Do you twitter? A teacher mate of mine asked me that the other day. Twitter? No idea, I said. So I signed up (yet another alias assumed) to check it out. Just the same as the facebook status updates, but without the photos. You get 140 characters to say what you're up to/ thinking/ doing. And it all works on the premise that other people will want to to know exactly what you're up to/ thinking/ doing several times a day. Crikey. Not unlike blogging, I guess. But a drawcard in this Age of Celebrity, is that you can search for anyone and start “following” their updates. So to test this idea, I'm now following Hugh Jackman. Would you believe it? He's just been sitting in Miami airport and is looking forward to going to Disneyland with the kids. Noise, anyone?
Noise? I popped along to the Shrine of Remembrance this year for a bit of dawn service. Not really my idea, nor something I'd ever done. We caught the tram there in the darkness, people emerging from the gloom at each stop. Strangely packed tram by the time we reached central Melbourne.
-so you're down from Canberra are you?
-yeah i'm here for the long weekend. We get the public holiday Monday in Canberra.
-gee that's alright. How's yer work?
-oh I was in Papua New Guinea last week and before that I was organising the Chinese delegation to Perth but we were only there for 3 days so it wasn't really enough time to catch up with anyone, you know?
Happy to be off the tram and walking in darkened silence with the pilgrims. Past some seedy gents just emerged from an all-night bar. Strangely sheepish in the face of the silent, solemn looks of the sober. Walking up the grassy slope, among the darkened trees, branches in the face, when the Last Post rang out.
I wondered about the whole “glorifying war” angle of the day, but I reckon it's a totally personal issue. What someone gets out of the day, recognises of the day, attributes to the day, is their own business and for me it was a remembering. I think the workaday soldiers of the lines are people to be remembered. Not so the politicians or decision-makers of the era. Nevertheless the occasion intrigues me still. Why do so many get out of bed to be there? So many kids. So many people so far from home.
Lately we've had mates & kids staying with us in our house. Playing & eating & sleeping & living. Holidays to the beach, cavorting with a dolphin. We've had an Easter at home, painting & washing & sandpapering. And we've felt the cold snap and realised the heater stopped working sometime over the summer. We've enjoyed many many birthday parties of little people; including a 2nd birthday party held at our place. So for the first time since October 2005 there is no one at our house under the age of 2.
And I learned last Friday that my coccyx is in fact fractured. Tail bone. Cracked it back in the first week of Feb, throwing myself backwards onto a low low couch. Expecting to be enveloped in the loving embrace of several cushions. Instead crashing CRASHING my tail hard onto a sturdy, non-cushioned armrest. Crack. Yeah, it hurt at the time. Since then it has stopped me running. Stopped me riding a bike. Stopped me sitting down on the tram. Stopped me sitting down at work. Fairly inconvenient. So I finally had an x-ray taken, and yep, crack-o-rama.
Fingers crossed for a decent recovery.
Tram-riding much more frequently now, me and my broken tail, and this means book-reading nirvana. Talk about a silver lining. Have you read any of Roald Dahl's short stories? Or Cloudstreet? These stories and story-tellers are worth a look. He says. Seriously.
So two days each week I'm home with the girls, so no book reading of my own then; rather plenty of Possum Magic and The Very Hungry Catepillar and Tikki Tikki Tembo. And lazy walks to the market and maybe a tram ride to the museum this week. Ahh yes, it's cold and slow at our place these days. Putting another jumper on and easing along. Hope you're fit & firing wherever you are.
