Fridays seem to come around much more quickly since I’ve started blogging regularly.
It’s time for another three questions and an F-word.
This week’s F-word is fragility, but before I get to that, I’ll respond to the three regular questions.
What made me happy this week?
What was I most proud of this week?
How did it feel to see a particular something in real life for the first time?
I’m going to answer all three questions at the same time, because they all have the same answer.
This. This is what made me happy this week. The publication of this book.
It won’t come as any surprise to those who read this blog on a regular or semi-regular basis to know that I’ve been excited for some time to see this book in real life.
Well, last night I got the opportunity to do just that. Last night, October 3, 2024, the book was launched by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. It was a packed house – standing room only – with loads of people eager to view and buy the book.
In case you don’t know, the story of my (very minor) involvement goes like this:
I was retired briefly in 2022 and part of 2023 and decided to join U3A (University of the Third Age). I joined two groups – a photography group with U3A Hawthorn, and a book club with U3A Deepdene. Both were interesting and educational and great for meeting new people and hearing new ideas and perspectives.
The U3A Hawthorn group were invited by Richard Broome, president of the RHSV, to contribute images of Melbourne’s lanes to the society primarily for the purpose of creating a second edition of Weston Bates’s book published in 1994, titled Essential but unplanned: The story of Melbourne’s lanes. Sixteen members of the group eagerly scoured the city’s laneways looking for just the right angle and light and spark of interest. All up, we produced 3000 images.
Of those 3000 images, one of mine was chosen to be on the front cover of the book.
Seeing my photo on the cover made me very happy.
I am super proud that one of my images was chosen to be on the cover.
It feels great to be able to flick through the book, read about the fascinating history of Melbourne’s lanes, and see the fabulous images selected from the 3000 images that were contributed. The ones not used will be held by the RHSV in their collection to be used at any time someone is doing research on the city.
It was a great project to be involved with. It was also really great to catch up with others from U3A Hawthorn’s photography group.
And so to my F-word for the week: fragility
While I’ve been feeling happy and proud, there’s also been an undercurrent of deep sadness in our household this week. When a family member is desperately ill, you’re reminded of the fragility of life.
I’m not going to get deep and meaningful here or look for quotes on life’s fragility – but at the moment it’s looming large in my heart and that’s why it’s my F-word this week.
In case you don’t know what it means, it’s Friday and that means it’s time for another 3 questions and an F-word post.
Today’s three questions are:
What made me happy this week?
What am I looking forward to next week?
What am I doing this long weekend? (Yes, in Victoria we have a long weekend because it’s the eve of the AFL Grand Final. Don’t ask me, I don’t know why that requires a holiday either … but I’ll take it anyway. Well, actually, I have a long weekend every week because where I work has taken the brilliant decision of having a 4-day work week and every Friday is my day off. But it means Tim is home today and that means we have plans. More on that later.)
My F-word for the week: Fabulous. Read on to find out why.
First, to the questions.
What made me happy this week? One of the projects I’ve been working on culminated in a presentation this week. Tuesday morning to be precise. It was to be a 20-minute presentation that took many more hours to prepare than to present, but the preparation was worth it.
I was confident, I knew what I wanted to communicate, I talked about assumptions (something I don’t get a chance to talk about enough these days), I was clear and, those in the audience (an Expert Advisory Group from the Victorian Department of Health) said things like, “thank you Dr Pittaway for your insightful presentation”. That felt good. I felt so good afterwards that I craved a biscuit with my celebratory cup of tea. Trouble is, I have a problem with supermarkets, so while I could present to an audience of over a dozen experts, walking into a supermarket was a whole different kettle of fish. But I was so happy I did it anyway.
What am I looking forward to next week? This one has me so excited that I clap my hands with glee everytime I think about it. Which is often. When I was retired (over a year ago now), I joined a photography group through U3A. Every second Monday we’d go to a location and take photos, and the next week we’d show five of our best. The group had been photographing together for many years (as many as 16) but they welcomed me into their midst. I was part of the group for about six months before I stopped being retired.
One of the group members knew someone who knew someone who was the President of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. The RHSV had the idea of publishing a second edition of a book originally published 40 years ago, focused on Melbourne’s laneways. U3A members were sent out into said laneways with the task of capturing up-to-date images for the new edition. I happened to be part of the group involved in that project. The book has now been published and is being launched on Thursday, October 3. That’s Thursday next week.
I’m more than excited. I’m chuffed. And proud. And I can’t wait to go to the book launch and see it for myself. And I’ve been told, by Diana from U3A, that there will be a copy waiting for me there!
What am I looking forward to this long weekend? I’ve made a list: * Taking some more photos for my black glove series * Planting the rest of the snow in the summer plants that it’s been too wet to plant * Our annual Grand Final party. We don’t watch any football through the year (apart from the odd occasion I get to watch my grandchildren play football – rugby and AFL), but we started a tradition about 18 years ago of having a grandfinal party while actually watching the grandfinal on telly. One year we even went to the GF Eve parade and then to the celebrations the day after the GF because Hawthorn had won for the third year in a row and the celebrations were being held at the local oval (we lived near Hawthorn at the time) and it was on the way to the train station. It’s only ever Tim and I – although one year my friend Rosie attended too (well, she had to because she was visiting from Tasmania at the time) – but we really live it up! (Emma, I heard you laugh at that from here!!) I wasn’t here last year so Tim had to party on his own, and come to think of it I wasn’t here the year before either, but I’m determined to attend the party this year so Tim doesn’t have to party on his own for a third year in a row. * We’re also going out hunting for retro motels to photograph and I’ll do some drawing.
All in all, a creative and lavish party weekend!
So why my F-word of fabulous? Well, I’ve had a fabulous work week, I’m looking forward to a fabulous book launch, and who can say no to a fabulous grandfinal party complete with gourmet delights like cocktail savs and party pies?
Not me, that’s for sure!
Here’s a sneak peek of the image on the cover of the Laneways book.
A few weeks ago Tim started a street photography challenge and is posting his images in his blog.
As he was heading out this morning he asked if I’d like to join him today. Street photography is not really my thing, but I thought ‘why not’.
This week’s task was “to produce nine images that break the ‘rules’ of photography but still work… that might mean breaking rules of composition, rules about not ‘chopping off’ limbs or heads, shooting with a straight horizon, and so on”. [I just took that straight from Tim’s blog!]
Here are my nine images. To see the full image, you’ll need to click on it.
One thing that intrigues me is that we went to the same places yet took quite different shots. I like that.
Week 33 … I counted. I wrote my first ‘diary of a distancer‘ post on Saturday March 28, and it was subtitled ‘Week 3’.
Thirty weeks later we’re still distancing. Not as extremely as we were even a week ago – our bubble has extended from 5kms to 25 glorious, mind-blowing, spine-tingling, breath-taking kilometres and if you think I’m exaggerating that just means you haven’t lived through a Melbourne lockdown – but it’s as far afield as we can go.
And it’s glorious.
Yesterday was a public holiday. It would have been grandfinal eve public holiday, but given the grandfinal is being played in Queensland this year, it was changed to a ‘Thank You’ day. It came at just the right time for me. I was in desparate need of a day off.
It was a relatively warm day – more muggy than warm if I’m being precise, but I’ll take muggy over cold any day – and we decided to make the most of it.
We organised with Alison to head to Warrandyte – a suburb 23kms north-east of here which is leafy, has a river running through it, cafes you can line up outside of, lots of public amenities (for those game – or desperate – enough) and walking tracks that meander along the river for miles.
I said that so casually, you possibly didn’t notice, so I’ll repeat myself. “We organised with Alison to head to Warrandyte …”. We hadn’t organised with anyone to meet up and do anything for some time and while the concept wasn’t new, it was so far back in the depths of our minds that we had to fossick around back there for some time to work out what that actually meant. In practice.
It meant – not necessarily in this order – making decisions about what time to meet, what time to leave, how to get there, what to wear on our bodies, what to wear on our feet, which mask to wear, how many bottles of hand sanitiser to take, what to wear … I know I said that already but when you’re used to wearing nothing but trackies and hoodies, deciding what to wear is a big deal. For those of you who haven’t yet emerged from lockdown, don’t under-estimate how anxiety-inducing this can be.
I found a little room attached to our bedroom – I have a feeling it’s called a wardrobe but as I hadn’t used it in many months, I wasn’t quite sure that was its name although the more I said it, the more it sounded familiar. I took dresses, a thing I hadn’t worn in a very long time, from this wardrobe, tried them on, discarding one after the other until I found one that suited my purpose (to not accentuate the new bits of me that had been created by being locked down) and then decided I needed something else in case the breeze was cool in Warrandyte.
I had a vague recollection of something called a cardigan but I couldn’t easily bring it to mind nor visualise where it might be in the house. Eventually, I remembered that the white thing with handles in the corner of the bedroom is a chest of drawers that holds clothes and one of those clothes might be a cardigan. It was.
Dress on, cardigan on … I was ready.
Nope. Shoes. Slippers and trainers have been my only footwear companions for the duration and again it was more of a struggle than you might imagine to think of what shoes I owned and where they might be after all this time.
Dress on, cardigan on, shoes on … I was ready.
Nope. Mask. We have a cloth bag hanging from the loungeroom door with an assortment of washable masks, plus boxes of medical-looking masks next to the box of medical-looking gloves on the buffet in the hallway. Which one to choose? There’s lots to consider: how long you’ll be wearing it, whether you’ll be meeting anyone hence how much talking you’re likely to do hence how big it needs to be, whether you’ll be getting a cuppa and lunch hence how easily it can be taken off and put back on, how much driving you’ll be doing and if the roads are familiar (ha) hence how fogged-up it’s likely to get hence whether to use tape or not.
Dress on, cardigan on, shoes on, mask on … I was ready.
Nope. Handbag. Keys. Wallet. Hand sanitiser. Spare mask. All the things you forget you need because it’s been so long since you’ve been out, hence needed them.
Ready.
When you’ve only been allowed to go 5kms from home and for only four reasons (to buy food, to seek or give medical care, for education purposes, for work purposes – work from home where possible) can you imagine what it’s like to drive for 23kms?
Exhausting. Why are there other cars? Why are they driving so close to me? Why are they honking me? I’m doing 25kms an hour, isn’t that fast enough?
And exhilarating. I’m moving at 25kms an hour!! The needle creeps up. And up. I’m doing 110kms an hour. SHARON! WE’RE IN A 60 ZONE.
Ah. Yes. Speed limits are a thing.
We went to Warrandyte yesterday. Just because we could. And so did half the population of Melbourne, and their dogs.
It was warm. The sun shone on us as we sat in the main street at the bus stop eating our lunch (no eating inside at the moment – plus, how weird is that? To sit inside with loads of other people, all eating at the same time? Nope, not ready for that yet). We sat and ate and talked with Alison. Not about anything, just talked. And it was glorious.
People wore their masks. They queued up outside cafes in orderly and socially distanced ways, they used the hand sanitiser at the doors of the cafes, they chatted about anything but the situation we’ve been living through, and at other times just sat together. They walked their dogs and watched their children play in the playground and at the edges of the river, they kayakked, ate icecream, forgot that strolling on the road wasn’t a thing you do when there are zillions of cars around, and they smiled.
We’re so close now we can smell it. And it smells good. We still might not be keen to go to the cinema in droves, or hop on a plane anytime soon to share our air with hundreds of others, and we might be wary of catching public transport or of walking into crowded shopping centres (none of which we can do just yet anyway) … but we can get together with others, we can feel a sense of freedom at the edges of our being, we can connect in ways we wouldn’t have been able to before with those who went through this too. There’s a sense of unstated knowing. It’s not something we have to talk about, we just know.
We were out yesterday for four hours. All in one go. Four hours!
It was exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure. By the end of the four hours it was mostly exhausting.
One day, sometime soon, it might even feel normal.
COVID-normal, but that’ll be normal enough for me.
Princes Pier – showing us how to do responsible distancing
Do weeks exist any more? Do months or seasons for that matter? Days do, I’m sure of that. They start, often grey here in Melbourne, and finish, just as grey. One day follows another in a regularity of routine. There’s the morning presser if I’m not in a meeting – tuning in to hear the latest from Premier Dan Andrews and CHO Prof. Brett Sutton – or CHOttie as some people have taken to calling him.
There’s lots of talk about the mental health challenges of this time of lockdown. Reading the comments during the pressers is very bad for my mental health. As is listening to many of the journalists’ questions. You’d think I’d stop doing it, but I can’t seem to help myself. I’ve even started writing my own comments. It’s not a healthy place to be, yet, there I am, tuning in like a moth unable to stop flying into the light.
Two days a week there’s my 30-minute exercise routine – the one designed by my physio to help keep arthritis at bay, to help keep my bones strong by strengthening my muscles, to help strengthen the muscles around my knees so they stop hurting, to help me develop shoulders that look like they have muscles in them. (That last one is just for my own vanity!)
I have a tendency to work through the exercises too quickly – I am my mother’s daughter it seems, at least in this regard. Last week I was given information (read ‘stern talking to’) about not allowing time for recovery in between each exercise and that being bad for my body. I have to make the workout last for 30 minutes at a minimum. I was getting it done in 20.
It was a lovely (cool but not windy) morning on Thursday. I do some of my exercises outside as I need a strong anchor point and we don’t have any inside. It was suggested that doorknobs would be sufficient, but all of ours fall off with regular monotony, so I knew not to use them. One of the trees in our courtyard/backyard is about the sturdiest anchor point we have so I tie the orange powerband around that and do rows and supported squats, and I wrap the blue theraband around it and do L Pullaparts. (No questions about the L part of that – I have no idea).
In between each rep (I use the shortened form to suggest I can speak ‘exercise’) I have to rest – for a minute. Thirty seconds at the very least.
Thursday morning, cool, not windy, I head outside armed with my exercise bands. I look around the neglected garden and decide it could do with some weeding. I get busy: 10 powerband rows – 1 minute of weeding; 10 supported squats – 1 minute of weeding. 10 L Pullaparts (they’re for my shoulders) – oh, there’s a great photo just waiting to be taken! I rush inside and grab my camera. Whoops, my rest break seeps into multiple minutes. Ten more powerband rows, more weeding.
The garden is looking much better! Who knew exercise was so good for the garden?!
I check my watch – 34 minutes. Yes! Go me. Rob, my physio, laughs fit to burst when I tell him about the weeding. He says he’ll buy me a deck chair so I can properly rest between reps in the future.
Breakfast. Porridge. Tea. I’ve taken to making tea in a teapot since I’ve been fulltime at home.
Shower – although that depends on the time – so most often not.
The commute to work takes ten seconds. Up the stairs, and into my office. I know it’s my office because it has my name on the door.
Tim has already plugged my heater in, opened the curtains and turned on the lamps. Between 10:30 & 11am he’ll pop in with a cup of tea.
I’ve taken to scheduling in a lunch/brain break each day – an hour where I eat, then read education-related Tweets and articles and learn stuff. It kinda makes up for the negativity of the comments section in the morning’s presser.
Home time – no afternoon traffic to contend with, no rain on the windscreen, no avoiding flying debris from the wind whipping through the trees. No road rage, no horns honking, no slamming on the brakes to avoid the car in front that stopped suddenly to avoid the car in front that stopped abruptly …
The commute is now calm and peaceful – a mere 15 stairs and I’m ‘home’. I don’t even need to get the front door key out. Actually, I’m not even sure where my front door key is any more. Or my car key for that matter.
When it’s not physio-exercise day and when it’s not windy, we often use our exercise hour to walk around the neighbourhood. We’ve found laneways we didn’t know existed – not the hip kind of laneways in the city; these ones don’t have graffiti-covered walls and cafes serving single origin machiato soy almond truffl-infused cold ‘brew’. These ones have cobble stones to not twist your ankle on, and high fences with little doors built in, and sometimes on the non-windy days the sounds of families playing tennis.
Little doors make me curious
And then it’s Saturday. I know it’s Saturday because of the street corners. They’re abuzz in ways streets corners in my part of Melbourne had never been before this year.
People, with slight morning tremors, gather on street corners now. They stand, mostly silent, a good arm’s length or two apart, straggling across the road in some instances, masked faces staring intently at the hole in the wall.
New friendships have formed in this new, regular routine called Saturday-morning-waiting-for-my-fix-in-the-time-of-COVID. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of engagements and marriage proposals resulting from these now-regular gatherings. Each Saturday morning as we ride by, the crowds are bigger, the masks a little further down faces, a little less distance between each slightly tremoring body. More kids on bikes, more dogs on leashes, more conversation, more bike bells dinging frantically as we weave our way through them.
It’s Melbourne. They’re waiting for their coffee.
And now it’s Sunday. Father’s Day. Roadmap day. What time’s the presser? It’s the question on everyone’s lips. 12pm says the authority that is the Twitter account: What time is Dan’s presser. An account that keeps us up-to-date so we know when to tune in.
Will I tune in today?
Probably … I want to know what’s ahead. But I’ll do my very best to avoid the negativity and ignorance that is the comments section.
It was my first day at my new (full-time, ongoing, academic) job today. A barrage of information that lasted all morning … then ‘getting settled’ during the afternoon – which meant finding more information, this time on my own.
New jobs are exhausting! Ten hours of newness in one day is quite enough. It’s time for a cuppa … and some flowers, of course!
That’s me right now. Not as in kite surfing, but me as in free as a bird. I am officially between jobs and so am on holidays! Except for teaching … but apart from that, one job finished yesterday and my new one doesn’t start till April 24 … so I could go kite surfing if I wanted to!
They’re such beautifully contemplative places – places of calm and meditation. At least they are for us (my sister and I), as tourists. There are others for whom these spaces mean something entirely different. One space – many different emotional responses.
Musings from the cold 