No salted caramel macarons for me, then

Well. Today I went to Hutt Street on a follow-up visit to the nice surgeon who removed my gall bladder and, while he was in there, (gulp) biopsied (is that a verb?) my liver.

The good news is that there is no new bad news about the liver, and that everything that was eating at my innards has now been surgically removed and is healing up nicely. The bad news is assorted: (a) that gallstones can in fact form in the bile duct, so there's no guarantee that I won't grow more, and (b) the confirmation that the condition of my liver is not at all what it should be (NB this has nothing to do with drinking, so there) and if ignored and neglected could easily lead to something called non-alcoholic cirrhosis, which is exactly like alcoholic cirrhosis except that you didn't have any fun. And cirrhosis -- well, you know.

Now Hutt Street, as Adelaideans know, is an excellent place to have coffee and cake. I had coffee. No cake, no biscuits, no gorgeous French patisserie and absolutely, positively no salted caramel macarons. Not today, not next week, and only very occasionally as a special treat ever again. Sugar, fat and alcohol, formerly three of my main food groups, are off the menu for the foreseeable.

The bright side is that if I take this seriously, as who would not, then my days as a traditionally built lady might be numbered. Goddess knows I'm already ten kilos less traditionally built than I was when this all hit the fan two months ago. It could be the start of a whole new look.

There's a name for this

But look on the bright side, there's a cracker of a dystopian novel to be written about it.

I wouldn't

Leonard Cohen's giving a concert at Hanging Rock?

Is that wise?

In the words of the First Dog on the Moon ...

Australia, what have you done?

Normal people just keep cars in the garage

but some of us are running breeding programs.

Brothers, sisters and anthologies : oh the irony

So when I got home this afternoon from fifteen rounds with a sibling -- the ferocious upfront one, all teeth and claws all the time, and no backing down until one of you dies -- so stratospherically stressed out that my eyeballs and teeth were aching and there was a strange metallic taste in my mouth that no amount of medicinal chocolate would shift, I found two things in the mail.

One was a copy, kindly sent by Allen & Unwin, of Charlotte Wood's new themed anthology of specially-commissioned stories by Australian writers about siblings, entitled Brothers and Sisters. The other was my copy of the current Australian Book Review, in which critic Peter Craven continues his attack on the team of scholars of Australian literature (of which he is not one) who edited the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, including moi, that he began in his magisterially and savagely opinionated review of the anthology in the previous issue.

I've been a fan of Charlotte Wood's since I read her novel The Children, in which she shows great interest in the sibling dynamic and great skill in representing it, an impression further borne out by the brilliant, funny, moving introduction to this new book. And after reading the ABR correspondence pages I'm considering the possibility that one way to understand the shifting, endlessly complex dynamics of the literary scene and all its tortured interrelationships is to think of it in terms of sibling relations, where the keynote is intensity for better or worse, and where endless fights for territory, dominance, independence, sentimental vases and Mummy and Daddy's approval all take place in the hothouse arena of shared interests and common experience.

At the very least, I find that thinking about these things anthropologically and psychoanalytically helps me to get some distance on them, to back away from the rage. It's that or the bottle shop, and I have too much work to do tonight for the bottle shop to be an option. Besides, I want to be fully alert when Germaine takes on Planet Janet on Q&A.


Cross-posted at Australian Literature Diary

Good news for aspiring writers!

Because these days, apparently, you can get any old crap published. Any old offensive, outrageous, barking, evil crap at all.

A taste, if you can stomach it. My emphasis. Note the interesting elision from 'polygamy' in the headline to 'polygyny' in the article, and ponder on whether it was a nodding sub or a deliberate way to make this bilge look more palatable, or what. NOW READ ON ...

Yes, polygyny may lead to jealousy. We are all human. But ... the ultimate in giving is for a woman to give a fraction of her husband's time and affection to another woman who is willing to share with her. It is a spiritually rewarding experience that allows women to grow while the husband toils to provide for more than one partner.

... Many men in Western society complain about their mother-in-law or a “nagging” wife. If his wife and in-laws were difficult, would he seek more of the same? The willingness of a man to take on another wife is in fact a form of praise to his first wife.

While Islam sanctions polygyny, it does not condone threesomes. Islam also does not permit polyandry, a form of relationship in which a wife takes more than one husband. There are many reasons for this. Some are medical, some relate to paternity. Others pertain to the sexual proclivities of the different genders.

Yeah, see, you need to know who the father is. Because that's the most important question in the world. And everyone knows women don't like sex. And 'medical' -- hey, enough said. (It must be enough; he doesn't elaborate.)

Now re-read this article swapping the roles. Try to think of any man you have ever met or heard of who would accept that being one of several men in any woman's life would be a spiritual experience that would allow him to grow, or that he should look on it as a song of praise for him.

I know the blogosphere is particularly scone-hot on free speech so I take my life in my hands here. But this kind of stuff ought not to be allowed to poison our reading air. Speech is action, and some actions are not to be condoned.

Worry and the alleviation of worry

You just keep looking for your glasses until you find them.

You finish the novel, and then you finish the next one.

You go to the chemist and get Strepsils and Betadine throat gargle and tickly cough medicine and two kinds of analgesics, and take/use them all one after the other.

And you ring up the little man with the chainsaw and he comes and cuts down most of the overgrown bottle-brush one of whose main branches is split from the fork and rapidly splitting further and further down the trunk as the foliage is tossed about in the wild weather, with half the tree about to come crashing down any minute on the shed and the other half on the precious fancy-pants irises, the fence, and three or four of the bloke next door's chooks.

After a consultation during which we prowl around muttering, looking at the tree from various angles, the little man with the chainsaw cuts off everything but the main trunk, which supports the branch where the orb weaver lives. In August. I ask you. Surely it can't be the same spider, though it is certainly living in the same tree.




This is what these spiders look like when holed up in the daytime, their legs all swooshed forwards to protect their heads, a bit like the crash position on those aircraft safety cards, or maybe they're just pretending to look like a chunk of tree. Are they related to squid, does anybody know?

Perspective, restoration of

I spent an hour today with a dear friend drinking sparkling wine and bemoaning the state of our peer group -- almost all of whom including both of us seem to be in some sort of trouble or state of crisis -- and whingeing and moaning about the next few weeks, which one way and another are going to be difficult and demanding. When I got home I decided to tackle a couple of long-neglected tasks before settling down to the current work novel, and started with the very cobwebby outside of the front door hinge side.

Brush jab sweep tug, I went, thinking gee this is a strong web and look at those off-white bobbly things, I know they don't bode well: little arachnid labour wards. As I stood imagining the horror of lots of little spiders bursting out of them, a movement caught my eye: a very large redback, its scarlet stripe blazing, charging up the broom handle towards my right hand.

I would have taken a photo, but let's just say there wasn't time. And a shot of sludgy redback puree on the front verandah really doesn't convey the drama of the moment.

But there will be no more whingeing before lights out, and possibly not for the rest of the week.

Gah

Papa Cat got carted off to hospital yesterday after some sort of heart attackish thingy. Not very big, but there is some damage. Have spent the last 36 hours walking past and under signs saying Emergency and Resuscitation and Critical Care, writing book reviews in hospital corridor chairs using the Notes application on my iPhone, and sending texts to my sisters saying things like 'Have you got his Gold Card?' and 'I'm in the cafeteria, where are you??!'

Tonight he is, as they say, resting comfortably: under observation in a quiet ward, no surgery or anything. But a doctor saying "I've looked at his ECG's and I didn't like what I saw" is a doctor whose face not even a mother could love.

Enough already

The first three weeks of June are my least favourite time of year. It's officially winter, it's got seriously cold, and the days are still getting shorter. I hang out for the solstice and when it arrives I make mulled wine to celebrate. Quite a lot of mulled wine.

In the meantime the Weatherpixie over there on the right says more rain and so does the Bureau of Meteorology. Apparently it's going to stop for a few minutes tomorrow and Thursday and then it's going to start again.

Yes, of course the rain is a blessing, particularly here in Adelaide where a matter of weeks ago we were staring straight down the barrel of the gun and the death of a city looked like a real possibility. For the people down at the Lower Lakes and the Murray Mouth I think it is already too late (ask the Ngarrindjeri people about that), but here in the city and out in the country it's filling the creeks and the rivers, the reservoirs and the tanks and the dams. It's saving the gardens. People's lawns are growing back unbidden. Animals are fat and happy. Paddocks will soon be covered in the soft green fur of incipient wheat and barley. You don't get that from occasional little gentle drippy rain, you get it from the regular roaring, thundering floods of the kind that washed away half my back yard last night when the heavens opened and terrified the cats out of their little furry minds.

Now whether it's my advancing age and concomitant decrepitude, or the fact that I don't trust this house and its outbuildings not to leak or indeed fall down or blow away, or the fact that the phrase 'extreme weather events' seems to describe accurately what's been happening for the last few years, or more nebulous and less tangible anxieties being projected onto the weather, or some hideous combination of all those things, is something of which I can't be sure.

But there's one thing I'm completely sure of. I really, really need it to stop raining. Just for a week or so. Please.

Because everybody knows that women exist only as a reproductive function

Currently featured in the 'Say What?' spot at the Doonesbury site (see links in sidebar) on Slate:

"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

-- radio host G. Gordon Liddy on Judge Sonia Sotomayor

I know that many bloggers are too young to have any first-hand memories of the name G. Gordon Liddy, so allow me to show you his credentials.

UPDATE: According to Wikipedia, Sonia Sotomayor was born in 1954, which makes her 55 this year, so apparently Liddy is pig-ignorant as well: not only is she very, very unlikely to menstruate ever again, but she is probably well over the worst of menopause as well. So, G. Gordon, what else have you got?

Stockpiling: yes / no / oh please

It's a month since the World Health Organisation declared that the swine flu situation had reached Stage Five, the point at which the Federal Government's 132-page manual on the subject (and I hate to think how late how many public servants worked for how long to get that together and out in such a prompt response) said that Australians should begin to stockpile supplies in preparation for an imminent pandemic.

While the End of the World as We Know It scenario has thus far failed to develop, it cannot have escaped anyone's notice that there are now almost a hundred confirmed cases in Australia, with a spike expected shortly in the stats.

Over against that, some immunologists and such are saying that swine flu is actually not that big a deal, little if at all worse than just another new strain of flu. But the bloke I saw being thus sanguinely quoted didn't volunteer an opinion as to what, if not swine flu, had killed all those Mexicans.

Anyway, the manual (see para 1) appears, in its list of provisions that one should stockpile, to anticipate the scale of disaster that would see water and power supplies cut. More, erm, power to them for being cautious, but I'm not quite up to there yet. In response to that May 1 news item I linked to above, however, I have over the last few weeks been casually buying extra tins and packets of this and that, and have therefore beefed up various supplies from a list based on a quick analysis of what I couldn't go 24 hours without, much less two weeks, if push came to shove. In the order in which they came to mind:

24 hours
coffee
longlife milk (a six-pack of 200 mil cartons)
cat food
cat litter
2 x prescription meds
toilet paper

2 weeks
muesli
pasta
tinned crushed tomatoes
tinned soups
onions
garlic
olive oil
Nurofen Plus

Everything else is negotiable, but I find myself now with a freezer full of frozen green veg and a pantry full of canned beans, lentils, chickpeas, tomatoes, sweetcorn and tuna, extra boxes of tissues and aspirin, a spare new battery for the big torch, plenty of matches, all the ice-cube trays kept full, and a serious-emergency token ten-litre cask of spring water. I figure if it gets really bad I can put on a mask and gloves and go next door to swap my neighbour some home-grown lemons, spinach and herbs for eggs from his chooks.

Is anybody else stocking up? What would you need to put and keep yourself in quarantine at home?

Not safe for arachnophobes

Going out the back door late tonight to put some stuff away in the shed, I noticed that the pet patio spider into the remnants of whose web I blunder one morning out of two seemed to have called it a year, as they do around this time when April winds down and the nights close in and the cold snap snaps and the rain buckets down and floods the un-cleaned-out gutters. Again.

No sign of spider, nor yet of web.

Then I looked up.




You might be able to see one or two tiny white dots on the black background. They're stars.

I'm not sure 'serendipity' has quite the connotations we want

A friend and regular reader of this blog emailed me a couple of hours ago about that last post to say that he'd looked up singulars and plurals for 'remains' in Fowler's Modern English Usage, and reports that:

Fowler wonderfully says ‘plural names of diseases as mumps measles, glanders [pardon? Glanders??] can be treated as singular or plural’. But then remains are not a disease but the aftermath so not a lot of help.

I had a vague memory from a Robertson Davies novel that glanders was a disease horses get, and a vague notion that people could catch it, so, pausing only to read more news about a possible swine flu epidemic and start a mental shopping list of long-life groceries in case I have to stay inside for a month, I googled glanders (thereby acquiring my first-ever exposure to the verb 'to weaponize') to discover that both of these things are true, and furthermore that it is fatal, and that the word for a disease transmissible from animals to humans is zoonotic.

Eewww.

A Road to Damascus moment

As of a moment ago, I am no longer sure whether I still believe in democracy.