I grew up in Melbourne.  It’s a fairly religious town.  We start talking about it every Friday, and on Monday we debrief.  The religion is The Footy.

There has been a lot about the footy in the media this last few weeks, with Essendon being dragged over the coals over allegations of drug usage, and with some of the club’s favourite sons being drawn into the fray.  I can’t help but wonder which other clubs may be involved. I just hope it isn’t mine (although their recent results would suggest they are in the clear).

This weekend, it was time for some pastoral care Asher style: Nathan took his son to the footy.

We forgot all about the recent furore, and were transported back to a simpler time.

A time where you wore your team’s colours and your heart on the outside, proudly displayed.

A time where you felt pride in your team’s success and you yelled disparaging comments at the opposition.  Where you ate a meat pie that defied occupational health and safety regulations, and burnt your arm when you inevitably spilt some of the meat.

A time when the purest joy was screaming out “Go Dogs” at the top of your little lungs at every opportunity, and you high-fived your Dad after every great passage of play.  Where you felt like a grown-up because, for those couple of hours, you were an equal to your Dad.  Brothers in arms, united against a common enemy.  Where you probably wouldn’t even get in trouble if you accidentally let out a medium swear.

A lot of things have changed in football over the years, but these things have not.

Nor has this little tune lost it’s ability to stir my heart.

Up There Cazaly

I miss you sometimes, Melbourne Town.

Go Dogs.

Do you love your Footy?

Do you sometimes let out a medium swear?

I’ve been meaning to get organised and get a brazier for years, and yesterday I decided to get onto it. We had to go to three shops, because they have already cleared them out to make way for the palm-tree motif cane lounges and neon pink beach umbrellas (I did mention it is Queensland, right?), but my tenacity, and Nathan’s patience paid off, with a Big W jackpot.

A fire-pit, no less.  We could be on Renovation Rescue, or whatever that shit was.

We stoked up the fire, found appropriate sticks, ripped open the marshmallows, chucked the kids some sushi for tea, and settled in for an evening of staring at the embers.

Faces hot, backs cold.

Icy cold beers from the bar-fridge slaking our parched throats.  (After all, we were being all outdoorsy.)

We live near the beach, and I guess it is still the ‘burbs, but sitting by our fire, we could’ve been anywhere.  But the fire held us right here.  In the present.

We watched the Evening Star come out, and made silent wishes.

A bat flew by, in that creepy, almost silent, way they have.  Just a soft rustle of those strange fleshy-sounding wings.

A possum made it’s way across the power lines to forage on the other side of the street (and then shit itself and nearly fell off when I tried to take a pic for my Instagram).

And we sat and we stared and we talked and we watched the fire go down, until all there was, was the ashes. And the Ashers.

Just me and him.  Him and me.  Just how it’s meant to be.

Do you have a fire-pit?

What was your Saturday night like? 

One rainy Friday afternoon, my Father, Peter brought me a book home. I think he grabbed it on a whim, but it started something. The book was this one:

Trixie Belden, The Secret of the Mansion.

I don’t think he knew it then, but that quick little purchase started a ritual that changed my life.  I remember ripping that bag open, and scanning the first sentence “Oh Moms, I’ll just die if I don’t get a horse”.  I ran to my bedroom and didn’t come out until I’d finished the last words.  For I too, would die if I didn’t get a horse.  I had no idea who ‘Moms” was.

And then I flipped it over, and I read it again.

The following Friday, another brown paper bag from the bookshop, another Trixie.  And so the habit was born.  I don’t think Peter knew just what he’d gotten into, for author Julie Campbell and then mysteriously after book six, Kathryn Kenny, were prolific.  They wrote thirty-six Trixie Belden books. THIRTY SIX.  At a book a week, that’s nine months.  In the time it would take to grow a human baby, my Dad grew a monster.  A reading monster.  It was voracious.

And so that is what happened.  Every. Single. Friday.

Some Fridays he would have “lunch meetings”.  It was back in the 80s, before everyone got a work ethic, and when long boozy lunches were an accepted and expected part of business.  When he got home he’d be so “tired” from his busy day that Mum would make him go straight to bed.  Yet still the brown paper bag.  Still the book.

He never forgot.

Of course, eventually we moved on from Trixie, and through other catalogues: Dahl, Tolkien, Twain, Steinbeck.  Then later; King, Hornby, Bryson.  And finally, right near the end, Nick Earls.  By the time we got to Nick I’d long since moved out of home, and so we would have quick chats over the phone or send emails about what we were reading.  We had lots of cross-overs, but our tastes diverged at Peter Carey.  I couldn’t do Carey.

In the later years, we had switched roles a little, I didn’t do it every Friday, but I did sometimes buy my Dad a book.  The last one I got him was The True Story of Butterfish, by Nick Earls.  He never finished it.  Before he could, the cancer devoured him, from the inside out, and Butterfish was left sitting on the bedside table.

A few months later I was sitting at my desk, reading Butterfish, and I came across a passage I particularly liked.  Forgetting my Dad was dead, I absent-mindedly picked up the phone and called his office to discuss it.  A woman answered, and the pain and the sad came over me in a hot and cold wave.  I hung up quickly, without telling her I was calling to speak to my dead father.

My Dad always thought I’d write a book one day.  I don’t know if I have a book in me, but I do have a blog now.  And for now, that is enough.  I hope my Dad would like reading it.

…From The Ashers xx

What book memories do you have?

Did your Dad do cool stuff for you when you were a kid?

It’s book week in Queensland, and the culmination today at the children’s school was a dress up parade.  Come as your favourite character.   I was seriously tempted to join in, because I does love me a good bit o’ fiction.

It was a close thing, but I didn’t know if Annie Wilkes from Misery (remember the sledge hammer?) was appropriate for the Prep to Year 5 demographic.

And that got me thinking about all things bookish.

So here goes, confession time: I’m a book nerd.

The proof is as follows:

• I have four bookcases of grown up books, that are overflowing, and stacked in all directions.
• I write my name and the date in all my books.
• They are put away alphabetically.
• I do not borrow books, nor do I lend them.
• I still have my first ever “proper” book, Fox in Socks. It’s from my second birthday, I know this because my Mum has written 1973 inside the front cover (!)
• I have one bookcase full of children’s books.  These books do not belong to my children.
• Once upon a time, a particularly shithouse boyfriend threatened to burn all my books, and I thought I might die.
• Sometimes I just sit and hang out with my books… Okay, that’s probably enough right there.

Over the years, I’ve read a few books, but more interestingly, I think they’ve read me.  I like to underline passages, and when I go back and peep at my scratchings, it’s like I’m gazing back, at the me of back then.  Remembering what moved me and grooved me.  What I thought was clever, or funny, or the perfect sentence.  I’m always in search of the perfect sentence.

It’s fun to go back and try and imagine being in love with Edward from Twilight all over again, or to go further back and see myself distraught and blubbering over The Bridges of Madison County.  Not my finest moments.  But there’s so much more.

Pissing myself at Nick Earls, (any book, they’re all hilarious).  Freaking out at Pennywise from ‘It’. Finding a voice speaking to me from the pages of ‘Catcher in the Rye’.  Getting lost in Middle Earth on a quest for the One Ring.  Deciding to defend my virginity at all costs after reading ‘Forever’.

And then further back again, to simpler times in the Enchanted Wood, or hanging out with The Famous Five.

I don’t know when my book addiction first began, but I do know that it was nurtured and grown by my wonderful father, Peter.  But that’s a story for another day.  Maybe tomorrow.  Pop in, I think I might tell you a story about an amazing bloke…

What books do you love?

Do you lend your books out?

Today is my big day at work, so I haven’t seen much of the kids.  Just bit of time together this morning, and a quick goodnight.

After I was all done, I came up to see Coco’s homework on the table.  She had some spelling words to “look, cover, write, check” and sentences of same.  Her writing is slowly getting better, as she seems to be getting less fatigued these days.  She is proud of her achievements, probably because they are so hard won.

It isn’t the neatest writing in the world, but you can see she has tried hard, and the work is all her own.

My favourite, was her sentence for the word ‘breakfast’.  All spidery writing and smudgy from the rubbing out:  “The smorning I had breakfast.”

It made me laugh.

That kid.  She makes me cry more than any person I’ve ever met, but my God she makes me laugh more too.

She’s had a tricky week, but tomorrow is the book week parade, and I know she’ll be up early ready to dress up as Pearlie the Park Fairy.

Keep up the good work Coco, your tenacity makes our hearts sing.

….From The Ashers xx

What about you, what makes your heart sing?

What did you do the smorning?

Coco was still home from school today, her eardrum is still perforated,  the iPad is still lost, or found, and now living in it’s new home,  (I hope the new owners are having fun playing in all the Minecraft worlds that Coco and Liam have lovingly created over the last few months.) and my frown lines are still as deep as ever.  Yet somehow, today was a little better.

Today, the sun had to work a little harder to warm up the Sunshine Coast.  But it was worth it once it did.

Today I overcooked the eggs a little, so they weren’t quite as runny as I’d like.  But they were bright yellow, and yolky thick and tasty all the same.

Today I had to do four loads of washing to freshen everything up after all the musty sickness of the last week.  But the wind blew and blew and everything smelt fresh and sweet once I got it off the line.

Today Coco painted her own fingernails whilst I was in the shower, and smeared colours all over the white leather chair and the tiles.  But it sort of came off, and she was so proud of how she looked, that it mostly outweighed the vague pinkish blur that remains.

Today Liam taught me how to play chess, and it looked like he was going to win.  But I lured him into check with my rook, so I STILL RULE.

Tonight I wasn’t concentrating, and burnt yet another pot to a smoky cinder.  But when we had to evacuate to the balcony for some air, my neighbour threw me over a home grown lemon, then we spent time looking at that fecund moon.  Liam swore it was green.

So even though my day today hasn’t been perfect, it’s been a little better.

How has your day been?

Have you looked at the moon?