The love has gone

My love affair with sugar is fading. We used to be so close, but now we hardly see each other …

But before I give you the latest report from the war zone, I have to show you the invitations I made for Demon Duck’s upcoming slumber party.

Aren’t they cute? When you lift the quilt the invitation is revealed hiding underneath. I was very proud of myself for dreaming this up – and then it occurred to me how very little actual sleeping takes place at a so-called slumber party. Lots of giggling and talking, watching DVDs and consuming junk food, but not much sleeping. So maybe a bed wasn’t such a good idea after all!

I did a little sewing the other night. One of my sister’s sons gave her a Kindle for her birthday recently (I shall have to give Baby Duck hints that this is the level of awesome required for presents from one’s grown-up sons!). She was carrying it around in a satin bag. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that she needed a padded bag to protect it. Actually that was probably the second thing, after “Oh my God, you’ve got a Kindle!”

So I had a go at making one. My first attempt ended up too small, and will be reincarnated as a handbag for Demon Duck. For my second attempt I found a pattern here and, armed with proper measurements, it turned out much better.

Here it is with a book inside it (since my son hasn’t received the memo yet about buying his mother a Kindle).

As for the War on Sugar, or The Sad Story of a Love Gone Wrong, there’s not a lot to report. I’m past the major headache stage and the cravings are lessening. I weakened and had one square of peppermint chocolate with my cup of tea the last two nights. One lousy square! How the mighty have fallen. I claim extenuating circumstances. I won’t bore you with the details, but life is fairly stressful at the moment.

Apart from that, no sugar apart from what’s in a couple of pieces of fruit a day. Not even in tea, which is another sad story of lost love. I’ve been having Equal, a sugar substitute, in my tea. It gives the tea a slightly different flavour, but it’s still tea and it’s still sweet – and yet … Nope. I’m just not feeling it. Turns out that my great love of tea was actually a great love of the sugar in it. Without sugar tea is just a pleasant hot drink that I can take or leave.

Jay Lake had a link on his blog to a report on the evils of sugar, specifically its fructose half. A new study has found that pancreatic cancer cells use fructose to divide and proliferate. The researchers fed cancer cells both fructose and glucose, but the cells used the two types of sugar differently, showing the sugar industry’s claims that all sugars are the same to be wrong. In the US, where they have a huge amount of high fructose corn syrup in their diet, this has big implications. “US consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.”

Now the research team is hoping to develop a drug to stop cancer cells using fructose to grow. I guess that’s what researchers do, but it seems to me to be coming at the problem from the wrong end. Instead of trying to fix the damage fructose causes, wouldn’t it be better to prevent the damage in the first place by removing fructose from the diet?

I realise that’s not an easy thing to do. Trust me, I know! Governments would have to take on the big companies like Coca-Cola and educate people on the dangers. It would require a huge shift in people’s attitude to sugar. But we only have to look at the government regulation of the tobacco industry and the way the public perception of smoking has changed over the years to know it can be done.

Meanwhile, my personal struggle against the Demon Sugar continues. Someone hide those biscuits and pass the damn nuts.

Kicking the sugar habit

It has occurred to me more and more lately that I am addicted to chocolates and sweet foods. I used to have a more responsible attitude. I’d only eat my beloved peppermint chocolate two or three times a week, for instance. Then it crept up to every night. Then the amount started to increase. Lately I’ve felt that I could happily down the whole block in a sitting, though I haven’t quite sunk that low yet. But the potential was alarming. I could end up one of those sad cases where they have to bring in a crane and knock a hole in the wall because they can’t get the body out through the door.

So I decided to give up peppermint chocolate, at least for a little while. Two days later, my well-meaning family, unacquainted with my new resolve, gave me ten blocks of the stuff for my birthday. Sigh.

Then we watched the DVD Supersize Me, in which Morgan Spurlock nearly eats himself into an early grave by eating nothing but MacDonalds for a month. I’d seen it back when it first came out, but wanted to show it to the girls. There is a moment at the end when a very sick-looking, much larger Spurlock is sitting with a dietician. On the table between them are pots and pots of sugar, representing the enormous amount he has ingested over the month.

With that image in my head I walked into a bookshop the next day and a book jumped out at me: The Sweet Poison Quit Plan, by David Gillespie.

“Sugar makes you fat,” it begins. “It is converted directly to fat by your liver and it destroys your appetite control so that you want to eat more of everything.”

Gillespie also says it is the cause of many chronic diseases such as heart disease and obesity, and of course diabetes. It is as addictive as nicotine, and in just about everything we eat. Not only that, but it caused the Global Financial Crisis. Okay, I might have made that part up. But there is a lot of food for thought in his book, if you’ll forgive the pun. If you’re interested, his blog discusses much of it.

Ding ding ding! This was ringing some bells with me. Most days I wake up with a headache, which often disappears mid-morning. Hey, that would be just after I’ve had my glass of sugar (ie orange juice) for breakfast, followed by my sugar-laden morning tea. Coincidence? And you know when I have a headache and the Carnivore suggests I take a tablet, and I say “oh, I’ll just have a cup of tea, that’ll fix it”? Maybe that’s not the caffeine after all.

Okay, I’m a sugar addict. I finish the book on Monday afternoon and resolve to give up sugar forthwith. No tea and chocolate before bed.

The result?

Day 1: I have a filthy headache all day. As in, toothed, spacefaring worms from the planet Mongo are devouring my brain kind of headache. I take this as a challenge and resolve not to be bested by the demon sugar. Feel abnormally tired driving home in the early afternoon, so much so that I worry about falling asleep at the wheel. Damn the evil sugar and its energy highs and lows! Sing along to the radio and focus on how good I will feel when I conquer this addiction. Cut my beloved breakfast orange juice back to half a (large) glass.

Day 2: Headache has subsided to a dull ache. Amazingly, I feel no cravings for sweet food. I attribute this to my new gung-ho attitude to the demon sugar and feel mildly smug all day. Cut sugar in my tea back to half a teaspoon. Tastes so bad am forced to drink herb tea instead. Notice for the first time how very sweet orange juice is, and contemplate cutting my breakast ration back further.

Day 3: Still no cravings for sweet foods. For the queen of peppermint chocolate, this is most unexpected, but very welcome. Snack virtuously on nuts and natural yoghurt. (“What’s that?” the Carnivore asks. “Natural yoghurt.” “Does it taste nice?” “Disgusting. No sugar.”)

Day 4: Cut breakfast orange juice down to half a small glass, and drink a large glass of water with it. OJ is now tasting almost unpleasantly sweet. Perhaps I’m only drinking it out of habit now. Have also purchased some dextrose (“good” but not very sweet, sugar) to try in my tea.

Perhaps as a result of cutting my OJ back so far from normal levels, I experience some cravings today. Manage to tough it out, but then, at dinnertime, a heavy blow. The Carnivore points out that the bottle of diet soft drink I’ve been drinking with dinner the last few days is, in fact, the real deal, overflowing with sugar. Feel despondent. Tip evil, lying soft drink down the sink. And then the traitorous Carnivore flourishes the packet of Mint Slices (a peppermint chocolate biscuit – only my Most Favourite Biscuit in the Whole World) he has bought. Feel betrayed. And slightly homicidal.

Day 5 (Today): Cravings are worsening. Spend much time staring at the pantry shelves, hoping some healthful sugar-free chocolate will magically materialise. Wonder how diabetics cope. Search the internet for “diabetic chocolate”. Avert eyes from Mint Slices in fridge. Encourage confused but eager children to eat all the sugary treats in the house. Wonder how long I can keep this up.

Consider lynching David Gillespie.

Time flies when you're ... hmmm

Having fun? I wouldn’t exactly say that. Not that fun is not being had. There’s fun by the bucketload around here lately – writing workshops, netball clinics, basketball clinics, shopping, trips to the park and the movies. It’s just that it’s the ducklings who are having it, and me who is doing taxi duty and continuously digging into my ever-lightening wallet to pay for it.

Yes, you guessed it – it’s school holidays again, which is why I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. Too busy with the aforementioned fun.

I have a love/hate relationship with the school holidays. By the time the term drags to a close I am longing for the holidays with a passion usually reserved for peppermint chocolate. No more getting up early! No more rushing to after-school activities! Lots of time spent lazing around with my darling ducklings!

Then, by the time the new term rolls around, I’m so pleased the holidays are nearly over. I can’t wait for the kids to go back to school. Not because I’m sick of their company – just because I can’t get anything done while they’re home. My revision is languishing, my sewing is abandoned. I’m desperate to take off my maid/taxi driver/entertainment officer hat and get back to work. Every time I walk into a bookshop I get cranky seeing all those people who are published when I’m making no progress.

Cranky at myself, mainly. I know perfectly well I should be able to work when the kids are around, despite the extra interruptions. I’m just not focused enough – I get into holiday mode too.

So I guess it’s a win/win for me. I love the holidays and I love term-time too. Next week the kids will be back at school, and I’ll be able to get stuck into revision. All I have to do is remember where I left that attention span …

Seeing what's there

I finished my mystery WIP from last week. It did look very like a skirt in the photo I showed you then, but in fact it is a table runner.

Only I think I need a bigger table! It was meant to live on my sideboard, but it turned out way too big. Even on the table it takes up a lot of space but it’s very pretty. Here’s another photo which gives you a better idea of the colours. They’re so gorgeous.

I had a few random wedge-shaped scraps left after I cut out the table runner, and those beautiful fabrics were calling to me. “Don’t throw us out!” they said. “We could make a really pretty little art quilt.”

I’ve never made an art quilt before, but I’ve been wanting to try for a while, so last night I had a lovely play, sewing random scraps to other random scraps with joyful abandon. I ended up with this: my newest WIP.

Yes, that’s a real leaf sitting on top of this little quilt. That’s why it’s still a work in progress. I have to applique a fabric leaf on there instead, then quilt and bind it. But I got that leaf off the maple in our front yard to help me draw it right.

(Actually the Carnivore got it for me, bless his little cotton socks, at about 10 o’clock last night, when it was probably all of two degrees outside. That’s true love for you.)

Only when he handed it to me, I was shocked at how long and skinny the points of the leaf were. It was nothing like the picture of a maple leaf I had in my head.

And then I realised I’ve lived here for 17 years, and walked past that maple tree day after day – and never known what its leaves really looked like. My mental classification system has just gone “yep, maple, I know what they look like”, without actually seeing what was in front of me.

I suppose classifying is a self-defence mechanism of the brain. If we couldn’t make assumptions based on previous experience, our brains would have to examine and evaluate every single thing we saw and did, every time. We’d be overwhelmed by detail, unable to function. Maybe it’s even a survival skill – “ooh, I remember how sick I felt last time I ate the shiny purple berries, better not do that again”.

But if you’re a writer or an artist, sometimes you have to take the brain off automatic mode. You have to see those details you normally gloss over before you can describe them or represent them visually. You have to listen to what people really say when they’re frightened/ecstatic/overwhelmed, so your characters don’t sound like animated cardboard. (Believe me, I know cardboard – there’s an awful lot of it in Man Bites Dog. The interminable revision grinds on.)

So I’m going to practise being a soaky soaky little sponge, and really see the things I look at. I’ll try to give people my full attention, instead of half listening and half formulating my response while they’re talking. (Unless it’s Baby Duck rabbiting about monsters or X-Men or aliens. I reserve the right to tune out baby babble.) Who knows? I might Become a Better Person. Or more likely I’ll forget – but it would be an interesting exercise, don’t you think?

And speaking of forgetting, I almost forgot to wish my blog a happy birthday. Two years old today, and if not exactly “going strong”, at least still going!

Crimes against the English language

Driving into the city last week I passed a building which housed a kitchen renovation company. Biggest range!! said one sign. DIY or we instal! said another. Then there was the sign, in really big lettering, which they clearly felt was their greatest selling point.

I could picture the brainstorming that must have gone on for the creation of that slogan.

“How about we make it easy?” says the first advertising guy.

“Nah,” says the other one, “too simple.”

“Well, what about we make it simple then?”

“Hmmm. I’m not feeling it. We need something, I dunno, that combines ‘simple’ and ‘easy’.”

Deep thought for a moment.

“I know!” cries the first guy. “We simply make it easy!!”

“Better. It’s just … it’s just …”

“We just make it easy?”

“I’ve got it! We just simply make it easy!!”

Talk about diluting your message. “We make it easy” isn’t the most original slogan but at least it has punch. “We just simply make it easy” – not so much. My editor’s soul was itching to rip the useless weasel words right out of there. Lucky I didn’t have a red pen with me, or who knows what might have happened.

It was a day for noticing signs. Further along the road was a branch of a shop that has me shaking my head every time I see it. I can’t decide whether the people who named it have no imagination or they’re deliberately making a very gross pun to make their shop memorable. Maybe there’s just something wrong with my imagination, and other people don’t start thinking about the wrong kind of stools the minute they see a perfectly innocent sign.

What do you think? Would you call your shop The Stool Shop? Even if you were selling stools?

Then there’s Baby Duck. He’s making great progress with his reading this year, but his spelling is still in that adorable phonetic stage little kids go through. His seems more extreme than I remember the girls’ being, though. Often I have to ask him to translate for me.

For instance, he wrote and illustrated a new story this week. The title was “A Gient Giniypig”. Easy enough with the picture of a King Kong-sized guinea pig standing on top of a building fighting off planes. But I needed help with the writing on the bottom of the front cover:

“oftld and ilstchidt dy [Baby Duck]”

Even with his name there I couldn’t pick it. Apparently it says “authored and illustrated by [Baby Duck]”. Silly me.

At Easter he gave me a present he’d made at school. There was a tag attached with my name written on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a misspelling of “Marina” before. You spell it just like it sounds, and most people are familiar with it anyway from boat parking lots.

This is so cute I think I’ll laminate it and keep it forever as a bookmark. Every time I look at it it makes me smile.

Now I shall take off my editor hat and show you what I’m working on sewing-wise at the moment. Hey, it’s Wednesday, and I’ve always wanted to do a “Work-in-Progress Wednesday” post, but selections of my deathless prose from the interminable Man Bites Dog revision just don’t seem interesting enough.

Can you guess what it’s going to be?

How about now?

No? Hopefully next week I can show you the finished thing. I promised my quilting group I’d have it finished by our next meeting, so that will give me some motivation to get on with it. I’m also working on another sock monkey. I got a bit carried away with the stuffing, though, so he’s turning out to be a very chunky monkey. Baby Duck insists I give this one googly eyes, so he could also be a rather scary-looking monkey.

Or as Baby Duck would say, “a scerey looking muker”.

Monkeying around

Some people – often people of the male persuasion – suggest that quilters are all mad. They take some perfectly good bits of fabric, cut them into little tiny pieces, and sew them back together again.

So how’s this for a really crazy idea: let’s vandalise a perfectly good pair of socks.

Aren’t they pretty? So warm and snuggly-looking too. I was almost moved to spare them. My toes would have liked to get better acquainted. But no. They had a higher purpose to fulfil.

I hacked into them with my trusty scissors. Four hours, a pile of toy filling, and many pricked fingers later, I had this:

How cute is he?? Apparently sock monkeys are a childhood fixture in America, but I’d never heard of them till I came across some sweet little ones on Kellie Wulfsohn’s blog. Then I found this great tutorial on how to make them so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Can you guess what my problem is now?

That’s right. I have three children. And only one sock monkey. Thinking of all those dreadful pinprick injuries I had sustained in the making of Monkey One, I suggested to Drama Duck that she might be too old for a sock monkey toy.

Apparently not.

The sacrifices we mothers have to make for our children! Stay tuned for Monkeys Two and Three to join the tribe. Herd? Troop? What is the collective noun for monkeys? In this case, perhaps a cuddle of monkeys. Or a cuteness. In fact, he’s so cute I might need one for myself.

Look out, socks! I have scissors and I'm not afraid to use them ...

One letter makes SUCH a difference

The phantom whiteboard defacer has struck again at our house. You may remember me telling you last year about Drama Duck removing some of the letters from the menu I write up on the whiteboard in the kitchen every week. In that case, “beef skewers” for dinner became “bee sewers”.

This whiteboard also serves as my shopping list. Whenever I realise I’m out of something, I write it on the whiteboard, then transfer the list to a piece of paper when I’m ready to go to the shops. This morning I was hastily scribbling items from the whiteboard on to a piece of paper just before we rushed out the door to school.

Chicken stock cubes: check. Dishwashing liquid: check. Stain remover: check.

Hang on – what’s that next item???

I’d written “chicken noodles”, but some unknown person – which, on enquiry, proved to be the same person who perpetrated the bee sewers – some wicked person had changed the “n” of “noodles” to a “d”. Don’t think they sell those at Coles!

Definitely her father’s genes.

Notes from the white room

I received a very useful rejection for a short story recently, which pointed out that my tale suffered from “white room syndrome”, ie the action could be taking place anywhere – or nowhere – due to the lack of detail of the setting. As often happens, once I became aware of it, I started seeing it everywhere – in stories I was critiquing for others, in the book I’m revising, even in published novels. (If you’ve ever read The Partner by John Grisham, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a fast-paced thriller with very little description of any kind.)

By coincidence, I was working on the lesson that covers settings in the course I’m doing, How to Revise Your Novel by Holly Lisle, when I got this rejection. For each setting, I had to fill in a page which included, among other things, listing what elements of the setting I had described in the scene. Before this exercise I would have said my settings were well described. My main characters, after all, are artists, so visuals are important to them. They notice details of colour and lighting. Or do they? Hmmm. Hope their favourite colour is white.

Yep, page after page came up empty. A “table”, not described, would be the only object mentioned in a scene set in a dining room, for instance. Yet in my head I had seen the tablecloth, the cutlery, the subdued lighting, everything. But none of it had made it into the story. I could draw you the floor plan of whole houses in this novel, but no one could ever guess it from what I’ve written. Not that I’d want to bore readers with floor plans, of course! I don’t even look at maps in fantasy novels. But I need to find a happy medium between the “nothing to see here” style of a John Grisham and the “five pages to describe the butcher’s shop window” of AS Byatt. (I love AS Byatt. But she has the skill to get away with it. I don’t.)

It’s interesting, though, isn’t it, how much work readers will do to flesh out a writer’s creation. I built pictures in my head while reading The Partner, despite the lack of description. Grisham said “courtroom” and my mind supplied the wood panelling, the rows of hard bench seats, the gowns and wigs, courtesy of all those Hollywood courtrooms I’ve seen. In fact the reason I read the Grisham book was that I’d heard he deliberately wrote very sparsely. He started off writing down the bones of his story, thinking to flesh it out later with descriptions and details. Eventually he decided to leave all that out, since people normally skipped over it anyway. I think he put it as “leaving out the boring bits”.

While I certainly wouldn’t condemn all description as “boring bits”, I know what he means. No one wants the story held up for big lumps of setting or long descriptions of what people are wearing or eating. I like descriptions in small, easily digested amounts – little “telling details” that individualise a character or place.

Probably it depends, too, on genre. Small details can play large roles in crime fiction. Descriptions of exotic alien places and customs are half the fun in fantasy and science fiction. I don’t read much romance, but I imagine loving descriptions of the hero and heroine’s charms could be a feature there.

What do you reckon? How much is too much, or not enough? And do you think the magical Goldilocks amount varies by genre?

And the Housewife of the Year Award goes to ...

… someone else. Look, I freely admit I’m not the world’s greatest housewife. Life’s too short to spend your time picking up all the kids’ toys and belongings scattered through the house, when as soon as they come home from school they’re only going to re-scatter them. And there are so many other things to squeeze into every day. Some of them are necessities like washing, shopping, cooking. Others are more fun, like dropping into the local patchwork shop to buy cotton and coming home with a few extra things.

You can see I’ve been replenishing my stock of hot pink fabric after Drama Duck decimated it for her owl.

I needed the cotton because I ran out two-thirds of the way through quilting butterflies all over that quilt that’s been hanging over the railing in my foyer so long. I’m practising my free-motion quilting and the butterflies are gradually improving. It will be so nice to be able to pack that quilt away!

But about that Housewife of the Year award. I changed the sheets on Baby Duck’s bed, so for a change the bed was made when he came home from school. He stopped dead in the doorway of his room and turned a look of surprise on me.

“Mum! Are we having visitors today??”

Ouch!

He’s come out with some pearlers lately. Another one was when I was driving him home from school on Friday and we were discussing the movie Monsters Inc. He couldn’t remember the name of one of the monsters so I supplied it.

“That’s really good that you remembered, Mum,” he said in tones of great admiration. “Usually old people forget everything.”

And he wonders why I laugh at him so often.

Owl babies

Do you know the picture book Owl Babies, by Martin Waddell? So cute! Three little owl babies, Sarah, Percy and baby Bill, wake up alone and wonder where their Owl Mother is. Sarah and Percy discuss the problem but all Bill can say, on nearly every page, is “I want my mommy!”

Now we have our own owl babies. I saw the cutest toy owl on the front cover of a quilting magazine recently. Once I’d dragged the ducklings all around the patchwork shop in search of the perfect fabric for its wings, Demon Duck was quick to announce that she was going to make an owl too. Then of course Drama Duck had to get in on the act as well. So our house was a hive of industry over the recent long weekend.

This is Drama Duck’s owl. She’d have to be Sarah, wouldn’t she? Very girly! I wonder if you can guess what Drama Duck’s favourite colour is?

Demon Duck’s owl is Bill. He’s very striking, isn’t he? I love how appropriate the moon and star fabric of his wings is for a nocturnal creature.

Which leaves Percy for me. He’s red and blue to match our lounge room, where he’s perched on my red velvet chair, looking very comfortable.

I feel the urge to sew lately, to surround myself with bright coloured fabrics. I’ve been reading lots of quilting blogs and drooling over the gorgeous creations. Have a look at all the beautiful things on Quiltsalott, for instance. Or what about this divine quilt? Baby Duck would love it. Unfortunately his mother is so slow it’d probably be finished by the time he was 38. Maybe if I start now it’ll be ready for the grandkids!

So you may see some more quilts here in the future. I’ve had an almost-completed one hanging over the railing in my foyer so long it’s starting to bug even me. The problem is that I like doing the patchwork, seeing the design come together – but I hate quilting the damn thing and finishing it off. Hence a cupboard bulging with UFOs (UnFinished Objects). Bad Marina, no biscuit! Must. Do. Better.

But at least I have three finished owl babies to admire!

It's all relative

The girls had a cross country carnival today. Demon Duck came 22nd in her age group, an improvement from 36th last year, so she was pleased. Drama Duck came 12th in her event. We were pleased at the obvious improvement in her fitness – she ran for most of the three kilometres. But 12th isn’t quite as good as it sounds, since there were only 15 competing in her age group.

It reminds me of one of Baby Duck’s earliest sporting achievements. He came home from preschool one day full of joy.

“We did races today,” he said, “and I came second!”

“That’s great, darling! How many were in the race?”

“Two.”

Attack of the tae kwon dodos

I’ve been running around the house all week yelling “tae kwon dodo!!” and pulling ridiculous martial arts poses.

“You’re so embarrassing, Mum,” Drama Duck says. The other two just ignore me.

The scene in Ice Age where the dodos do taekwondo is one of my favourite parts. I love it when one executes a flying kick off a cliff and the others peer mournfully over the edge and say “That was our last female”. But my taekwondodoism this week has had an ulterior motive: trying to get the ducklings revved up about starting taekwondo.

They had their first lesson on Tuesday night. Halfway through Baby Duck burst into hysterical sobs and watched the rest of the lesson from the safety of my lap. Not sure why, but apparently the yelling was scary and it was hard and boring. Most things are, according to him. The only thing that isn’t boring is watching TV.

Undeterred, I decided to try the Thursday night class instead. Same taekwondo school, but a different location and a few younger students. To make it more appealing, I said I’d do the class too so I could help him.

Thus I have just had my first taekwondo lesson. The combination of me and martial arts is such an unlikely one, anyone who knows me will now be rolling around the floor laughing. But I made quite a good taekwondodo. I’m going to be sore tomorrow, but I had fun.

The teacher was a lovely man who I now feel very sorry for, as not one but two ducklings burst into tears before the end of the class. Baby Duck again for his own inscrutable reasons, and Demon Duck who lost it when asked to do something she didn’t know how to do and spent the rest of the class sobbing in the toilets. I’m sure the poor man thought it was his fault, but it was just her painful perfectionism coming out. He was a gentle and patient teacher, and seemed quite stunned that he’d managed to make two of them cry. I told him to go for the hat trick next week.

On the way home Demon Duck asked when we would be getting our uniforms.

“Maybe when we get through a lesson without anyone crying.”

Baby Duck discovers April Fools' Day

Plastic cockroach: 50c
Packet of Weetbix: $6

Look of unholy glee on your small son’s face when you discover his first April Fools’ prank: Priceless

Amnesia as a genre

Hands up if you know anyone who has ever suffered full-on amnesia. I’m not talking the “I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman” kind so favoured by politicians, but the kind where someone has an accident and wakes up missing the last several years of their life.

Don’t know anyone? How about celebrities then? Have you ever read about this happening to a well-known person? You’d think it would be in all the papers, wouldn’t you. No?

Me neither. So why does it happen so very often in fiction? It could practically be a sub-genre all on its own.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love a good amnesia story. It’s like the ultimate mystery, where the puzzle the detective has to solve is their own life. I never get tired of it.

I read a couple last year, which made me think about how often I’d seen it used. There was The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson, a slightly science-fictional Young Adult contribution to the genre. A teenage girl comes out of a long coma with no memory of her life at all. She has to watch family videos to relearn her history. But why doesn’t her grandmother seem to like her? Why are her family hiding her away from the world? There’s an awesome moment when you find out what’s really going on.

About the same time I also read What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, a more typical entrant in the genre. There usually seems to be some crucial emotional entanglement the heroine (and yes, the amnesiacs are always women) has forgotten. In this one Alice has forgotten the last ten years of her life, so she thinks she’s happily married and expecting her first child. In fact she has three children and she and her husband are separated.

Or there’s Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella, where the heroine thinks she’s happily married because she’s forgotten the existence of her lover. Or Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult. Who wouldn’t want to wake up with no memory only to find they’re married to Hollywood’s most gorgeous star? Until you start to remember what he’s really like …

It was also a popular plot device in the Mills and Boons I read as a teenager. A particular favourite, whose name I’ve now forgotten, involved a woman who lost her memory in the same car accident that killed her husband. Later on she discovered, in very dramatic circumstances, that the child she’d thought was her husband’s was actually the hero’s. She’d forgotten that her marriage was unhappy and she’d been about to leave the husband for the hero.

So why do you think it’s such a popular theme in fiction, when it never seems to happen at all in real life? Is it a kind of wish fulfilment? A chance to see what life would be like if you could start fresh with a clean slate? Are there a whole bunch of women out there wondering if they would still have married their husbands if they met them as the people they are now? (and just in case you’re wondering, dear, my answer to that would be yes).

Anyone got any other good amnesia books to recommend?

Get Everything Done by Mark Forster

I’m feeling evangelical today, so let me tell you about my experiences with two very different books in the self-help organising/time management genre.

I read Getting Things Done by David Allen at the end of 2008 and found it full of great organisational ideas. I particularly liked the one about getting all your mental to-dos out of your head and into some centralised list so you don’t forget anything. This frees your mind from the stress of trying to remember all these bits and pieces, and allows you to focus on whatever your real tasks are.

Good idea, I thought. Must try that. If using a paper-based system rather than a computer program, he advised getting a diary big enough to fit weekly lists. So last year I had a lovely big diary with lots of room for writing lists and notes as well as my appointments. I’m a stationery geek and a listophile (if that isn’t a word, it should be!), so it should have been a great system for me, right?

Sadly, no. The beautiful diary, which I really did love – so many extra features! – was too big to fit comfortably in my handbag, so most of the time I left it at home. Can you say Diary Fail? I never had it with me when I needed to check or add appointments. So this year I’m back to my usual small, un-beautiful diary.

The other big problems with the system, for me, were:

(a) I’m a procrastinator; and
(b) I’m a procrastinator.

I’m sure there are people for whom the system works beautifully, and I’m not knocking it, per se. I’m just saying I’m not one of them. I loved making the lists, but as the year marched on I grew more and more depressed about how few items I was crossing off. Nor was this a new experience for me. See (a) and (b) above.

What I needed was not a system for planning and organising what I needed to do. Being a listophile, I’m quite good at that part already. What I needed was a way to make myself do the things on the list.

Enter Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play by Mark Forster. Who could resist a title like that?? I read this one towards the end of last year, and have since reread it, highlighter in hand (which felt vandalistic and shocked my children, but there were so many passages that seemed to be written just for me it was like a religious conversion. Praise the Lord, I have Seen the Light!).

Written by a procrastinator, for procrastinators, it points out what I had already discovered from my list-and-diary fail of 2009. Organisation systems, priorities, schedules, etc, are great for people who have no problem getting stuck into action, but they don’t really help people whose main problem is with the actual starting.

So instead of these, it offers strategies to help you actually do the things on your list. One that is working really well for me helps with that perennial problem of having so many things to do that you don’t know where to start and instead do something else, so none of them get done and they’re still hanging over your head. (I used to think I was the only idiot who sabotaged myself like that, but after reading this book I realise I’m not alone here!)

I pick three or four main tasks and set the oven timer for 15 minutes. Until the timer goes off I work as hard as I can on the first task. At the end of the 15 minutes I stop immediately, reset the timer and start work on the second task. I go on this way, rotating through all the tasks. It sounds daft, and I do feel a bit stupid setting and resetting the timer, but it really does work.

It’s the power of the deadline. I can do an enormous amount of work if I have a deadline. Make a quilt for someone’s birthday next week? No problem. Write 50,000 words in 30 days? Sure thing. Yet without a deadline I flounder around and fill up the days with busyness that doesn’t achieve anything.

In three days, my trusty oven timer and I cleaned out the pantry, a horrendous job I’d been putting off for six months, just by alternating that job with working on my revision of Man Bites Dog, making a quilt and a couple of other big tasks. Knowing that time is literally ticking away motivates me to focus on the task, so I get much more done in these short bursts than if I just allowed myself to work on it till it was finished. Plus I don’t get bored. This trick also helps with that panicky feeling of being overwhelmed by all the other jobs that are still hanging over your head, by allowing you to make progress on several things at once.

And this is just one of the helpful strategies in the book. If you’re a procrastinator like me – and I think there are a lot of us out there! – this is a truly useful book.

I’d tell you more but the oven timer is ringing …

Genetics: a practical demonstration

The other day I was on the phone and my eye fell on no less than six pairs of shoes on the floor, all huddled together having a little shoe party. They all belonged to the girls, who only have one pair of feet each, so it must have taken some time to assemble this little pile.

Bloody kids, I thought. Why can’t they ever put their shoes away?

Today I was in the same room, took an unwary step back and tripped over a shoe.

Bloody kids! I thought again, full of righteous anger. But then I had to laugh.

I looked down and realised the shoe was mine.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s demonstration of the awesome power of genetics.

A tale of four chickens

No, this is not the continuing story of my little black dream chicken. I’m talking real chickens here, three of them, who came home as little balls of peeping yellow fluff a few months ago to live with my neighbour’s family.

My neighbour procured a Taj Mahal of a henhouse for the new chickens and installed them in the backyard.

“But what about the dog?” we said.

They have a German Shepherd, a lovely friendly dog, but still.

“She will eat the chickens,” we said.

“No, no,” said our neighbour, with quite astonishing optimism. “When we go on holidays we’re sending her to a boarding kennel where they will train her to love the chickens.”

We were sure she would love the chickens. With sauce. But our neighbour was convinced all would be well. This in spite of the fact that their dog has been known to devour slow-moving possums.

So they went on their family holiday, and we had the task of looking after the chickens while they were gone. The ducklings enjoyed the job, and I was very thankful that no chickens died on our watch. They were all present and correct when the neighbours returned.

But soon after the parents went overseas on their own, leaving the children in charge of the chickens. And the dog, who was now home from her peace-and-love-to-all-chickens brainwashing.

Not two days later, we were out in the yard when a little voice called over the fence, “Have you seen any chickens in your yard? The chickens have disappeared.”

“Honey, if they were in our yard our dog would have ripped them to pieces. Are you sure your dog didn’t eat them?”

“No, there’s no sign of them. They’re just gone.”

Much speculation followed at our house as to what might have happened to the three missing chickens. Had a fox got them? (But surely the German Shepherd would have chased off a fox.) Had they slipped through the fence and gone for a walk? Had they left for a chicken holiday of their own? And what would the boys’ mother say when she came home and discovered her chickens were missing??

Sad little notices appeared on telegraph poles round about, asking if anyone had seen three chickens, but no one came forward. When the parents returned from their holiday we heard that their dog had, in fact, done the deed. She’d dug a hole under the side of the coop big enough for the birds to get out – and then merely waited till they did to chow down. The evidence was discovered underneath the house.

Wait a minute, you say. Didn’t you say this was a tale of four chickens?

Hang on, I’m getting to that.

Meanwhile, I’d been telling the ducklings about the movie Jurassic Park. I even acted out my favourite part, where the T-rex comes through the fence when they’re in the stalled jeeps:

“And they’re in the cars and it’s pouring with rain, and the goat disappears and there’s this HUGE dinosaur. And the kids are in the car on their own and they’re all omigod!! and turn off the torch! And she’s all aargh!! and waving it around and he’s all turn it off! turn it off! And the dinosaur’s attacking and the guy gets out of the other car and waves to attract its attention and then the dinosaur sees him and he’s all oh sh*t”

Meanwhile I’m waving my imaginary torch and pulling scared faces and pretending to be a stalking dinosaur. The ducklings found it highly amusing.

“We want to watch it! It sounds really funny!”

“No, no! It’s not funny. It’s really scary!! It’s dark, and raining, and there’s scary music. And even though I’d read the book and I knew what was going to happen I was still scared!”

But they wouldn’t believe me. So I let them watch it.

And they thought it was funny.

“You’re scared of everything, Mum,” said Demon Duck. “You’re such a chicken you’re going to grow feathers.”

“Hey!” said Baby Duck. “Then we can give you to the next-door neighbours to replace their chickens!”

Moments of brilliance

I’ve just begun revising my first novel, Man Bites Dog, and I’m reminded of that famous comment about Wagner’s works: “Moments of brilliance, quarter-hours of great boredom”.

Well, “boredom” is a bit strong, but you get the idea. I haven’t looked at it in over a year, so it’s like reading a story by someone else. I can’t remember what’s going to happen next as I read. I come across some parts that are good but of course, being a first draft, there are many more parts that are less than stellar. (Even one part that made me yell “No, no, no!” and cross it out with much violence, hoping no one will ever find out I wrote something so cringeworthy.)

The happy moments give me hope I can wrestle a good book out of this mess. I’m doing Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course and I’m only halfway through the first of many steps, but I’m trudging on, putting my faith in Holly to guide me and my subconscious to pull some idea rabbits out of the hat. Gotta love those plot bunnies.

Bunnies … chickens … It’s a real farmyard inside my subconscious lately. Still haven’t figured out what happened to my little black chicken, dammit. I kept hoping I might dream of him again, but I’ve been away on a beach holiday, doing lots of tiring outdoorsy stuff, and sleeping the dreamless sleep of a very tired dead thing.

When I figure out how to drive my new camera properly I’ll post a photo of the view from the house we stayed in. It will make you all swoon with envy, it was so beautiful. But then I shall make you feel better by telling you about the mountain we had to climb to get back to our house from the beach, and the 5,083 steps inside the house itself, and how I borked my knee something severe just before we left, so that my holiday was just one big throbbing knee pain … and your envy will dissolve like a double Berocca in a glass of water.

“My goodness, but Marina deserved that view,” you will say.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last little while: revising, limping, computer-less. And now I’m home, and the ducklings have gone back to school, oh frabjous day!! and life can resume what passes for normal around here. At least, it would be normal if it weren’t for the physiotherapist doing things to my leg that I’m sure contravene the Geneva Convention. We don’t want to make a habit of that, oh no.

And they all lived hap ... aargh!

Don’t you just hate it when you’re in the middle of an interesting dream and someone wakes you up? And then you never get to find out what happens???

This morning I was blissfully asleep, dreaming I was browsing in a bookshop. I found this gorgeous picture book about a little black chicken. He was drawn very simply, just a little egg-shaped blob with stumpy wings and two dots for eyes, but really cute.

Every day all the chickens gathered in a clearing in the woods to see Mr Fox’s magic show. Every day Mr Fox made one of the chickens magically disappear, which the other chickens thought was cool, but our little black hero was getting suspicious. So he decided to run Mr Fox out of town.

His plan was to scare Mr Fox away, so he gathered up all the plastic bottles and styrofoam hamburger boxes the chickens left littering the clearing after the show every day. He turned all this litter into styrofoam chickens and arranged them in the trees of the clearing. There was a great illustration of all these ghostly white styrofoam chickens perched in the trees at night, hundreds of them staring accusingly out of the dark.

The little black chicken climbed into the trees too and began a ghostly squawking, pretending to be the voice of all the dead chickens, so when Mr Fox came out to see what was going on he’d be terrified, thinking the ghosts of all his victims were after him.

Unfortunately Mr Fox wasn’t taken in. Even though it was night time, the moon was out and it was easy to spot one black chicken among all the white ones. It was as Mr Fox stared hungrily up at him that our hero realised he was now stuck in this tree with no escape and maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

And then …

“Brring brring, brring brring.”

No, I am not attempting to render the sound of a phone ringing. Those are the actual words that were spoken into my sleeping ear.

Torn from my little black chicken story, I opened my eyes to find Demon Duck kneeling on my bed, her mouth next to my ear.

“Brring brring,” she said. “I’m your alarm clock. It’s 7:26. Time to get up!”

Aaaargh!! Now I'm left with a whole bunch of unanswered questions. Does the little black chicken make it?? Does Mr Fox get his comeuppance??

And why on earth am I dreaming about styrofoam chickens???

Health by stealth

If I had been so deluded as to make a New Year’s resolution to get fit and lose weight – I only say if, mind you, since I certainly wasn’t – if I had been so foolishly optimistic about my own intestinal fortitude, then I might have been busy exercising and setting targets and denying myself peppermint chocolate. And really, what’s life without peppermint chocolate?

Since I am not so deluded, I have instead been sneaking up on myself. Yes, it’s my new plan – better health by stealth. I think I should trademark that – Health by Stealth™! The new path to a better you! No more weighing yourself, or feeling guilty and miserable when you eat that slice of cake, or miss a day of exercise because it’s too hot/too cold/the planets are in the wrong alignment. Never go near a gym! Perfect for people who don’t like exercise!

What is this wonderful plan? I hear you cry. And why are you not already flogging it on late-night TV?

It's fiendishly simple. Pretend to everyone, but especially to yourself, that you are not trying to get fit or lose any weight. You see? Am I not cunning?? No pressure. No angst. If I happen to go for a few more walks than normal, well, so what? I like walking. The fact that it may have some effect on my health and/or weight is neither here nor there. If I keep myself so busy I don’t have time to stop and snack, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to lose weight. I just have lots of things to do. And if I’m making sure to eat enough fruit and yoghurt, well, I’m just trying to look after myself. The fact that it makes me too full to fit in the chocolate is just a side effect.

And no, I’m not going to weigh myself. I’ll know if any of these things I’m sort of accidentally doing behind my own back are having any effect when my clothes start to feel loose.

But how does this work if you don’t like exercise? I hear you cry.

I’m glad you asked that question! I don’t like exercise that’s boring and repetitive. Especially if it hurts as well. So gyms just don’t work for me. All that squatting and pumping and feeling the burn. I like walking because there are always nice gardens to admire and people to say hello to, or you can just zone out and think about writing. I like dancing too, though that’s a little harder to organise. I need fun things I can do at home. Hula hooping is a good one, because it works up a sweat plus it keeps me interested as I try to learn new tricks. Check out some of the amazing things people can do with hoops here.

I’ve never been a runner because I’m just not fit enough. I can barely jog for a minute before my chest explodes and I have to stop. But running has the same advantages that walking does, of being outside, nice things to look at, etc, and I do like a challenge, sooo …

I found this cool site, Couch to 5k. That’s me: couch potato extraordinaire. It claims that even slobs like me who can’t run can work their way up to a 5km run using this program.

Now obviously I can’t commit to that, because then I’d have a fitness goal, and angst and disappointment and self-loathing blah blah blah. So if anybody asks – especially me! – I’m certainly not doing this. But I might just happen to do a little running while I’m out walking, and if it happens to follow the same pattern as the program mentioned on Couch to 5k, well, gosh! What a coincidence.

And if I was trying to lose weight, I’d probably like some encouragement, some feeling of community. I could go and read a site like Five Full Plates, where five very funny ladies are documenting their weight-loss challenge. But since I’m not, I just read it for the laughs.

Favourite books of 2009

I read 54 new books in 2009. New to me, that is, not necessarily new in 2009, though many of them were. Quite a few old favourites got reread too.

I enjoyed most of them – the ones I don’t enjoy tend not to get finished – but here are a few of my particular favourites in case you’re looking for something new to read.

I took the plunge into a new field this year and started reading paranormals. The Carnivore did too, and he’s actually read more of them than I have, so it’s not true that these kind of books only interest women. One series we both enjoyed was Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series, which starts with Kitty and the Midnight Hour. Kitty is a late-night DJ whose talkback show centres on the supernatural, a topic she’s well qualified to discuss, since she’s a werewolf. Each book in the series is a stand-alone adventure in Kitty’s complicated life but they also show interesting developments in characters and themes over the series. Lots of fun to read.

I read a lot of Young Adult this year. This stuff is not just for kids! I’ve read so many great YA books this year I couldn’t pick a favourite.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, for instance, has the most awesome first line:

“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.”

How could you resist reading on after that? The premise is fascinating too. Todd lives in a world where men are afflicted by “the Noise” – they broadcast their thoughts constantly and uncontrollably, so there’s no peace or privacy anywhere. There are also no women, since they were all killed off by the germ that caused the Noise. At least, that’s what Todd has been brought up to believe. But just shy of the birthday that marks him officially as a man, he discovers everything he’s been told is a lie – and then the killing starts.

A warning though – it has a shameless cliffhanger ending, so you might want to wait till you get your hands on the next books in the trilogy if that bothers you.

World Shaker by Richard Harland is a YA with a completely different feel, though it too deals with a young man’s discovery that his whole world is a lie. Col’s privileged life aboard the massive rolling city World Shaker is very British and proper. Think cups of tea and cravats. Col’s grandfather is the Supreme Commander of the juggernaut, and Col takes his place at the top of the food chain for granted until the night an escaped Filthy bursts into his room. She begs him to hide her from those who would torture her and change her into one of the zombie-like Menials.

Col is both fascinated and repelled; he has never in his sheltered life seen a Filthy or the frightening Below where they work. He hides her in spite of his certainty that Upper Decks people would never stoop to torture, but of course he’s wrong, and his entanglement with the Filthy girl opens his eyes to the truth of his privileged world and the rottenness at its core.

The worldbuilding is phenomenal, with the marvellous World Shaker itself, the Victorian culture, even the way they speak and think very convincing.

Another culture I love to visit in fantasy novels is the Asian-inspired one, and Alison Goodman’s The Two Pearls of Wisdom is a fine example (also published in other countries as Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye or just plain Eon). I’ve actually read this one twice this year, having just reread it this week, and it’s well worth a second visit.

Eon is struggling to complete the harsh training necessary to become a Dragoneye, one of the lords who communicate with the powerful spirit dragons that protect the realm. Struggling because he’s a cripple, but also because he is actually a she – a secret that would prove fatal if anyone should discover the imposture. But when the Mirror Dragon returns after an absence of 500 years and chooses Eon as its Dragoneye, Eon is suddenly thrust into the centre of a desperate struggle for the emperor’s throne, and the secret of her gender is no longer the most dangerous secret she has to hide.

Vivid characters in this one and interesting themes of loyalty, honour and identity and how gender impacts on them.

And for more on themes of identity, how about an amnesia book or two? I’ve read quite a few books where the main character has total amnesia and is trying to rediscover the truth about themselves – it seems to happen in fiction a lot more than it does in real life, thank goodness. It’s a storyline that never gets old for me. It’s like the ultimate detective story.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson is a YA science fiction take on the theme. The mystery at the core of Jenna’s identity caught me completely by surprise and was very cool.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a mainstream adult novel asking the same question: who am I really? When Alice wakes up in hospital after an accident at the gym she’s forgotten the last ten years of her life. As far as she’s concerned, she’s happily married to the love of her life and expecting her first child. It’s a bit of a shock, therefore, to find she has three children and is in the process of divorcing her husband. What went wrong? And what aren’t people telling her about the best friend she doesn’t remember?

This is Liane Moriarty’s third book and I’ve enjoyed them all. They’re layered with good characters and subplots. They may only deal with the small dramas of a woman’s life, but they do it in a big way, addressing universal themes of love and loss.

Liane is a Sydney girl, too, and her books are set in Australia, which is a nice touch for us Aussies, when so many books we read are set in America. I used to work at the same company Liane did, though our paths never really crossed. It gives me a special interest in her career – but, trust me, her books are worth your time no matter where you live.

A couple of other books I loved last year that also weren’t fantasy (see, I do occasionally branch out!), were gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson and, for sheer good fun, Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer.

I’ve read three of Joshilyn Jackson’s books and loved them all. They’re all set in the deep South of the US, full of marvellously colourful characters living in dysfunctional families. Her writing is beautiful, insightful and witty. Incidentally, she also writes just about the funniest blog on the internet, Faster than Kudzu.

In gods, Arlene hasn’t been home to Alabama in ten years. She promised God she’d never go back – just as long as he kept his side of the deal and made sure no one ever found the corpse of the guy she killed. Now someone’s looking for him, which forces her to go back and face the past, her African American boyfriend in tow. And that’s not going to go down well with the family.

Agnes and the Hitman is fun from start to finish, the literary equivalent of eating a whole box of chocolates at once, only without the feeling-sick-and-guilty-afterwards part. Agnes, a feisty chef, is catering the wedding from hell in her own dilapidated Southern mansion. If that’s not bad enough, men keep appearing in her kitchen trying to kill her. Luckily one of these strangers turns out to be Shane. He’s a hitman too, but he’s on her side, sent to protect her by a shady uncle. Mayhem and romance ensues.

Glenda Larke’s The Last Stormlord I already told you about here, but it remains my favourite adult fantasy of the year. Amazing worldbuilding – a real treat for fantasy lovers.

The Margarets by Sheri S Tepper made my brain hurt, but in a good way. I had to work hard for this one. It’s complex but immensely rewarding science fiction. At various parts of her life, different aspects of Margaret’s personality split off and disperse throughout the galaxy, taking on different names and living different lives. One is a queen, one a healer, one a slave. One is even a man. Their stories intertwine throughout the book until the finale, when all the different Margarets must come together again to save mankind.

Putting it so baldly doesn’t do the story justice at all. It’s richly imagined and detailed, and each of the seven stories would make a good book just on its own. Deep and surprising.

I didn’t read much science fiction, but another of my favourites was sf too – Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. I’ve only read her military sf before, so this one was a surprise. It is a deeply moving exploration of the questions: Is autism a disease that should be cured? And if you were offered the possibility of a “cure”, should you take it, knowing that, though you might be “normal” afterwards, you might lose the very things that made you “you”?

Lou, a man with high-functioning autism, faces these questions and tells his story in his own voice. You feel as if you’re really inside his head, seeing the world with all its frustrations and difficulties the way he sees it. And yet you can also see that the life he has is a good one, and the often astonishing capabilities autism brings him are not things to be thrown away lightly.

It’s an amazing insight into the mind and life of an autistic person. I can’t help thinking that this book could have been a bestseller like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, another book with an autistic narrator, if it hadn’t been marketed as sf. The only science fiction component of it is that a cure is available for autism. Everything else is perfectly mainstream. Yet other books with more sf in them, like The Time Traveller’s Wife, get marketed as mainstream and make a killing. The Speed of Dark deserves a much wider audience than it has. Hell, it deserves to win literary awards. Even if you never read sf, you should read this book. It will blow you away.

Dinnertime jackpot

One look at Baby Duck’s stick-thin body will tell you he’s not a big eater. Sparrows have bigger appetites. A common scenario at our place involves everyone sitting around for half an hour after we’ve finished eating, watching him endlessly chew his food.

So if he is ever not the last person to finish a meal it’s a cause for celebration. And if I’ve really hit the dinnertime jackpot it’ll be because I’ve managed to find a recipe the whole family enjoys and will eat without complaining or negotiating which disgusting bits they can leave.

The dinnertime jackpot is a moving target. You might think that by now I would have a good repertoire of meals that all the ducklings will eat and enjoy without involving any trips to MacDonalds. Ah, Grasshopper, your innocence of the ways of children is amusing.

Just because they like something this week doesn’t mean they will still like it next week. Demon Duck’s list of fruit she will eat is rapidly narrowing till soon she’ll be living on air. We’re always saying to her “Since when have you not liked mandarines/peaches/watermelon etc? You used to love it.”

So I’m crossing my fingers that tonight’s universal approbation for curried chicken salad continues for at least a few more weeks. Baby Duck finished before I did and proudly displayed a very clean plate.

“You must have liked it,” I said.

“I didn’t like it,” he said. “I loved it!”

Then he came over to give me a somewhat greasy kiss from all that yummy barbecued chicken and added, “Just like I love you for making such a good dinner.”

Yep – that’s the jackpot all right.

Dances With Blue Wolves

I went to see Avatar.

The short review: Wow. Just wow.

The longer review:

I’ve heard a lot of comments on the “predictability” of the movie. Often this is mentioned in a sad way, along the lines of “but he could have done so much more if the story wasn’t so predictable”. Sometimes it’s harsher, as in “pretty to look at, but such a hokey plot”.

But I’m thinking that “predictable” isn’t such a bad thing.

I’m thinking, for instance, every time I pick up a fantasy novel I know, in a larger sense, what’s going to happen. The protag will face many dangers and adventures but in the end good will triumph over evil, more or less, depending on the level of sophistication of the particular book. People who read crime novels know the crime will be solved and the criminal brought to justice by the end. In every romance novel the hero and heroine will overcome their differences and find love by the end.

I like knowing there’s a feelgood ending coming. Predictability in this sense is a good thing. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’re reading a romance and three-quarters of the way through the book the heroine kills the hero and goes off to become a nun to atone for the crime instead. (Not that I ever have read such a book, but you know what I mean. People have expectations they bring to the reading experience.)

Movies are no different. Nobody goes to see a romantic comedy expecting exploding cars and a high body count. Nobody thinks the characters in an animated movie are going to sit around drinking beer and moaning about property prices.

Occasionally there’ll be a “cheater” movie like The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects which produces a twist ending that changes everything you thought you knew about the movie you just saw. Such movies are a delight but extremely rare. And I don’t think anyone was expecting such a stunt from Avatar.

If you saw the trailer you knew exactly what to expect. Big bad business wants to pillage and destroy natural beauty and resources, native greenies (blueys?) resist, led by soldier-with-a-conscience who changes sides. Soldier goes native, romance ensues. Plus there are all the characters and elements you’d expect – the power-mad warmonger, the “voice of reason” scientist, the ruthless businessman, the battles, the explosions, the “let’s humiliate the new guy” scenes as the hero tries to learn the native ways …

I suppose that’s the “predictability” people mean. Same old characters in the same old situations we’ve seen so many times before. It really is a lot like Dances With Wolves in many ways, though more upbeat. I can see why some are asking why it always has to be the white guy who has to become a better native than the natives themselves and save everybody. Why can’t the natives save themselves for a change?

I wonder if this is why they made the hero a paraplegic, to head off these accusations of white privilege. Yes he’s a white male, but he’s in a wheelchair, so he’s also a member of a minority.

So … predictable on a larger scale: yes, but that’s not a bad thing. Predictable on the smaller scale of the plot line: yes as well. Which may or may not be a problem, depending on your expectations. Me, I like a surprise as much as the next person, but I wasn’t going to see this movie for the storyline.

I was there for the magic, and I got that in spades.

People who know about such things have talked about the groundbreaking effects, the historical cinematic significance of this movie. What that means is that when the hero took a corner at dizzying speed through the treetops I felt the world tilt. Everything seemed so real I’m still thinking about it and feeling disappointed that it doesn’t really exist somewhere. There was no sense that you were watching actors dressed up in funny outfits, the way there is when you watch Star Wars. There was no feeling that the exotic beasts didn’t quite come together. I could never quite believe in the wargs from The Lord of the Rings movies, for instance, much as I loved those movies. They were a little jerky, somehow not quite “real” enough for me. Not so with the denizens of Pandora’s forests.

The thing that this movie pulled off better than any I’ve ever seen, and the reason I enjoyed it so much, was that elusive “sense of wonder”. Watching it is like being a child in fairyland, enveloped in a magical dream. Admittedly things in fairyland don’t eat you quite as much as things do on Pandora, but wow. Just wow. And so I’m back to the short version of my review.

It was such a visual treat. It’s an unashamedly pretty movie. The Lord of the Rings movies were beautiful, but in a grown-up grey and grungy way. Avatar can do majestic too, but in glorious colour, full of ultraviolet delights and gorgeous plants and creatures. Even the blue people are beautiful. And that Hollywood tape! Man, I wish I knew how the female lead kept her necklet arrangement plastered so cunningly to her breasts through every death-defying leap and battle scene.

So I was dazzled and delighted, but didn’t entirely lose my objective senses. Some minor plot holes annoyed me, though not enough to stop me loving the movie. Naming the McGuffin* “unobtainium” seriously irked me – come on, guys, if you can’t take yourselves seriously, no one else will – but again, not enough to stop me loving it. Having a McGuffin in the first place, ditto.

It had flaws, but none of them were that bad. And what it got right was so amazing that I’d go see it again tomorrow. In 3D. On the biggest screen possible.

There’s a scene late in the movie where we see the paraplegic hero in shorts for the first time. His legs are wasted, as you’d expect. I spent quite some time wondering how they’d managed to make the actor’s legs look like that. Were they someone else’s legs superimposed on his body? Eventually it occurred to me how stupid I was being. I’d never questioned the entire alien world or the 12-foot tall blue people, and here I was wondering how they could make a healthy guy’s legs look wasted.

It’s that real. You’re really in this incredible, beautiful place. You can’t believe it’s just a movie. And even though it was a long one, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to stay immersed in this amazing world.

And that’s what every creator wants – to give their readers or viewers that total immersion in their creation. For others to believe, for a couple of hours, that what they have imagined is real, that big business doesn’t always win, that the guy will get his girl and that blue people have the best Hollywood tape in the business.

*McGuffin: some object that doesn’t do anything plot-wise other than motivate the characters

'Twas the night before Christmas

… and all through the house, not a creature was sleeping. Except Baby Duck, who’s worn out from the elevated levels of anticipation. The other two ducklings are lying in bed talking and giggling, despite repeated warnings that Santa Will Not Come until they’re asleep.

It’s now 10:30 and looking like being a looooong night. A little while ago I even threatened to stop Santa on the doorstep and tell him to take all the presents away unless they go to sleep Right Now Dammit.

“Yes, Mummy,” they say through their lying little teeth, then start giggling again before I’ve even made it all the way back down the corridor.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas again already. It feels like only a few months since we did this all last time. Where did that year go?

We went to church tonight, to avoid the rush in the morning. Ha! Us and 57 billion other people. Still, it was a children’s mass and very sweet, with a real live baby – a very fresh one, judging by the size of it – playing the part of the baby Jesus. So cute, though I don’t think I could have done it if it were mine. I’d be busy picturing the 10-year-old Mary dropping my precious bundle.

However, no babies were harmed in the making of the pageant, so it all worked out. The Carnivore sang with his usual gusto and inaccuracy. In Hark the Herald Angels he sang “late in time behold Him come / offspring of the Virgin’s wum”.

“What?” he said when I gave him a funny look. “Womb doesn’t rhyme with come. I always want to sing thumb – or something even worse …”

Is it a sin to laugh in church?

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. And if you have children, I hope you get some sleep and that the sun is actually up when your little ones bound in full of excitement. Though I know it’s a pretty faint hope. Kids will get excited about Christmas, even if it only feels like three months since the last one to the rest of us!

Baby Duck and the Honking Big Trophy

Thank goodness the school holidays have started. Last week I watched about 400 children individually receive certificates at a series of interminable end-of-year assemblies. When the kids were younger I used to think Hell was being forced to watch Wiggles videos for all eternity, but now I know better. Hell is listening to 400+ scrambling attempts by the teachers to dream up something unique and congratulatory to say, and watching 400+ little people shaking hands with their teacher, when the only little people you care to watch are your own. And really, I’d give up seeing them get their certificates in a heartbeat if it meant I didn’t have to sit through the other 397.

Oh for the good ole days when only the kids who actually achieved something got a prize. Now no one must be left out. All well and good for the little ones, I suppose, but honestly, kids aren’t stupid. By the time they get to primary school they’re awake to the whole “if everyone’s special then no one is” thing.

Yes, I know I sound grumpy. Sorry! But I challenge you to sit through the hours of assemblies I have lately and not feel a trifle tetchy. Because the ducklings are all at different stages they received their certificates at three separate, though pretty much identical, assemblies. I heard all the speeches three times. Though it could have been worse – I felt sorry for the principal, who had to look happy and interested the whole time.

By the time I got to Baby Duck’s assembly, which was last, I was so over the whole thing I was like Scrooge sitting up going “bah, humbug!” at the cute little kindergarteners and their off-key singing. Fortunately Baby Duck made up for the lack of maternal excitement by skipping across the stage when he won an extra award as well as his certificate. He held his big blue trophy up above his head to show the world, beside himself with glee.

But oh! the irony! This is the boy who asked me every morning if it was the weekend yet. The boy who suggested nearly every day that it might be better to stay home in case he gave his classmates his (fictional) cough/sore throat/runny nose. (And then gave me looks that managed to be tragic and filthy at the same time when I told him he had to go anyway.) The boy who said school was boring because they made him work.

What was the trophy for? “Most creative attempts to get out of attending school”? “Best dramatic performance in the dying swan category”? No – “Outstanding Effort”.

He’s so proud of himself. It’s like none of that resistance and tears ever happened. He’s decided he’d quite like to win it again next year. I’ll have to remind him of that next time he sits on his bed in his pyjamas for half an hour when he’s supposed to be getting dressed for school. Can’t win any trophies if you don’t go.

Maybe they should give out awards at those assemblies to the parents instead. That would make things more interesting. “Most Patient Homework Supervisor”. “Most Creative School Lunches”. “Most Persistent in Dealing with Reluctant School-goers”.

I’d be a shoo-in for that last one.