fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

A friend reckons I am one of the scary people on the Tube. I like to watch people, to try and plumb the depth of their character by observing the minute of their faces and bodies as they wait in the introverted suspended animation that the Tube requires of you. This friend tells me that when I watch people I get an intense look on my face that reminds her of a Dali painting that she once saw. When she imitates my look, she looks crazy, and I hope she is exaggerating because I do not want to make my fascinating subjects uncomfortable as they entertain me on my journey through the bowels of London, swerving around plague pits and hurtling past deserted stations. To Her Door One of the most haunting passengers of my travels got on at Morden with me with a large polystyrene box, carefully taped, something that you would transport a fragile object in. He sat in the corner of the carriage, his entire being concentrated completely on the box in his lap. The importance of this container w...

Since I started travelling, I have begun to treasure the more unusual of Australian national traits, including our unique outlook on defeat. The fact that tens of thousands of young Australians travel to ANZAC Cove each year to commemorate months of slaughter ending in inevitable defeat is indicative of our appreciation for hard work, whether it ends in wealth or death. Young Australians travel to the Gallipoli Peninsula in tour groups, spend almost 24 hours on the site visiting memorials, waiting for the Dawn Service and standing on the soil that birthed the Australian sense of country and identity. Yet we are people of life and spirit, who work hard and try to empathise with others, in a place of sorrow and death, created by incompetence and intolerance. My first trip to ANZAC Cove was made in the company of the victors of those hideous killing fields - the Turks. A friend of mine with ties to the young people of the Turkish town of Gelibulu, after which the Gallipoli Peninsula is ...

The BBC Proms is the biggest musical festival in Britain. It was started by Queen Victoria, and the Last Night at the Proms, broadcast live and screened in parks around London, is an event that allows the British to really display their national pride. I decided to go and see the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra this year, the only non-classical performance in the programme. Four pound standing room only tickets go on sale before the start of the concert and Lizzie and I lined up for three hours for our tickets. Thankfully the night was gorgeous – clear, warm and balmy – perfect conditions for perching on stone steps for hours keeping an eagle eye out for queue jumpers. Even better was that we were right by the huge BMW people mover with tinted windows when it disgorged the orchestra itself - the American jazz musicians alighted, grinned at the crowd, eyed a few girls and sauntered into the Hall. We had lined up for the Gallery, the very top tier of the Royal Albert Hall, and we sat on th...

Jen's friend Lizzie was stopping with us for a week and I was happy to haul the poor girl around with me on my never-ending attendance of the latest free gallery event, movie or lecture. The first night she stayed with us we went together to see a brilliant Indian movie at the National Portrait Gallery. While the story itself was an unremittingly sad and emotional one of a poor family – the almost wholly female audience at one time couldn't keep their sadness contained and in one moment sighed, sniffed and knuckled away tears together in a testament to the exquisite emotional tension created – there were moments of extraordinary emotion, especially between the brother and sister, that made my heart ache for my brothers and sister. At the death of the sister I thought I was going to start bawling. Terrible form really. In direct contrast to the film's virtuoso performance on my heart strings on Thursday, Friday I got to exercise the cynical and disdainful muscles of my wan...

I was a real groupie the other day, for the first time since I left Perth. I usually prefer to listen to live music cabaret style, with a table of good friends, liquid refreshment and no risk of a head-banging fan landing on my newly polished toenails! (my toe nails are ugly enough as it is). So I am a reluctant gig-goer at the best of times. One thing I do like to do, though, is support the bands that contain people I know and tonight I was finally invited to a friend's brother's gig. Walking into The Standard was like walking into the Grosvenor in the good old days of 2000 – plenty of boys with perfectly messy barnets, plenty of girls in perfect alternative outfits and the smattering of normal people who are usually old chums of or related to the band. I was introduced to Kate's brother - red-headed like his sister, he sported a flawlessly coiffed seventies mullet in deep copper. I was impressed with the grooming. Then I noticed that the crowd had a soothing seventies mul...

I left a few songs into the headliner's set and headed for the tube, absorbed in my own reverie and itching to get home. I settled on the seat next to the window and stared out onto the platform. As the tube moved off, it kept pace with the passengers moving along the platform to the exit, and my pensive stare was obviously too much for one stylish young man. In a gesture of familiarity that is usually unwelcome in London, he tapped the window and smiled cheekily at me. A freely given smile with no hope of a return is all too rare in this town apart from babies and, lately, cute men from Blackhorse Lane ...

Thursday night was another sharp reminder of just how nostalgic I can get. I was out at the thoroughly antipodean Slug and Lettuce in Fullham for the first time in almost five months. Since then I had moved to Old Street and started going out to bars where my accent was the only Australian accent in the place. My subsequent move to Leytonstone placed me even further from the Kangaroo valleys of South and West London and deep in the Indian and black end of London. Being back in the bosom of London's Australian population was a shock for me on Thursday. Firstly, they just don't make boys like they do in Australia. My nights out in Old Street were nights when I was the same height as the crowd and too many men were disregarded because they were just too short. The only men that topped me were the black guys. Try to make your way through the crowd at the Slug, though, and you are nose to nipple with chests I took for granted back home and was all too happy to oogle again. I...

I digress though! (don't I always when I talk about men?) The part of the evening that stays with me the most, however, beyond the shameless eyeballing of chunky six-packs and broad shoulders, was my catching sight of what was being played on the big screens in the pub. They were playing a DVD on Taj Burrows – champion surfer and native of Yallingup, the town I have holidayed in each summer since I was born. I miss Yallingup beyond anything else in Perth – I often go entire weeks waking up each morning in a haze of sadness because I dreamt aching dreams of rolling surf, sweeping headlands and endless empty beaches. As each shot of Taj surfing panned out to embrace the familiar bush covered dunes and arching line of pristine sand of Yallingup bay, I took the unexpected step of physically dealing with my frustration – I stamped the ground and moaned 'goddamnit I want to go home.' My last photo of Yallingup beach before I left Perth. Cave's House gardens in Yallin...

Monica and I went for a walk around the lake the other day in a surprising haze of warmth and sun. We stopped to watch the ducks up-ending themselves in the water to graze the reed-lined bottom. As one bird rocked his head down and his bottom up my entire body felt, for a moment, the phantom sensation of the water gymnastics I used to conduct while floating in the ocean back home. I realised then that I have not been swimming for almost a year now, and I was feeling the lack. One of the first books on modern England I read was Alan Coren's Golfing for Cats, in which there is a chapter on the horrors of the British Health System, including a little moment where an arm needs to be amputated to rid a patient of his splinter. I have been literally terrified of the pools here since Monica recounted a tale that seemed to dwarf the splinter episode. Her father stubbed his toe in a public pool here and contracted a blood infection that nearly cost him his leg, as the doctors here were no...

Now, I am going to do a little bit of shameless promotion here – I would write a huge post filled with my own thoughts on the Jack Vettriano exhibition, but I am disinclined to repeat what has already been put succinctly by my fellow fans. So if you want to read a really excellent review of a fabulous exhibition – with illustrations – go to Monica's blog for her post . The rest of the blog is well worth a look too ... and not just because I star often and, I feel, rather fabulously! I first saw Jack Vettriano's work when my brother's girlfriend bought him a print of the Singing Butler, and became a real fan when I walked into a little gallery in Woodstock in Oxfordshire last year and saw a whole room of his prints and bought a signed copy of one of his books. Our entire household are huge fans of the Scottish artist and all our thoughts come out in Monica's essay on the topic. What I will say is that Vettriano has a sense of narrative that echoes my own. When I entere...

Matt, Monica and I moved into our new house at the end of last week - it is way bigger than the old one and was decorated by someone VERY fond of bright blue – bright blue carpet, curtains and soft furnishing, predominantly blue colored art and, just to add a bit of colour, canary yellow kitchen appliances. My bedroom is at the back with a lovely view (we are on the second floor) and I have made sure to put out all my most colourful possessions to counteract the predominance of blue. With my pink and green sheets, my vast rainbow silk scarf across the window, my acres of colourful postcards on the walls and my bright pink umbrella suspended from the roof, the blue kind of disappears! (sunglasses are recommended for entering the room though) Monica and I spent a day setting up the lounge room, so we had a little party. My bedroom. My bedroom.

I enjoy working in central London for many reasons – chief among them the chance to see some genuinely different sights. One lunchtime Kim and I met on the Victoria Station concourse for lunch, we were officially going to find somewhere to sit for lunch but something even better turned up. As I was heading towards our meeting spot I walked past a very elegant couple in tux and ball dress, unusual to say the least at 12.30 in the afternoon. I found Kim and on the way back saw this couple standing by a Haagen Daaz promotions stall with another couple in elegant dancing gear. I made Kim lurk with me as I watched them organize something, turn on a stereo, and then start to tango and salsa around the stand. I was enchanted – one couple were a distinguished and very tall man with grey hair, his partner a tall stunning blonde in a strapless red ball gown. The other couple were shorter than me, two slight and very dark South Americans, the gentleman in a tux, the woman in a tiny red velvet d...

It was Matt’s birthday and we had a small celebration in honour of the day to tide him over until his party. Jacinta had come up to stay the night and try out our local club, only two blocks from us. It was an outpost of the South African equivalent of the Walkabout called Zulus , painted in the gaudy colours of the South African flag and unfailingly packed each Friday and Saturday night. So Jacinta and I got into our glad rags, downed the birthday champagne and even persuaded the usually hermitical Matt and Monica to get dressed up and join us. When we got to the line, the doorman refused to let Matt in with us three girls, despite Monica’s incredulous cry of ‘But he’s my husband!’ The irritated blondes went home and left Jacinta and I to the tender mercies of London’s South African community. And what a strange night it was too. We got into the club and it was in a huge hall with all the warmth and atmosphere of a school social – probably exacerbated by the dirt cheap beer and alc...

Despite a hideous first week at work, I actually got up on Monday morning in the best mood ever to find itself manifest on a Monday morning. I attribute it to both the sunlit bedroom and the residual well being of Sunday. Yet as I stood on the tube, crushed against my fellow travellers for 40 minutes, as I navigated the heaving tides of Victoria station concourse during peak hour and as I settled myself down in my grey office with a view only of chimney stacks and roof tiles, I felt almost Zen-like in my composure, like I was relaxing after a pleasingly strenuous yoga class. It almost felt like I was a solar charged panel, finally lighting up with the sun and radiating the stored energy. I was so high on the weather I tried to find a park in the concrete jungle of Victoria for lunch and thought I had hit pay dirt when I spotted a strip of green on the street map. Alas I had forgotten we were on the border of Belgravia and my little park was a luscious private garden that was only open ...

The timing of my move out to Matt and Monica's house couldn't have been more auspicious, the spring weather is glorious, but definitely more enjoyable with a forest on your doorstep. When I got to London in August an unusually hot summer was ending and the gardens were parched. Even so, to my eyes the greens were amazing and the pure abundance of growing things astounding. Now I understand why people live through the winter – the spring is a pleasure that makes the dreary months almost worthwhile. A sunny weekend was exactly what I needed – starved of sun, warmth and the chance to bare more than just my hands and face, I went a little crazy and became a dedicated Suntoucher. I missed one day of stunning weather frantically doing all the jobs I had to do inside, and finally escaped the house with Monica as my guide in the late evening. From home, it is only a short walk to a slice of forest surrounding a lake and the Snaresbrook Crown Court. It must have been about 7pm when we...

For a little while there London wasn’t being it’s usual self and throwing up strange and bizarre co-incidences – and then it gave me a genuine reason to laugh. Monica and I got the last tube home one night and were walking up past our 24 hour Tesco at what must have been about 12.30am. As we walked up towards the deserted car park we spied a black man in only a small white bath towel sprinting across the tarmac. We watched incredulously as, gripping his just purchased soap, he raced across the road in front of us yelling out ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ At this point we were exchanging quick bemused glances and shrugs with the young man who was the only other person in the street. It could have just stayed a funny story except that three weeks later I was walking out of the station when I heard a man behind me giving his companion, obviously a first time visitor to Leytonstone, a rundown of the area – ‘It’s nice, a little dodgy sometimes, like the time I saw this black guy in just a bat...

When I was in Morden, Jacinta and I were fond of a Friday night out at Edwards in Wimbledon, and since I moved out of easy traveling distance of Wimbledon, the Edwards nights had to include staying at Jacinta’s. This night was such Friday – except instead of me piking at 12 to go home, Jacinta induced me to stay out in another, far less salubrious club called Footlights. We finally left that establishment at about 2am and, it being a mild night, we walked back to Jacinta’s via a little road of shops and houses just out of Wimbledon. As we were passing the houses, we were hailed by a group of boys having a party on the roof. After a slightly rowdy exchange of greetings and compliments, we accepted their invitation to join them, trotted up three flights of stairs through a crowded share house to climb a precarious ladder to the roof to join our hosts. Once out on the flat roof it was definitely worth the slightly bizarre circumstances. Jacinta’s little slice of Wimbledon is along a l...

I just don't know where to start! The tackiness seemed to go on forever and that 'bracing' wind was whittling away at my bones. I was at a seaside resort on the Lincolnshire coast called Skegness - sadly enough the name is a good indication of the general attractiveness of the surrounds - to attend the Evangelical Alliance stand for a few days at a four week Christian Conference. I had spent the entire weekend gushing on about my paid holiday in Skegness, an excitement that vastly amused my English friends, who warned me repeatedly not to expect much. The three hour train journey out to Skeggie (or Skeggers – my attempt at a more Australian ring – it never caught on) was brilliant. I finally traveled out of the South East of England and I was glued to the windows watching the most fabulous countryside unroll before me. There was a particularly lovely section of the trip where the train chugged through low, hedge-rowed hills that hid so many little towns that as one church s...

I know the Square Mile MUCH better now – after that night I made sure one day a week was set aside to wander the streets without a map and with no direction. I went to the Alternative Fashion Week in the Spitalfields markets - shows put on by students with the most fabulous designs and ideas - after which I followed the crowds to Petticoat Lane markets and the beautiful arcades of Bishopsgate. I walked a substantial part of the ruins of the Roman Walls - a wonderful trek that has you darting down dark alleys to find oasis' of Roman ruins in landscaped gardens. I strolled down the dark valleys of the roads radiating off the Bank junction, vast stone walls looming above the pavement and hiding an amazing array of churches, pubs and Roman temples beneath its corporate facade. My favourite part of the immediate neighbourhood however is the Barbican Center, which is a huge complex of apartments, conference centers, cinemas and theatres that is like a small 1960's space station set...

The biggest exhibit at the Tate Modern Gallery for the last few months had been the Weather Project, a vast sun made up of powerful lights and an opaque plastice disc setting in a vast turbine hall with a mirrored ceiling. For the last two nights of the exhibition the hall was open until 1am and I joined the crowd on the South Bank at midnight to see a Midnight Sun in wintery London. The Tate is housed in a huge factory and the turbine hall was vast, the mirrored ceiling opened it up even more and the air-conditioning pumped out air carrying dissolved sugar which gave the area a sulphurous glow. Coming out of the freezing night air off the Thames, the heat was incredible and familiar, I was grinning as I crossed the concrete floor to get closer to the much missed warmth. After walking behind the disc to look at the mechanics of the sun I joined the rest of the crowd on the concrete floor – once you had inspected the sun for more than five minutes the urge to watch yourself in the mirro...