Mobiles, piano, Melbourne weather, books, a Lurid Tale...

[Tabouli]

Catherine in California:
> I used to haul one around when I was the oncall and I must admit that I equate cell phones with a leash.

Ahh, the cell of the cell phone.  Such creatures are invariably called "mobiles" in Australia.  The level of mobile phones per capita in Australia is, I read somewhere, one of the highest in the world, and well I would believe it.  Up until the mid 1990s or so, the Australian pretension-allergy denounced them as the ultimate in yuppy pretension, but since then they've taken over everywhere.  People just assume you have one.  I resisted for a long time, but gave in last year because I was starting my own business.  Mine is a special sort that is a flat rate home phone at home, and becomes a mobile outside it.  I must admit, though, since getting it I haven't looked back... it's just so terribly convenient!  Especially compared with the former ritual of pacing the streets in search of a working payphone and change or phonecard.  It's also invaluable for someone who is apt to run late... (what, me?)

Pippin:
> Do you still play piano? I took it up again after a long lapse and 
was surprised to find it much more enjoyable than I remembered.<

Not really.  I still have lingering aversions (though I've occasionally contemplated learning some contemporary piano or jazz instead).  The problem was, I think, that my parents wanted me to play the piano for extrinsic, rather than intrinsic reasons.  It was a chore I had to suffer through to make me Accomplished, so I could Impress People.  Unfortunately, as I had my last lesson at 16, I no longer play well enough to impress anyone, and have this major mental block about trying.

Mind you, 12 years of piano lessons means I have a very solid grounding in music theory, which comes in handy for other things.  And on occasion, I still do enjoy playing, so long as I'm not trying to dig up my exam pieces.  I bought myself an electronic keyboard as a present to myself for leaving work, but for songwriting rather than a desire to rekindle those exam pieces o' mine.  It's nowhere near the same of course - touch sensitive, but nothing like the real thing, and shorter than a proper keyboard - all that Chopin and Debussy I used to play falls off both ends!


Mieneke:
> Speaking of Australia, my mum moved to Duramana, do any of the Aussie listees know what kind of place that is, because I'd like to know where my mum has ended up. ;-)

Never heard of it.  From storm's comments, I assume this is because it's in the state of New South Wales!  I live in Melbourne, the southernmost capital on the Australian mainland, reputed to have the most capricious weather of any large city in the world.  If you listen to half the people from Sydney and Adelaide, you'd get the impression that Melbourne is a sub-arctic micro-climate of perpetual cold and rain, but this is all lies (lies, lies, I tell you!).  Deep winter is a bit miserable, I grant you, but between about October and April you can get just about anything from 12 degrees max (Celsius) and hail to 42 degrees max with fan-forced oven winds, and probably will.  Within days or even hours of each other.  Melbourne's weather is a wonderful illustration of the maxim "Nothing is permanent but change"... (on one memorable day in my childhood the temperature dropped from 42 degrees to 19 degrees in about 20 minutes).  It drives people from the consistent tropics mad, and I've heard people from countries as diverse as Austria and Japan complaining bitterly about it.  We robust Melburnians, however, take it in our stride (and always carry a jumper and an umbrella).  I personally found the stagnant weather in the tropics far more maddening...

Speaking of storm the sydneysider, all these requests for further reading remind me of the tragic, violin-laden tale of meeting Antonia Forest she requested.  Violins and dire meetings with the author aside, her books really are good, if you can track them down, and, I imagine, far less intrinsically child-directed than Lemony Snicket (though I haven't tried those).  Her books even have the Brow of Approval from the literary snobs (and were published by Faber & Faber, known to be a Quality Publisher)!  They are about a family one child larger than the Weasleys (with a set of twins and a head girl sister!), with some books set at the sisters' girls' boarding school, and some at home with their brothers and friend Patrick Merrick (a rather attractive fictional boy).  I was particularly reminded of these books when I stumbled on the following rant about bullying at school:

http://www.kilireth.freeserve.co.uk/rant16.html

... which began:

"I love school stories. I'm very proud of my collection of Chalet School books, and I believe that Antonia Forest was writing books for children that deserved the thinking attention of adults long before anyone had heard of Harry Potter."

(I wonder if JKR read them as a child?)

On a light and lurid note, I've had quite an amusing day.  Using the excuse that I must buy more summer clothes before going to the States for a second summer (where summer clothes are no doubt widespread, but will cost double in A$), I went shopping, and had one of those cheerful sales assistant bonding experiences.  I started chatting to the bored but good-natured sales assistant (working alone in this factory outlet-type clearance shop, I was the only customer), while trying on jeans, and we got along famously, to the extent that I lingered for half an hour talking and we started sniggering our way through the discount bin (and the discount bin in the factory clearance shop is grim pickings indeed).  Hardly had we laid eyes on said bin than they were assaulted by a truly LURID garment which, after the application of sunglasses, proved to be a skirt.  And what a skirt!

It was light corduroy, in a shade of chilli red so bright it would almost glow in the dark, with a hanky hem (read points of fabric hanging down front and back instead of being even all round) edged with sueded burgundy fringeing.  Around the bottom of this brave statement the corduroy was plain (if so vivid a shade could be described with such a word); from the waist to about 2/3 of the way down, however, the fabric was a patterned paisley which was brightly coloured beyond the dreams of Tom Bombadil on LSD.  The background was that same chilli red, and the densely packed tadpoles were yellow, orange, blue, green and red.  Now there's loud, and there's deafening...

We were busy laughing heartily about the fact that someone had, beyond all the bounds of taste and marketing potential, actually *designed* this garment and imagined people might pay $55 for it, when the sales assistant noticed that it was my size.  Oh go on, try it on, try it on! she cried, so I did, and emerged gleefully from the changing cubicle.  "You know what?"  she said.  "What?" I asked.  "You won't believe this, but it *suits* you!"  And, bizarrely enough, it sort of did.  The long and the short of it is, in the end she offered it to me for $5, and I am now the proud (?) owner of a psychedelic cowgirl skirt in chilli red paisley with burgundy fringeing...

I'm really not sure what this says about me.  Admittedly, since I offloaded my adolescent self-consciousness my tastes in clothing have slowly been becoming more adventurous, but this is totally over the top.  Do I really think I'm ever going to wear this??  If clothes maketh man, what doth a fringed, chilli red paisley psychedelic cowgirl skirt maketh woman?

Tabouli
(who has been musing that this skirt could prove an infallible means of identifying herself to American listmembers, though I advise them to stock up in sunglasses first...)


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