Wake In Fright: My Idyllic Country Writer’s Retreat

On Sunday I started a three-day writer’s retreat at my parents’ weekend house in the country. The plan was to come home after dinner on Wednesday. Today, Tuesday, I finished that retreat, at 4.55 am.

I’ve done a couple of these little three-day stints in the past few months, and until now they’ve been fantastic for getting a huge amount of work done in a really short time. There’s something about not having to get small people’s lunches made, clothes on, and delivered to school and preschool, then not having to plan dinner, shop for dinner, and do laundry and bath, dinner and bed that really helped me focus on the book.

Lots of people, when I said I was going to the country on my own to write, expressed concern. Mostly the people who have actually been to the house, because it is big, old and, not to put too fine a point on it, haunted.

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Ignorance Is Bliss

Apocalypse now, or have we time for another coffee before the end of days?

‘Why do I still have to go to kindy?’ May Blossom moaned  to me yesterday. ‘I already know so much stuff.’

‘You don’t know everything,’ I told her. ‘There’s still lots for you to learn, and that’s why you get to go to school next year.’

‘I know enough. I know redback spiders are poisonous.’

She might be right. That might be enough. After a weekend of bombing and shooting and earthquakes and their attendant horrors, I wish all I knew was that redback spiders are poisonous.

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More Cat, Less Complaining

Obie in repose

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Degree Of Difficulty

Oh for the days when the in-seat phone was all the entertainment she needed.

In about four hours we are heading to the airport to fly for fourteen hours to LA. Then we will wait at LAX for another five hours, before flying for two more hours to Denver. I am more daunted by this trip than I have been by any other I’ve taken.

It’s not as if this is the first time we’ve flown with May Blossom. We’ve taken this trip twice before, and many other shorter domestic flights too. But this is the first time we’ve flown since she has been weaned, and talking a lot. Breastfeeding was so handy for travelling: it functioned as food, entertainment and a gag. I’m just not sure what to expect without it. I gather gags are frowned upon in some parenting circles, so that in-flight option is ruled out.

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Fear and Loving in Far North Queensland

Welcome to Cape Fear. Also Cape Hliarious Strategic Removal of Letters on Signs.

I’ve been thinking this morning about H’s and my honeymoon. I think it’s the intense heat and humidity here today that reminded me of it, because it felt rather like this back in April 2009, when we took off for ten days in Far North Queensland. Back in the Olden Days, the honeymoon would might have been a frightening prospect for an innocent young bride. It would have been her first opportunity, theoretically, to know  her husband ahem ahem.

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