The Carriage Held But Just Ourselves

I've started a new blog over the road at wordpress (blogger is great, I just thought I'd try something different). It's a bit more personal than Marrickvillia... so please come to visit at http://thecarriageheldbutjustourselves.wordpress.com/, I'd love to see you. Marrickvillia is almost an old lady now in blog-years: she is out to pasture but I will visit her often -- in fact, there is a review of a new book set in Marrickville on my stovetop as I type...

If anyone would like to write something for Marrickvillia please feel free: reviews, commentary, politics, festivals, found objects, crime, culture, transport, food -- anything -- so long as it's about Marrickville, obviously.

See you around the layers of webbiness...

mj

Poor Neglected Bloggie

I'm writing this post from the airport in Vancouver - I'm on my way home and hoping to do some proper blogging soon.

I've been in Canada for the past few weeks, in Edmonton and in Vancouver, working and attending a conference. See pictures here.

I took 4 days off to drive through the Rocky Mountains - my goodness, it was eye-bogglingly beautiful, scene after scene of craggy cloud-high mountains, all tipped with snow, and conifers and glaciers and bears (well, one bear - hey, I saw a bear!) and elk and a marmot and some long-horned sheep. I went with my dear friend Cressida and we stopped to ski for a day in Jasper (where elk wander along the streets & the rubbish bins are bear-proof). I LOVE skiing, it's totally addictive - I think it's the combination of brightness, coldness, cushioned silence and of course speeeeeeeed. Excellent. Until you fall and sprain your finger or get a nasty ankle-burn, but even then it's worth it.

My conference, transsomatechnics, was rather wonderful too. Cressida and I presented a panel with Lucas Crawford. I had some technical glitches because I over-ambitiously tried to show a series of small extracts from The Swan, Poltergeist, Videodrome and The Ring, silly me, but it was all ok in the end. People seemed to get my idea about "media-bodies" so that was pleasing. I think I'll make it the subject of my next book.

It's hard to choose a highlight from the conference but it was great to meet one of my long-distance mentors, at last, the philosopher Kathryn Morgan. We had some wonderful talks and I now have a new friend.

I was thrilled to also meet Antony Hegarty, who is my all-time favourite singer (I played his bird album every day of 2006, all through my cancer treatments). Antony was absolutely delightful during the performance he gave for the conference attendees - he kept starting songs, stopping after a few bars and telling a little story, then starting the song again. He spoke about his childhood, about the environment, and about gender. He was captivating, modest, humble and very very lovely. If there were more humans in the world like him I reckon we'd all be set.

The only sad note of my trip was that Ruby emailed to say she's found a place to live with some of her friends ... that is, she's moving out of home. I feel bereft. But I know she has to do it, she wants to be independent and of course that's a good thing. But, well, you know, poor me.

Before I went to Canada I had my book launch, and did heaps of media stuff - mostly interviews - radio & a little press. That's me at the top there in the UTS Co-op Bookshop window, with the display that my very talented friend Natalie Coulter made. Isn't she clever? Gleebooks sold out of the book (they'd only ordered 30 copies) on the night of the launch which was very gratifying. It's great that the book is finally out there in the world, doing its own thing - but now I have to wait for the reviews! Goodness knows how long they'll take, or even if there will be any produced at all by the notoriously slowly churning academic world.

Anyway, I have some new ideas for the blog so watch this space...

Miscellanea

The New York Times seems rather keen on Dulwich Hill, which is part of Marrickville, just up the road from me. The version of multiculturalism described is rather vanilla (or should I say garlic?), but I'm not complaining.

In other breaking news -

Dean has tagged me. Actually he did this some time ago, but I didn't notice until I subscribed to technorati last night.

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

Hmmn, well, first I have to say that the two closest texts to hand are an old NW, its cover screaming "Plastic Surgery Disasters", and the latest Continuum. The closest actual book is a goodie, a hardback borrowed from the UTS library, Ruth Barcan's Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy.

Here are the required sentences from page 123:

"For our purposes, Foucault's description is noteworthy because his metaphors draw on that of the naked truth - revealed, paradoxically, in death rather than life. His description makes use of the recurring binaries of openness and closure, visibility & invisibilty, revelation & concealment. In terms of Perniola's categories, the corpse in modern medicine is not the older en-souled nature, but the empty box."

So there you go. That's rather good I reckon. I tag Superannuated Feminist, Thirty Something North, and Go Away Please.

All booked out

I sent the book off last night. Phew. Gee it's hard to find a picture of champagne that isn't absurdly phallic. Not that I'm anti-phallus, totally, but really... anyway I diverge. The book is done! It is now in Oxford sitting on my editor's desk, and she's already emailed me about some tiny changes... why don't you have a glass of something and think of me.

The Christmas Cupboard

This is the secret Christmas Cupboard!
Family members read no further!
I mean it, have a bit of restraint.
I trust you.

Christmas is coming in case you hadn't noticed. Last year we were so poor (I didn't have a proper job and my scholarship $ had run out) that all we gave people were cheap frames with photos of Ruby in them (beautifully wrapped). They were appreciated, I know, and Ruby is totally gorgeous, but nevertheless I'm really looking forward this year to being able to spend more than $6.00 per person. We have a lot of people to buy for... when Richard married me he got in-laws galore. My parents, siblings & their partners, my 3 remaining grandparents, and Ruby's father's family too... (in an unheard of development that side has decided on a Kris Kringle this year). Our family has grown recently too, with Hugh now with us and Richard's son Griffin born in March (Griff and his mothers are visiting us from London in January - we can't wait to squeeze him!).

I decided to get all my presents in Marrickville, then realised I'd be a little restricted so extended it to the Marrickville LGA to include Enmore & Newtown. We can't buy anything really big, as most of it has to be taken down to Melbourne in plane luggage.

ARE YOU A FAMILY MEMBER STILL READING? SURELY NOT? BUGGER OFF OR RISK SPOILING YOUR CHRISTMAS SURPRISE.

I've got a bunch of things on lay-by at M.A.D. This shop sells work made by artists using materials from Reverse Garbage, and lots of it is really beautiful. Dad's getting an Alex Noble lamp (to go with his Danish Modern furniture), Mum's getting a milky-purple Jane Alexander necklace, Dorian & Laura are getting the thing I really want myself - not pictured on the website - a deep red, round carpet made of really soft fabric with a nap about 4 inches thick. Helen is getting a Chandice satchel with a big H on it (what a find!), Julia is getting a necklace by Jason Bell (not pictured on the website - a small bright yellow & silver oblong pendant).

We've got little Griff a blow-up thing to float about the sea baths in, shaped like a hippo (what does a baby know?). For Hugh I'm thinking the new Scarface computer game, or a Fight Club poster & DVD, or a new skateboard. Ruby, I really don't know... I'll have to wander along King St & see what pops out. Grandpa - socks of course! The two Nannas I don't know about yet either... But I reckon I'll get my brother Gareth a copy of The Present History.

I almost forgot Richard... me & the kids are going to get him a crumpler backpack.

I might order everyone a dear little badge from prickie, or even use the badges to decorate presents in lieu of ribbon... one of the best things about Christmas is the wrapping. One year I wrapped everything in black tissue, then put a handful of glitter & foil stars on top, then wrapped it again in clear cellophane. They were like snowdome presents. This year I'm thinking of getting metres & metres of ribbon from one of the Bollywood shops at the Paris end of King St... ho ho ho

Day of the Triffids

I've just read a lovely review in the London Review of Books of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany, written by Bill Buford. The reviewer is Steven Shapin and he offers a great little history of our relationship with food as well as a critique of how we eat and cook now. I'm going to buy the book - I love the quotes from it, the interchanges between Buford and his pasta mistress best:

"...just when he thought he'd cracked the secret of working the dough with the matterello, she announced her disapproval with a blow on his shoulder: 'You look like an old woman... You will never learn if you roll it out like an old woman.' "

Buford, former fiction editor of the New Yorker, went to Tuscany to "learn meat".

"...by the time he returned to Manhattan, he was able to schlep a whole still-bleeding pig (only recently bereft of life) from the farmers' market back to his apartment, taking it up in the lift - together with an unamused Wall Street banker - and butchering it in the traditional Tuscan way: a tub of pork confit, chains of salsicce, a rosticiana, an arista (the aristocrat of roast, herbed rolled pork), vast quantities of ragu, brawn: 450 servings of food from one animal, skilfully dismembered."

This getting in touch with the sources of food is utterly admirable, but not for the faint-hearted, or those like me who don't eat pork for ethical reasons. The pig may have been lovingly carved up, but its life was still most likely absolutely misery, especially if it was female. I'll do my bit for the slow food movement by continuing to tend my vegie patch.


Remember when I put it in, not even two months ago? (see before shots)


We have lettuce galore - butter and frilly, which is more bitter. They're a great combination in a salad.


I never knew brussels sprouts grew like this, along the stem like parasites... I picked these and ate them on Sunday, lightly boiled then tossed in butter and a little white wine vinegar.


The broccoli head, still only about 4cm in diameter, is protected by this huge fan of bluish leaves. I wonder if the leaves are edible? It seems such a waste if they're not.

And... I looked for a pic of a triffid but only found out that John Wyndham's full name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris.