in the abstract

Buying iced tea at Tim Horton’s today, I was reminded of my trip to the Rotorua Starbucks last summer, being offered the choice of either “zen” or “passion” iced tea, and on asking the difference, being seriously informed that one “comes with Passion” and the other “comes with Zen”.

And it suddenly struck me that the evil empire of coffee has completely missed a trick here, offering only two different Abstract Noun Iced Teas. Where the Disappointment iced tea, or the tea of Wistful Regret? Where the iced tea that "comes with" an Unfocused Yet Persistent Sense of Irritability? Where, indeed, the Vengeance iced tea with a side of whipped non-fat Malice?

Awaiting your ideas for the new abstract noun menu, please.

heartsease

A few years of skipping gaily about the globe gets you used to Not Owning Things. Because if you Own Things, you have to have somewhere to Put Them. And really, in the end, Everything You Own has to come to about 30 kilos.

So! This is quite the momentous event. I bought a DVD! Canada Pony Express took its sweet time in delivering it, but I guess that just adds to the build-up. And Oh! This…











…is made of awesome. It tastes of beauty and wonderment. If you were sick with a great sickness, and breathed in this concert, it would cure what afflicted you.

That is all.

fingers, signings, and pretty pretty hair

How fitting that on the evening I returned from the publishing orgy known as Book Expo Canada, I found my parcel finally made it to Sydney and a special booklady on the other side of the globe is properly attired for winter with woolly knuckle tattoos that read "book diva". Bless her for thinking it read “book avid” – I guess it does when you’re wearing them and reading upside-down. And are a little hard of thinking.

I did pretty well at Book Expo with only picking up freebies I absolutely was desperate to read. I even put down and left behind books whose covers seduced me when I discovered they were just not my kind of thing. And there were some almighty seductive covers. Not even always the books. I work for a place that gets hundreds of copies of every publisher’s catalogue every week, and I still picked one up just because the cover is so freakin’ beautiful it makes me want to weep.

I almost never get books signed. I don’t get the point. The authors already wrote the books for us, with 60 to 100,000 real meaningful and carefully-crafted words in them, and that's the important bit. I’m not sure what it adds to have them write their names at the front. If I really admire an author, I’d rather just tell ‘em why. What do you have of them, when they have written their names for you? Do you own a bit of their soul? It’s a really weird construct, for my money, the signing of things.

And then, the Yarn Harlot was right there at BEC. So naturally I stood in line and asked her to sign a book for me. I did kind of get to tell ‘er why I admire her, though I was just able to stop short of gushing over how pretty her hair is. But when you have a name that long, signing it over and over must absolutely kill you.

N.S.B.P. Live 2008 - are you ready to ROCK??

Every evening on the way home from the Land of Library, the carpool passes an apartment building. In the foyer of one end, every evening, a barbecue is taking place. The chairs are arranged in the doorway, while the barbecue itself balances between the front step and the pavement.

It’s led to quite the discussion. The first point that came up was that we are not all completely groovy with barbecuing on the front porch/ deck/ stoop/ entryway. As opposed to round the back of the house/ flat/accommodation. One of us was very firmly of the opinion that front porch = bad; back porch = good; viz, why would you barbecue on the street when you have a perfectly serviceable backyard in which to do it?

Then there was the drinking aspect. Were the two old guys with no shirts on, sitting in deckchairs in one of the small towns we passed through, who were not barbecuing but were drinking beer in the front yard, less or more acceptable than the motley crew in front of their apartment, also free of shirts, waving their burgers at passersby and – and this is another aspect – sitting on their couch, which they had pushed outside for the occasion?

Then, in the cycling leg of my triathlon commute home, I passed two shirtless guys drinking in chairs in their front yard with a barbecue and exceptionally loud music. Where on the scale do they fit?

Among the carpool, there appeared to be a sliding scale in effect, with the worst combination being some sort of neverending front-deck drunken shirtless barbecue party (and presumably, I don’t know, the most acceptable being sipping Pimm’s on the patio behind the summerhouse).
I'm leaning towards the side of "as long as it's a block party and we're all invited..."

But what do you think? Are you offended by the shirtless front-porch barbecuers in your neighbourhood? Or are you in fact the shirtless barbecuer yourself? I want international responses on this one, folks, because there are few things more fun than sweeping cultural stereotypical generalisations and, you know, poking fun at the Australians.

In the end, only one certainty arose from the whole debate, which was that Neverending Shirtless Barbecue Party would be an awesome name for a rock band.

in pain

This morning, I’ve been shown the brochures to the world of regular people, and been asked if I want to book in and become a member.

I’m not sure I do. It is a frightening place.

Specifically, it is a world in which regular people own cars. It appears, because of my job, that I now have to consider becoming one of them.

The ownership of the car is not in itself too scary. Find a used car, get it inspected to ensure it won’t fall apart the minute you drive it away, pay the money. Own car.

But it transpires that Ontario is the most expensive province in Canada for car insurance. Add to the mix someone who’s never owned a car in Canada, never been insured, is completely off the record in automobile-related terms…and the annual cost of even the most basic insurance is almost as much as I was intending to spend on a car.

This is very scary bananas indeed. It has all made me extremely shaky and no longer in the frame of mind to even start looking for a vee-hickle. How do regular people do this?

I am also in a world of actual, as well as mental, pain. Some of you know I can be highly-strung at times, with a great deal of nervous energy fuelled by large amounts of tea and biscuits. Well, the other day in the carpool we got to talking about spiders and wetas and long-legged beasties. You know how talking about those things makes your skin kind of super-sensitive and you imagine there’s a redback climbing up your leg at every moment?

Later that evening I sat working at the computer, and one of the pins that was holding my hair up slid out slowly down my neck.

To my over-prepped, hyper tea-fuelled mind it could clearly be nothing less than a black widow making her deadly way down my shirt, so naturally I freaked the frack out. My left hand flew up to the back of my neck at the speed of light to remove the beast. This had the effect of flaying every last tendon in my left elbow, causing me more pain this week than the actual spider bite would’ve.

Especially bearing in mind that the spider was, in fact, a hairpin.

But what should I do about the car? My carpool buddies say I can keep paying them fuel money. But are they just being nice, and they’d rather I properly pulled my weight? Do you think this insurance thing is just something that needs time to sink into my mind, and after a week or so I’ll be okay with it and ready to take the next step? Could I come round to the idea of making monthly payments on a consumer item (on insurance, for crying out loud), which by the way is also a world that I have never inhabited?

Seriously, is this the kind of thing you regular people do? And are you still able to sleep?

matters arising

1. You people sure like a girl who farms her hair. I’m leaving it, ok?

2. Maleficent hoyden, yes. In this instance, 'hoyden' is correct usage, not 'harridan'. I figure I have at least twenty years before I'm a harridan, if at all, because I don’t intend to start an unhealthy dependence on tanning beds, drinking gin-and-tonic on people’s staircases at parties, or over-using mascara. I remain committed to hoydenry.

3. Deadlegging. Is it perhaps only schoolteachers and schoolkids who know what this is? I’m not going to tell you how to do it. Because it’s not a very nice thing to do to someone, that’s why. Grow up, will you?

4. Comments, m'dears. I love your emails much, but really the little clicky thing at the bottom of posts is there to make it more convenient for you to tell me these things. I want to sink luxuriously into your emails for your private and delicious between-me-and-thee-and-the-gmail-data-miners thoughts, not your queries on my choice of vocabulary. Pants, god bless her, is trying hard, but she’s only one woman. (And for the record, my vocabulary choices are always correct. Always. Don't fight it.)