and so on, and that I was looking forward to reading his blog (ho ho what a jolly uncle). Andy said, ‘a blog, what’s that?’ and I said ‘you’ll have to wait for Rohan to tell you.’ And Andy said, ‘is it like a diary you keep on line?’ and I said yes. And Andy said ‘H’mm. I’ve never heard of that before.’ Which makes you wonder where he’s coming from.

This morning we just pushed Shadow out into the back yard (she had pulled her bandage off and ‘cleaned up’ the wound as Mia’s mother put it) and although there was a bit of a barking thing, it all seemed fine. Mia and her father and I went shopping and apparently when we were away Shadow pushed Charlie on her (Charlie’s) back and stood on her, which would be enough for anyone I would imagine. Later in the evening we had more dog conflagration as Shadow attacked Charlie for showing too much attitude. Millie (surprisingly) took Charlie’s side, I assume once again because it is deemed world’s best practice amongst dogs to attack the weakened, sick one. Mia’s father intervened and got bitten on the hand for his trouble. I, never one to learn from either what I see or what I experience, also intervened and whisked Charlie out of the way and fortunately was not bitten. Charlie barked until 2 am.

Dog world aside, we went on three great driving trips. One was a shopping trip, as mentioned above. One trip was to Pickering Brook where Mia’s father keeps his Alfa Giulia alongside the broken and skeletal bodies of various other Alfas. Some are being harvested for parts and others are one day to rise again as proud Alfas. Mia saw her first car there, in a state of decrepitude.

The other trip was a meandering one ultimately to Mundaring but we went to Midland on the way for some reason, where we found an open Salvos and I bought some bowling shirts though I am not sure why. But I don’t regret it. Also a strange Canadian mug. Since that Salvos was open we thought maybe the one at Mundaring would be as well so we went there and it wasn’t. We also dropped in at Mundaring Arts Centre and had a look at their current exhibition which was a high school art exhibition of the type we generally often like. I was particularly up for a picture of a street scene in which all the commuters, passers-by etc were clowns. Good call. Also a picture divided into 9 squares with Howard’s face and ‘Sorry’ written on it, and the other 8 squares images from protests. I really don’t know if the whole exhibition had a theme but it might have.

In the evening I picked up The Da Vinci Code and read two thirds of it.

ghost of easters past

I had a little sentimental nausea earlier today when I switched on the radio and instead of the usual Fran Kelly it was old religious programming. Oh yeah, we're a Christian nation, I was trying to forget and oh, plus, we're not really. But it did remind me of the bad old days when Good Friday was the single most awful holiday you could get, worse even than Boxing Day, because there was absolutely nothing to watch on tv or nothing to buy. It was a pandora's box of absolute ennui. Still is, I guess, pretty much although these days I am a little more able to entertain myself. You know, go out and bounce a tennis ball against the wall, or get Mia to drop me naked in the street a few suburbs away and I have to get back without anyone seeing me.

bloody gnawer

Charlie has a distinct interest in chewing on the arm of this very nice chair (the upholstery of which really suffered from the attention of Millie as a puppy, which is why it is now covered in something a nice lady crocheted and gave to an opshop). She really locks her jaw on it and bites, and looks at us on the couch while she's doing it. Yes it is an attention-getting/power-assertion device. Of course it is. However in this case I think she is just resting her head on there without the slightest thought of, I really want to sink my teeth into this mother.

In other news the amount of essays I am churning through is making me quite light-headed. I very nearly responded to a student's email with the words 'cool bananas'. Of course I stopped in time and amended it to 'fuckin' A'.