Momentous moment for Pilgrim Monument

So now you know why Miriam doesn't write headlines for a living - that's one of her better examples. She wanted to participate in the blog so I gave her a headline to write and that's what she did. She can wave goodbye to any future involvement, that's for sure! Thanksgiving eve and it's time for the annual lighting of the Pilgrim Monument. In November, a long long time ago, the Mayflower landed here in what is now Provincetown and the pilgrims hung about for a few days, assessing the place for liveability before moving on eventually to the now more famous landing place of Plymouth. They clearly didn't think much of it as a place to spend time in! How wrong they were, looking around at the town now :-)
The Pilgrim Monument, erected at the beginning of the 20th century is going to be celebrating its centenery in May next year, but for now, it's business as usual. Before the lighting, most of us wandered around and looked at what the museum has to offer. Miriam likes the monument museum. It's got cool little dioramas and stuff. Tiny people doing things that tiny people have been doing for centuries (I suppose!)

And it's been a while since we saw a picture of Zoe on the blog, so take a look at this! Zoe being musical and multi-instrumental in front of the Mayflower display.

Before being lit, the monument looks alot like this (i.e. hard to see on a dark night!)
And then, at 6 pm, the switch is flicked and yaaay! the lights come on. And there's the monument, as it will be all Winter, lit up and

watching over the town during the night.

Oh, and here's a tricky shot from underneath.

More grumpy pictures and Fort Hill

A couple of posts back I showed you a picture of Miriam and me and a half-demolished plate of sugar cleverly disguised as Apple and Walnut French Toast (not sure if that should be capitalised so I've put caps in this post and avoided them in the previous one, to ensure I'll be right at least once!) Here's some other shots from that trip to Dennis, which we did with Jim.


Here's Miriam holding me up to read the sign at Grumpy's. She clearly thinks I'm blind. Which I'm not. And I can tell you I got sick of the snide allusions to grumpiness in me and how appropriate it was that we were having breakfast at a place that was named after me etc etc etc. Blimey she gets my goat sometimes. Anyway...

Then there's this shot of me on Jim's glass of coke. Very bloody funny. I'm an odd shape and I don't straighten up very well so everybody thinks they're so clever when they realise they can hang me off the edges of things. So, here's me hanging around with Jim. Ye gods.

On the way home we stopped by a place called Fort Hill. It has an amazing view, which your friendly Australian nutcase will show you in the picture below, and no doubt the place has some historical significance. No doubt there was a Fort. And I'm guessing the hill part was related to the slight lumpiness in the landscape... Whatever. She wasn't concentrating because of all the SUGAR. I'm glad she took a shot of these whale jawbones though. Makes you stop and think doesn't it. Perhaps we're all just krill, in the scheme of things. Jim certainly seems to think so! That's him playing Jonah.



And then Miriam decided to point to something. We'll never know what it was. Possibly an ambulatory sugar cube. Possibly a storm coming in. Possibly nothing at all. You know what she's like.

Hanging about in the Library

The Provincetown library has been a boon. For one thing, it has access to a free wireless network (yaay!) so M and I can come in here where it's warm and write and read and just generally hang out when we don't feel like going walkies or drinking :-) or sitting at home reading by ourselves or watching cable TV any of that stuff. She's writing a bit at the moment, and reading. They have a great selection of art, poetry and philosophy books here, which is what she appears to be a little bit into at the moment (yawn!!) and it's always warm and well, it just feels great in here. The one little thing that's a little bit perturbing is that the Provincetown Library is home to a ship - a 1/2 scale sized model of the fishing schooner the Rose Dorothea is perched on the first floor (or the second floor as they call it here. But what I mean is the floor above the one that's the same level as the ground) Here's a pic of the Rose Dorothea in al her sailign glory. Ain't she grand. I should get Miriam to take a shot of her from the floor where the ship is sitting, but this one is taken from the Mezzanine floor, which where Miriam hangs out when she's here, if there's space available at the big wooden table. Here's one of the reasons why she loves this table... look at the view. I mean check this out! She gets to come in here and read and write and day dream and when she chances to look up and out the window, this is what she sees. Lucky cow.


One afternoon, she sat there taking shots from time to time, every time she thought of it. Here's one a little bit closer up. The days are shortish here right now (sunset just after 4 pm) and she generally comes to the library in the afternoon so the light gets progressively softer and pinker during the course of the afternoon. There's something achingly beautiful

about the flats at low tide, with pink and peach coloured light coming from a clear sky onto the blue water and glistening sands, with pretty little human interventions in the shape of sloping rooves and empty masts sitting precariously on the surface of it all.

Look at that glow. Dontcha just want to ice it and have with a cup of tea? Where did that come from? [checks watch] ah... Miriam must be sending me afternoon tea vibes. It's 3:30 in the afternoon.

Grumpy update

I've been a bit slack getting to the blogs, I know. But she keeps taking me out for walkies, or sitting around reading, and forgetting that sometimes I need to be able to get to the laptop, while connected, and tell everybody what's going on her life. Sheesh.

Here's a quick one before they kick us out of the library. We went to Dennis. Yes the same Dennis where we visited Jim with Silverware two years ago or so. This time we visited Dennis with a different Jim, and our aim was to go to Eldred's Auctions, which is also where the other Jim was (the one who didn't want our silverware because it was all plated). Confused yet? I was, so she took me for a sugar hit to a place called Grumpy's that Jim (our favourite Jim, not the grumpy one who doesn't like epns) had recommended. She had Apple and walnut french toast. SUGAR. WITH FRIED BREAD. AND SUGAR ON TOP. WITH MAPLE SYRUP ON THE SIDE. I had some, and as you can see it put me in an all-caps state of mind. Here she is looking absurdly photogenic (thanks non-grumpy Jim!!) and also looking suspiciously like she is going to sweep me and the rest of that french toast into her capacious receptacle of a handbag. I stopped her just in time. But she was jittery all the way home, making up odes to sugar.

Gotta go - they're flicking the lights and kicking us out. I promise to post more soon!

walking in the woods

Another mild, beautiful day and Miriam decides she's going walkies in the shrubbery. She can't seem to sleep until very late (about 2:00 am) and it's driving her nuts as someone who normally goes to bed by about 11:00. Anyway, she figured a little stroll might get things back in order. So off to the Beech Forest. At the beginning of the walk, just near the entrance to the town dump, there's this helpful sign.

She hasn't walked to Herring Cove before, so this seemed like the day to do it. It was about a mile to get to this sign (1.6 km for those who prefer the metric) and then another 2 plus ish miles (3.2 plus ish km) to get back to town at the other end. So she figured that it would tire her out sufficiently to send her to sleep at a decent hour. 6.9 + 1.6 + 3.2 = 11.7 or 12 km if you round it up to include the plus-ish figures. Yep. That should do it.

Here's what we saw:

Squirrel and a bend in the track

Some yellow leaves and a lichen lawn

And then the ocean and on the way home, a beautiful sky...

She slept well that night :-)

comments, anyone?

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Gettin' reaquainted...

Jane took her home from the bus stop; Jim took her to the exhibition and then they went to dinner. And in the following days she met up again with Ginny, Midge, Suzanne, and of course the inimitable Zoe Lewis. Zoe's now with Sharon, the Miss Pacman fiend mentioned in posts from last year. Sharon's on the left, Zoe on the right. Here's Zoe's website: http://www.zoelewis.com/

Catching up with Zoe and Sharon was fabbo. Here they are at the Squealing Pig. Beer was drunk by all and stories were told and then we got on various bicycles (with plastic bags strapped to their seats because we did not want wet bottoms) and wobbled up the street to the Mews where the regular off-season open mic coffee house thingy was on.

Some great acts tonight. Zoe got up and played during the course of the evening. She'd brought her ukelele and sang a little ditty. Then there was the guy who played Hungarian Rhapsody #12 by Franz Lizst. Very serious music for sure. A guy who recreates JFK's speeches (dresses ina suit, does his voice and everything!) which was weird but cool. A guy who had never performed before AT ALL and made a good fist of it (except that his song was one about how life never turns out as one had hoped when one was young... and I kept waiting for the verse that said 'that's OK, though because I grew up and learned to be happy with whatever life did dish out to me.' Or something vaguely positive. But that never happened.) Then some folksy stuff from Janet Feld. She was the feature artist of the night, currently based in Boston. Great songs. Like little poems.

Later on in the night a couple of unrelated but similarly curly haired young men played some interesting blues on their guitars and sang. And that was it. Hugs all round and then Miriam and I walked home (she walked, and I bounced along in the pocket as per usual) and she dreamed that night of renovations on a beautiful house. It really was the most beautiful house. She only got four hours' restless sleep, still out of synch with Ptown's timezone - but it seems like all those hours filled up with beautiful images of just the sort of house she would like to live in. All she really remembers of it now is a sense of light and space and orderliness that felt perfect.

I may start getting soppy in these posts, although I will try not to. I've been thinking about matters of the heart. Jim has some new boarders at his house. Three of them actually but one in particular seems very nice. I've never met anyone who quite makes me feel this way. I made Miriam take his picture. What do you think? Doesn't he look nice? I can't wait to see him again.

The galah has landed

She's written this 'clever' 'witticism' in two emails so far... so I figured I'd pander to her weird sense of humour by calling her a galah as well. As you may have guessed, my postings are a couple of days behind reality. But that's what's supposed to happen when you're on holidays, right? I'd like to be able to tell you that the rest of the time she's letting me lie around on the bed and eat chocolates while watching cable (yup, there's cable in the bedroom of the apartment this year, tee hee!!) but no. She makes me come out with her and do stuff. Sheesh.


OK, one of the first things we did (obviously) was go and see Jim. And we combined that with a visit to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM or the Art Ass to those in the know, although the director does not appreciate the second option). There was an opening of an exhibition of recent aquisitions. Here's Jim and Mim standing in front of one of them. It's a (big) Littlefield. Remember the essay she wrote on the I Ching for the Littlefield cattle dog last year? It all comes together, you see, in the end.


Later Jim and Miriam went to dinner at the Mews and caught up on gossip, then it was over to Jim's house to see Russell, who had come up for the weekend. Miriam got a tour of the garden and here are some of the pics.

Russell flicked a switch among the shrubbery and like magic, a fountain lit up - it had been sitting stagnant for a while, so was a bit whiffy when Russell started it up, but it looked lovely. Check it out!


And here's a pic of a piddling statue:












And here's a bay window, looking spooky from the outside...

not funny or interesting

Blogs are supposed to be interesting, right. Funny, maybe? Well the problem is that I've been a bit jet-lagged and uninspired. But after a couple of days in the flowerpot, I'm starting to feel like things are coming together again. Hopefully I'll start finding somethign interesting to say -- soon. OK, now where were we in the narrative? Ah yes. The train from New York to Boston. It's a good trip, actually. Easy peasy. $78 one way and there's a dining car and a dunny. She booked us into a hotel in Boston that she's stayed in before. It's one of those fancy pants ones with broadband and room service. But she spent most of her time there feeling like crap. So I just hung around in the sock because she basically neglected me. One little walk on Friday morning before catching the bus to Provincetown. There's a bar just up the road from the hotel that she hasn't quite made it to, but would like to sometime. It's called Bukowski. There's a sign on the side window 'Dead Authors' Club'. Trouble was, just the thought of alcohol and she had stomach spasms. Or food. Or water. She just wanted to quietly and slowly dehydrate as long as nothing else had to ever pass her lips. i.e. she didn't go into Bukowski's for a drink :-)

Oh, and she went shopping for jeans and found out her butt has shrunk another dress size. Yip de doo dah day!

On Friday afternoon, she caught the bus to Provincetown. She had a seat to herself until about a minute into the trip when a gentleman she had seen in the waiting area decided to move down the bus and sit next to her. He scratched an instant lottery ticket and she had herself all geared up to tell him it was a bus rule that you have to split instant lottery winnings with anybody sitting next to you when you scratch the card. But she buttoned her lip when she saw that he hadn't won anything. He seemd upset, sighing and squirming. But the sighing and the squirming continued long after the pices of the instant lottery ticket had gone into his back pocket. He was clearly uncomfortable. He took a call on his mobile phone from a prospective employer and Miriam loaned him a pen. This apparently also constituted permission to embark on some intimate sharing time and he revealed that his hemorrhoids were really bothering him. Wow, it's been a really interesting trip so far. First the self-confessed premature ejaculator in the bar in New York and now the jobless dude with roids. Ye gods. http://www.answers.com/topic/hemorrhoid

In Provincetown again

Yup. It's a cliche, but she says it's like she never left. Whatever. I could say the same, I guess. This year, it's a little warmer than last year, and so she's put me in the flowerpot to make up for the endless hours in the sock that I had to endure to get here. Regular readers may be interested in the sock. It was black. Newish. Clean. Intact. i.e. not very interesting. Here's me in the flowerpot beside her front door. I'm the colourful little thing you can just see if you have super powers in the vision department. No really, she cares. I know she does.

The trip here was long, as you'd expect. 14 ish hours to Los Angeles then an hour and a half in line to get the passport stamped. I am not kidding. Shockin' Then a sprint to the domestic gates at the terminal, and a 5 hour flight to New York. Leonie had booked us into a nice hotel in New York... Mmmm... Here it is...





New York was... interesting. She left me in the hotel room at about 8:00 pm and came back at Midnight a little the worse for wear, and was very very ill from about 5 am until she had to get the train at Penn Station (3 ish blocks away) at 1:00 pm the next day. Maybe a recurrence of that tummy bug she had? Maybe something else? She has her theories. Some of you will have heard them. 'nuff said.


Anyway, the train trip was nice. She spent most of the four hours with her head on her back pack, trying not to throw up. Good company, I don't need to tell you. Here's a view out the train window.

A post from Kew!

Not that thinking about them helps... If she wants to tell somebody she misses them, she should just tell them. They can't read her thoughts. But there goes another day in sunny Melbourne (it's perfect here at this time of year) -- it's 11:23 pm (a bit later by the time I post this, no doubt) and Miriam's about to go to bed, still thinking about the good times she had in Massachussets in December and not doing anything about it. But while she faffs around doing the toothbrushing etc etc, I thought I would sneak in and have a go on the laptop.

She should probly write to them herself, shouldn't she. But this is for them if they log in to take a peek. Hellllooooo from Miriam!

We've been back for six weeks or so, now. It's been busy. She's now working three days a week as a technical writer, about to sign up for two more semesters of study at the University of Melbourne (Masters in Applied Linguistics) and writing away, busy busy busy. Despite a couple of minor hiccups and few dental appointments that would not have been entirely necessary if she hadn't waited FIVE YEARS between appointments, she's genuinely happy. I haven't seen her like this for ages. What is it? She's exercising regularly, eating right, taking time out to cultivate and nurture friendships and relationships with family... could that be all there is to it? Could it be that easy to create happiness? Interesting question.

And of course none of that helps me. I'm ceramic, mostly grumpy and have a very short and uninteresting spectrum of emotions. About the happiest I get is when she keeps me out of the sock. Hmf. I hang out in the herb garden and beat the snails off with a stick. I like my life. Really. NO, really. I do.

hooray for the heating

Sunset the night before the storm.
The white spot is a half moon... >

3:27 pm, Friday 9 December, she walks out of the Wired Puppy with a grin on her face, holding the regular post-walkies treat: Medium Mocha, No Whipped Cream (Note Initial Caps For Emphasis). She's just been talking to the barista-person about weather, because today in Provincetown it is the thing to talk about. It feels like she's heard a hurricane is supposed to behave... rainy stormy weather with trees bowing down under the strain of it, followed by a lull. And a big dirty sky hanging over the east end of town meanwhile, just biding its time. She doesn't have to wait long.

Here's a picture of the rainbow that appeared in 'the lull'

Halfway up the half-mile between the post office (some of you are getting postcards soon!!) and Wired Puppy, the rain starts. She loves it. As she passes the mouths of alley ways the wind nearly bowls her over. She giggles out loud and hangs on to her hat and clutches the plastic bag with padded postbags in it tightly to her chest. What fun!

And then she gets to the Wired Puppy and has the Weather Conversation. Her hurricane idea is dismissed peremptorily. What is apparently going on, says the barista is that there's a storm coming in this direction (he sticks his arm out) and there's another storm coming from over here (he crosses his first arm with the second arm) and then there's a bit where the two meet--that's the lull we just had, he says confidently. Makes about as much sense to her as a hurricane, so she nods and they have a little extra chat about the length of the days. They are short. At 3:27 it's nearly over... just over half an hour to go before the sun dips over the horizon.

The lights dim.

She leaves, waving. As she crosses the street, clutching not only the plastic bag with padded postpaks, but also a coffee, the snow starts. It stings exposed skin. What she doesn't know is taht the wind is travelling at somewhere between 35 and 60 miles per hour. That's the mile that is 1.62 kilometres in length. As they say in this blessed country... 'Do the math'

So she walks up Dyer Street (her normal route) and by the time she's half way up the street, she's squealing. Half delight, half (a little bit) scared. oooooohhhhh... the wind is blowing, the snow is stinging, she can hardly put one foot in front of the other. Visibility: approx. not a lot.

Up the stairs to her little pad. Notes screen door has been blown almost off its hinges... opens main door. Goes in side. Warm little pad. Dark little pad. Pulls the light cord. Dark little pad.

Power's off. Remember the lights dimming?

The wind howls and it gets darker. Snow is blown so hard against her front windows that she can't see the street and must look out the side windows. She lights candles and puts Robyn's crocheted rug over her knees. Reads by two candles and remembers what it felt like without power in the bush as a kid. Feels the room getting colder.

The phones work so she checks weather.com (gotta love the lappy with a charged battery!!) The wind is supposed to abate by midnight-ish (it did!). It is supposed to get down to -1 C and Saturday is supposed to be a sunny 3 degrees celcius (39 F). Walkies in store for us, methinks!

At 4:16, the power came back on, and it's now 5:53. She's sitting up in bed writing (well she actually ducked out to the kitchen to top up the coffee cup so that's why I thought I'd give you a quick update.

She loves heating. She loves electricity. She loves life. Billie Holiday is playing in her earphones. It's Saturday 10 December, and all is well in Provincetown.

That final picture is Snug Cottage across the road... looking pretty in the snow.

scatology

ha ha ha ha! I nearly fell out of my sock laughing when she came home from walking to the GU. A seagull shat on her. All across the front of her jacket, right across to the front of her jeans. The gulls are big here! They do big doo-doo.

Interesting fact: seagull kaka looks like milk and smells like dead fish.

Walkies!

Lots of photos in this posting. She got busy with the camera -- as did I, although I didn't do a terribly good job as you can see if you scroll down a bit.


Walking to the Beech Forest she decided to go the long way and cut through the graveyard.

Some of the headstones are heart-wrenching. So many small children died in the late 1800s. No explanations, just these sad little date ranges of 2 years, 4 years... So many of them too. It made us really think about how much things have changed in a couple of hundred years when you can have kids in our countries now and be pretty sure they'll make it.

Great view of the Provincetown Monument (with headstones) Look at that blue sky with fluffy bits. Dontcha love it!!!

[by the way, as I type this, the wind is fairly howling outside the apartment and I am snuggled up in a blanky, with the laptop on my lap keeping me extra warm. So the weather may have turned, maybe.]


Here's me hanging around on the sign at the beginning of the bike trail we walked along today. She walked from home to the Beech Forest (via Chach and eggs benedict). This is the beginning of the Beech Forest trail.

Hi ho, hi ho, a walking we will go... no wait. That's what dwarves sing, isn't it. Not gnomes. I was never properly socialised, you see. I was brung up by humans, and spent my adolescence in a tomato patch, so whaddya expect. Don't judge me. I can't help being stiff and ceramic.


Oh, oh, oh, I nearly forgot. Then we found these cool mushrooms. They grow right out of the sand.

I tried to see how the hydraulics work. As you can see here, I was taking it very seriously, getting right down on the ground and investigating the underside of the funghi in question... to no avail.

Whatever mechanism they employ here, it's clearly quite intricate and cleverly disguised.



Here's what red leaves look like.


Here's what Miriam looks like when I move the camera away before the shutter has finished clicking.



Here are Miriam's eyes. Noice crows feet, girl.

Proof

Just in case you didn't believe she's been writing, here's photographic evidence. There's a restaurant on Shankpainter Road called Chach. They have good food, and the peeps are noice as well. Good Eggs Benedict, passable coffee... (for all the Provincetown residents reading this, that was an attempt at irony, or more precisely a joke!! :-))

It's a terrible dilemma when just days away from what locals say is definitely, absolutely probably going to be snow... when she has some serious writing to get into and when the days keep ticking away... that the sun shines. She just has to go out in it! Believe me, when it does start to snow, she'll be holed up in that apartment, just dashing out to dance naked in the snowflakes from time to time... (for all the Provincetown residents reading this, she'll only do it in the dark and only for seconds at a time)

But look how good she is!!! She took me, her manuscript and a pen that works (the gal can really think sometimes...) and she edited pages 33 to 52 before heading off on the big walk (see next entry for details)

Look at the sunshine in this photo. It was so deliciously warm on the table in the corner she chose to sit at. As you can see, I couldn't resist and stretched out for a nap. Mmmmm.

din-dins!

A house is just not a home until you've had friends over for dinner, or so she says. Oh, she forgot to put the flash on the camera. Ooops.

That's Chris on the left and me in the middle and then Jim on the right.

They were quite good company. We laughed, we cried... we solved the world's problems. Global warming, endangered species. Solved. But we forgot to write it down before we went to sleep, so now that's all been wasted!


On the menu? Chicken marinated in yoghurt, lemon juice, cumin and turmeric. Cous cous with roasted capsicum and fresh coriander. Roasted parsnips, carrots and aubergine. Followed by Raspberry cream cheesecake. yuuuummm. So now the apartment has been 'christened'.

And here I am in Jim's pocket. They think my hands look like boobs. Not a nice thing to say, really.

Rainy day...

Rain on the roof this morning - it's such a great sound. After writing in the morning, she went for a walk in one of the breaks in the weather. Of course the break didn't last and we got soaked... but hey, she loves walking in the rain. She thinks it's one of the best things to do after a few hours of writing.


First, she had a bite to eat at the Squealing Pig. Here's me helping her out with her glass of wine.










Derek is the bartender. He was doing a bit of a spring cleaning - wiping down the shelves and the bottles. (dreadful shot -- sorry Derek!)

We went down to the breakwater.

< Here's a shot of me looking longingly out along it. It's getting colder and wetter here now and I'm not sure when she's going to make it out along the breakwater to the Long Point lighthouse -- but hopefully she's going to do it soon!



< GU
And then, she went to the GU (Grand Union Supermarket) to get some supplies and the rain really started. By the time she'd walked home with a full backpack she was completely soaking, but you know, it was great. A hot shower and a pair of snuggly tracksuit pants and a fuzzy jumper and a cup of tea later and she was just about the happiest gal in Provincetown.

I had written him a letter...

Here's a kangaroo we saw in Bradford Street. Eeek!


She's being quite good and writing her novel every day, but at this time of year there are so many things to do during the evening - people to see, food to eat, laughs to be had. She goes out at night a bit. She doesn't always take me but she tells me about it afterwards...

The Mews, a quality restaurant here in town, has open mic nights on Mondays and she went along with Zoe, just for a laugh. Earlier in the week, she'd said something about wanting to maybe do something... read a poem, whatever... but in the end she couldn't find one of her own poems that she could bear reading out loud to an audience, so she opted for the one piece she's known by heart since she was small -- A.B. (Banjo) Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow. What some of you may not know about Miriam is that she has a bit of an on-going love affair with the bush and some of its older colonial mythologies. The bush ballads, the stories of Henry Lawson... all that stuff. And having lived in the bush as a kid, she developed a sense for it. She has what has come into common parlance as 'a strong sense of place' in relation to the less inhabited parts of her native country. In an environment such as Provincetown Massachussets it's easy to understand why the known image of Australians might be a bit clichéd or painted with broad brushstrokes. The Australia that Miriam loves and embraces when she touches down from trips away or gets homesick on foreign shores does include Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin, Secret Life of Us and Porpoise Spit but that's not all there is. It's too big, to complex, to put into words, but it suddenly struck her that Clancy of the Overflow might be a way to shine a light on another facet of what it means to her to be Australian.

So Zoe shared her open mic slot... welcoming Miriam and making her feel grand. Then, lights in her eyes and a stammer in her voice, Miriam launched into this... one of her favourite pieces of verse. And guess what? They loved it :-)

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, “Clancy, of The Overflow”.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
’Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
“Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.”
. . . . .
In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving “down the Cooper” where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.
. . . . .
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal—
But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.

Cheers, m'dears :-)

gym / jim -- spelled differently for a reason

Pic: signing in at the gym for a day pass...

I knew there was a reason she chose to study linguistics. It's so the subtle things like differences in spelling and meaning can't get past her any more. Let me give you an example of how useful the last semester has been for her. Jim's place - a few minutes' walk down Bradford Street. Great food, great company, a widescreen TV and various on-demand movies and other programs. Gym - a longer walk in the other direction with no food, nobody to talk to and very small TVs on brackets high up the wall, with captioning so she can see the dialogue as she sweats. And yet, both words sound the same. Homophones, they call 'em. Gym, Jim. Life's funny, isn't it. That's gotta be worth the fees she paid at Melbourne Uni last semester.

Pic: in the girls' locker room at the gym :-)

Well, as you can see I am sweating the small stuff. That's just my way.

She went out last night. Her friend Zoe Lewis was playing at the Vixen, a club in town. So Miriam went to the Squealing Pig first, for a glass of wine and a bite to eat. Mackenzie (mentioned in previous blogs) was there (some things never change...) and it was great to see him. Derek was there too, behind the bar, just where she left him. Remember the Squealing Pig was where she took the shot of me last year. It was a hangout of hers, a place that she could go and eat without having to cook... So after a glass of wine, a nibble of chicken and a good read of Mackenzie's TV guide she toddled across the street to the Vixen. She didn't bring her handbag last night - she wanted to feel free or some rubbish. So I was in the pocket. Everything was a bit muffled through the woolly material but Zoe sounded great as usual. An intimate crowd listened to Zoe play and sing some of her songs. I like her song Eyelashes alot, and that was the one Miriam and I walked in on. Here's a link to Zoe's website if you want to take a look. www.zoelewis.com

After the gig, Zoe's friend Sharon, from New York taught Miriam how to play Ms Pacman. She (Miriam) is really really bad at it but did manage to get some points by about her third game. Sharon is a great player and was actually straining her shoulder with the joystick. I may have to try and talk Miriam into hanging out at the Vixen and learn to play the game better for next time she gets the chance to complete. I mean it's really embarassing to be sitting in her pocket and listening to her lose and lose. She squeals when she loses. Ye gods. I'm blaming it on the wine of course. It's always the wine with her.

The embarassment did not stop there. We all went to a place called Enzos, across the road from Bubbalas. A great little underground grotto-ish place with a fireplace and nice people. She had a glass from a great bottle of Sangiovese wine, a few more nibbles and lots of conversations. I was really enjoying myself just hanging in the pocket (!) and then she met an author named Michael. He seemed nice. We started talking about the writing process and then of course she thought she'd ask him what his surname is "in case she'd seen his work somewhere". Well, it was only Michael Bloody Cunningham (author of, among other things, The Hours). She blushed. I could feel it from the pocket but hopefully the light was dim enough down there in the grotto that nobody could see her face changing colour! She decided to play it cool and say "hmm. Yes, I think I may have seen your work around." Gotta love the girl under pressure.

Tonight we're going to Jane's house. Jane lives in a street called Aunt Sukey Way. Miriam loves the name of that street!

I'm going to put the camera near the front door now so she can't bloody leave it behind - you'll get pictures next time.

Strappy frock one day -- woolly sox the next

Ye gods. I'd forgotten how cold it can get here. I thnk she actually wanted to put me on the porch of the apartment that she's staying in, but thankfully she's had a re-think. After all, I mean really. My paint could crack off out there!

And those of you who may or may not have been reading previous blogs, from last time she was here, will be desperate to know about the sock situation. Did she or did she not (for example) transport me here 'dans une chausette'? Not as fancy as it sounds unless you have a thing for socks. Yes, yes and yes. She did. This time it was one of her old terra cotta coloured items, with a hole in the toe. Having colour made me feel upgraded... but the hole kept me in my place. Seemed like every x-ray machine we went through between Melbourne airport and Provincetown I put the wind up the security person. I'd get into the machine and the belt would stop, then reverse a little, forwards a bit, back again... and finally I'd be sent through to the otherside. I'm not sure exactly what it was about me that gets them worried. But I figure it was either me or the house keys and my guess is that they see house keys in handbags all the time.

Pic (left) The view from the porch.
Anway... back to Provincetown. She arrived on Thanksgiving morning and was picked up by Jim, who took us back to his place for coffee and bagel. And thus began the eating. Home to our apartment for a nap, then back to Jim's house for the proper Thanksgiving. Turkey with sausage stuffing, yams, asparagus, turnip, potato, carrots and cranberry relish made from cranberries picked in one of the cranberry bogs down on Seashore Park Road. Apparently the bogs are knee-deep in mush at the moment - it's been a wet autumn. Hopefully it will dry out a bit and she can go and do a bit of cranberry picking - keeps her out of my hair long enough that I can upload a blog. She's here to write which means she hogs the laptop a bit and uploading updates may have to be carefully scheduled. You should hear her go on about it. "I've got a novel to finish." Whatever.

Meanwhile, she took a walk this morning, down Commercial Street, which is where the action here is. Today was what's known in the USA as 'black Friday' -- the day that will ensure any business is in the black!! I thought it might have something to do with bushfires or stock market crashes but that's just me being negative. Town was full of post-Thanksgiving shoppers, but we do not have a Walmart or Target or any department stores here so the really serious shoppers were absent :-) Being a small town, it's easy to run into people in town and she managed to do that, lots of hugs and smiles all around. The big find of today was a coffee shop that was not yet open last time she was here. Wired Puppy, on Commercial Street just down the road from our apartment. It sells coffee from 6:30 am to 7:30 pm every day. The coffee is good (espresso machine, not drip filter) and it is also a free wireless spot. Oh happy day. That means she now gets to take the laptop down there and write emails and stuff. Another scheduling glitch. Do I sound grumpy?

And that's it from me, for now. I'll update again when she gives me a chance to have a turn the keyboard.

Now, here are a couple more pictures.

Me, on my head, upside down with happiness to be out of the sock and handbag. In the room at the Airport Hilton in Boston.

And the view from the kitchen window. Looks warmer than it is. That speckly stuff on the window is ice.