fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Susan Without Sue I would never have come to London at all and for that alone I owe her absolutely everything that was great about the last two years. Jen facilitated the idea too, but it was Sue’s six weeks in Australia during which she offered me the chance to look after her house in London that got me out of Perth in nine weeks flat. Sue is one of the handful of friends I have over here that makes a truly profound impression on all who meet her, each person who talks to her comes to me with a hushed ‘oh my god, Sue is so cool …’ I hesitate to try and sum up her character in one sentence, but I think it is because Sue is entirely awake to herself that she is so admired. Sue will always epitomise for me awe inspiring cooking, asides that make your eyes bug out and (and I use the word advisedly) an earthiness that makes you feel like you have found someone who really knows where her towel is. Jacinta I actually cemented my friendship with Jacinta under entirely false pretences. O...

Last July, when I mentioned that my first year in London was drawing to a close to Matt, he reminded me that I had not done the last year by myself. He was too right - housemates, drinking(!) buddies, travelling companions, old friends from home, new friends from home, new friends from London, visitors from home – each person that entered my life over here formed a memory that ties my heart that little more to this land and I am eternally grateful that they provided for me that cocoon of a great group of friends. Last year I got a few people a small token of my appreciation for their part in making my first year in London bearable. My personal debt to my friends over here has increased quite a bit in the past year, however, and I want to officially give my heartfelt thanks to the people that have BEEN London for me. Friendships when you are travelling are a truly wonderful experience. Firstly you have the Perthites, people with whom you can swap that special currency of ‘Perth hey?...

I have only six more weeks to go in London and I really should be starting and ending each day with wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Instead I am having night after night of brilliant conversations with friends who are already becoming a wrench to leave behind, and it is entirely because I am leaving that I am having such a good time. I was afraid that my moment of fear, which inspired the entry below of the same name, was going to be a permanent state. That my fear of the known would hamper my ability to settle my affairs over here. Yet the limits of my time here and finality of my imminent departure from my real life has woken something unusual in me.I have become a grinning martyr to my love of Britain. Instead of wallowing, I am barefacedly declaring that I am leaving a fulfilling life behind to be buried in a cultural backwater. I am declaiming right, left and center my ambitious plans for my stay in Perth, the writing and the reviewing and the wonderfulness that I will br...

It’s been a week since I read this little gem from Alan Coren’s column in the Times, but now that Wimbledon has actually started and Henman has won his first game, I think it is time to bring to your attention one of Coren’s Corkers. Tim Henman is, right after Jonny Wilkinson, my favourite English sportsman because he symbolises for me an inexplicable aspect of the English psyche. Henman is the best English tennis player at the moment, he has been ranked 4th in the world, he is currently 21st, he holds eleven titles and he gets to the quarter, semi and finals on a regular basis. But he has not won Wimbledon, and for that little oversight, all his overseas achievements are ignored. The love / hate relationship between England and Henman is epic in its dichotomy, the country prepares to back him to the hilt, but are completely resigned to him crashing out before the finals. Every Wimbledon, the whole of England manages to say exactly the same sentence at least once … ‘Henman is p...

I am being stalked. My last weeks in London are being lived in parallel, one with me frantically running hungry eyes over my beloved London trying to remember everything, one finding me freezing at inopportune moments with the overwhelming knowledge of going home. My thoughts of home are stalking me through my work day, my bus rides, my dinners, my sleep and each of my conversations. At any moment I may say something or see something or hear something that triggers a memory of home and my stomach disappears, my lungs turn to concrete and I seem to exist outside time for the split second that it takes for one of two crushing feelings to rip my throat out. I can never tell which of my two stalkers will pounce on me next. The fear is like one of our famous venomous snakes lurking in the dark, ready to sink its’ fangs straight into my chest and freeze my blood. I stand on Pall Mall each morning, admiring the sight of the National Gallery and will find myself mentally standing in ...

PART ONE HERE Gloriously Normal Our B&B was a working Hereford farm called The Grove Farm run by Lynne Lloyd and her husband (we never caught his name so he became Farmer John). Our fellow guests were two Yummy Mummies from Kingston and they were such caricatures, with their white linen trousers, primary colored designer leather handbags and condescension to Lynne. We had a fascinating conversation on politics on Sunday morning in which these two women were racist, hypocritical and snobbish with complete aplomb and without a trace of irony. I was particularly conscious of their particular brand of Londonitis because I had gone for a little trek around the farm earlier in the morning with Farmer John and had had a fabulously earthy conversation about animal husbandry and cropping in our two different countries. It is so frightfully nice to talk to someone who is not from London … Michael Buerk Jen and I were assigned to the largest venue for Sunday’s penultimate sessions, consis...

We packed sneakers (they should have been wellies), we drove a Vauxhall (it should have been a Range Rover) and we had tongue-in-cheek nicknames (Kiki and Bunty). The Hay-On-Wye Literary Festival was never going to know what hit it (and it didn’t because they couldn’t tell what our accent was!). The Great Escape It took us six hours to get from Kingston to our Farmhouse B&B, including a tense 45 minutes around midnight winding our way through Herefordshire lanes one car wide with hedges so tall they seemed to close over our heads. I always love the journey out of London, from the smell of the grey prison of London to the smell of the green grass of England. We drove over the Severn Bridge , painted a luminescent baby blue, its struts fanning out in your peripheral vision like a peacocks’ tail as we drove over it. Jen was duly impressed with the Welsh hills, the hills of South Wales just as clean-cut and handsome as those around Snowdonia . Setting the Scene We had to wear sexy D...

Fear is merely allowing that which has not happened to cripple your present actions. I used to be quite fearless. Until the age of 22 and 6 months I knew that all I had to do was wish for something to happen and it would. When I needed marks, I reached out lazily to my few hours study and plucked knowledge effortlessly from my mind. When I needed company I picked up to phone to one of my cherished friends and I was diverted. When I needed a job I asked and received with little need to exert myself. Emotionally I suffered a moment of doubt once a year exactly, a yawning pit of bottomless horror that would immobilise me for about 30 seconds and pass, letting me live my life on a relentlessly optimistic upward curve. And when I was handed my darkest hour, the only person who could pull me through did so without ever allowing fear to touch my heart. I have suffered only one debilitating family death, no hardship and while I have my biting moments of shame, they are of a kind that can b...

It is Eurovision week, and a European friend of mine, who shall remain nameless to preserve her dignity, has turned down a night out drinking and dancing into the wee hours with us, her girlfriends, for Eurovision. Knowing the five of us when we get together, that is being pretty serious about Eurovision. But, you know, it is seeing that kind of seriousness about something that I don’t understand that makes living in another country so fascinating. Last night I sat at dinner with three girls who are as close to me as sisters, and they come from cultures so utterly different to my own that I get intellectually jealous that I can think in only one language, while they think and exist in two languages and two cultures. It is both humbling and inspiring, ensuring I am eternally grateful that I never had to struggle to develop my ability to communicate in an almost universally acceptable language and guaranteeing I harbour a deep regret that I can understand so very little about other c...

I have always been an admirer of beautiful cars, but I never realised how few really expensive cars I had actually seen until I joined the boy racers at the start of the Gumball 3000 rally on Saturday. Considering it involved very expensive cars, celebrities and quite possibly scantily clad girls, I borrowed a man for the afternoon so I would look as if I actually had an excuse to be there. I am very glad that Matt did come along too , because not only was he able to tell the difference between the makes of Porsches, Ferraris and Lamborghinis (I only had the badges to go by), but he actually made sure I got a private viewing of the cars. The race started at 6 so we arrived at 4 and joined tens of thousands of panting boys lustfully oogling the 100 cars entered in the race. I had such a hard time trying to decide whether to a) watch some playboy slide into a bucket seat to warm up a Pagani with a roar that nearly flattened the people standing at the rear of the car or, b) rest...

I read the Economist yesterday and I dearly wish I had picked the damn thing up a long time ago. Long have I assumed that it was an Economics Journal rather than a News Journal, I mean, what is the title of the publication? Eh? Eh? Anyway, my boss’ copy of it was sitting on her desk and she drew my attention to the fact that it had an economic survey of Australia in it. So, expecting to be completely bamboozled by all that economic gobbledegook I started reading, and reading, and reading … Have They Got The Ticker? It was absolutely fascinating, mainly because it is written by an author unburdened by local bias, mostly because it was enthusiastically praising the last 15 years of Australian Government and was relentlessly optimistic about the future of the country. I was rather unnerved to discover that my loosely held, standard issue touchy-feely do-gooder political views on Howard and his Government were completely subverted by the articles I read with increasing enthusiasm. ...

Shakespeare's Globe THE SEASON OF THE WORLD AND UNDERWORLD The 2005 summer theatre season at Shakespeare’s Globe has been announced as The Season of The World and Underworld. Three plays by Shakespeare - The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale and Pericles – will be joined by an adaptation of The Storm by Plautus. This Graeco-Roman comedy has been adapted by Peter Oswald whose previous work for the Globe, The Golden Ass, was a huge hit in 2002. In addition to these productions, two company projects will explore voice and the use of masks on the Globe stage. The Season of The World and Underworld, which begins on 6 May, will examine the influence of classical Greece on Shakespeare’s works. The season will finish on 2 October with The Tempest. It will be Mark Rylance’s final performance as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. The Natural History Museum CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Diane Maclean, Sculpture and Works on Paper Until October 2005 Admission: FREE Visit our latest outdoor sculpture exh...

We have all seen that clever little email from the Washington Post's Style Invitational competition where you can only change one letter of the word to get a new meaning haven't we? If you are after a chuckle then, I recommend you follow me to the latest Style Invitational ...

Part I It was 8 o’clock and I had to go to bed. I was perusing the bookshelf in my Grandmother’s holiday house in Grace Town for a new book. The Carpetbaggers ? Nah, looks like it has too much of that ‘adult material’ that is really too boring for a nine-year-old. Bloodlines ? Ick, that had so much ‘adult material’ it put me off trashy novels for quite a while thanks. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ? It was a thin paperback, just the title and author on a discreet rainbow squared background. Considering how it changed my life, it really should have had DON'T PANIC! on it as well. I settled down in bed and started reading. I finished about 2am, which was definitely my very first extremely late night due to a book, and when I got up the next morning I read it all over again, trying to work out if I had dreamt the entire thing. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is my first concrete book memory, my first taste of the humour of a generation of English writers and I have n...

The weekend past I was a steward at the very luvvie Oxford Literary Festival, and that Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia was mean to me! After so much literary wonderfulness, I am reluctant to indulge in luvviness myself, so I will not natter on about the commentators and authors I listened to (John Humphries and Terry Pratchett amongst numerous others) or spotted in the crowd (Colin Dexter), but I am going to share the two best incidences of the two days. First amusing moment was Fiona Shaw and Saffron Burrows turning up for the session on Writer's Block that Fiona was hosting. Fiona is a national acting icon in Britain, and Harry Potter's nasty aunt is by far her least important role, which must be why she point-blank refused to give me an autograph. To think I broke my golden rule of not asking for autographs that I have kept for almost 15 years too. She should have been more conscious of the honour; the last autograph I got was from Ricky Grace! Both women were unnatur...

Internet-geek time everyone. I have a website. You are reading it at the moment. I only have in the format of a blog because blogger is the easiest platform for me to publish on the net and no-one liked the ezBoard forum anyway. Thus, I do not consider myself a real blogger, I just publish my writing on the net. But what I *AM* is a complete sucker for people mentioning me on the net. Monica mentioned me quite a few times on her blog Th'inkwell but that was because I lived with her. Matt links to me on his blog Creativity on Demand but that is because I used to live with him. I love those two links, but they are ones I didn't earn. What I did earn were these three little gems of Claire’s minor presence on the net. BIG MENTION NUMBER ONE – Miss C’s blog. I found Catriya’s blog when a flash of boredom drove me to press the next blog button. I landed on a post about her plans for an ex-boyfriend and didn’t look back. I don’t think I have ever read a better commentator on my ge...

WARNING: Plot Spoilers I am currently devouring Robin Hobb's most excellent Liveships trilogy, enjoying once again an author that is fearless in her writing. Hobb, along with the equally ruthless George R R Martin , has my eternal regard because she is not a sentimental author, allowing the most hideous hardships to overtake her heroes over and over again until you feel fate-ravaged yourself and wish desperately she would stop creating such cruel realities and indulge in some old school positive tweaking of the plotlines. Reading until 2am on a school night because I just met these guys and they are going through a rough patch, I remembered a heartfelt book review I knocked up at the start of the year. A week before I left Perth for London and needing cheap entertainment due to budgetary restraints, I got my greedy hands on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and lay in bed for nine hours straight getting back into life at Hogwarts. At 3am that morning I let the book sl...

Friends, Family, Visitors Today we stand at the start of an uncertain eight months for our State. Having failed in our negotiations with Great Britain for residency the State is conceding defeat and returning to Australia. While deeply regretting our passionate love for Britain could not move mountains, nor, indeed, the Visa and Immigration Department, the State is proud that our feelings are truly ambivalent, as we must leave the land of Intellectual Paradise for the land of Physical Paradise. During our final four months of residence in Great Britain, the State will be engaged in various activities that naturally occur with disengagement. Many new friends are to be left behind and time must be spent cementing relationships, a state of alertness for last minute opportunities for the State to remain in Great Britain must be maintained and plans drawn up for the Return to Paradise. These activities are, in their very nature, apt to make the State completely self-absorbed and potential...