I am chatting to three young guys next to me. When you sit this close to strangers it is best to start up a conversation. They are friendly as I squash into their space. They’ve travelled the 911 km from Melbourne to catch two days of WOMADelaide and are suitably impressed. Impressed with the crowds; the 34 hectare parkland setting; the incredible huge, fairytale Morton Bay Fig trees and Adelaide’s weather. Melbourne has just suffered a freakish storm, three hours of solid rain and hailstones as big as lemons. Typically, Adelaide has had a few tiny showers which evaporated into the dry atmosphere almost as soon as they descended.

I explain to them that often the locals don’t patronize great local events as much as they should and I feel a strange guilt at not being a veteran of all 18 WOMADs . I wonder at my temerity in calling myself a music lover. I have only bought the day ticket but I’m here. It has been three years since my last WOMADelaide (does that require listening to three hours of world music as atonement?)

I had forgotten just how chillaxing the whole event is.

I have seen a mature Tim Finn perform almost fully acoustic versions of Crowded House classics – he is good, very good. A sea of Gen Xs and Baby Boomer cusps sway in unison appreciatively. 

There’s a group of talented musos, Arrebato Ensemble playing a cool fusion of Flamenco and Middle Eastern sounds - from guitar to Oud and cello, the blend is beautiful and unexpected. The addition of double base, sometimes played with a bow  is a stunner.

I had to then to rush off to see a cool brass band someone recommended – exit to stage two.

 African American brass with a rap beat. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is funky and bright, with a smooth professionalism that matches their onstage moves. A little girl with Botticelli curls is on her dad’s shoulders in front of me. She has her arm up and is playing the beat in the air, like a Princess rap-fairy, floating in the sounds.

I wander over to stage three and am transported to the desert. The haunting clarity of this exotic lament from Algerian singer Kamel el Harachi is contagious. Our shy hips move with the beat and before you know it, on the other side of the crowd a group of women begin to dance, bellies rippling, arms curling, lips smiling, eyes closed,  they become the music. On the way over there was a group of military clowns assembling on the stage. People were gathering in numbers as the cheesy percussion began. The “captain clowns” jumped the stage and headed into the pack, they whistled and buffooned about to their matching beat. We were on our way through to the other act, but people kept saying … “don’t miss this…it’s amazing”.

So I cut short the desert songs and returned in time to truly make sense of La Compagnie Trasse Express – “Mobile Homme”.  And there they were - snare drums tatt-tatting away, up in the sky suspended from a huge crane these little soldiers had become a living mobile. Something so fanciful we wait to see if a huge pram rolls in, so that a baby giant can enjoy its toy.  These little athletic Frenchmen don’t miss a beat as they spin through the air to our delighted oohs and aahs.

It is another WOMADelaide  moment. 

While not a regular…I do have a memory collection from WOMADs past – seeing the dynamic Yothu Yindi perform Treaty, with my eight year old curled at my feet after a full day in the sun, furiously trying to stay awake to share the beat and soak up the sounds of the didgeridoo. The amazing Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, proud, full-voiced and still sexy and sassy well into their 50s and 60s. A Georgian men’s choir, a wall of pure glorious human sound – a special kind of shock and awe. I add the French drummer, soldier, clowns to my collection.

At exactly 8.30 pm Anoushka Shankar  has now come on to the stage and begins to play. She is remarkable..mesmerising. The sitar gleams black and pearl against her deep purple dress and we are all drawn into its sound as it fingers its way through the crowd. It is as though it lives and you have to remember Anoushka is actually making the music happen.  Then Ravi is helped on to the stage and brings his aging mastery to the instrument. He delivers beautiful, bending sounds – complex, intricate.  We applaud and cheer and whistle. He bows a gracious Namaste in return…he is still a master, if a little tired now. 

As am I. 

 A misty rain starts to sprinkle. It won’t last but I have to go to work in the morning so with the sitar’s song stretching out into the night,  I wend my way through coloured lights, matching the colourful crowds and vow not to leave it so long to come back to WOMADelaide .

Image courtesy of www.fasterlouder.com.au

I had such a moment when I was working as a press secretary for a government minister. I was suffering a flight of imagination and creative flair and in my quest for the unforgettable press release headline to slam the Opposition, I alluded to a poem.

Yes, you read right, a poem of all thing was ringing in my head….begging me to use it. I was working for the then Minister of Primary Industries and deep in the recesses of my mind was the refrain from a wonderful , funny, rural poem we had dallied with in primary school (who says you can’t learn anything useful at school) – “we’ll all be rooned [read ruined]” said Hanrahan”.

The poem, Said Hanrahan, was by John O’Brien, the pen name for a Catholic priest called Patrick Hartigan, which was probably why it was on the syllabus at my convent school. It tells the tale of a rural pessimist – who when it rains thinks of flood and when the sun shines can only see drought.

So it blazed across my headline something like this – Opposition the voice of Harahan on policy – an absolute delight – except nobody, and I mean nobody, got it.

I think some journalists were scouring the MP lists for a Mr Hanrahan! The most spectacular failure I have ever penned. A salutary lesson in understanding that culture is not necessarily popular culture and certainly not for all time.

The next best was one about a visiting professor, an expert in fission and microchip technology. I mean who in the mainstream media understands such critically significant science? No one, I figured…and no one would care either, so that headline went something like this… Expert talks Fission and Chips in Adelaide. The story didn’t run, but I was quite chuffed with my work. Which brings me to my point - politics is increasingly about simple messages. Just ask the current leader of the Opposition in Australia – he is fast developing a sinister mastery of the one liner.

That the pervasive one-liner still has so much power may be more about the media industry’s own love of its capacity for producing twee grabs and headlines than anything else. We, as practitioners, are in love with them.

We have moved from the adage Keep It Short and Simple – lusciously named the KISS principle to Keep it simple and stupid – still a kiss but more like the one you get when someone head butts you.

I think our Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme has been defeated simply on the strength of one line…”a great big new tax”…said over and over and over again.

Never mind global warming and the destruction of the world as we know it ….just watch out for that “great big new tax” or even better that “fat new tax” …it has a ring to it. Little echoes of fat cats and taxes…it pushes buttons.

He is not alone I fear. As sure as night follows day (that one was another Opposition leader’s refrain back in the 1980s) – they trot them out like some strange code written for the heartland of middle Australia.

Staccato sentences directed straight to our subconscious with the same tonal delivery of a nursery rhyme, just so it sticks.

At least 20 times a week Australians are referred to as “working families” – the Labor Party’s replacement tag for John Howard’s “battlers”. The irony of the right wing of politics having harnessed the traditionally working class term “battlers” should not be lost here. It is evidence that the left and right of politics in Australia has become as close as two hands clapping.

But for all my compatriots in the PR game – those who beaver away looking for the perfect line for their Ministers (why do they remind me of Peter Laurie…”yes…master”), maybe…just maybe you have become too clever by half.

These tonally childlike phrases are turning into a bland mélange. We don’t want to hear them. In fact often we don’t hear them. They glide over us like wind on a spring day. They are just another bit of stuff in the constant barrage of information that is beamed to us – each of us like a receiver station – we get delivery but it raises no emotion.

Our PM told us this week that his Government deserved a “good whacking” because it had not delivered quickly enough on its promises. It has already been used on several radio and TV interviews and is in every paper.

The phrase only has cut through because it is so quaint. There are images running through my mind of an event where the public get to bend a government minister over a desk and give him or her a few sharp strokes of the cane.

But the fact is most of the country can barely remember legitimised corporal punishment – it was banned in the 1970s. To anyone under 45, a “good whacking” might just conjure up a really top night of drugs and partying or a great sexual experience – who knows.

I am waiting for a politician somewhere to talk simple sense to me – not patronizing nonsense, not one liners – something clear, unmanipulative, heartfelt, passionate and real.

But I probably will be waiting  “till the cows come home”.

Why not? I am it seems technically part of the rule-breaking, hip-shaking, peacenik generation known as the baby-boomers – slogans and T-shirts are our thing.

When we were growing up, we were the unnecessarily rebellious generation. No decorum whatsoever. The rebels without cause – the bra-burning misfits who wanted to change the world in ways that then seemed impossibly extreme. For many of our seniors and therefore superiors at the time, it was quite plausible that our very existence and our insistence on change was some strange drug-fueled communist plot (they were tricky those Russians!).

But some 30 or 40 years on, how times have changed.

Along the way we have been labeled irresponsible hippies, selfish, indulged and self-indulgent and greedy, the had-it-too easy generation especially by those gen X types (mostly too old to be our kids and too young and hip or chic to be boomers).

They forget or just never knew the shadows that spurred our rebellious spirit, our yearning for freedom – the cold war; Vietnam; the looming threat of nuclear holocaust; the gender divide; the iron grip of convention; the pre-pill days of unwanted pregnancies, unholy adoptions or backyard abortions and shot-gun weddings; the double standards; the crushing responsibilities of the sole breadwinner and the crushing boredom of being sentenced to domestic bliss; and the stunning realisation that politicians and priests and doctors and mayors and teachers and policemen and world leaders lie…they tell great big fat ones.

Once we were brought up to believe in them like our folks did – with whole hearts – why else would they and their parents have trotted off into two massive world wars.

I think we paid our dues and as different as they might be to the problems of today’s young people, I think we made some changes that needed to be made.

I also admit that we were not perfect.

But down under and I suppose worldwide in developed nations we are about to be given a new mantle. With dizzying statistics set before us as proof positive of the continuing irritation that we are to society, we are being cast as a great big sack of burden.

By 2050 a full quarter of the Australian population will be …wait for it …old. This is devastating news for the nation ….good heavens what will we do with all those geriatrics?

Will grey be the new black? Will every bus and train finally have wheelchair access?  Will there be special traffic lanes for those personal mobility scooters that are technically banned on our roads? Will there be affirmative action for political representation in our parliament? Will we be considered wise and asked our opinion?

Well these are not the questions being asked. Oh no – the biggest question is how will our nation possibly afford us? Can you actually build that many nursing homes and who will pay for us to be tucked away in them? If you are an operator of one of these delightful facilities, put your thinking caps on now, because it is apparent that there may not be enough young people to pay for all the old people to be settled nicely into Les villages de gris, away from the real world where they are not wanted.

We are also being urged to work longer – the new retirement age may appropriately be set at 70 which is fine if people still want to hire you when you are 50 or 60 (ostensibly ones prime if you consider the changing demographics) – but they don’t.

It is fascinating stuff really, depending on how you look at it. Even if they are fighting fit, there are not that many 70 year olds who are up for a hard day’s yacka on a building site, or even a long flight air stewarding. What will it mean if we work until our 70s – do we get the thinking and sitting around jobs, while the young do the heavy lifting? Will all those call centre operators suddenly be less intelligible not because of their unfamiliar accents, but because the false teeth are a bit loose on the telephonist?

In all of this I must say I resent the burden tag – deeply.

It is not our generation who stayed at home until we were in our 30s so mum and dad could bear the cost of our partying and foot the bills while we saved for a dream home - no two bedroom renovator’s delight for this lot ..oh no.

We hightailed it out of home as soon as we could..we lived in appalling share houses, we sowed some wild oats or married too young and lived to regret it.

We had our kids before 30 and raised them as best we could even if we did have a few quiet ciggies while we were pregnant and ate creamy cheeses with our occasional glass of red – they were born and were OK.

We worked and paid loads of taxes in the days before governments gave you childcare subsidies and a large financial bonus for having babies. We struggled and still do with work life balance and our weight…we took our politics and our music seriously..we valued education and communication. We did what most people try to do – the very best we could within our lights.

So when they come knocking at my door to remind me I am old and frail and that perhaps I would like to give away all my responsibilities (baby boomers are actually quite good at responsibility) and move into a nice comfy subdivision designed specifically for the mature Australian. I am taking my superannuation and buying a combi van (it might just cover that) and heading up north to the bush or to the wild coast somewhere to see out my twilight days under the stars.

I hate New Year’s resolutions.  The very construction of a list gives me the heebie geebies. It is a ticket to failure …a “to do” list with nothing crossed off…it is sworn evidence of my inherent allergy to rules, duties, or maybe, just a monolithic fear of not succeeding.

How I ever passed an exam is beyond me - study was always a chore unless I found inventive ways to entertain myself - recording my history notes in funny accents and similar peculiarities.

And according to Wiki only about 12 per cent of us ever achieve our New Year’s resolutions.

So give me the fireworks and the bon homi but save me from an strategic approach to personal improvement. While all my friends are diligently scratching out a plan for life, I am trying to improve without parameters.

I have ill-formed goals stewing away like a good pasta sauce – the best kind – one with no written recipe.

I am afraid sometimes I expect magic.  I will fall asleep one night and wake up five kilos lighter, feeling new and refreshed. I will keep my lotto ticket and randomly check it a few weeks later only to find I was the winner they had been waiting to hear from; the man of my dreams will come knocking on my door looking for directions. Yep I know…it is fantasy.

But strange things do happen. Who would have thought that a young Miss Cloake would one day meet a handsome Mr Dagga and fall in love. It happened here in Adelaide and one of my fondest media memories was the announcement of their impending nuptials. I wonder if they are still together?

In a way, I am convinced life is just that random and to see it any other way sucks out the spontaneity.

Strident planners scare me. I have unspeakable thoughts on this topic.

What happens to your resolutions when you get hit by a bus, the list still fresh in your pocket?

I wonder if people made such promises to themselves during times of hardship and horror…during plague and war and famine and drought and flood. Maybe they did. From what I can gather the tradition dates back to ancient Babylon, when farmers resolved to return borrowed farming equipment.

Ancient Babylonian joke - Why do farmers wait till New Year to return their neighbours tools? So they can Hoe, Hoe, Hoe at Christmas!

Call me irresponsible, call me wayward, ill-disciplined and wrong-headed but New Year’s resolutions seem to me a privilege or maybe an indulgence for the well-heeled control freaks of the world.

Was it John Lennon who said “Life is just what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans”…an astute observation, I reckon.

I would rather just throw it all out there and see what happens….$100 on the red thanks..you never know, I might just get lucky.

I am feeling kind of strange about this birthday. It was a really big one.

The birthday after which no youthfulness can be pretended unless you go for plastic surgery, a punishing regime at the gym and a much younger boyfriend. It is the end of the penny section…the beginning of the slow (I hope) road to never never.

You have choices at such moments in life. You could shut the door, turn out the lights and go to bed for a week or you can bugger the consequences and shout from the rooftops. 

I chose life. I chose to have a really big party.

When I say big I mean about 50 people.  the dollars were never going to stretch to catering  for 200 at a trendy bar.

With my options limited, I decided that at this particular point in my life, I wanted to re-live some of the magic of my childhood.  I wanted a party like my grandfather’s parties - outdoors, people, music, Italian food, laughter - a certain love of life and living.

He celebrated his birthday on December 24 so they always seemed like magical parties. At one of these parties my father decided to blow fire as a party trick. Amid all the fizz and excitement of the party itself, this was one of the most awesome moments of my childhood…unforgettable.

A hard act to follow, but I was going for a close approximation of the full Italian festa.

My son returned from the UK for this very big birthday. He wanted me to mark the occasion with more than a jug full of gin and tonic and a few old cds playing in the lounge room -  a tempting thought.

But I girded my loins and set about planning a “do” as we say over here.

Several weekends beforehand I was cooking items for the Italian antipasti…homemade polpette, two kinds of pasta sauce…but to really make it happen I took time off  work,  just to cook.

The menu … antipasto platters for 50…polpette, salami, marinated funghi and carciofi, baked capsicum, olives, patè, cheeses, hummus…lasagna, pasta…barbecued chicken, Italian sausages, squid, salads…and for dessert…trifle and home made cassata in cones.

I am telling you now, it was a monumental cooking effort and topped with the anxiety that there would be enough food and that the food would be good enough, I had to wonder how my grandmother did that kind of cooking year after year…party after party…with not a hint of stress. She was a legend.

The day came, the tables were laid out in the garden with check cloths and candles and candle lanterns in the trees. I hired a piano accordion player. Unfortunately he did not stick to his brief and the Italian and French cafe music I had requested turned somehow into the “chicken dance” and accordion renditions of modern pop songs. Very disconcerting for me, but my guests just loved the fact that he was there. They did not mind his detached German style. I wanted “Its Amore” played at my feet.  I wanted joy and passion and I got the wrong song sheet…story of my life really.

So it is over now - they ate, they drank, they had a really good time - I ran around a bit like a chook with its head cut off - spoke a few words to people and awoke the next day with a headache from stress - not overindulgence  - there was no time for serious drinking.

The problem is the party did not change anything - it was still a landmark birthday -  I am older and that is no longer exciting. I still have to work out what happens next. I mean in between now and the big full stop.

It may be all a bit maudlin but unless your life revolves around TV and the latest celebrity scandal, its hard to avoid the shadow of mortality that hangs around a mature birthday.

So what is the tactic moving forward? At the moment I am wondering if the younger man might actually be the go…a Spanish pool boy maybe.

Think I’ll go out into the garden and see if there is a spot for a pool.

In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of birthdays past, when I was a little girl and everything was still wonderful.

Birthday

I watched the meat grinder

as little curls toppled into bowls,

waiting to be dressed with salt and pepper,

then deftly primped

and patted into pockets

of cream colored pasta.

Birthdays began with food,

a busy bustling of

sauces on the stove,

biscotti in the oven

and dishes in the sink.

We corralled carpenter’s horses

into the garden, then settled them with

table tops and white linen.

Amid the vines, a crop of

colored globes grew overnight,

ready to ripen as the sun set.

Revved up by the music of chinking glasses,

we tumbled in and out of chairs

tasting panini and olives while

on the run from cheek-pinching

fingers and lipstick kisses.

Lights from the Christmas tree

twinkled meekly inside the house

as the blue, black night backdropped

a million stars - some leaving early,

shooting off to other parties

when no one was looking.

Pink-cheeked men let loose

merry, belly laughter,

rocking back and forth

in their wooden chairs.

A host of happy Santas

telling stories of faraway places 

A music man settled on the

verandah to capture the spotlight

and ladies drew up their skirts a little

to dance around him,

summer moths drawn to his melody.

He appeared from out of the darkness

bolder than my father

but looking just like him – a crisp

white shirt matching his smile,

black hair waving at us like a flag

to get our attention.

Breathing in through his nose

he kissed the air and a blazing fire ignited,

a single sizzling candle

frothing forth,

all the love in the world.

 
I have just served my Blue Heeler the last bowl of home made patè left over from my birthday party - he is doing his best to finish it. Good dog.

I am feeling kind of strange about this birthday. It was a really big one.

The birthday after which no youthfulness can be pretended unless you go for plastic surgery, a punishing regime at the gym and a much younger boyfriend. It is the end of the penny section…the beginning of the slow (I hope) road to never never.

You have choices at such moments in life. You could shut the door, turn out the lights and go to bed for a week or you can bugger the consequences and shout from the rooftops. 

I chose life. I chose to have a really big party.

When I say big I mean about 50 people.  the dollars were never going to stretch to catering  for 200 at a trendy bar.

With my options limited, I decided that at this particular point in my life, I wanted to re-live some of the magic of my childhood.  I wanted a party like my grandfather’s parties - outdoors, people, music, Italian food, laughter - a certain love of life and living.

He celebrated his birthday on December 24 so they always seemed like magical parties. At one of these parties my father decided to blow fire as a party trick. Amid all the fizz and excitement of the party itself, this was one of the most awesome moments of my childhood…unforgettable.

A hard act to follow, but I was going for a close approximation of the full Italian festa.

My son returned from the UK for this very big birthday. He wanted me to mark the occasion with more than a jug full of gin and tonic and a few old cds playing in the lounge room -  a tempting thought.

But I girded my loins and set about planning a “do” as we say over here.

Several weekends beforehand I was cooking items for the Italian antipasti…homemade polpette, two kinds of pasta sauce…but to really make it happen I took time off  work,  just to cook.

The menu … antipasto platters for 50…polpette, salami, marinated funghi and carciofi, baked capsicum, olives, patè, cheeses, hummus…lasagna, pasta…barbecued chicken, Italian sausages, squid, salads…and for dessert…trifle and home made cassata in cones.

I am telling you now, it was a monumental cooking effort and topped with the anxiety that there would be enough food and that the food would be good enough, I had to wonder how my grandmother did that kind of cooking year after year…party after party…with not a hint of stress. She was a legend.

The day came, the tables were laid out in the garden with check cloths and candles and candle lanterns in the trees. I hired a piano accordion player. Unfortunately he did not stick to his brief and the Italian and French cafe music I had requested turned somehow into the “chicken dance” and accordion renditions of modern pop songs. Very disconcerting for me, but my guests just loved the fact that he was there. They did not mind his detached German style. I wanted “Its Amore” played at my feet.  I wanted joy and passion and I got the wrong song sheet…story of my life really.

So it is over now - they ate, they drank, they had a really good time - I ran around a bit like a chook with its head cut off - spoke a few words to people and awoke the next day with a headache from stress - not overindulgence  - there was no time for serious drinking.

The problem is the party did not change anything - it was still a landmark birthday -  I am older and that is no longer exciting. I still have to work out what happens next. I mean in between now and the big full stop.

It may be all a bit maudlin but unless your life revolves around TV and the latest celebrity scandal, its hard to avoid the shadow of mortality that hangs around a mature birthday.

So what is the tactic moving forward? At the moment I am wondering if the younger man might actually be the go…a Spanish pool boy maybe.

Think I’ll go out into the garden and see if there is a spot for a pool.

In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of birthdays past, when I was a little girl and everything was still wonderful.

Birthday

I watched the meat grinder

as little curls toppled into bowls,

waiting to be dressed with salt and pepper,

then deftly primped

and patted into pockets

of cream colored pasta.

Birthdays began with food,

a busy bustling of

sauces on the stove,

biscotti in the oven

and dishes in the sink.

We corralled carpenter’s horses

into the garden, then settled them with

table tops and white linen.

Amid the vines, a crop of

colored globes grew overnight,

ready to ripen as the sun set.

Revved up by the music of chinking glasses,

we tumbled in and out of chairs

tasting panini and olives while

on the run from cheek-pinching

fingers and lipstick kisses.

Lights from the Christmas tree

twinkled meekly inside the house

as the blue, black night backdropped

a million stars - some leaving early,

shooting off to other parties

when no one was looking.

Pink-cheeked men let loose

merry, belly laughter,

rocking back and forth

in their wooden chairs.

A host of happy Santas

telling stories of faraway places 

A music man settled on the

verandah to capture the spotlight

and ladies drew up their skirts a little

to dance around him,

summer moths drawn to his melody.

He appeared from out of the darkness

bolder than my father

but looking just like him – a crisp

white shirt matching his smile,

black hair waving at us like a flag

to get our attention.

Breathing in through his nose

he kissed the air and a blazing fire ignited,

a single sizzling candle

frothing forth,

all the love in the world.

 
I have just served my Blue Heeler the last bowl of home made patè left over from my birthday party - he is doing his best to finish it. Good dog.

I am feeling kind of strange about this birthday. It was a really big one.

The birthday after which no youthfulness can be pretended unless you go for plastic surgery, a punishing regime at the gym and a much younger boyfriend. It is the end of the penny section…the beginning of the slow (I hope) road to never never.

You have choices at such moments in life. You could shut the door, turn out the lights and go to bed for a week or you can bugger the consequences and shout from the rooftops. 

I chose life. I chose to have a really big party.

When I say big I mean about 50 people.  the dollars were never going to stretch to catering  for 200 at a trendy bar.

With my options limited, I decided that at this particular point in my life, I wanted to re-live some of the magic of my childhood.  I wanted a party like my grandfather’s parties - outdoors, people, music, Italian food, laughter - a certain love of life and living.

He celebrated his birthday on December 24 so they always seemed like magical parties. At one of these parties my father decided to blow fire as a party trick. Amid all the fizz and excitement of the party itself, this was one of the most awesome moments of my childhood…unforgettable.

A hard act to follow, but I was going for a close approximation of the full Italian festa.

My son returned from the UK for this very big birthday. He wanted me to mark the occasion with more than a jug full of gin and tonic and a few old cds playing in the lounge room -  a tempting thought.

But I girded my loins and set about planning a “do” as we say over here.

Several weekends beforehand I was cooking items for the Italian antipasti…homemade polpette, two kinds of pasta sauce…but to really make it happen I took time off  work,  just to cook.

The menu … antipasto platters for 50…polpette, salami, marinated funghi and carciofi, baked capsicum, olives, patè, cheeses, hummus…lasagna, pasta…barbecued chicken, Italian sausages, squid, salads…and for dessert…trifle and home made cassata in cones.

I am telling you now, it was a monumental cooking effort and topped with the anxiety that there would be enough food and that the food would be good enough, I had to wonder how my grandmother did that kind of cooking year after year…party after party…with not a hint of stress. She was a legend.

The day came, the tables were laid out in the garden with check cloths and candles and candle lanterns in the trees. I hired a piano accordion player. Unfortunately he did not stick to his brief and the Italian and French cafe music I had requested turned somehow into the “chicken dance” and accordion renditions of modern pop songs. Very disconcerting for me, but my guests just loved the fact that he was there. They did not mind his detached German style. I wanted “Its Amore” played at my feet.  I wanted joy and passion and I got the wrong song sheet…story of my life really.

So it is over now - they ate, they drank, they had a really good time - I ran around a bit like a chook with its head cut off - spoke a few words to people and awoke the next day with a headache from stress - not overindulgence  - there was no time for serious drinking.

The problem is the party did not change anything - it was still a landmark birthday -  I am older and that is no longer exciting. I still have to work out what happens next. I mean in between now and the big full stop.

It may be all a bit maudlin but unless your life revolves around TV and the latest celebrity scandal, its hard to avoid the shadow of mortality that hangs around a mature birthday.

So what is the tactic moving forward? At the moment I am wondering if the younger man might actually be the go…a Spanish pool boy maybe.

Think I’ll go out into the garden and see if there is a spot for a pool.

In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of birthdays past, when I was a little girl and everything was still wonderful.

Birthday

I watched the meat grinder

as little curls toppled into bowls,

waiting to be dressed with salt and pepper,

then deftly primped

and patted into pockets

of cream colored pasta.

Birthdays began with food,

a busy bustling of

sauces on the stove,

biscotti in the oven

and dishes in the sink.

We corralled carpenter’s horses

into the garden, then settled them with

table tops and white linen.

Amid the vines, a crop of

colored globes grew overnight,

ready to ripen as the sun set.

Revved up by the music of chinking glasses,

we tumbled in and out of chairs

tasting panini and olives while

on the run from cheek-pinching

fingers and lipstick kisses.

Lights from the Christmas tree

twinkled meekly inside the house

as the blue, black night backdropped

a million stars - some leaving early,

shooting off to other parties

when no one was looking.

Pink-cheeked men let loose

merry, belly laughter,

rocking back and forth

in their wooden chairs.

A host of happy Santas

telling stories of faraway places 

A music man settled on the

verandah to capture the spotlight

and ladies drew up their skirts a little

to dance around him,

summer moths drawn to his melody.

He appeared from out of the darkness

bolder than my father

but looking just like him – a crisp

white shirt matching his smile,

black hair waving at us like a flag

to get our attention.

Breathing in through his nose

he kissed the air and a blazing fire ignited,

a single sizzling candle

frothing forth,

all the love in the world.

In the last two weeks of Spring here we had temperatures of 40C at 8pm.  It was above 37C for four days over that period and the air hovered around 40C  for  a further three days – that is radical heat.  It is the hottest Spring heat wave in the more than 120 years they have been taking records.

The sky is like a blue-eyed blank stare. The beach is crowded on weekends even at 8.30 am – I joined the crowds just to cool down my core body temperature. But I won’t be going out too deep this summer because we had our first shark attack the other day at a beach about 30 km south of here.

We had our first bushfires in South Australia last week – some 700 km of farming country and scrub has been burnt through, as a hot northerly winds nurtured the spark from a lightning strike into a full-on  blaze.

I know I have been banging on about global warming over the year but it is hard to escape the fear that this might actually be the start of it. We have had three very dry years, our seasons have shifted so that they kind of blur between cold and dry to hot and dry. And the 24-7 news cycle that informs of fires, floods, tsunami, tornados, droughts, quakes and all other natural disasters around the globe, is having the same impact as brainwashing sessions – it is the seedbed in which our fears take root – founded or unfounded.

So while our politicians line up as believers or non believers in the global warming hypothesis, fighting tooth and nail for air time – is it because of post industrialized man-made carbon emissions or just one bad seasonal phase in the many million year weather history of the planet –– I want them to know one thing.

We don’t actually care who or what caused global warming, we want to know what we can do about it.  A friend believes we will do nothing until it is an unstoppable phenomenon – until countries go under the lapping seas and we are dealing with whole nations of boat people.

Now the issue has revealed a deep ideological fault line in the conservative ranks here between a wild and militant conservative core and the seemingly more balanced liberals in the Opposition. Despite being Liberal in name, the party is showing that what lies beneath is a highly rebellious, intransigent group of naysayers – I am not sure there are not some among them who think Darwin’s theory of evolution is left wing hooey.

Their stand against the Government’s proposed Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme has white anted the leader, the urbane, successful, former businessman Malcolm Turnbull, and is proving an international embarrassment to our PM.  Any dreams he had of attending Copenhagen with a policy in place in Australia are fast retreating as the Liberal/National party coalition bites ferociously at its own tail over the Bill.

Amendments agreed to by the Liberals in lengthy talks with the government, had received tacit acceptance, deals were made, gentlemen’s words were given, and then it all broke open.

Since then every eccentric, extreme dissenter in the Liberal ranks has been vox-popped on the steps of parliament house saying they will not pass the Bill. Out of the woodwork have come elected Liberal and National party politicians that are actually a bit scary. Usually rarely seen or heard beyond their regional radio and TV stations, many of them are the sorts you would move seats to avoid in a bar or a train.

Some of them are so bizarre you can make up a quick psychological stereotypes for them, “Crazy Aunt Sadie”, “Uncle Bob who never gets invited to Christmas dinner”, “pretentious Pete the pompous office geek”, “Bob the bully who’s wife always says very little”, “steely Sam the manipulative bastard”, “very serious Teetotal Tim, who found Jesus and lost his sense of perspective”.  These are elected members of our Government…what were people thinking?

And in our wonderful democracy this is the character of the people who will be allowed to make decisions on our behalf on an issue of difficult science and complex economics.

It makes me wonder why we don’t have a political house of review that requires people to have the brains and skill to really assess issues. I will answer my own question …because intellect is no guarantee of intelligence and intelligence is no guarantee of altruism and knowledge is no guarantee of ethics or honour. 

But in political circles, power and control seem to be the greatest prize, an aphrodisiac, an elixir, a golden grail, so desired that nothing else seems to matter. Nothing…not the voters, not the climate, not humanity, not the planet.

Ok, ok a tad extreme and gloomy, but that is what it feels like…like being a child again where everything seems to be done  around you and for your own good without anyone asking you what you think.

I am sure government is not meant to be like that..is it?  It might account for the growing numbers in the population who have political ADHD.

I say shocked because despite the fact that we are being blessed with an amazingly wet Spring, it is still close to a cardinal sin in South Australia to stay in the shower for more than seven minutes (preferably four, under a specially designed water-efficient showerhead which I think you can get a government subsidy to install). In summer I actually put buckets in the shower to capture the splash so I can water my plants.

Here any hint that you might waste water – leave the tap on while you brush your teeth, wash the car with the hose -  is like admitting you have a sexually transmitted disease - people actually go a bit white faced and pinched looking… they shift away ever so slightly.

Wasting water on the purely joyous and somewhat strange human desire just to stand under warm wet cascades of it is just not done.

You see green is the new black. The psychology of it is interesting. We have seen the eccentric slide into mainstream. All that flipped out hippy.. love the planet, hug a tree, save water shower with a friend button-pin sloganism is now totally and utterly the way things should be.

We have shifted - at least in our publicly professed attitudes. The green fringe has become the whole poncho.

But in a nation, which many here still refuse to acknowledge, produces more carbon emissions per capita than most, there is still a tension between needing to appear to be saving the planet and what we are really doing.

Oh yes there are some die hard environmental warriors out there but most of us don’t think twice about nipping down to local shops to get some milk in the car, and I am sure that in the privacy of many South Australian bathrooms showers run well over the prescribed four to seven minutes.

Our politicians are locked in a struggle at the moment over a Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme. The Government has put forward a scheme that was not carried earlier this year and are about to resubmit the Bill in the hope that having some legislation in place in Australia, will give them more street cred in influencing negotiations in Copenhagen. Good luck I say…both here and in Copenhagen.

The passage of that Bill will all depend a rapidly disintegrating Opposition and some divergent Independent voices - from Green extreme, to a member of the doubting Thomas Christian right (it is God’s will we get a bit hotter – perhaps a little taste of things to come if we don’t mend our wicked ways).

Meanwhile most of us in electorate land – the “sticky masses” as I once heard a Federal member of Parliament call us as he grimaced – don’t really have a clue what it all means. We don’t get the science except in its most simplistic form and we don’t get the economics either. Energy use = carbon emissions = hot atmosphere = melting icecaps = dead polar bears (awwah) + rising sea levels + plus hotter weather + more expensive everything.

Depending on how it pans out this could give me a tropical, beachfront property - nice!

But seriously – it is serious, complicated, intangible, distant, unimaginable. And I am sure in a sombre moment we are wondering why the hell everyone isn’t doing a lot more a lot more quickly. 

It is a bit like peace negotiations only harder – “I am not giving up my car unless everyone else does and there is a train to take me to work or I can work from home”…and from the third world …”why should I go without the option of finally having electricity and a petrol powered car when you have had that luxury for the past 50 years!” Not questions I would like to facilitate.

Meanwhile in South Australia, as we gear up for another hot summer with our ancient Murray River shrinking like a hardened artery – I take a secret “un-green” delight in thinking of my Chinese friends singing a happy Chinese pop song in a tiny shower somewhere in Beijing – it is probably the only alone time they get.

I write this knowing that if it were published in a major newspaper here, there would be an instant barrage of hate mail from the dark shirted men, shadowy casualties of the fight, who seem ever-ready for an organised response to any view from a female about the state of play between women and men in this country.

Some 30 or so years on from the strident emergence of the feminist movement, this battlefield is tinder dry, any spark set to ignite a firestorm.

Men here are highly sensitive to criticism. They have been for the past 25 years; probably since the no-fault divorce laws were first introduced - a significant tipping point in undermining male domination of the family unit.

And as for women, well our prejudices lay just beneath the surface ready to bubble forth when we sit in groups (there’s safety in numbers) to discuss the latest assaults and wonder about tactics – all men are bastards, emblazoned on the conversation.

A recent battle between a friend, who had been sleeping with the enemy, has thrown the tensions into sharp relief.  A sensible, attractive, intelligent, woman who had not rushed into marriage has now found it falling down around her with the consequent collateral damage. Within her own four walls she is fighting a hidden battle for the basic right to live without being blasted with verbal abuse every day.  She has an escape plan but it is moving slowly.

I suppose it is the natural evolution of any revolution that things should be undone before they are remade and you can’t know beforehand if it will all turn out for the better. 

I am bored with this war.

I want to get over it but I’m afraid I’ll be caught off guard; lord knows my own personal battles have been anything other than victories.

But wouldn’t it be nice if men and women could just like each other, respect the qualities in each and work together in harmony. Yes it is a cliché from the Miss Universe contest, but I want world peace.

And why does the war feel so much harsher here.  It is brutal. There are certain places when fueled by alcohol, men appear like mad, lust-crazed barbarians. Don’t go to the cricket in summer unless you are happy to get a score out of 10 and a loud, crude, appraisal of every one of your body parts on your way to the toilet.  They are Vikings set to rape and pillage your ego.  It is not admiration it is hot and hateful. 

I think I know where it comes from.  I have been in pubs and heard the war stories from their side.

She took my kids, she wants more child support, she cleaned me out!

It may be a pub thing, but I have never heard the self-reflection required to move on – there is never a …maybe I could have been more this or that..maybe we just had different aspirations…no, it is simply, she’s a bitch.

I once met a guy who, at just 23 years old, had already decided never to marry because he wanted to avoid any chance of having the family farm at risk from the claims of a divorcing wife. 

Just like most conflict in the world – economics is right there in the mix.

And I have met hundreds of women who have struggled to keep their world together as single parents – working two jobs – one unpaid, running the home and life in general and one paid, sometimes two because equal pay for women is still not achieved.

I’ve heard the stories of kids who never or rarely see their fathers.

They spend years wondering what they did to deserve such determined disinterest.  They grow up with the scars of war – a new generation enters the fray.

I have been friends with the enemy too. I have been the supportive voice on the other end of the phone when they have come home to an empty house - no furniture, no children, no dog – a first sortie in a war set to wage for years.

It is actually one hell of a mess. 

It is a betrayal of the cause, but there are things I miss about the time before the liberation army’s first strike.

I miss unconscious complements – the ones that had no sexual timbre – an appreciative whistle with a smile that had no hint of lust or predation – just a “you look nice”.

I miss a sense of order about relationships. I miss politeness – “never swear in front of a lady”.

I miss male shyness.  I miss being cared for, respected for no other reason than that I am a woman.

And yes, I know if you unpack all of that, it existed from a base of satisfied, unchallenged, dominance – it easy to be nice when you are in charge and benevolence makes you happy. 

There was a time when there were more benevolent, happy men.

Today in Australia, it seems if you scratch a man, you open a wound, and they don’t hold back. There is no protection for women. The fight is an equal weight bout. That is the price of freedom.

All very well and good until things get physical or you come up against the remnants of the old order in the justice system or in the myriad of others ways in which the “playing field” is still uneven.

Is it any wonder that so many of us just don’t want to play anymore?  We are attracted and repulsed all at once – like some crazy mucked up conundrum of physics.  It is unbelievably tiresome to live every day with such competing tensions.

When I was in London earlier this year, I got the feeling that the war was not as intense there.  Maybe that is the tourist experience, but in a little tube station in Hammersmith, a sweet, old, Irish official saw me looking lost and asked me “Why is such a lovely lady as you looking so troubled?”

Grateful for his help I told him I was not sure if I was in the right place and I was late for meeting friends for coffee. He put me on the right train but added, “Lucky friends, I’d like to be meeting you for a nice cup of coffee and a chat, you have a nice morning.”

It was such an unthreatening, polite, interplay that it left me smiling for hours.

He was probably from the time before the war, he was lyrically Irish, he had a happy twinkle in his eye, he is a dying breed.

It has been years since I have met such an uncomplicated, happy, man here at home – they are probably hiding out in nursing homes and bowling clubs.  Maybe we should employ them as diplomats.

Don’t get me wrong, I still listen to love songs, they’re a big part of my fantasy world.

PS: Keep the faith, Kelly.

That is the sum of expert survival advice on dealing with the thousands of hungry hands in New Delhi.

This trip has been for business so we are travelling with air-con and the protection that a shiny car and an elite hotel provides.  Cool, clean, separate, yet the barrier feels fragile.

I am not the first person to be put in a spin by world poverty – it is a slap in the face, possibly several short, sharp blows.  Coming from Australia, the place we are told repeatedly, is the lucky country, the dissonance is so vast it is hard to describe.

And yet the locals love their home. A young man on the plane as we flew in had a smile as wide as a slice of watermelon when he glimpsed the first twinkles of electric lighting on the horizon. 

I wondered as the power failed several times throughout the next day in our magnificent six star hotel, if the city disappears for a few minutes every now and then as the electricity fails.

But for millions there, electricity isn’t an issue –and neither are the myriad of other little things we bother about - long queues, a late bus, a cancelled TV show, chipped nail polish.

Life here is much tougher.

There are now about 11.7 million people living in New Delhi and more than eight per cent are scratching out an existence,  some on the proceeds of sympathetic travellers, others by scamming or offering to service the most basic needs – carrying a bag a few paces, guiding people a hundred metres to find the right path - in the hope that there will be a few rupee for their trouble.

It is possible that altruistic kindness is a luxury of the rich and unfortunately not one we indulge often enough.

It is also likely though that among the equally poor many little kindnesses take place every day – but here I feel this is a secret trade – all I see is hardship and the kind of desperation that makes people wily, dangerous and willing to take things to the edge.

This is a place where children dance through horrendous system-defying traffic in the hope of a few notes shoved out of wound down car windows. It is where pencil thin arms offer up mewling babies to perfect strangers as a symbol of neediness and hunger.

I am troubled by my ability to ignore the destitution when it is staring me in the face.

I have been told what will happen if I give money to one child – there will be another 50 waiting with hands outstretched.  In some places one act of kindness can cause chaos.

As we leave one monument we are followed relentlessly by a man who is obviously not right in the head. He is on our trail asking for money for train fare. He names his price. It is not much, but all around us there are more hands - map sellers, cheap postcards, tour guides, grandmothers with babies – everyone wants a piece of the action. We walk on as he grabs at us physically. The strain of saying no is awful.

Maybe it issues some telepathic message because the harder it gets to say no, the more persistent are his supplications. He is grabbing at our overfed western bodies until he is seen by another man on the street.  In an instant there is an incident.

He is beaten off with full punches by a cheery fellow who wants to protect us - probably for a price.

In the swell of all this motion, an open faced child with the smile of an angel wants to sell us a fan.

She is quick though, she sees another opportunity and talks soothingly to us.. “Follow me Madame – that man is crazy – never mind he is just crazy, this way is safest.”

She can’t be more than eight or nine.  There is a torrent of confused emotion, grief, sorrow, fear, superiority, anger, distaste and then the site of our shiny black taxi…relief.

We bustle in and leave little angel face on the footpath with no reward for her efforts.

And then there is guilt and recrimination – I want to go back and buy a fan. I want to talk to her, to find out if things could ever be better, if anything I could do could make a difference.

We swim into the tooting, swerving, throbbing traffic.  The air con lowers the temperature. We debrief to make ourselves feel better. The traffic lurches to a stop and I hear a tap tapping at the window.

Through the glass is another beautiful smile. Hand outstretched and then tapping alternately, he says…”Madam …please madam …no father …no mother”.

I want to open the door and say hop in. I want to make him spaghetti Bolognese on a cold winter night, I want to give him new Reeboks and a cricket bat and colored pencils and music lessons, but instead we drive on.

The play was wonderful - a vibrant performance of Moliere’s Hypochondria with some witty modernisations of the script.  It was an absolute hoot and a great way to cheer up as our weather struggles between winter and spring - the perfect mid-week antidote to the long holiday-free work worn winter.

So I bid my friends goodnight and make my way back to the car three blocks away.

It is about 9.45 pm and the walk takes me through the marvelous old Adelaide railway station. The original central terminus was built in 1856 but in 1926 it was upgraded to a three storey grand neo-classical building, complete with a lofty domed main entrance and highly varnished timber stair rails, service desks and telephone booths. 

A substantial and gorgeous building, today its upper floors house our neon palace of the pokies, Sky City Casino.

But I remember it in its heyday.  As a school girl I took the train every day from grade six through to the end of high school.

It was a bustling hub in those days, still the central point for all interstate train travel, it was full of suitcases and tearful farewells right into the evening.

It was where I took my first rail trip to Melbourne as a 10 year old. It was where my family stood hearts in mouths as we waved my brother off to military training when he was conscripted for the Vietnam war.  It was where we hugged teenage cousins as they stopped through on their post school adventure trips around the nation.

A place to meet schoolboy sweethearts to share ice blocks on summer afternoons, somewhere to sneak that first furtive cigarette – it was where you bumped into people you knew and at the same time felt refreshingly  anonymous.

But tonight it is a like a scene from one of those day-after-the-disaster films. I count four other humans beings as my boot-clad footfall echoes off the marble floors and they don’t look too happy. They might well be zombies – but there is no tell-tale drooling or decaying flesh.

Now it is kind of spooky. I stride on, remembering the theory that confidence builds a protective wall around you. I make it up to the street and feel safer playing in the traffic as I cross North Terrace, a main perimeter road of the city, dubbed in a rather overblown fashion, our cultural boulevard.

I see no culture - only a few folk scurrying into taxis as the wind picks up. Oh yes, there is some beer drinking culture happening in one of the pubs across the road but it is all indoors under the yellow glaze of appropriately dimmed evening lighting.

I make the turn down a narrow connecting street. It is bare. There is a trail of empty beer bottles in alcoves and doorways along the street accompanied by the faint smell of urine.

I suppose what goes in must come out but I wish there were more public urinals.

I approach Hindley Street prepared for party time. This is the street of bars, broads and beer. It is notorious for its seedy nightlife and it is atypical to walk through without at least one drunk asking for money for food or a fare home.

I’ve turned the corner and …nothing.  One, two, three…five…I peer into the distance…six people.

As my footsteps ricochet along the next laneway I wonder what the news broadcast might tell me when I get to my car – has there been an earthquake, a leak of noxious gasses, a tidal wave that I missed as I laughed my way through Moliere?

I unlock the car, do a quick count and realize than in the three blocks I have walked I have seen about 25 other pedestrians on the streets of our capital.

I am thinking about London at the end of winter when I was there.

In the five week stay, there was only a single one-hour period at about 2 am when I had taken the wrong bus that I had found myself so isolated. Maybe I should have been more aware or wary but there was not a second in all the human hubbub of that city that I felt as alone as I do now.

I start the engine, Bob Dylan mewls from my CD player, the lights are on and I am off and into the company of the rest of the population who are also in their cars. It makes me feel normal again.