Hilarity - I work in change management and all around me is changing. Work is currently feeling like a cat stuck in a washing machine on a slow cycle. There is support but it is tenuous and I am feeling tremendous pressure.
So I concentrate on the lighter things: the deliciousness of lamb shoulder roasted for four hours, the oomph of a sweaty workout in my new Lorna Jane top (oh the cleavage!), the joy of coming home to a just-cooked dinner and the company of my favourite man and always, the embrace of this city, unrushed by time.

Desperate. For the passing of time. How strange that usually the tussle is the other way. I just want this mood/feeling to pass.
It's a clean, brittle day today - the first time the temperature's dropped to 10 degrees in longer than my skin can remember. The cold ran up and down my arms and legs as I walked to the station and I listened to a conversation with Susan Swingler, whose father left her and her mother in the UK to go to Australia and marry Elizabeth Jolley. There was incredible deception throughout her life but she spoke articulately and with minimal rage, which I found admirable.

But god, public transport... I know, I know - it's important and all, but really, if I wanted to scrunch my face into someone's armpit and be shunted from behind by an unseen crotch I'd bloody move back to London... so I suspect this feeling will help spur me on to ride the bike (when it comes) every day.

Django Unchained: Amazing film. Tarantino at his blood-spurting best. Two of the best things about the film though: Don - even though he was blown away, it was good to see him.

But the other good thing was that I saw Leonardo Di Caprio in a role that didn't make me vomit all over him. He played someone deeply cruel and evil and selfish and he played it very convincingly. It gives me faith that he will do Gatsby a little justice.

Heading north the fuel gauge not showing what I would like it to. Can I make it to Lancelin? Can I make it further? Oldnew music blaring from the iphone - Shattered (Turn the Car Around) - how apt.
I am driving towards the clouds, Perth having broken out in such painful sunshine that I had to leave.

I turn off at Guilderton, drive along the lip of the hill until I reach the car park and go cross country down the dunes to the almost deserted curve of beach. I am reading Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro and despite the warm sun it takes me to a cool, grey imagined England, and it's a feeling I enjoy.

Less enjoyable are the sand flies, so after a time I pack up and go for a meandering walk along the beach, ask a lone fisherman what he's hoping to catch, nod sagely as he says tailor (taylor?) and eventually return to the car. Fuel at the Moore River Roadhouse is $1.65 but foolishly I have left myself no further choice, so I sink in $50. By the time I turn back onto Indian Ocean Drive I am spastic with fatigue but I make it as far as the Gingin Observatory turn off and slide gratefully into a bay just inside the sparse pine forest. I'm so tired I even forget to take Norm out of Drive and just pull the handbrake, cut the engine, open the windows a crack and sink backwards into a sweaty, drooly, fainting sleep.
I woke when the shadows had lengthened and the forest was more sinister, less welcoming. I cranked up the air, turned up the music and headed home.

On top of everything else it was the state election on Saturday. I was still registered to the electorate of Carine so i went to Glengarry Primary School and found that I was so upset I had trouble fighting back tears while I marked the ballot papers with a trembling pencil. Once back at the car I let it all go though and had a good weep for the dignity that we've lost in politics, for the ideology the Labour Party has destroyed and for the shameful lack of statesmen (and women!!!) in any sector of politics. I wrote to both my Liberal Party friends and wished them well and I meant it, but there was sadness throughout the weekend.

I tried yesterday to paint (the photo above actually), and then to write, but neither worked and my soul was choked up and my heart was unsettled. So I finished Ishiguro and started reading Bill Clinton's life (oh the things I find on my Kindle) and then Jay and I watched The Island and then went to bed, where finally, we put the remnants of our weekend to sleep.

One step up from the devil

It would seem the old Hungarian adage "A woman needs to be beautiful to get a man, but men have only to be one step up from the devil" is alive and well in 21st Century Australia. It may be a clumsy translation but you get the drift.
I seldom feel the need to comment on what is discussed on Radio National's Breakfast program - I leave that to the excellent Fran Kelly but this morning...

This morning she interviewed prominent Australian plastic surgeon Dr Bryan Mendelson about a book he's written and his opinions about plastic, or as he calls it aesthetic surgery.
I was appalled at his shallow estimation of what is important and at how he tried to label it 'the importance of beauty on the inside'.
Dr Mendelson effectively encourages aesthetic surgery for women (no mention of men in modern surgery was made) so they can preserve the looks of their youth, because as his imbecilic example conveyed, women who age naturally tend to get ignored by men. And there, ladies and gentlemen is our reason for being. To be noticed and talked to by men. Younger men, and older men, he said.
He is perpetuating this disgusting fallacy and adding fuel to the self-loathing fire stoked under women for many decades. I concede plastic surgery is sometimes necessary, and of course it's each person's choice. But to suggest that women's worth in society is dictated by how young they look made me so angry.

M used to say to me "You're over 30, you're past it. You should shut up and settle with a man because soon they're going to be thin on the ground for you". It made me question all the lines on my face, the sagging of skin on various parts of my body, my spots of cellulite here and there. It made me hate everything. And it takes AGES to get over that shit.

I'm not saying we should let ourselves go - quite the contrary, stay fit, healthy, sun-smart and sensible by all means - men and women both - but don't bend to Dr Mendelson's one dimensional tirade against loving yourself naturally.

Phew, I really needed to get that off my chest.

Now on with the day!

I may have just been invited to perform at the Fairbridge Folk Festival in April. I might pee my pants. Excitement!!!