inspiring women

Eleanor Catton, you guys. What the what?! I know prizes aren't everything blah blah blah (I say that as someone who hasn't won a prize that didn't include a draw since fourth form), but man, this is SOMETHING, and by something, I mean COOL. Catton is only twenty-eight, and The Luminaries is her second novel. What the what?! I KNOW. After finding out, I spent a little while rueing my squandered youth, too, but then I decided to be INSPIRED.

There's nothing I can tell you about Catton that isn't in the article, except that I think she's awesome, and I think her book is going to be awesome too (I haven't read it yet, and at my current rate of getting halfway througha book and then forgetting about it, it could be a while before I do). I don't hold to the bollocks "if she can, I can" attitude; it sounds nice, but completely ignores individual talent and everything else Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers. As much as I'd love to win the Booker prize, it ain't going to happen. But I do think that we're all capable of doing SOMETHING awesome, and seeing someone else do their awesome thing (and be recognised with the MAN BOOKER PRIZE, WHAT!) is a really cool reminder of that, and an impetus to do it.

Go Eleanor!

my favourite things about Dunedin no.1

Since Spring arrived and the shop started to come together and I got to my second trimester and stopped feeling exhausted all the time, I started to really enjoy being in Dunedin. It wasn't Dunedin's fault it took a while; it took a while to get to know some of my best friends, plus, when we first moved here I was a little under the bell jar, if you know what I mean. Anyway, now I wake up and it's (usually) sunny, and I look out over the harbour and I feel glad to be here. I pick leaves out of my strawberry plants in my little garden, and think about my old apartment on Queen Street that didn't get any direct sunlight, and I feel happy. I have weird conversations with people in shops who seem to have all the time in the world to talk, and when uni kids make room to let me and my burgeoning stomach pass they actually look at me (not entirely Aucklanders' fault that doesn't happen much up there; we're constantly giving way because there are so many of us - but still, it's a nice effect of living in a small place), and holding up other drivers isn't the end of the world to them. I like it. So I'm going to start telling you about little things I like down here; places, people, whatever, and then you'll have lots of reasons to come down here, and maybe, if you're crazy like us, you'll be so enchanted you'll think about moving here... Maybe. Anyway, the first of my favourite things about Dunedin is Otago Access Radio (OAR), 105.4 FM.

The best things about OAR:

1. The variety within shows. I've heard '93 Till Infinity (which is NEVER played on the radio) played straight after an awesome country song I'd never heard before. Unless a show is dedicated to a particular style (like the excellent Jazz Cafe on a Thursday evening), you don't know what might be next. It might be great. It might be spectacularly bad. It's always unexpected.

2. The variety of shows. There's the Bridging The Gap, hosted by recovering addicts taking part in the Bridge programme, who share their stories and what certain songs mean to them (a lot of Tracy Chapman on this show). Voice Of Samoa, on a Monday, which begins with a rousing and beautiful recording of the Samoan anthem and then seems to be this woman who phones the host and then talks so fast he can't get a word in for the next half hour. Vinyl Vault, which features great music and which I always mean to listen to but then forget. Some show I listened to once hosted by a kid, where he interviewed his sixteen-year-old saxophone teacher (reading both prepared questions and responses) before they played a duet. And there's Phil's Trucking Show. Phil is a guy who speaks with a computer-generated voice, like Stephen Hawking, and he has his own radio show, during which he does shout-outs to truckies. I think that is one of the coolest things ever.

3. All of those things, again.

I like to imagine that people I see on the street or talk to in shops might have their own shows on OAR, and I like knowing that's not an unrealistic fantasy. I know there's no "real" NZ, but there are certainly people who are more real than others. OAR is full of these people; people who are artless and genuine. Which, in my (limited) experience, is a pretty good reflection of people in Dunedin. (Not me though. I am ALL smoke and mirrors. Come buy clothes from me!)

Birkin

What is it about Jane Birkin? I can't put my finger on it. Sometimes I wonder why she's the icon she is and if it's just style-blogger group-think, and then I'll find I've been looking at the same picture of her for what feels like an age. I feel like I want to lump her in with Marianne Faithfull (whom I detest) with her eyes and lashes, but she's not like her. I only know what's on wikipedia about her, yet I'm convinced by her face that she wasn't the passenger Faithfull was, but an adventurer, and, to borrow a phrase from a friend, that she paddled her own waka. I like her.

I also like how she didn't feel compelled to wear a bra. I frequently refer to my epilator as a tool of patriarchal oppression; I should save that title for my bras. Why are women's nipples considered so offensive, or so much more sexually suggestive than any other part of our bodies (including the rest of our breasts)? I'm too tired to think through how I want to say it exactly, but sometimes a bra is to a top as golf is to a walk. Let nipples be FREE.

tuberculosis and elections

I should say outright that I don't have any photos to show you today, and it's such a shame, because the shop looks SO GOOD. My fairy-godpainters have transformed the p lab into a beautiful TB ward. I picked TB because there's nothing sterile about it, but it looks so clean and pretty. Maybe it's nothing like a TB ward; it's just that with the white walls, wooden floors, and sun pouring in, it makes me think of the sanitarium in which old turkey-gizzards Buddy finds himself in The Bell Jar. In any case, the place is transformed. Today the skirting goes on, and tomorrow, the fun begins! By "fun" I mean cleaning and jobs where I can be of use (provided I don't repeat yesterday and find myself sleeping in the car for the last hour of activity; I blame the baby - it's very lazy and strong-willed). We'll also buy the dressmaker's dummy, for which/whom I need to find a name. I keep thinking of Miss Blossom in I Capture The Castle (one of the best books ever), but I don't think our mannequin will be quite as cheerful or helpful. Jimmy and I name most of our appliances (some pathetically comical, like our previous blender, Wendy) and they're always very nice and reliable, but anything with the slightest person-ness always seems to develop a bit of an attitude.

Anyway, in the absence of photos, I came here to talk a little bit about the imminent local elections. Today is the last day to post your vote, and all voting closes on Saturday. I just want to say PLEASE VOTE. This government is doing everything it can to take the demos out of democracy; the Anadarko Amendment and Amy Adams' proposal to make applications from oil companies "non-notified" being prime examples of this. When we have the chance to participate in what happens to this place, I really believe we have a responsibility to do so (I should clarify that by "we" I mean "people who care about more than only themselves", so I suppose I'm not entirely democratic either. A post-grad student was quoted in our local paper saying she wasn't going to vote because there's not enough information "around" and, after my blood calmed down to a gentle simmer, I decided maybe, in the spirit of meritocracy - which I know is wrong but is SO appealing - that it's best that such morons don't vote). Some things might be able to be eventually fixed; some things lost are lost forever.

I wasn't sure how to end this and then Changes came on the playlist I've had going while I've been writing, and it's so apt (but the record company won't allow playback from blogger). I think the council seems unimportant to some people, but it really isn't, especially not if you look at change as being something that starts with an individual. Our councils spend our rates. They (ideally) defend us against the government when necessary. And they determine the direction in which our cities and towns are headed. Unimportant? Maybe if you're dead. And even then, they can dig you up.

  

painting, and then talking (at length) about painting

Once again, the romance of film and literature has misled me. This time, it was Fried Green Tomatoes (At The Whistle-Stop Cafe). I forget how it happened in the book (which is really worth reading; I'm a huge fan of the movie, for which Fannie Flagg co-wrote the screenplay, but you gotta read the book), but in the movie, I distinctly remember Ruth, with child, painting and being as involved in the setting up of the cafe as everybody else. So naturally, I've been entertaining visions of myself; pregnant, smiling, ready for work in a fabulous thirties outfit - bathed in golden light, painting walls and sweeping floors. IT WAS A LIE. Or maybe it was just the times; I conveniently forgot about the scene where she gives birth to Buddy and is promptly handed a beer (I WISH). Anyway, painting today was not as I had expected. Firstly, I didn't do any for a while, because I didn't want to put on my awful painting clothes (trackpants with that gathered elastic at the ankles that looks a bit like the fabric tops people put on jam jars when they sell marmalade at fairs), so I did an OCD job of putting masking tape on the light switches and power points (they now look impressively mummified). Then I took Joe for a walk. Then it was lunchtime. I'm a slow eater, and by the time I finished, there were only forty minutes left to work. So I put on my painting outfit (and immediately needed to pee, but didn't want to leave the shop and have people see my jam jar ankles, so I held it), and commenced cutting in. I've cut in before; around the skirting in my niece's first bedroom - it took me about an hour to do about two metres, after which I was retired. This time I was much faster, but ten minutes in started to feel woozy, which I blame on the baby - not its fault, but also totally its fault. Maybe (it was hot). I took a break, then tried again, which was when the headache began. I walked around the room for a bit with my brush and paint to make the most of having poured paint into a Subway cup (and not wanting to appear to be shirking, or to reclaim the title given to me several times during renovation projects ie tits on a bull), and gave up.

I thought about deleting this, but one day it might be interesting to see what paint and pregnancy can do to a person's brain. (I should assure you that I was only around the paint for about twenty minutes, that I wore one of those mask things for a while until it made breathing difficult and which I now realise protects against dust not fumes, and that I won't be doing any painting tomorrow or any other day before next March - unless it's outdoors, or my nails.) There is nothing simple about anything. I should have known that from Fried Green Tomatoes.

heigh ho

This is Joe, and Pete, my excellent father-in-law, cleaning the walls ready for plastering and painting. Joe's help was more along the lines of moral support and eating a netball Pete found out on the roof, but I think it made a difference.

There's this scene in EuroTrip when the kids are in the tour-bus with Manchester United fans (including Vinnie Jones), getting a university education in binge-drinking and cussing, and Cooper says "Wow. You guys are on like a completely different level of swearing over here". (It's not my fault I know the movie so well; it was on loop at Aggies' the first time I stayed there, and the person in the room next door fell asleep with it playing very loudly... and I might have watched it several times as well.) Well, the previous tenant of the shop was on a completely different level of hygiene and cleanliness. I already described the empty premises as an abandoned p lab. Now the floors have been sorted (and look so great!), but the walls are so dirty it's kind of remarkable; sixteen years of grime, and dust, and what looks like coffee or maybe stout splashed around? - even near the CEILING. The CEILING! And there are HOLES. One where it looks as if the resourceful guy needed to use something with a cord that wouldn't reach into the other room, so he just knocked the cord through the wall. I'm actually really curious to see him (though knowing he exists also makes me want to take hand-sanitiser EVERYWHERE.)

But it's HAPPENING, you guys. Now that the crazy reception area has been knocked out, and the floors don't look like a layer of rolled-out chewing gum with sixteen years of dirt over the top of them, I can really see the shop. I see where the desk will go, and racks of clothes, and the chairs where we can sit and drink tea when you come to visit. There's lots of work to do, but it's getting EXCITING.

More updates to come!

the Marilyn in all of us

I'm choosing pictures for the shop walls and thought I'd show you this one of Marilyn, which I think is beautiful. There's a great shop in Paeroa called The Vintage & Retro Shop, owned and curated by a lovely woman with excellent taste - I bought one of my favourite dresses from her (as my hips get wider and my stomach starts to balloon, I pray to Hera that I will fit it again), and a blouse that makes me feel like Joan Harris when I wear it, and I would have bought a hat or two if my head wasn't so much bigger than hat-wearing women of the sixties. Anyway, one of the lovely things about this shop is the changing room. The dress I bought was... friendly, around the bum/hip area, and required me to shimmy into it. Usually, having to shimmy into something in a changing room embarrasses me. I imagine some kind of strange, localised natural disaster occurring, and the curtain flying off its rail to reveal me, trying desperately to squeeze myself into a piece of clothing, like some kind of grotesque reverse-birth, and people gasping, and the shop assistant running over to rescue the clothes and escort me off the premises. Not at The Vintage & Retro Shop. In the changing room, there are pictures of Marilyn - all around the mirror, in all her curved glory. And they makes you feel great! You see her, poured into her dresses, and you forgive yourself your undie-line; just don't wear any on the day! Any loose bits; I'm so skinny! Tight bits; I'm a siren! Etc.

I'm not sure I would have risked ripping the lining of the dress to get it over my hips if not for those pictures. And I certainly wouldn't have felt like the tightness was a-ok; I would have pretended that I would exercise before I wore it. As it was, I felt like Marilyn, and I never forgot the genius and kindness of the shop owner for putting those pictures in there. I probably don't need to add that there will be a couple of pictures of Marilyn in the changing room at Dogtown Vintage.