Familiar strange

The last two days I have been without car. This is no big deal really. The panel beater is right across the road from the bus stop, or should that be the other way around? Anyway, I chose the panel beater because of its proximity to the bus that would take me to work with minumum fuss. It is also the bus to take my young son to daycare. In fact, the bus stops right between my work and his daycare. Perfect really.

And this is when the adventure begins...A bus, a boy and the start of summer are well met. I find myself clutching the sweaty palm of my little man as we make our way through the leafy back streets of North Melbourne, across the park from the public pool where we swam in glorious evening light just last night. Past the men at work, I have to pull on my son's hand a little more strongly, captivated as he is by digging equipment and witch's hats. Round the corner to the bus stop at the end of the street, by the tram stop and the corner shops. We sit on the green metal park bench and wait. He sits with backpack still on his tiny back, the pack sporting Lighting McQueen, almost as big as he. And then he sees it. The adventure takes flight. A well fed friendly looking possum staring intently through the wire fence, one paw resting casually on the tree. The boy stares back. The possum leans forward and back, as unaware pedestrians march by. The possum scampers up the tree a bit, and back down, leans forward further still, then hesitates, his self-assuredness astounding, his fearlessness a delight.  Avery magic possum

 My boy jumps up. 'He's coming to get me mum!' I laugh but I'm not so sure about the motives of possums either (even though this one is especailly cute), so happily spy the bus from the corner of my eye.  As we alight the bold little creature darts across the road, making safely, I am relieved to note, to the other side. We were not his intended destination after all. Boy and I take our seats, a little elated, for so much adventure so early. He sits, faced glued to the window, as we wind our way along. This is the same route we take every morning in our car yet it is somehow transformed from the vantage of the bus. Even for me.I feel like a tourist. I feel like I am seeing with fresh eyes this old home of mine. The warm day, the smell of the bus, like a foreign place I can't name. I feel fresh even through my tiredness. I feel adventurous for doing something so mundane. Familiar strange. It is a delight to feel this way. Perhaps it is the fact of being on the bus in this city of trams. Or not being in the one to have to navigate the ever worsening traffic. Even for the extra time it takes, I feel far more relaxed when I arrive at my destination. Turn me into a TV commercial. I'm a convert to the bus. To the extra bit of day for me and my little man. To letting someone else drive. To feeling like a tourist in my own town.

Magical realist earrings

My early birthday present to myself bought at the NORTH MELBOURNE MARKET, just about the most awesome craft market ever. Called Birds of Paradise by Julie Parker. Having regretted cutting off all my hair since the day I did it, wearing these tonight to see the sublime EXPECTATION at Arts House made me feel long of hair and cool of soul. Better than extensions. That's a lot of links. Enjoy. Next week I'll post some pics of me actually wearing them at my 33rd at The Estelle.

Clare Bowditch - long live the Queen

"If we're all princesses, who's going to be the queen?'

 Ms Bowditch asks this question on the title track of her latest offering, the sublime Modern Day Addiction, and, after seeing her in action last night, I can't help but think it is rhetorical. As she commanded the stage at the Forum, Melbourne Cup eve, flanked by the sweet voices of three diminutive princesses, fluttering about like handmaids to the high priestess of cool, I had no doubt about the answer to that question.

I must admit to a bit of a mad crush on Clare Bowditch. I don't want to be her lover, however. I'd just quite like to be her. No actually, I totally want to be her. I have only seen her play three times, but for a non-gig going person such as myself, that's a pretty impressive record. The first time was at the Corner when she and Libby announced their respective pregnancies (CB had twins on board). Being privy to that moment was intimate and lovely, made even more so by the fact that I too had a bun in the oven, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of enduring sisterhood with the fecund CB. Another element was added to that insiders secret last night when CB shared with us that it was at the Forum 8 years prior she had stolen her way into the venue to tell the unsuspecting Marty, quietlty swigging his beer and watching a gig, that she was with child.

The second CB gig I attended was also at the Corner. This time I was there with a group of women, nearly all of them mothers, and one of them heavily pregnant, and whilst the music was as brilliant as ever, and CB rocked my world, the weariness of knowing I had a nearly 2 year old waiting at home for me and, the total lack of seating at the venue, the impossible exhaustion brought on by one glass of wine, meant that I looked up at the masterpeice of a woman rocking out on stage through a misty eyed veil of nostaligia for my youth. But! Knowing she had 3 wee ones at home made me determined to endure to the very end. I remember thinking how nauseatingly young the crowd appeard to my aged eyes, and how terribly enthusiastic they all seemed to be about being up so late.

I learnt something that night. Mothers can and do rock. CB was further secured in my mind as Goddess.

At the ARIA awards in 2009, Clare turned up in this little number...

I got it. Michael Dyer wrote in The Age recently about this number...

"SHE used to be such a nice, straight, modern pop star. Remember the 2006 ARIA Awards? There was a Clare Bowditch for the whole family. Cheerfully pregnant and pure of voice between that nice Kasey Chambers and straight Bernard Fanning; gratefully collecting her best female artist trophy to the pleasing acoustic strains of a heartbreaking ballad. For a minute there, Australia had her safely pegged. Then she went weird.

 

Last November, Bowditch rolled up at the ARIAs wearing several pairs of sunglasses at once, a voluminous frock of plastic bin liners and the commercially questionable legend "BIGGER THAN THE $$$" inked across her bosom."

Happy to let the other girls look pretty and vacuous, CB was in fact subverting, self-promoting, playing, messing, taunting and gimmicking all at once in bin liner couture. Don't box her in.

Last night, in a not overly crowded Forum, I saw another moment in CB's evolution. The crowd was older, perhaps evolving as she is, perhaps just a broader mix as CB's profile as a political, social and cultural activist increases (in fact Catherine Deveny was making out with her boyf right in front of me - a sure sign of being culturally significant?). And CB, whilst ever the raconteur, was more contained, self-sovereigning - she didn't need us, the crowd, to feed her energy. She has the wattage to power the entire planet. And it appears effortless. The planets, the others on stage, talented and terrific in their own right, can only orbit around her formidable presence.

Great at banter and witty repartee, it seems Clare Bowditch can hold her own in rhetoric too. Long live the Queen.