Luka Wilkins Fearne

This is Luka:

He whooshed into our lives at 6:49am on Saturday 17th January, at 3.77kg (8 lb 5) and 53cm, after 14 hours of labour, augmentation by synotocin drip as he changed his mind mid-stream, and finally forceps administered very gently by my lovely obstetrician. Paul didn't pass out and Tracy passed her driving test 6 hours later, despite not having slept since Thursday.

I love epidurals, everyone should have one.

I love the Cabrini Hospital midwives, everyone should have one.

My new claim to fame is that initially my waters broke spectacularly and voluminously all over the floor and then contractions started - just like in the movies. My faith in Hollywood restored.

And look what we have now! A strange little creature that does starfish impressions and stares at me like I'm the most interesting thing in the world.

We think he's pretty nice.

A dearth of blogging will now ensue.

The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey

From the favourer: "It's the nostalgia factor really - it's the first book I remember owning. It's about escapism & rebelling against authority & the little guy who stands out from the others! Most importantly it's about using desserts as a threat."

Everyone had a nice stack of chewed-on Little Golden Books as a kid - my favourite was The Color Kittens (I like it best when they make pink). But until recently they seem to have been relegated to the Big W/supermarket kind of shopping venue. Now suddenly there's big twirly stands of them popping up at Borders and Target, which is how I finally found a copy of The Poky Little Puppy.

First published in 1942, it's a harrowing tale of disobedience, the auditory qualities of chocolate custard, and the second meaning of the word 'poky' that I was not aware of.

One morning, "five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world." They climb a hill, but when they get to the top, one of them is missing. Where's puppy #5 buggered off to? Finally they spot the poky little puppy still at the bottom of the hill, and down they go; "roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble", to suss out what Master Poky is up to.
He's smelled rice pudding back at home! The four non-poky little puppies race home ahead of him, but get into trouble for the hole under the fence and are sent to bed by their mother with no rice pudding as punishment. Lord Poky, however, comes home after everyone's asleep and snarfs down all the rice pudding for himself. (Apparently Mum's not up for puppy-counting and doesn't notice one of her sons is missing - perhaps once you have more than 4 puppies you get a bit lax about these things.)

The next morning, "someone" has filled in the hole and put up a sign: "Don't ever dig holes under this fence! BUT....The five little puppies dug a hole under the fence, just the same, and went for a walk in the wide, wide world." This time, they get to the top of the hill and His Pokiness is missing again; he's back at the bottom of the hill and this time he's heard something - it's chocolate custard! (I went 'err, what?' too, but apparently he can hear it being spooned into their bowls.) The four less-than-poky little puppies tear home, only to be scolded again by Mum for the hole under the fence, and sent to bed with no custard. Senor Poky, however, sneaks in after bedtime again, gutses down the noisy custard and sleeps the sleep of the just.

You're getting the idea here - each day they go out in the same fashion, see different creatures on the hill, go down the hill in the same way, etc. - lots of nice repetition for the kiddies (although parents might have a different reaction - I love how HarrangueMan tires of the repeated phrases pretty quickly and, in the grand tradition of parents altering picture books when reading aloud, he starts "to paraphrase, skipping entire chunks of text with the words 'they went back to the place they were at the previous day, looked for Poky, found him and went to see what he was up to.'" Tee hee.)

But in the final trip up the hill *spoiler alert*, when the four dessertless-and-pokyless little puppies miss out on strawberry shortcake, they get back in Mum's good books by filling in the hole. Mum is won over by this act of earthmoving, so the four get dessert after all. By the time the Pokster makes his usual delayed homecoming, he's out of luck: "'Dear me!' said his mother. 'What a pity you're so poky! Now the strawberry shortcake is all gone!'"

This is where I got a bit confused (after the audible custard incident I was already somewhat befuddled), because I thought 'poky' just meant 'small', and so I considered Mum's comment a bit insensitive. But a quick dictionary check informs me that 'poky' has a second meaning of 'dawdling, slow'.

Oh right then.

Things now make a bit more sense in a 'moral of the story' way - he's not at the bottom of the hill because he's too little to go fast, he's just somewhat of a slackarse. He is punished for his pokiness and goes to bed without any dessert feeling "very sorry for himself".

And in the morning, there's a final sign that "someone" has erected - though it's a bit confusing as well in a 'there are known knowns' kind of way: "No desserts ever unless puppies never dig holes under this fence again!"

Gosh. These are the desserts we know that we know. It's all rather scary, really. Not helped by the fact that the Poky-in-the-second-sense-of-the-word Little Puppy also has what Paul and I refer to as 'Sartre eyes':

If that's not creepy enough for you, there's also a wonderful Sinister Reading of the Poky Little Puppy by Rob Beschizza that you can listen to - as one of the commenters says: "I've never been so terrified of rice pudding."

So the moral of the story is: watch out for your brothers. If you hear custard in the distance, don't say a word, just get home quick and say that the other puppies dug the hole and what's for dessert?

Perfectly happy

So I’m trying (belatedly) to read the new Siri Hustvedt novel, but the baby book on the table is so much more suited to my bite-size concentration span at the moment. The section on Post-natal depression (always a cheerful breakfast read) in Kidwrangling mentions that “expecting things to be perfect” is a personality trait that can predispose you towards developing PND. There are a million other factors too, of course. The main one is having a baby.

Those of you who have seen my house will understand that I am already okay with things not being perfect. But what about expecting your children to be perfect?

There’s a short story that I’ve always loved, though I can’t remember for the life of me who wrote it or what it was called. It was about a perfect little girl who never misbehaved and never lost her temper. This level of perfection naturally caught the attention of and annoyed the devil, who became determined to make her crack it (I can’t remember if there was some deal where he got her soul if she lost her rag, or if it was a slow week in hell and he just needed a new project). He made everything go wrong for her. I especially remember he made her dolls fall in the mud and get stepped on by horses. But every time this little girl pulled a Pollyanna on him and didn’t lose her temper. Eventually the devil hit upon a long-term plan, which worked a treat and made this little-girl-now-woman absolutely furious.

He gave her a perfect husband.

He gave her a perfect house.

……..And he gave her a “fair-to-middling” child.

I love it. It’s such an evil little story. And I love the idea that the best way to piss off a perfect person is to give them something that everyone else would be quite happy with.

Although maybe not, as according to the tv, most parents these days require their children to become Prime Minister. These little tackers are either going to have to share the role or become leaders of different countries, because there just isn’t enough Prime Ministership to go round that many kids. Paul and I recently watched “Life at One”, a production about child development that follows a bunch of kids and their parents from birth (they’re up to “Life at Three” now). When the parents were asked what they wanted for their children, a scary amount of them said they wanted their child to be “healthy”, “confident” and “leaders”.

Paul and I look at each other in horror. “I don’t want to be a confident leader,” I said. “Neither do I,” says Paul. Is anyone going to mention that they’d like their child to be “happy”? Nope. Or maybe “happy” is supposed to be an exclusive result of combining those other three terms.

I want most for my child to be happy. Healthy is good too. If being a confident leader makes him happy, I can deal with that. But if we all give birth to confident leaders, the amount of public speaking competitions in high school will soon reach critical mass, and might distract from the importance of sporting events.

So:

Here’s to shy children.

Here’s to children who quietly hold their own opinions.

Here’s to children who quietly hold no opinions at all.

Here’s to children who say “I don’t know” in answer to every question they’re asked, because it’s easier or they’re embarrassed or they can’t be bothered.

Here’s to children who, to quote Tripod, aren’t ahead of the pack. They’re just with the pack. Towards the back.

Here’s to children who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, and still don’t know when they are grown up.

Here’s to easy-going children.

Here’s to children who do what they think they want to do (which may even involve enrolling in a course that doesn’t take full advantage of their VCE score).

Here’s to them changing their minds and doing something completely different.

And here’s to fair-to-middling children. May they piss off perfectionists and give the devil his due.

"Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty." - How to sell your hair

"...and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which puzzled the family as much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying with a little choke in her voice, 'That's my contribution toward making Father comfortable and bringing him home!'

'My dear, where did you get it? Twenty-five dollars! Jo, I hope you haven't done anything rash?'

'No, it's mine honestly. I didn't beg, borrow or steal it. I earned it, and I don't think you'll blame me, for I only sold what was my own.

As she spoke, Jo took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for all her abundant hair was cut short.

'Your hair! Your beautiful hair!' 'Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.'"

- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Given that I am a) lazy and b) tight, I only have a haircut every 3 or 4 years, and when I do I sell it to a wigmaker. I'm a hair farm. Pretty much everyone brings up Little Women when I say I sell my hair, so that's the tenuous bookish link for this blog entry.

Since I'm supposedly giving birth in about 2 weeks, it seemed a good time for a haircut. Firstly, I wanted to take advantage of 'pregnancy hair' (thicker and more of it), and secondly, it's one less thing to wash baby spew out of. Also, after 3.5 years of growing it from here:

To here:


I was a bit sick of it. When I turned over in bed at night it practically strangled me.

So how do you sell your hair?

Firstly, you can't sell loose hair (otherwise hairdressers would make a fortune from what they sweep off the floor). The hair shaft has a direction, and wigmakers need all your hairs pointing in the same direction to use them. Also, loose hair turns into a matted furball within about 20 seconds.

So when you go to get your hair cut, first get the hairdresser to put it into four tight ponytails and cut them off above the rubber band, leaving a fair bit of hair (at least 5cm) sticking out past the top of the bands so they don't slide off.

It's bizarre how much resistance you can get from hairdressers at this point. Seriously, what do they care how many ponytails it's put into? I had to bargain to get mine put into two ponytails (he had his heart set on one - this is how you end up with the rubber band slipping off and all your hair landing on the floor, which is how I lost about a quarter of my hair last time). They're also a bit slapdash with the rubber band fastening, so you might need to carefully adjust the ponytails a bit when you get home. Here is my product, after I'd tidied things up a bit:


Then you take it to a wigmaker. There's quite a few around, I rang around the ones in the Yellow Pages about 4 years ago, asked if they buy hair and roughly what they pay and picked the one who gave the best price. Since then I've been selling mine each time to:

C. Harms - A Better Wigmaker
Suite 512 (Level 5)
125 Swanston Street
Melbourne (next to the HiFi Bar)
Ph. 9650 4484

She's open Tues-Thurs 8am-4pm, and makes wigs solely for cancer patients, which is kind of nice.

So what do you get? It depends on the length, weight, colour and quality of your hair. The ponytails generally need to be at least 25cm to be of use to a wigmaker. I've got what is hilariously termed 'virgin hair', which means it's never been dyed or heat-treated (straightened or permed or other such things that damage hair). You get more money for virgin hair, though you can still sell dyed/treated hair to some wigmakers. The wigmaker will weigh and measure your hair and make you an offer (C. Harms writes you out a cheque to cash then you go round the corner to the ANZ and cash it in).

I got $100 for those two ponytails above, I think they were about 40cm long. So I don't exactly get enough to bring Father home from the war with, but it pays for my haircut and it's better than letting it go to waste on the cutting room floor. Apparently you can also sell your hair online at places like The Hair Trader, but they're generally American, are advertisement-based (eBay-style), boast curiously high prices and I've got no idea if they're legit. I prefer just handing it over to a person.

And now I start again from here!

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

From the favourer: "For once, the general public got it right. I first read it over 20 years ago and was amazed (and a little annoyed as I was about 30 by then myself) that someone, somewhere, hadn't told me about it earlier. So, if you haven't read it, delay no more. You can thank me afterwards."

When a comedic novel is first published in 1889, you’d expect by now that the jokes would, well, date a bit. Like the cartoons from Dickensian newspapers and Shakespearean comedies, where you can’t exactly work out what the joke is (although in Shakespeare the joke is usually a man in a dress. Hilarious.)

Perhaps the longevity of the humour in Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) has to do with its honesty about travel (flowing on rather nicely from The Art of Travel) and people. As the author says in his preface, George, Harris and Montmorency (the dog) “are not poetic ideals but things of flesh and blood – especially George, who weighs about twelve stone.” And of course, what we really want to hear about other people’s travels are the bits that went wrong. And preferably involve someone showing off and being shown up.

Upon publication Three Men in a Boat was snatched up lovingly by the general public and derided by the critics as being vulgar and written for the "‘Arrys and ‘Arriets" (kind of the Kath and Kels of the time). Probably a good sign.

The story begins as the author and his two friends George and Harris are sitting around with their pipes, and discussing their general malaise (the author, on perusal of a medical dictionary, has discovered he suffers from every disease known to man, except Housemaid’s Knee: “I felt rather hurt at this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation?”). They conclude that what they need is to get away from it all, and a boating trip up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford is planned.

What follows is the “record of events that really happened” on this trip; part travelogue, part floridly described reverie (which the author keeps being dragged away from as he’s about to the crash the boat) and part tangential anecdotes about storing cheeses.

Lots of the stories are a smile-out-loud read, such as when the author stops Harris from singing a comic song:

“You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, or you would understand the service I had rendered to mankind. It is one of Harris’s fixed ideas that he can sing a comic song; a fixed idea, on the contrary, among those of Harris’s friends who have heard him try, is that he can’t, and never will be able to, and that he should not be allowed to try.

When Harris is at a party and asked to sing, he replies: ‘Well, I can only sing a comic song, you know’; and he says it in a tone that implies that his singing of that, however, is a thing that you ought to hear once, and then die.

‘Oh, that is nice,’ says the hostess. ‘Do sing one, Mr Harris’; and Harris gets up, and makes for the piano, with the beaming cheeriness of a generous-minded man who is just about to give somebody something.

‘Now, silence, please, everybody,’ says the hostess, turning round, ‘Mr Harris is going to sing a comic song!’

‘Oh, how jolly!’ they murmur; and they hurry in from the conservatory, and come up from the stairs, and go and fetch each other from all over the house, and crowd into the drawing-room, and sit round, all smirking in anticipation.

Then Harris begins.

Well, you don’t look for much of a voice in a comic song. You don’t expect correct phrasing or vocalization. You don’t mind if a man does find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes down with a jerk. You don’t bother about time. You don’t mind a man being two bars in front of the accompaniment, and easing up in the middle of a line to argue it out with the pianist, and then starting the verse afresh. But you do expect the words.

You don’t expect a man to never remember more than the first three lines of the first verse, and to keep on repeating these until it is time to begin the chorus. You don’t expect a man to break off in the middle of a line, and snigger, and say, it’s very funny but he’s blest if he can think of the rest of it, and then try and make it up for himself, and, afterwards, suddenly recollect it, when he has got to an entirely different part of the song, and break off without a word of warning, to go back and let you have it then and there.”

It’s all pretty delightful and unserious, and could probably be prescribed as a good alternative to anti-depressants (much like P.G. Wodehouse, who I always read when I feel sad).

Most of the fun comes from the general wrestling with the realities of travel, in this case, boat travel. When they try to set up the tent-like cover over the boat ready for the night; “it would take quite ten minutes, we thought.

That was an underestimate.

We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the socket places for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous work; but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell the tale. They were not hoops, they were demons. First they would not fit into their sockets at all, and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and hammer at them with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out that they were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets, and they had to come out again.

But they would not come out, until the two of us had gone and struggled with them for five minutes, when they would jump up suddenly, and try and throw us into the water and drown us. They had hinges in the middle, and, when we were not looking, they nipped us with these hinges in the delicate parts of the body; and, while we were wrestling with one side of the hoop, and endeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the other side would come behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over the head…It took us half an hour’s hard labour, after that, before it was properly up, and then we cleared the decks, and got out supper. We put the kettle onto boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out.

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.

It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don’t need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, ‘I don’t want any tea; do you George?’ to which George shouts back ‘Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’ll have lemonade instead, tea’s so indigestible.’ Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out.”

The actual journey of the book is apparently still quite recognizable (and replicable) today, if you know the towns by the river they are traveling through - which I don’t, but it doesn’t matter reading-wise. So, if you’re planning a boating trip up the Thames (aren’t we all), perhaps you could follow their itinerary.

And if it rains, and you can’t take it any more, you can always follow their lead – lie to the boatman that you’re not running away from the rain and the boat is to be ready for you at nine the next morning, but “if anything unforeseen should happen” preventing your return, you will “write to him”. Then bugger off to the pub and home.

___________________________________________________________________

I've registered this book on Bookcrossing and will be releasing it into the wild in a week - but if you'd like to have it, email me before then and I'll post it to you instead!

Due dates

This morning I lent a dvd to a borrower and stamped the due date in the front (yes, we still stamp date slips at the Rowden White Library).

Me: "There you go."

Borrower: "Thanks. When is it due?"

Me, looking at the dvd: "In a week."

Borrower: *horrified pause, staring at my 6-months-pregnant belly* "A week??!!"

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

From the favourer: "The thing I loved is that it's the universal guidebook applicable to all travels. It also implores readers to make sure they engage in the travel experience in a way that is personally meaningful and not just ticking items off a list."

Travelling is an art. It's not one I do exceptionally well (I do it so it feels like hell, in fact). I am a bad traveller, and when I say to people "I don't like travelling", they look at me like I've said "I enjoy boiling puppies". There are three main reasons I'm a bad traveller.

1. I hate discomfort, physical and psychological. Not 'discomfort' in a doctorly "you may experience some mild discomfort" sense (which translates as "you will now suffer agonising pain"). Just the ordinary uncomfortableness of plane seats, being too hot, having to say the same thing all over again, not knowing where you're going, etc. If I had somone to carry all my luggage for me all the time when I travelled, I reckon I'd be about 50% better at it.

2. I hate unfamiliarity. I'm best at going back to places I've been to before, and much happier going anywhere for the second time. This is a bit of a problem as generally to go anywhere, you have to go there for the first time sometime.

3. I'm a self-conscious traveller. In the immortal words of Jarvis Cocker: "Everybody hates a tourist". I feel like all the locals hate me all the time. Because of this I always tried to be nice to tourists in Warrnambool when I worked in the bookshop there, even when they asked really stupid questions like: "What time are the whales on?". I didn't say "It's not Sea World, guys." I just politely explained that as they were wild, the whales showed up whenever they felt like it, so you just had to try your luck to see them. Only once, when we were really busy, did I say to one man "They're on at 3pm" (and he seemed quite happy with that anyway).

These may seem like small reasons, but given that most travelling (unless you're stinking rich) is basically about being uncomfortable, in unfamiliar situations, and being a tourist, I find my small reasons get bigger fairly quickly. I think Alain de Botton would understand.

The Art of Travel is a guidebook to the why, rather than the how or what of travelling. Each chapter takes an author/artist/thinker (starting with our old friend Joris-Karl Huysmans) and uses their work as a 'travel guide' to a particular country de Botton is visiting, exploring notions such as anticipation, the sublime, the exotic, beauty and habit.

It's a neat little structure, part personal reflection, part travelogue, and part philosophical/art/literary history. He can be a bit of a romantic (I initially had trouble working out when he was quoting Huysmans and when he was writing as himself), but his reflections often have an appealing honesty that balances this. He notes things like how an argument with a partner over who gets which serving of creme brulee can totally spoil the appreciation you should be having of a Barbados sunset.

Journeying through Madrid (with Alexander von Humbolt as our guide), de Botton reflects that travel works better when there is a driving interest behind why you've gone to the place - a mission, of sorts. The danger is in taking in many unconnected 'sights' in a row "before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain." 'Sight-seeing', it's an ugly compound.

I always made myself keep a diary when I travelled (and no, it wasn't all whingeing. That would bore even me), to 'keep' moments of the journey - small details without which the memory of travelling becomes a bit of a coffee-table-book blur. With John Ruskin as our guide in the chapter On Possessing Beauty, de Botton explores our need to 'possess' the beauty we find on our travels; "to buy something - a bowl, a laquered box or a pair of sandals...to be reminded of what we have lost, like a lock of hair that we cut from a departing lover's mane." (I know what he means, but someone really ought to have a quiet word to Alain - cutting bits of your ex-partner's hair off is creepy and liable to land you with a restraining order.)

De Botton recommends word-painting or drawing on your travels as a better way to really "eat a place", rather than blindly taking photos. I think there's photo-taking and photo-taking though - some people take real care with the framing and composition of their travel photos. But I guess it's easy to take a thoughtless photo, not so easy to do a thoughtless drawing or written description.

I think my favourite chapter (apart from the first one, but that's because Huysmans' Des Esseintes and I have similar attitudes to travel) is the one on Xavier de Maistre and his notion of "room travel", which de Botton (not being blessed with a spacious bedroom), extends to "neighbourhood travel". He decides to spend his walk to the Underground actually paying attention to the details of his surroundings rather just barging along. This really appealed to me, as I spend my walk to the bus each day basically looking at stuff - for instance, currently there's a bandaid stuck to a tree at the top of the hill, a huge dump of lilly-pillies that are gradually being crushed into the footpath, and a newly printed 'NO ENTRY' across a one-way street that's all raised and clean and nice. I know the sleeping places of the neighbourhood cats and which ones will come over, and I name the trees and birds that I know (in a species kind of way, not a "Hi Bob, hi Sandra" kind of way).

Introspective thoughts, who needs 'em. I much prefer de Botton and de Maistre "gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen."