fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Last Thursday I was making my leisurely way down Regent Street to the National Portrait Gallery and I walked past the new Apple shop , unwrapped from its scaffolding and hoardings only that week. Despite the fantastically bright red and blue Christmas lights spanning Regent Street, it was the light (the light …), the clean, white light that attracted me. As I flattened my body against the window in curiosity, I had to admit that Apple had spent their money well. Calculating the price the company paid for a two storey shop front, three times the width of most of the other shops makes my head hurt. But it is what they have done with that decadent amount of space that really makes the shop extraordinary. There are a few vast, clean blonde wood tables nearly lost in the gleaming whiteness and the sexy machines sit in splendid isolation so you can caress them and still have more than enough room to bring your other hand up to wipe the drool away in comfort and without disturbing your neig...

The cattle-class conditions of rush hour on the tube are an amazing way to learn to ignore people. With my head tucked into my neighbour's armpit, the wookie attempting to suffocate a seated bystander and some diminutive child eyeing the pink plastic handle of my umbrella as if it was a candy-cane, I travelled in one forgetable morning on a train that was packed to dangerous and unsociable standards. When in such circumstances the urge to withdraw from the outposts of your body is overwhelming and I cease my habitual, ceaseless and obvious observation of the people in the carriage, pull all my nerve endings in closer to my spine and attempt to ignore any touch registering with my brain. I blur the edges of my peripheral vision so I can be alone and discreet in the swaying mass of steaming, exhaling, sweating bodies. Today I was particularly loath to be in such close quarters with anyone as I was reading Perfume by Patrick Suskind and the rich descriptions of Grenouille's o...

Today it rained heavily for about 20 seconds at 8.12 when I stepped, umbrella-less, out of the door to work. I went back for the umbrella. This took all of a minute. By the time I got back out it was drizzling. I barely raised an eyebrow. I remember sitting in my room in the middle of the English 'summer' just past, rearranging my photos and postcards on the wall and trying not to look outside. I tended to overuse non-descript when describing the weather this summer, but I will use it again because the only better way to describe it is as an absence of weather and that is just silly. One boring and grey day, as I sent my reluctant gaze outside like a child into the gloom of England's summer, my mind had itself an epiphany – I could write a book about eternal summer and beautiful gardens and adventures and ...! I suppose, then, that the sunny, balmy days of English children's literature were wishful and hopeful rather than factual. Given that I spent my genuinely sun...

I find England literary and historically thrilling and Saturday was one of those days when the thrill reduced me to ecstatic silence. Three months ago I decided to see the last night of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet in Stratford Upon Avon and I was determined not to do it alone. Half the shelf outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. So I ruthlessly organised seven other people to come with me (I say ruthlessly because no matter how many emails I sent out about the minutiae of it's organisation no-one ever replied to them bar Sue because she is organised) and all was good for my scheduled three hour perve-fest on Toby Stephens as Hamlet. It was a great pleasure to step off the train surrounded by a gaggle of friends instead of by myself, take possession of our own private inn instead of having to hang in the B&B lounge room by myself, Half the shelf outside our inn, The Queens Head. have dinner by the consensus of 'god we have 30 minutes and we c...

Woke up. Groused about how much sleep I don't get in bed and how much I was going to get in front of the computer at work doing stuff a trained monkey could do. Had lunch with Jacinta and laugh maniacally about stupid stuff. She is a treasure for what she puts up with. Told Ozy she was weird. Spent the rest of the day assuring her that was meant in an endearing fashion. Spent an hour nose-to-oil with portraits of the Tudors. Some of those 'favourites' of the first Lizzie were right lookers – especially the dandy with the long auburn hair. Watched three vaguely silly art-house animations that reduced Kate and I to uncharacteristic silence due to amazed incomprehension. Left in the middle of the question and answer session with the directors when a paragraph-length luvvie question from the critic to the artist was answered with 'well, I don't know what I really mean by using dolls, I am just making the film, I am just the puppet for larger forces ...' ...

Once upon a time there was a young woman (me) who lived with a lively couple called Matt and Monica. Sometimes this young woman had trouble sounding intelligent and this resulted in the embarrassing phenomenon of her referring to Mott and Manica so often it became the couple's nickname among the young woman's friends. To curb this habit of hers, she started referring to them as M&M. Sometimes M&M really did remind her of the famous chocolate that melted in your mouth and not in your hand. You melted them by intelligent conversation, not posing and glad-handing. Then, prompted but an email in which I made a clumsy, yet appropriate rhyme, Monica decided to channel the OTHER M&M. One of my friend's sent out an invite to a nightclub event to which she had been invited by a DJ. Another member of the list commented that the hostess was going 'street' on us. I admitted I would not be able to make it because I was going to a Terry Pratchett convention and m...

I got out of work today and the sky was clear. For me, this equates roughly to a lotto win. Very soon it will be pitch black when I get to work and pitch black when I get out of work. The pleasure of walking on sunshine is going to be curtailed cruelly very soon. So me, the Wookie (my classy but vast vintage fur coat) The Wookie, bought in Camden and named for a large imaginary animal because no-one could come up with a Russian name that I liked. and the clear sky strode off down Regent Street. I made a quick side trip to Liberty (very swanky department store) to buy pot plants for my hosts for dinner this evening. Since I got here I have started collecting bags from all the expensive shops. The trick is to buy something cheap that needs a big bag so it looks like you bought something expensive. So unfortunately the two dinky pot plants needed this vast purple Liberty bag to be transported on the tube. Shame. I walked through Carnaby Street and into the back streets of Soho,...

Welcome to my blog. *mutter* scrap that! something more exciting is needed ... It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a girl in possession of insane sociability must be in want of a blog. *grimace* something ORIGINAL please ... This is the blog that will launch a thousand thoughts. *wail* you are plagarising again! I like to write, I love to share, I adore the idea of banging on about whatever I wish on the internet. Thus my experiences will live here in this little corner of blogger.com. It is rather rudimentary at the moment - I have been lazy in filling it up. This happens, I find, when you have too much fun doing the interesting stuff and not the discipline to write it all down! Over the next two weeks I will be back dating many posts, so when you get on be sure to check the August and September archives for new tales. For all those coming from Travelling with Clairebear, everything before June is old material from that board. I must explain that the lau...

Today was the kind of day you are glad you lived through, but hope you only have once in a while. I had my first big party in London on Friday and I got immense pleasure from seeing all the many and varied friends I have acquired here chat and mix, promising that the winter will be warmed by good conversations and easy companionship. Monica, Ely, Ozy and Lizzie at my party . Last night I saw Kristen off at the airport after spending our first week together for a year. We had five days on my first ever trip to Paris and then five days in London culminating in the party so she could meet all the people I had talked to her about in her weekly phone calls. Kristen and I in Paris . I finally have a regular paycheck and was able to shop for the first time in almost six months. We had had friends to stay the whole weekend, cooked good food and had great running conversations that had filled the weekend with laughter. To remind me just how much a heart can hold in both happin...

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.