A Little Space Of My Own

Oh well if I was ever looking for conclusive evidence that I'm losing my mind I now have it.

I mean, I never had that firm a grasp on my mind in the first place but it is definitely slipping away faster than I anticipated.

I left something out of my perfect house planning.

Something essential.

Something I didn't even remember until I read this article.

A secret room!

What the hell is wrong with you, brain?

How can we live without a secret room?

I very much doubt I'll ever be affluent enough to build a house big enough to contain a secret passage but a hidden room I think I could squeeze into the budget.

I like the elegance of this swinging bookcase.

First reason, the lovely curved double doors are a design feature I like all by themselves.

Second reason, it's a bookcase, which is not only a traditional method of hiding passages and bolt holes but also wonderfully functional.

I think I would have always been drawn to the idea of secret rooms and passages no matter what, especially considering the amount of books* I've read that have featured them, but I had a push in that direction when I was young.

My godfather owned a house that contained one.

I've been jealous of people for a lot of things.

Owning a sweet-ass Voltron figure that actually broke down into the individual lions which contained each of the pilots.

Being able to do backflips on the playground without worrying about messing it up and landing on their head.

Having a bike whose pedals could be pedalled backwards because the brakes were in the handles.

But I have never been as jealous of any of those people as I was of my godfather's son who lived in the secret room.

You entered it through a nondescript looking hallway cupboard which - when you opened it - contained not linens, Christmas decorations or winter wear but a set of quite steep stairs which you climbed in darkness.

At the top of the staircase you pressed up on a trap door which lifted to let you into a narrow but comfortable room which had a small unobtrusive balcony overlooking the very high-ceilinged lounge room.

It was amazing.

I'd never seen a secret room in person before and the idea that you could live in one, that you could have your books and clothes and stereo in one and be able to look out on the rest of the household when your presence or existence may not have been immediately evident or noticed at all...

So. Jealous.

They moved out of the house some years ago and as I was about 10 at the time I didn't have the finances to buy it or the influence to cajole my parents into moving cities and buying it so that I could live in the hidden room but I've never really forgotten about it.

Great swathes of time have gone past without me thinking about it but whenever it has popped up in my brain again I've felt that same wonder, excitement and satisfaction.

So it's going on the list.

Secret room.

Candlestick sconces and fireplaces optional**.



*I only reluctantly gave up on my plans to become Mary out of The Secret Garden when I realised that in order for that to happen my parents would have to die.

**The only option is which colours and of which materials they'll be constructed.

Sick Sick Sick

I can't think of a better way to start this so I'll just say: I got sick over the Christmas holidays.

It started off just before Christmas with me thinking I'd pulled a muscle in my forearm or given myself tendinitis ten-pin bowling with too heavy a bowling ball the night before and then a couple of days later the other arm started doing the same thing.

After a few days they both started aching and throbbing, they felt hot all the time and didn't like to be left in one place for long when I was trying to sleep.

Then my hands puffed up.

I spent two weeks with cold packs more or less permanently strapped to my arms which had to be rested on a banana pillow on my lap because holding my arms up made me too tired and hurt too much.

I didn't have enough strength in my hands to open a loosely tightened screw-top water bottle let alone type or do anything else.

All I could do was lay about the place watching TV and worrying.
I couldn't even read because holding a book up or even open for longer than five minutes hurt too much.

Then my guts decided to join in and ache and play up for a bit. So not only could I not sit up for too long, I couldn't lie in one position for long either.

My appetite went AWOL, I lost at least 6 kg* in 2 weeks. They weren't kilos I needed, losing them didn't push me into an unhealthy weight range, but it was disconcerting seeing them all wander off at the same time when the most energetic thing I was doing was pressing 'Play All' and gnawing on my lip.

I was in a panic and had been seeing the doctor ever since the symptoms had kicked up from 'slightly annoying' to 'what the hell is going on here!?'.

I had some blood tests done, I had some ultrasounds and a few other scans.

For the most part everything came back normal but a couple of things that should have been up were down and a couple that should have been down were up.

Just when things were at their worst and I was starting to make plans for how I was going to have to move back home with my parents, wondering how my cats would cope with our other cats and what sort of work a person with a functioning brain but crapped out arms could manage, things started to slowly calm down.

As far as we've been able to work out I caught a virus, probably courtesy of one of the many millions of mosquitoes that have come out to play after all the flooding in the last few months, which sent my system into a major freak-out.

Fortunately a combination of the lifespan of the virus and my being a reasonably healthy young-ish person stopped it before it went past the point of no return.
I apparently came within a gnat's wing of developing a permanent inflammatory condition.

I've been back at work since the start of February and every week since then I've felt a bit better. Just being able to be at work and do things like cook and drive for myself have been a huge mood lifter all by themselves.

Most of my blood test scores are back to normal and I have been eating and living like a saint to keep the recovery marching on.

I've had to give up both caffeine and alcohol for the rest of this year to give myself the best chance at a full recovery and avoid the possibility of any kind of relapse.
Depending on how far one of the last scores recovers, I may end up having to ration or forgo alcohol and caffeine permanently.

Nevertheless at this point what I am feeling is incredibly, incredibly lucky.

I have never been that sick before and hope never to be that sick ever again.

I am beyond grateful that I feel as close to normal as I do now and if it takes giving up stimulants to maintain it, I won't even blink.

It's easy to dismiss the phrase 'at least you have your health' when you're healthy and there's something going wrong in your life, or just not going as right as you'd like, but I am never going to take that sentiment for granted again.

Anyway, now that I'm done being serious and disconcertingly earnest the two things I started this post wanting to say are as follows:

When I was physically unable to write I still came up with ideas for my posts and now I'm both mentally and physically able to do so I'm going to start filling in the place-saver drafts I claw typed at the time.
So over the next few weeks I'll be filling in the gaping void that currently lies between December and the present day.
Some of you had already noticed my amazing time defying efforts in this area and oh how I wish your assumptions were true and I could pull a Back to the Future because I would tell Past Me what I'm about to tell Current You.

Wear mosquito repellent all the time.
Just all the damn time.
If you're going outside I want you to spritz yourself with repellent and then I want you to spritz yourself again just to be sure.
All over.
I don't care what the season is - mosquito repellent.
It's worth it, believe me.

OK, maybe I wasn't quite done being disconcertingly earnest.



PS. As hard as it may be to believe this isn't supposed to be a 'downer' post, me and my working arms are in a great mood :-)



*That's about 13 lbs for the imperialists.

Don't Mind If I Do

Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror as I wash my hands, I can't at first work out what is bothering me about this outfit and then it hits me.

This hoodie makes me look like a Jedi.

It is at least three sizes too big and is of a manly cut for manly shoulders so it drapes like a cowl and draws closed like robes.

And I have no idea where it came from.

I mean, I know where I got it from but before that the trail gets a little muddy.

I'm not making any sense, let me try again.

The universe gives me jackets.

It does.

On no less than three and no more than five occasions, friends or colleagues have approached me holding out a jacket and said "You left this behind."

I didn't, it isn't mine.

I tell them this and they shrug and say something to the effect of "Whatever, it's been sitting here for over a month, you want it?"

And what the hell, sure, why not, free jacket.

They're invariably at least a size too big but always incredibly warm and cosy and no-one has ever, ever come looking for them again.

I've checked periodically for months afterward if anyone has come looking for their jacket until I am gripped firmly by the shoulders by an exasperated acquaintance who requests very, very politely that I please, for the love of God, stop asking. Just. Keep. The. Damn. Jacket.

Seeing as this is a very odd thing to happen to somebody more than once and definitely a strange thing to happen almost a half dozen times I've decided to go the egocentric route and take this as a sign that the universe wants me to be warm.

This means one of two things.

Option 1: I am inherently important.

Option 2: The universe is in cahoots with my mother who never thinks that I dress warmly enough.

Seeing as the universe hasn't started randomly handing me babies* or sending me baby magazines like it did to Lucy Knisley (see 6pm), it is obviously Option 1.

So if you feel obligated to pay me tribute I wouldn't be averse to that.

I expect it to arrive in the form of jackets.



*Mum never used to be like that but in the last five years she's gotten very 'Oh look at the babies!'
It's... disconcerting...

The Enormity Of Everything

Sometimes I get a bit frantic about the impossibility of ever experiencing everything there is to experience.

And not even EVERYTHING everything.

Even if you narrowed it down and dedicated yourself to one pursuit you'd never manage to do it all.

Read all the books.

Listen to all the music.

See all the sights.

Watch all the movies and/or TV shows.

Learn all the languages.

Try all the foods.

There are so many things to do and see and every now and then the though that you might be missing out on something that would be truly life changing because of what you're currently doing and because you have no idea that this truly magnificent thing exists let alone that it is your perfect thing.

Of course that's the kind of thinking that can either paralyse you* or motivate you.

After a moment of 'Aaaaaaaaaargh am I wasting my time/not taking full advantage of life' freak outs, I generally get to planning which tends to lead to new things of one kind or another.

I know that if I was immortal most of what I'd do for a portion of that forever would be sitting around and reading and watching things, not because I'm lazy** but because it would give me a chance to have a crack at watching ALL THE THINGS.

But first I think I'd travel.

The chances of various bits of the world and the things in it ceasing to exist - or at least ceasing to exist in their current incarnation - is more likely than a catastrophic EMP event that wipes out all possibility of ever watching a DVD again.

And of all the Everythings that there are to do, a lot of them can be done travelling.

Of course by the time I finished travelling there might not be time for the Everything else but it's hard to believe I'd have regrets about that.



*Because you then get so worried about doing the Right thing that you don't do anything at all.

**Though I can be!

That's SIR Terry Pratchett, I'll Have You Know

There are some people whose work you just can't imagine your life without.

For me one of those people is definitely Terry Pratchett.

I have been losing myself in his books since I was about 14 and I often find it difficult to believe that so many varied characters, so many worlds could come out of one person's head.

I have trouble believing that some of those characters and places aren't in fact real, because who could have written something so complex and wonderful starting from scratch?

Well, he could.

And he does it in the same way as most of the people I truly admire do such things, by being genuinely and persistently interested in absolutely everything and filtering that interest in through their ears and eyes and then out through their fingers and into their work.

Hearing him speak was a fantastic experience.

I had been a little worried about how he would go as he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007 but apart from the occasional pause to try remember the word he was searching for, he didn't have too much difficulty.

Just hearing about some of the things he has researched for his own interest which may never find heir way into his books was fun, it made me feel like going out to a bookstore and picking up a handful of completely random books and seeing where they take me.

I'm not disappointed that I didn't get to meet him as I tend to believe that I'll make an arse of myself in front of my heroes and wouldn't be able to think of anything original to ask or say.

I might like to have a signed copy of one of my favourite books but apart from the fact I don't think he's really doing that any more, I think I'd be tempted to stop reading it as I would want it to stay pristine for as long as possible and that's not right.
Books are meant to be read.

Speaking of which, now I'm going to have to go home and re-read my entire collection.

It won't take as long as you might expect, familiar words move quickly past the eyes.


[Edit: Ooh look! In July they posted a video of his talk online!]



If you don't like embedded videos, here's the link to the Wheeler Centre webpage instead.

Where To? Where From?

I've always been obsessed with doors.

Not with the different shapes, different materials, different colours, different fixtures - though those things are all lovely and also interest me - but with doors as portals.

The idea of a shape or item that stands between one space and another always presented a huge array of possibilities.

I used to wonder if it was possible to pass through a door, close it and when you open it again, find it looking out into a completely different place, possibly completely alien to the one you just left.
This of course led to wondering whether the room you were in still existed on the same physical plane of reality that it had originally and whether therefore you could return to the place you left by exiting via the window instead of through a door that may then strand you in a place you'd not be able to return from.

As you can imagine I wasn't a difficult child to keep occupied.
All you had to do was leave me to my own devices and I could spend hours theorising ways to keep track or hold of your original world, like Theseus using Ariadne's ball of thread to find his way out of the Minotaur's maze*.

Any book, movie or TV show that involved any kind of travel or access to such different dimensions or locations were therefore insanely interesting to me.

Sliders, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe by C S Lewis, Stargate, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Weather Witch by Paul Stewart, The Fionavar Tapestry series by Guy Gavriel Kay, Goodnight Sweetheart, all of those crazy ABC kids shows that involved the characters stepping back in time or travelling to the UK or Canada** possibly whilst also stepping back in time...

I'm also pretty sure that despite my lifelong fascination with such portals, that if I found one, I would not have the guts to step through one.
Or if I did so by accident I probably wouldn't do so twice in the event I managed to get back to where I came from.
What can I say.
I'm a giant wuss.
Then again the curiosity and the fear of missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance would be warring with my terror of being trapped forever in an alternate reality or time.

I expect it isn't a choice I'll ever need to make but, y'know, never say never.

And never look at doors in quite the same way again either.



*Except I wouldn't douche-ily abandon somebody who saved my life and ensured I succeeded at an impossible task. I'm looking at you, pretty much every man in every Greek myth ever.

**You know, countries we just happen to have relationships with who also like weird shows like that and want to cross-market/co-produce their kids shows.

One Or The Other Or The Other Or The Other

I'm not very good at having 'favourite' things.

Mostly because I have this wandering memory and if it's been a while since I've seen/read/heard/experienced something, I may not think of it when the question is asked.

I have lots of things I love and am enthusiastic about but if you ever ask me point blank what my favourite book, movie, band, TV show or celebrity hairstyle is I simply will not be able to answer you.

I'll be able to give you a short list in each category of things that I like but I can't elevate one above the other, I don't grade them on a bell curve.

I don't know, maybe these things don't resonate with me on the perfect level they do with other people which allows that level of passion or maybe I'm more aware that the passion I feel for a particular book, show, movie, author, style of dog Halloween costume is partially influenced by its newness and novelty and I'll have to reevaluate my feelings in 6 months time to see if they hold up.
Whatever it is, I'm not good at favourites.

Even seasons.
For the most part, people seem able to declare at least their favourite season without even stopping to think about it.

Even here I struggle.

When it's winter, winter is my favourite season.
The wonderful bracing contrast between the warm inside and the cold outside and how satisfying it is to be inside looking out and knowing how warm you are, or outside looking in knowing how warm you're going to be.
All the scarves, jackets and gloves.
The warming food.
Reading in front of an open fire when you have the chance.
The crazy frost patterns that mean you have to fiddle around with water and wipers for minutes before you can drive to work.

When it's spring, spring is my favourite season.
The new growth.
All the animal babies.
The smells in the air.
The rain.
The touch of cold that still hangs in the air.
The hints of warmth creeping in.

When it's summer, summer is my favourite season.
The sunshine.
The picnics.
The BBQs.
The swimming.
The joy of air-conditioning and cold drinks on sweltering days.
Christmas with the family.
The long days and warm nights.

But autumn, autumn is my favourite season all year around, even when I'm playing at the other seasons being my favourite season.
As the days shorten, a crispness begins to creep into the air and the deciduous trees begin to shed their leaves.
As you get to mix and match the best clothes of summer and the best clothes of winter without having to shed two layers every time you walk in the door.
As the urge to eat harvest-type foods pops up.
As the outdoors becomes more invigorating and the indoors becomes more comfortable.
As your pets start pretending that they love you more than they usually do so they can start poaching your body-heat in preparation for the thermal-vampire routine they'll take up in winter.

For some reason although spring is perched between the two more extreme seasons in exactly the same way, autumn appeals to me more.

So I guess I have one favourite thing.
For now.
Until I get distracted.
And forget again.
And remember again.
Every single year.

But unless I need to answer thee these questions three my inability to commit to or remember my favourite anything on a reliable basis shouldn't actually kill me so I doubt I'll lose any sleep over it.

Instead I'll just stand out here taking deep breaths of the brisk Eucalyptus-scented air and feeling - almost impossibly - aggressively peaceful.