All posts by Princess Sparkle

Showtime – Gary Ryan

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

My wife Julie asked me this morning if I wanted to go to the Canberra Show. “No thanks” I replied politely. Julie knew that would be me my answer. And I knew that she knew that would be my answer because she then said “that’s what I told my mother yesterday when she asked me if you would be going”. Then Julie asked me if I had ever been to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, or ‘the big one’ as she called it. “Yes” I said. “Several times when I was a kid, and a couple of times later on”. “Wow” said Julie.

And then the memories started coming back to me. The flashbacks.  The first was one of the earliest. The family arrived at the Show at night, in the dark – no daylight savings back then. My parents pointed to a mysterious tent, plain and with a single sign on it (which I was too young to read). “That’s where you go if you get lost, the Lost Children’s Tent” said my father. I was mortified. Forget the Haunted House. Forget the Ghost Train. If I got lost I would have to spend the rest of my life in The Lost Children’s Tent. I couldn’t see what was inside the tent, and I wanted to make sure I never did. I tightened my grip on my mother’s hand, and all attempts to interest me in going on a ride, through a maze, or anything that required me to break contact with a parent, were rejected.

Some years later, and after I had gotten over that trauma and developed a better understanding of how The Lost Children’s Tent actually operated, I was able to see the appeal of sideshow alley and the rides. And I was that age when I believed I was ‘grown up’ so I insisted that I was indeed ready to go on a ride called ‘the wild mouse’ – basically a single seat mini roller coaster with some seriously sharp turns. I.Thought.I.Was.Going.To.Die. I had been brought up as an atheist but I made a promise to God that day that if I survived this horror I would become religious. Hell, I’ll even go to church on Sundays. I am a man of my word but, even though I did survive I didn’t keep that promise – one of very few that I haven’t.

Don’t get me wrong, the Easter Show is not all horror and near death experiences. A very fond and very early memory for me is riding home from the Easter Show in the back of the family car – an FJ Holden panel van. My parents in the front, and me and my two brothers in the back (seat belts were just a concept then). I was only four but I can vividly remember the sharing of the spoils from the show bag pavilion. In those days show bags were sample bags from confectionery manufactures and the like – Cadbury, Rowntree, et cetera – so you got a lot very little cost. And all product – no discount coupons or plastic trinkets. As well as being brought up atheist, we were also brought up as communists, so the spoils were divided equally between the three of us. Karl Marx would be very proud. My dad was.

Perhaps I will accompany my wife to the show this year

 

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The narcissism of writing – Jen Warr

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Early in January, off the back of a new year’s resolution to put myself out of my comfort zone and find a creative outlet, I booked into Catherine Deveny’s Gunnas Writing Masterclass (with some trepidation, presuming most people in the course would be fully fledged writers and esteemed academics). Thankfully, I hadn’t resolved to get fit and eat better, as I went straight from the Masterclass to the bar, and then to a pizza joint.

I have always loved writing. I loved English in school and I loved writing essays in uni. I realised on reflection today that I even enjoyed writing exams (I know, I’m not right). I love stationery – pens, highlighters and nice paper make me excited, and sometimes I think I actually just like the site of my own handwriting. From about the age that I was 15 to the age of 20 I wrote pages and pages in a series of journals, reflecting on my feelings – and mostly if I’m honest about what boy I was in love with at any given time (often drunk and illegibly). The journals are now locked in a toolbox with a padlock on it, somewhere in the depths of my parents’ garage in Perth. One day, I intend to go back and publish them or burn them. Or both.

My writing at the moment is limited to opinionated Facebook status updates that probably many people don’t read, and which probably cause me to one by one lose any followers I have. But I LOVE writing them. I love the feeling of choosing the words, of making the sentences witty, of making people think and of making people laugh. I also thoroughly enjoy the feeling of saying things that are controversial – I feel like it’s a giant middle finger from the safety of my screen at the issues, people and opinions that I don’t tackle in the real world. In reality, it’s textbook slactivism. During the recent global women’s march I researched, I found activists to follow, I watched live webcasts from all over the world of women marching and felt inspired and reassured as the women of the world finally banded together to stand up for their rights. But did I march in my own city? No, I was far too busy for that (too busy reading about it, probably).

I never enjoyed writing fiction. In school when I had to write stories I bribed my best friend to write them for me. I hate writing poems and I have no imagination. But ask me to analyse a book, an issue, a film or a person and I could say what I think and write forever (controversially and anonymously, obviously).

Which brings me to what I think until now, has been my biggest barrier to writing, even though I want to and I sometimes feel like I need to. Since I can’t write fiction, and have no imagination, that leaves me really only with only two potential choices – my own life and experiences or analysis of some of the issues I enjoy reading about so much.

Until today, I believed that people who write about world issues and current affairs spend their days working full time in those areas and have thoroughly researched and evidence-backed opinions. As I obviously can’t compete with that depth of expertise when I have a day job, I ruled this out as an option for me.

Which leaves the one topic I have a unique perspective on – myself, and my experiences. And the thing that stops me writing about that?

It seems narcissistic. It seems self-indulgent.

Maybe because I started my writing life penning drunk pages of unrequited life… but it’s a feeling I haven’t been able to shake.

I am a single, childless women and I have all of my time, thoughts, income and choices to myself. I have opportunities, I am educated and I experience first world guilt every night before I fall asleep. My life is, by comparison to a lot of people, easy. Do I deserve a voice?

To me, writing as reflection seemed another form of self-indulgence. Akin to saying to my friends and family – ‘hey, look at me! Not only do I have time to get regular manicures and massage, have sydney’s finest restaurants deliver to my door each night and live in my west elm catalogue of a home – I now want you to read about my life too!’

In the same way people talk about crafting an online social media identity that represents the good parts of your life and what you want people to think about you – I felt that starting a blog was the written equivalent.

I also was a little afraid of being the childless adult self-improvement cliché – get a life coach, have NET, meditate, do yoga, become a qualified yoga instructor (but never use it), travel to india, go on retreat… and then decide to blog about my own self exploration.

I didn’t want to write about myself and believe that anyone would want to read it. I didn’t want to be ‘arrogant’ enough to think that anyone could learn things from me or my experiences. It just seemed narcissistic to think that I have anything to teach the world that anyone else doesn’t also have.

After outing myself as having these feelings in today’s Masterclass, I know that many other women felt this too- that we are a fraud, or that we are not worthy. We are so uncompassionate to other women that we fear that we will be scrutinised in the same way as we scrutinise others.

Today I was challenged to reflect on whether I feel other people who write are narcissistic. I answered no, of course. But to be honest I do think that some people who write amateur blogs are narcissistic – and that they are seeking validation, understanding, an audience for their feelings and an outlet for things they should probably go and speak to a counsellor about. But real writers? I read as much and as widely as I can. I read the pamphlets in my hotel room. I read the signs on trains. I read every newsletter I subscribe to. I read books, I read newspapers. I read horoscopes. I don’t for a second think that anyone that authors the writing I read is self-invovled.

So today, getting together with 20 others and discussing a shared love of writing and hearing what each wanted to write has blown my last barrier away for me. I am going to write, and I have taken away three things that have changed how I think about writing.

Firstly, that there is no such thing as a real writer. Everyone who wants to write, can write. They can write for everyone to read it, or for no one to read it. They can write anonymously or they can write as themselves. They can write an Instagram photo caption, a facebook status update, a description of a food, or a book.

Secondly, if writing – like most things we do as humans – has an element of narcissism about it, so what? People write to express their feelings, to feel better, to share opinions, to escape, to share and to be a better person. And that is harmless, and okay.

Lastly, I was told and believe – it could be viewed as selfish not to write. How much of other people’s writing do I consume, without ever giving anything back? How many ideas do I have and reflections on the things that I read, without every saying anything?

I don’t think it will be easy for me to write and I think it will take some time for this view to completely go away (I am probably the very person that needs to get counselling on self-worth). I know that I want to write, I and I know that I enjoy it. I love that other people write, and I love reading what they write.

So I’m going to choose a nice font, and choose a nice colour, and start writing.

Thanks Catherine, and thanks to my fellow Gunnas.

I’m gunna.

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A Love Letter to Procrastinators – Helen McLaren

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

It’s time to talk about the excuses you use to avoid doing what you want to do. Now, let’s be clear about this. I’m not talking about the excuses you use to avoid something you really don’t want to do. You recognise these excuses. They are the ones you use in awkward social situations or to avoid hurting people. You tell a person who has asked you for a date that you’re busy that night. Or have to sort your sock drawer. Or wash your hair. Or you tell your parents that you have to work on Sunday and can’t come to lunch. These excuses are relatively harmless, unless you get caught out.
But you know the excuses I’m talking about. These are the ones that stop you from exploring your secret dreams, achieving your inner ambitions or plunging into your deepest desires. They drain your soul, without you even realising.
Let’s say that in the private chambers of your heart you’ve always wanted to learn to play the piano, or sing, or draw, or dance, or write, or ski or do yoga. What excuses do you use to stop yourself from trying?
‘I’m too old to learn to play the piano.’
‘I can’t hold a tune.’
‘I don’t have any artistic talent.’
‘I’ve got two left feet.’
‘I don’t have the time to get good at skiing.’
‘No-one will want to read it.’
‘I’m not flexible enough to try yoga.’
How will you know if you never try? What are you afraid of? What’s the worst thing that could happen? Hey, you might even become more flexible because, well, isn’t that the aim of doing yoga?
I love the example Julia Cameron gives in her book The Artists Way:
Question: ‘Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano?’
Answer: ‘The same age you will be if you don’t.’
Do you want to continue to use excuses to limit yourself? In five years‘ time do you want to look back on a finished novel? Do you want to be singing in a choir? Or holding your first exhibition of your drawings? Or blasting down the ski slopes?
I took up skiing in my mid-thirties. A lot of the time I felt terrified on the ski slopes but I showed up every winter, had lessons, practiced and got better. I even entered a couple of social races.
I said this was going to be a love letter to procrastinators, and it is. Tough Love. You need to get over yourself and stop being afraid. Take those risks. Show up every day. Go to ski, music, yoga, singing or dancing lessons. Don’t just talk about it, do it. And do it even when it scares you. Especially when it scares you.
There’s a reason that the marketing people at Nike developed their famous tagline. It resonates with people. But in this context, ‘Just f*&#@g do it’.
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How I was radicalised in the War on Women – Peta Swarbrick

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I was brought up by my step mother who was an unusual woman for the time in that she had travelled widely and already been in business before she met my Pommie divorcee dad, got knocked up and decided to marry him and take on his Miracle Whip family ( take two kids, one boy aged 7 one girl aged 4, add water, and stir).
My father was away alot. My mother was an unsentimental, not over demonstrative  woman who was open about not being that enamoured of small ( read boring) children. She married my father and was consigned to a life of packing up the household and following him to a new posting as he progressed his geology career. She worked here and there, could turn her hand to anything and needed to be out of the house in whatever state, territory or country, to stay sane.
We were well adjusted independent kids. I felt loved because my rescue dog amigdala would not accept any other narrative than we were in a stable, safe and secure environment. My mother was praised for her fortitude, her enterprise, her patience and her independence. She went to Flinders Uni in 1977 and studied politics, and arguments in our house in Adelaide got fiery. We heard my father call my mother a “shit stirring rat bag”. I loved the idea of being bolshie myself, I tried it out on my brother – whispering it to him on the bench seat of the company Ford. I knew if he dobbed my father had nowhere to go. It became a family joke and it made me proud of my mother’s courage
I grew up in a household dedicated to continuing education. My father was from a well to do carters who blindly dismissed cars and backed horses to their dynastic ruin. My father was a PhD and petrified of black sliding if the next gen didn’t have the security of a University education. We were a family that discussed ideas, where a degree was an unspoken expectation. Yet it was also a household in which my father said he wanted me to wait for a few years after my 17th birthday to go for m P’s because girls are not mature enough to be behind the wheel of a car at that age. Both my older brother and my father were the only drivers in my family who had been involved in an accident. I was furious. I know it was bullshit but I did not have the verbal cutlery, or the understanding of the issues or frankly the emotional resources to demolish my father’s outrageous sexism in the way I burned to. It was a salutary lesson, and I began to look at him differently. My step mother said nothing.
So the point of this backgrounding is that I am from a well off, educated, upwardly mobile middle class family where there was very little obvious sexism. My step mother held her own and there was no explicit belittling or criticism, in fact if you had asked me who was in charge I would have confidently explained “my mother wears the pants” because I thought in sexist tropes in the 1980’s.
I went to Uni, I did women’s studies. I didn’t protest or rally because it seemed to us that Germaine and Gloria and Betty and Angela had fought the fight, seen law changed, enfranchised women into the economy and we were all going to wear Enjoli and HAVE IT ALL. We lived with males in share houses and made them cook roasts and wash the dishes, we dropped them when they cheated on us, and we said something when they got drunk and got violent with our friends. We formed groups at college called Clit Soc, bought double beds we hid from our parents, got the pill  on campus, and even had abortions all by ourselves. Of course I was a feminist! A feminist who wore and arm full of “rape bracelets” when I went out to clubs, so hilarious. I used my stillettos as knuckle shivs walking home at night. I judged the slutty girls for having bigger tits, better hair, longer legs and having sex. But I challenged men left right and centre and I was MOUTHY and BOLSHIE and felt I was empowered and protected by this attitude.
I worked for my mother and then my father joined her new company, I graduated and moved in with my boyfriend and helped my parents start a new It company. I experienced sexism in the workplace but it came from my own father, so it was a little complicated and I unconsciously chose not to register it as such. It was “just my father”. I was successful, I earned more than my boyfriend who then became my husband, we shared domestic duties and I never felt I was oppressed. Not even a little bit. Many things did not make sense to me but I didn’t connect them with the intrinsically misogynistic world I lived in because that notion could not co-exist with my own self idealisation as a smart, resourceful, educated, empowered PERSON. Not just a “woman” but an equally enfranchised and valuable participant in our open and modern economy, free to keep my own name, earn my own money, own my own house and exist in my own right.
My daughter was born, and my husband took leave without pay and spent a year being house husband. He was such a rare breed it spawned a radio series and a book and the adoration of fawning women everywhere. I got to work 60 hrs a week, shop, clean, express, fight off mastitis and be told constantly what a lucky woman I was and how amazing my husband was. I felt guilty for thinking ugly angry thoughts because I put that down to being a tired cranky bitch. I felt something was wrong but I could not see it, I could not articulate it, but I could feel it, deep in my waters. It reverberated around me as my brilliant cohort of women friends tried to solve the conundrum of when to get pregnant, how to afford mortgages, how to juggle careers, and negotiate child care they could afford. I saw friends with careers equal to their male partners become neutralised by motherhood overnight. I saw these apparently long buried “gender roles” resurface with a vengeance. Confusing when everyone had told me these expectations were long gone (it was 1999 for god’s sake). There was a cognitive dissonance around me  I didn’t feel I could explain, especially with a stay at home teacher husband and my stellar IT sales exec career.
We moved away from the big metropolis to spawn baby number two and live on a teacher’s salary. I stayed at home until the credit card blew out and I felt number two was well settled in early learning. My friends and I loved the organic nature of daily mothering, but we hated the constant inference that “staying at home” was lying on the couch eating timtams and watching Oprah whilst the kids played quietly and went to sleep on demand. My daughter’s friends all had mothers with similar situations, mostly working full or part time, professionals with high levels of education and the high expectations of success at school and in life that comes with that. My career took off, my husband swapped  family unfriendly teaching for flexi public service work, I enjoyed my freedom from regular domestic patterns due to my work hours, my husband adored spending time with his kids. Life was pretty bloody good.
My daughter was born a happy, curious, observant, keenly intelligent geek with an almost photographic memory. From the age of 3 when she started to read, a PhD seemed to be fait accompli. Her friends come from similar home cultures – educated, travelled, liberal (in the right way) progressive, egalitarian and privileged. She is proud to be smart and she is completely focused on success at whatever she does. She has no sense that there is any barrier to any career she wishes to pursue. Unlike my father I have purposefully refrained from projecting any expectations onto her. Her own vision has never been for anything but University, and with two with multiple PhDs and Masters in the family it is only to be expected.
Privileged is what we are. I was so glad of that privilege. I have always felt that the gifts of privilege being intelligent, healthy, mentally strong, mentally strong, well informed, well travelled, well read, meant that I was an inoculated and protected from the evils of ignorance. I just blindly believed that I was blessed with too many resources to be affected by sexism, as would my daughter be, just as my son would be free from being a sexist. Surrounded by privilege and like minded people,  I was fully confident that my children would make their way in the world unencumbered by old prejudices. I think I really believed that sexism existed in individuals not fully awake, people without the benefit of education, it was a personal faults left over from the victory of feminism over systemic sexist ideology.
I thought I was a feminist. I thought I had inherited a new world. I thought that I was a strong, independent, woman with equal opportunity and value in my society. There were some things that rankled and some things that that didn’t add up. Like any proper woman, I understood that I needed to be grateful, and patient and ask nicely and earn my place at the table with reason, logic and infinite understanding. This was the way of the world, it wasn’t any kind of conspiracy, I knew that women were emotional, hormonal, cyclical, unreliable with periods and emotional needs. I knew women could be strident, and vain, and obsessed with their looks, I wasn’t one of those and I hoped to god my daughter wasn’t going to be either. I knew I needed to look good and be feminine, sexy but not slutty. I knew that if women wanted to be taken seriously then they need to work harder and smarter so no man could deny her merit. But I wasn’t going to be pushed around and I wasn’t going to take any crap. I was a woman in a post-feminist world, so in situations where feminism was required I would bring it, but really what need was there?
Life goes on as it does, parents worked and shopped and cleaned, children grew and learned and became the people encoded in their DNA and shaped by their environment. My daughter matured physically around thirteen, developed unknown interests in hair, earrings, t-shirts with funny slogans from Jay Jays, jeans from Dottie and dresses from Cotton On. She and her friends started to shut their bedroom doors, send each other funny emails on their school laptops, throw themselves into local gymnastics and form rowing squads. My daughter showed a wonderful aptitude for the flute and music and maths. We loved her serious, daggy geeky year 7 friends. We congratulated ourselves as her parents for the happy, friendly child, with killer concentration and an assuredly bright future. Teen tantrums, and the natural separation bad behaviour towards me was short and embarassingly not much to winge about. My ability to contribute to facebook “teen angst” posts, featuring gnashed teeth, cranky mothers and lots of wine jokes was limited by the a smooth transition to a new and excitingly mature relationship with my woman-girl daughter. Smugly silent, self satisfied and quite self congratulatory, I felt I was some mother, possibly better than my own, possibly the best one that I know.
Until a walk to the shops brought the whole facade crashing down in front of me. My daughter returned from a walk to the local shops one day,a little quiet, but then as a high functioning introvert she is always a little quiet. I was very pleased with this rather independent act. Walking anywhere in our town is fairly uncommon after you stop travelling with the primary school walking bus, and my daughter loves public transport not so much a fan of the bike so a walk to the shops to buys something with her own money was notable. The next day I suggested she walk to the shops for me, and I would give her some money to buy herself something. She went a bit quiet and said she didn’t want to walk to the shops again. I asked her why not? I was quite bemused thinking she was so unhappy to walk it was too much?? What she told me never occurred to me…she had been cat called. Yelled at by several men from the window of a car going at normal speed. It was the first time this had happened to her.
At the time I worked a lot of late nights and weekends. I didn’t do facebook, I didn’t read the papers, I caught some morning radio national. I wasn’t reading feminist commentary, I wasn’t tuned in, why would I be? We lived in a world where rape happened sure, and some women didn’t get equal pay but basically that would sort itself out and all women could expect to be and be treated equally and with equal respect. At first I was shocked, in my street? Near my shops? Why are these SORT of people in my neighbourhood? I was angry at these jerks, I was pissed off that these uneducated, ignorant, bogans had disrespected my daughter. I was furious, I shouted “Did you yell back at them, tell them to piss off?” She was silent, and she looked at me, she was angry at my response.

 

 In hindsight I am sure my anger made her defensive, it was no doubt redolent of the implied blame that we all get when abused, heckled, cat called, groped, or ogled. I asked her again ” Did you tell them to piss off?” Her eyes got bigger, and more serious, and she looked at me hard and said “What, and invite worse?”. Those words hit me like a truck, a had almost a wave of nausea, my blood pounded in my ears and I felt my vision blur as the implications of these words struck me. My privileged, educated, loved and adored daughter was telling me she understood without every having heard a word from me that she lived in a culture of rape. That the omnipresence of this culture that starts with the objectification of girls from the moment they are named and gendered, and continues until the day they die had seeped into my daughter, without my knowledge and without my understanding that it is a thing of the present not the past. How did my learn this truth universally known to every woman who dares to take up a public space, that they are fair game, that they must accept and that to antagonise, reject or ridicule any man could lead to physical harm? AND THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO OR UNDO.
I had lived smugly, safely, stupidly believing that I had inherited a world free of sexism, maybe not free of all of its vestiges but a world where these things were on their way out, no longer tolerated, no longer accepted or practiced thanks to laws and education…In that horrible moment of self awareness I felt I had failed her, I had failed myself and I had spent years doing nothing to make the world a better fairer safer place for my daughter. It was the day that I peeled back a corner of the matrix and started to see the complex, and frightening machinery behind the facade or equality. That day I understood that the War on Women is real, and that feminism has more work to do, in way less obvious places and with many more obstacles. I understood from that day that say say a feminist is radical is to say that she is vocal, and will not stay quiet, will not accept that the fight is won and is willing to offend, alienate, agitate, argue and fight (like a girl!). Today I am a proud, radical, nasty, shouty, angry, persistent, unrepentant feminist. I am now a more informed feminist. I understand more about the structure of the patriarchy. I understand how toxic masculinity robs men of opportunities and keeps them locked in an often times destructive gender binary. I am learning more about the intersectionality that feminism must embrace to be both authentic and effective. Most importantly I have identified and embraced my own internalised oppression, and how crucial this understanding is to see the whole picture and why 50 years after the second wave and several generations after “women’s liberation” we are still raising our children to objectify and be objectified.

 

 

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Here’s a bit – girloutonalimbwithchainsaw

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I was a million miles away when staring blankly at the departures screen.  Sydney to Alice Springs.  Oh my fucking God how can I get out of this?  Alice Springs.  Go to gate announcement.  Major sweats started but I convinced myself that it was the start of the end for my girly biology and just a part of life – not anything else.  35 degrees wasn’t helping.  Decided to sooth myself by texting Alice to relay the fascinating news that I’d made it to Sydney and was nearly on my way.  Like he would care.  Not that I was going to see him.

Her daughter wasn’t at the airport to greet me.  What a presumptive cunt I was to presume she’d be there waiting like some kind of puppy dog.  I was of course important to her in my own mind.

I was introduced by her and extended my hand.  I wanted to pat her hair.  She dropped her eyes and looked really awkward.  Oh no, not a mum thing.  I remembered how much I hated meeting great aunts and random distant family and looked away like it didn’t matter. Blinked away some tears and decided to pretend I didn’t care.  I was of course just hitching a ride to meet their half dingo (I mean yellow Kelpie) and the 3 pet snakes.  Yeah I love snakes.  Cough.

A hard thing faking that when she was the image of her mother.  OK.  Just be cool.  A long way to go yet and plenty of time.

 

 

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Rolling with it – Kate Hazlewood

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Looking out of the panes at the top of the door you would think it was a good day to go out. There is a lot of blue out there.

But it’s not.

It’s cold. There is snow and ice on the path and I’m sure to get wheelspin.

I like the chair. Don’t be shocked. You expect me to hate it – but why?

It is my freedom.

When I travel, I move with style. I have strong arms and I like to think I cut a fine figure.

But not on days like today. I can slip and slide and drift on ice. Not as fun as it sounds and I feel unaccountably feeble.

Oh, the looks I get when I struggle.

Maybe I notice it because I’m not moving with purpose.

You know I think fair weather strangers are easier to take.

I’m going anyway. I can’t be shut in, the dog needs to go out and I need to get over myself.

Plus I have work to do.

I do reception at the Doyle Hotel. The dog sleeps at my feet while I check in guests and I can sit without explanation. It is bliss.

The gravel outside the door gives a satisfying crunch. The wind is icy and the sky is clear. My cowl is pretty and feels snug against my neck. I’m up for this. I’m off.

The dog is dancing around my wheels and deftly avoiding the tyres in a way that is terrifying to the uninitiated.

She’s being a fool but will calm down. Half way down the hill and all good so far.

Into Fred’s for a long black and a pigs ear for Pup. All good.

I’m going past the grass patch so I get my bag ready on the way. I’ll pick up the shit. I can do that shit too. Ha ha!

So, turning into the motel drive, Pup is feeling relieved and I’m feeling good. And over I go….

Slam. Stars. The taste of blood in my mouth.

Tangled lead and spinning wheels.

Yelping.

At least no one saw.

Now the dog is walking on my face.

The stars recede.

A couple of kids walk past and I’m relieved they don’t stop. Then annoyed. They. Didn’t. Stop. Bahhh!

Now I’ve wedged the chair against the letterbox and I’m getting back in. God it’s hard.

But I’m doing it.

I hear footsteps and a couple of male voices.

“You ok missus?” the short one asks.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Yep, could you just hold it steady?” I ask briskly.

They do. And I’m back in.

I say thanks. One of them says “Don’t mention it.”

And then they don’t mention it. They don’t ask “Why are you in the chair?” or “What happened?” or “Do you hate it?”

God I love them for that.

Why do people think I want to start every conversation that way?

The dog is grizzling. The handsome one in the leather jacket lifts her onto my lap.

I salute them in a self-conscious faux military way. They both wink and nod and I wink and nod back as I wheel in. They go on their way, going back to their conversation.

God, that was nice. Pup is put out, but ok. I feel good.

I can do this.

 

 

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Memories of a young bride – Jasmine Hatharasinghe

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

The Journey
February 1954.  It is early morning and I am on a train, chugging its way to Colombo, the Capital of Ceylon.  I look out of the window and my very first impression of Ceylon in daylight is the purity of the white uniform worn by the school children, the emerald green rice fields and the unhurried movements of the adults going about their daily tasks. Above the roar of the train I can feel the peace and tranquility of the villages we pass through.
It brings a smile to my face and gives me a feeling of happiness and longing for the new life I am about to begin.
I have come hundreds of miles by train and boat to reach Ceylon. I am getting married!  It was sad saying goodbye to my family members in my village in South India  It has been a long journey for my family to get here. This was the first time I had left the shores of my beloved India.  And now, the last leg of my journey before I see my handsome betrothed.
In-laws
It is an amazingly beautiful house that I am taken to.  It has thirteen rooms, high ceilings, several bathrooms and a gloriously big garden.  This is all very opulent for me as my parents’ home in India is very modest.
My mother-in-law is very kind to me and gives me a pair of earrings and gold bangles on arrival and makes my family feel welcomed and comfortable. My mother gives me a piece of advice that her mother gave her when she got married.  “Treat your mother-in-law as if she were your own mother”.  I think this will sit well with me and I hope to pass it on to my children one day.
My father-in-law is a very influential man in the Colombo business circles and extremely wealthy.  He is also a kind and generous man. I have met two brothers-in-law who are very handsome.  The older one is a groomsman in our wedding party.  The younger one is still schooling and a lot of fun to be with.  I am still to meet the baby of the family who is with a wet nurse.
The wedding
Getting ready for the wedding was surreal.  I felt like a princess in a fairytale.  My wedding sari was soft white netting with beautiful embossed flowers and my bra had a whalebone in it.  Never heard of such a concept before that day.  And my veil was metres long, my shoes just perfect.
Our wedding was on 17 February at St Mary’s church, which is opposite the house.  My betrothed stayed at a family friend’s house overnight and walked to church.  I on the other hand was driven across the road in a shiny Mercedes decorated with flowers.
The wedding mass was beautiful and had seventeen priests in attendance.  The flowers in the church were abundant.  The reception was at my in-laws beautiful home with plenty of food and drink.  I remember seeing the claw-footed bathtub in the terraced backyard the night before, filled with apple cider and kept cold with chunks of ice.  Again, this was all new to my family and me.
Married life
I am finally married to my beloved León.  He is so handsome and dashing and loving and caring.
I met León when I was five years old and he seven.  It was during the Easter festival in the village.  I was following my mother however, got lost in the crowd.  My knight in shining armour saw me wandering alone and knew I was lost so he took my hand and led me to my mother.  He said he knew then that he would marry me one day.
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The Adventures of Miss Hamilton – Miss Hamilton

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Twenty years ago, I found myself in Edinburgh, a moneyless young backpacker, fresh out of school. My first introduction to Scotland was a night full of firsts- a ceilidh (where I quickly learnt what Scotsmen wore under their kilts), some thinly veiled ‘nutritious’ Scottish fare (though no sampling of a deep fried Mars Bar I’m sad to report), and a nightclub just off The Royal Mile where the theme song from Trainspotting pumped through the speakers as we all sang along, “…singing lager, lager, lager.”

 I remember being prepared for the Scottish weather by wearing thermals  under my clothes, and in the nightclub (as the lights grew hotter and the music louder,) peeling off those layers and rueing wearing long johns under my jeans. How those Scottish girls handled a wintry January in short skirts with bare legs I’ll never know.

Tonight, as a somewhat grown up with a professional job, I found myself at Trainspotting 2, (the sequel) where the gang were back together after twenty years. How far had they come? What had they achieved in the last twenty years, what had I achieved? Yes, still going to the cinema alone, but yet- still enjoying the adventure. So tonight I thought I’d touch base with the gang, see my beloved Edinburgh on the big screen and what had passed by.
Never one to enjoy the crowds, on purchasing my cinema ticket I asked the usher if the the session would be crowded. “No” was his response, “No young people will be watching this film”. With that, I smiled wryly and remarked that I’d not take that as an insult. I don’t think he’d ever seen the original Trainspotting- I don’t think he’s been to Edinburgh, the home of Begbie types who ‘don’t take kindly’ to that kind of talk. No- I smiled on and nodded my head as I walked up the stairs unaided, all the whilst “…singing lager, lager, lager.”

 

 

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Mother – the moth to a flame – Susan MacGillivray aka Sigourney Lotus

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I have thought of writing a story about my mother for many years.

When I was nine I was home alone, sorta like the movie. In fact a lot like the movie as it was two days before Christmas and very dark and cold. It gets that way in Canada in winter. At Christmas.

I was making sand candles for presents. Melt coloured wax on the stove in an old juice tin. Dig out holes in the wet sand in a cardboard box, poke fingers in for feet, then put in a wick.

After the wax is melted you pour it into the sand pod where it cools and hardens quickly. Then you can add another layer of a different coloured wax when the first layer has set. What you end up with is a candle, layered in colours with a fine sand coating. Very hippie. Very 1970.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas was on the telly. I got distracted and then Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special came on. No parents around to tell me what to do, or to interfere with my lovely, golden Christmas handgiftmaking that will put me at the top of everyone’s prized child list. I’ve had plenty of practice with the stove and oven. Expert grilled cheese making skills. Lived off from age 8 to 16.

I was aware of flames in the alley outside the house.

But as I neared the window I realized that the flames were a reflection in the window and were coming from the kitchen.

The wax on the stove.

Holy shit.

Ran to the phone to ring Mummy, but remembered that I didn’t know where she lived or if she even had a phone. She had been living in a place above a grocery so I could have rung the payphone, but I didn’t know if she was still there, or if the grocer would be able to get her to the phone.

The neighbours had also seen the flames and quite correctly rang the fire brigade.

I, on the other hand, was nine years old. I tried very hard to blow the flames out as if they were a massive birthday candle. Uhhhh phooooooooooo.

No luck.

It was getting very warm when the firemen came in. I was trying desperately to put the flames out. PUT THE FLAMES OUT. I was a moth to the flame. Blowing.

One of the firemen carried me outside and put me down on the sidewalk.

By then the kids in the neighbourhood had all gathered to see whose house was on fire. Renata, the Czechoslovakian girl from my class, asked me why I was shaking. I never trusted her as she also told her mother in Czech, the reason I was so fat was because I lived off grilled cheese sandwiches. Who doesn’t eat grilled cheese?  I was annoyed she spoke to her mother in a code, aka Czech and I felt even fatter and less a part of a normal family where mothers prepare kid’s meals.

I told her my house was on fire. That was my house. On fire.

The firemen started to smash the leaded glass windows. I though for sure my father would be angry with me because the landlord wouldn’t appreciate that the windows were broken.

I watched. I was scared of the blame. That the windows would not be replaceable. I knew it was a special house with amazing windows. My bedroom had an enourmous walk-in closet with a little window with a domed top that could be opened outward. I had my bed in the closet for a spell and my father had a darkroom in another walk-in closet off the bathroom that he blocked the light out of to do his film development.

They were very special windows.

The house was special.

Annie soon showed up with Wendy. She said she heard the firetrucks and hoped it wasn’t her house on fire.

– Sorry sister, yeah I burned down the house.

– Weren’t you supposed to be at home with me? No. I was home alone.

Daddy showed up later and the crowd was still standing around staring at the firemen doing their job as the fire gutted the kitchen. Clearly he had too much Christmas Cheer in his belly as he staggered toward me. I was scared shitless of what he would do to me.

I truly ruined Christmas that year. We had to find somewhere to stay.

I still do not know where Mummy was or where she lived. I never talked to her about it. I thank the firefighters for telling Daddy it was the stove shorting out, and not that I was making sand candles for gifts for the family. Neither Mummy or Daddy will ever know the truth.

Night mother, like a moth to a flame. I run heated, toward the flame.

 

 

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Travelling isn’t what it’s cracked up to be – Kerry

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

The first time I saw Malaysian money I was 18 years old and on my first overseas trip.  I had landed in Malaysia with only US dollars on me and didn’t know how I was going to change it for Malaysian money. I wouldn’t have worried but already I’d learnt that no-one wanted my US dollars and I was hungry.  How was I going to buy food if I didn’t have the right money? At this point I’d been travelling for a few weeks and thought I had it all worked out and knew what I was doing. Clearly not. I was completely stumped. I went to the backpacker’s where I was staying and tried to talk to a guy I found there. He was from Japan and didn’t speak English – I can’t speak Japanese.  I tried using hand signals and showing him the money but he didn’t understand me. So I left the backpacker’s and walked the streets for a while, cursing my decision to not bring my phone with me. I’d decided that I’d use my holiday as a chance to have a digital detox and told my parents that I’d stay in touch by sending a postcard every now and then.

Someone’s been sitting in my chair. Where did that thought come from? I guess it could have something to do with why I was overseas on holiday by myself. I broke up with Lisa just before I left – she said she had feelings for someone else. Maybe my mind is trying to grapple with the break up by saying random things to me like ‘someone’s been sitting in my chair’? Could be I guess.  This was not the plan. Lisa and I were going to travel together. We hadn’t made any definite plans but we’d certainly talked about it, as if we were going to be together for ages – like we had all the time in the world. Now here I am, by myself in Malaysia, starving, with no way that I can see of getting the money I need to buy food or of convincing someone to take the money I did have. I was enjoying the walk though.

Is it human? I saw something out of the corner of my eye – it looked like a blanket but it was moving. I went over to it and had a look – it was a baby! I looked around but couldn’t see anyone it might belong to. Next minute this guy appears next to me and says “what’ve you got there? A baby? I’ve heard that unwanted babies get dropped down the dunny in Malaysia.” I looked at him, stunned. Stunned that he’d just appeared like that, stunned that he was speaking English and stunned that he would say something like that. Dropping a baby down the dunny? Who would do something like that? All thoughts of food left me as I looked at this tiny baby and this stranger. Now it seemed I had even bigger problems. I turned to him to ask what we should do, only to find that he had run off. I wondered if I’d been dreaming but no, the baby was still here. Was it possible to start hallucinating due to lack of food? I thought I’d better pick up the baby and try and take it to a hospital or something. I picked it up and it started crying – just like any baby I’d ever held. I looked into its scrunched up, red face and felt completely helpless.

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