Helen Garner spoke on candour: writing, aging and seeing without being seen, at a literary event in Perth supported by the Forrest Research Foundation in 2025.
I’ve just come back from seeing Helen Garner in conversation with journalist and academic, Dr Merve Emre at UWA in Perth. I took my notebook along and whipped it out when Garner was asked to talk about the best writing advice she had been given early in her career. She said, “I’ll spill my guts,” which sounded promising. I jotted down as much as I could given I have appalling shorthand skills and I was more interested in listening.
1: “I don’t like passages of exposition.”
If your writing is clear, and you trust yourself, trust the reader too, don’t “lecture them with passages and passages of exposition.”
2: “It’s really good practise to write down dreams.”
Helen Garner said she can’t understand why people have such an aversion to hearing about dreams. She is fascinated by them and writes hers down. She talked about the value of writing dreams and also the “inexplicable behaviours,” you might notice in the everyday. She recounted an observation about a professor she interviewed for The First Stone. There was an open tin of biscuits on the coffee table in his office and she took one, and then, because it was delicious, she took another. The professor pointedly replaced the lid and then assured her he hadn’t done so to prevent her from eating anymore biscuits. She didn’t believe him. Notice “dreams, slips of the tongue and inexplicable behaviours, and put them on the page, without explaining them.”
3: “Once you learn free association – bingo. A whole world opens up.”
Helen Garner said both Jung and Freudian psychoanalysis techniques have helped her writing, especially, ‘free association.’ It was developed by Freud to access the subconscious by speaking or writing without self-censorship and without editing anything that might flow naturally into your mind.
The works of essayist and journalist, Janet Malcolm has been hugely influential. Malcolm wrote frequently on psychoanalysis and, as New York Times reviewer, Joseph Edelson noted, also had a “keen eye for the surfaces – clothing, speech and furniture.” Garner herself began to write more freely, less constrained. “Up until then, I felt I’d been writing with the brakes on.”
4: Dangling modifiers “drive her mad.” Just so you know.
5: “I read everything out loud, even the shittiest piece of journalism.”
6: Helen Garner on the best writing advice she was ever given, “You use too many adverbs.”
Helen Garner, Perth 2025
Helen Garner’s latest book is The Season, published by Text Publishing.
The ongoing hunt for the perfect Australian meat pastie. PS: this is not a recipe.
Exhibit A – the moderately successful pasties
It is the year of our Lord, 2025. I’ve been trying to re-create dad’s favourite pastie for what might be centuries but is probably, if I must be more specific, about 15 years. It just seems longer. My efforts recently intensified, given dad is in his 80s and undergoing treatment for a blood disease, and even the most optimistic of daughters might feel the pressing weight of time.
Not that he’s grateful. He loves nothing more than to complain about my cooking. It gives him great joy. A zest for life. He’s never looked more spritely and fresh than when he’s waxing on about how I’ve made far too much food or the flavours are too exotic or I’ve made that same thing too often. And he’s had a real fancy for a pastie for ages which has failed to materialise exactly as he prefers it. Not a Cornish pastie but the old-fashioned Australian pasties you used to be able to buy down at the local servo. His mum used to make them with vegetables and whatever offcuts of meat she could find. She had a huge old metal mincer that attached to the bench like a vice.
These kind of pasties are impossible to find. The modern pastie is either too mushy or too gourmet for dad’s tastes. He doesn’t like them ‘spicy’ which means it should contain no seasoning outside of salt and pepper, certainly no herbs, dried or fresh. He doesn’t like them too meaty, because then you may as well just eat a pie. They need to be plainly made, the vegetables diced just the right size, and the finished result preferably left to sit for a few days so the grease would soak through a paper bag should you need to store one that way.
He’s a very loved dad. I’ve tried many, many recipes trying to get it right. When I was a broadcaster, I shamelessly exploited my position on ABC Radio to conduct long talkback sessions on the subject, and plastered requests for advice all over social media. I’d think I’d finally got it, and the next time I’d visit, I’d spend hours slavishly crafting my latest test recipe. Gripped with wild hope, I’d hand over the fruits of my labour, he’d take a small suspicious bite then adopt that look of crushed disappointment parents get when their child announces they don’t want to take over the family business after all or they want to leave school and be an actor or they’re pregnant at 19. I know the look well because I did two of the aforementioned.
Then he’d scarf up the lot, musing the whole time about the many ways my pasties were lacking and the wonderful, glorious experience of eating a really well-made pastie.
The Great Australian Pastie Expert, Peter O’Shaughnessy, much loved father of three put upon daughters.
Anyway, last time I was visiting I came so close. And dad hadn’t been sitting around wondering again where he went wrong with my upbringing either. He’d got jack of waiting after all these years, and been on the Interweb, painstakingly researching methods I could employ to improve.
And by George, I think we’ve cracked it. Dad, with his gun research skills. Me, with my endless love and patience. My sisters, with their endless love and patience. As a family, each in our own way, we seem to have finally – look, I want to say shut the old goat up – but he’ll probably read this and I’m not past a clip over the ear if he can catch me.
I fed him one before tea tonight because I was frankly beside myself with excitement after I tried one myself. He was positively giddy. He didn’t grumble anyway. We agreed it needed swede, I hadn’t been able to find one for sale. But that’s ok, because we all need something to strive for. Otherwise, we agreed, it was pretty good. Huzzah!
In return for my near-success, he gifted me with a story from his boarding school years at Aquinas College in Perth when he and the lads were fed an even-more-unusually-inedible-than-usual mash of swede as part of their dinner. It was so disgusting and fibrous that the boys all refused to eat it, instead they spread the vile woody paste thinly over their plates to disguise it, then stacked the plates on top of each other at the end of their tables for collection by the kitchen staff. The staff weren’t fooled. The cook came out and insisted they finish their dinner, and again, as one, the boys refused. It was an unheard of rebellion. The headmaster, Brother Murphy was summoned and he was a man who brooked no defiance. The offending plates with their smear of swede were handed back out, notwithstanding the fact that the original owners of each plate couldn’t be established, so they landed where they landed. Still the boys refused. Brother Murphy swelled up like a blowfish and told them they were all to stay put till they cleared their plates. And stay they did. It was a good two hours before Brother Murphy decided it was more dignified to give in and send them all to bed without dessert or supper than continue to try and outlast them, or inflict corporal punishment on every single child. It wasn’t physically feasible. Dad reckons based on past experience Brother Murphy would have loved to have a shot anyway, but decided in the end there were too many of them. It was, dad fondly recalled, his first experience of a unionised force.
He tells me he’s going to talk to the people at the servo down the road tomorrow about stocking my pasties.
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I know I said this was not a recipe, but for my own records, this is vaguely what went in to them. As it turns out, it’s a very simple recipe. My mistake was that I had been trying to be too fancy. Don’t cook the filling, add it raw and let it steam. No seasoning except for salt and lots of pepper. Not too much meat or you might as well eat a pie.
Pasties
Two potatoes, cubed into half centimetre pieces.
One carrot, cubed same size.
One swede, cubed etc etc.
One turnip, cubed etc etc.
One brown onion finely chopped.
1/4 a cup of minced lamb or beef.
Mix it all up raw in a bowl with salt and LOTS of ground black pepper, (and I’m told white pepper is even better) a good teaspoon, you should be able to taste it.
Use a bread and butter plate to cut rounds from puff pastry sheets. Put mix inside raw (don’t overfill) and a 1/4 teaspoon of butter, seal and brush with milk. Bake at 180 till brown.
While still hot, place in paper bags and leave in a bain-marie for a week till soft. (Kidding.)
I’m waiting for a bus in a country town south of Perth when the police pull over a car and it stops in front of me.
I’d say this made me an unwilling witness to the events that followed but I was deeply interested, though of course I whipped out my sunglasses so I wouldn’t get caught staring .
There’re two women in the car. The one on the passenger side has short blonde hair, a buzz cut. She lays her seat back and theatrically pretends to sleep. I know she’s pretending because her arm is out the window and she’s tapping an impatient rhythm out on the door.
The driver, meanwhile, has burst into tears and fluctuates between swearing loudly and sobbing even more loudly. She bangs her hand on the steering wheel in frustration. JESUS JESUS JESUS, she wants to be heard. I’m not sure this is the best approach if she’s hoping to emit an aura of innocence. I keep that observation to myself.
One of the police, a woman with a degree in eye rolling gestures to her partner, then touches her nose, mimicking a snorting action.
When is your bus due?, one of the officers asks me, contemplating the clearly inadequate space for a bus to pull up should it arrive in the middle of all this. I interpret this as a suggestion they could be some time.
I start to get nervous. I’m hoping, because I’m paranoid and prone to melodrama, this isn’t a Day of the Jackal type scenario where the women are not possibly on their way to score meth from a skinny bloke called Troy or Ryan in a car park out the back of the local tavern.
Maybe they’re in fact, well disguised assassins on the lam, maybe they just pulled off a hit, a sniper shot at an impossible range, maybe at least five kilometres, maybe the woman pretending to sleep is actually trying to casually disguise the fact that her handbag is a high powered shot gun. Dismantled, obviously.
This could totally be one of those Eddie Redmayne scenes where everyone gets it, including the annoying sticky beak who is rubbernecking from the bus shelter a metre away from the kill zone.
Turns out it’s only an expired rego thing and they’re free to go and the speculation is more about me than them.
The woman who’s been crying punches the air in vindication, gives the cops the finger, then she and her mate drive off in a roar of defiance. My bus comes and I find a seat up the back, I jag the last one free so I don’t have to share with a stranger.
Before I got distracted by a routine traffic stop I was sitting at the bus stop practicing my new year resolutions, I was attempting to meditate in this instance via the medium of box breathing. It doesn’t feel natural. I’m easily distracted. I’m not good at the rhythmic counting. In four, hold four, out four, hold four, start again.
I was congratulating myself for successful efforts so far to adopt a new, low stress lifestyle. Last year was a bit of a cow for various reasons and I thought I’d front foot 2025 by trying different ways to rest my brain, especially the pursuit of creativity for its own sake and other general practices to slow down.
Slow down, you might reasonably ask in tones of rising disbelief. Didn’t I chuck my full time job in four years ago? Don’t I barely work? Even my writing hardly qualifies as an effort, my stories are like, 100 words long, if that. I swan around talking about books on social media. I fan girl authors at Festivals and call reading “research.” I claim selfies with celebrities as tax deductions.
Yes, I respond, bristling – all that stuff is very wearing on my brain. It takes concentration. And effort. And now that I’m pursuing a creative life, I need to do more arty stuff. Arty stuff that doesn’t require so much “learning” and “talent” and “skill.”
This is all a long winded way to both pass time on a coach from Bunbury to Perth and to announce I’ve taken up painting. Yes, I have. I’ve been reading up on the creative brain and apparently applying yourself to a creative pursuit of some kind without purpose or expectation of a finished product is Good For The Soul. Art for art’s sake. God forbid it makes any money or is of sufficient standard to be enjoyed by anyone else, that’s beside the point.
I am completely on board for this. I read the brilliant Holly Ringland’s book, The House That Joy Built and came away very inspired on the subject of creativity for its own sake. Highly recommend.
And only today, The Guardian reported on a bloke in Stoke-on-Trent who took up painting terrible pictures six months ago. His work is crude to say the least, he is proud to say. He’s got no talent but he enjoys himself tremendously. He’s inundated with commissions. Obviously I shall soon be joining him with my series of stripey paintings. There are two so far, illustrated here. Stripey One and Stripey Two.
Apparently, (and I would include the research if I wasn’t on the bus without access to the book, having narrowly escaped a genuine gang land criminal stand off in the mean streets of Eaton) apparently it’s very helpful to engage new areas of your brain, delve into uncharted areas of cognition as such. And it doesn’t come more uncharted for me than painting. I failed both art and tech drawing at school, spent a few months with watercolours painting buttercups badly in France once but I have never had a lesson. I am a bonafide novice.
I’ve been hanging out with my dad a lot the last year, and he’s the opposite. He’s educated in the field, he’s a beautiful painter. He has easels and canvasses and brushes and paint. He paints salt lakes and the red desert landscapes of his youth in the Goldfields. He’s not been too well so he hasn’t picked up a brush for a while.
Never one to let opportunity pass by, I decided to kick off my art for art’s sake campaign at his place. Some of the materials are a bit dusty, the paint tubes have mostly dried up from disuse but you’d be amazed what you can do cutting them in half and jabbing about with water and an old brush.
I can’t draw. Which is obviously a win given what I’m aiming for. So I am going for a loose interpretation of the form. I confess to googling some basic instructions – I look up ‘easy abstract painting ideas’ which was very useful I must say. There’s a wealth of information out there for the talentless and those devoid of ideas of their own.
People, I am a convert. I had so much fun. Who knew splashing paint around for nothing more than the thrill of it could be such a blast. Sure, my spirits were slightly crushed when dad tottered out to look at the result, snorted, and suggested I tried working on something good. Drawing a shape, for example, he said.
Out of my way old man, I said coldly. I am an artist. I am supported by science. I am being Mindful.
Then he asked for a pencil and showed me how to think about perspective and talked about vanishing points in visual art and he drew examples in my notebook. Precious times. I promised to practice then carried on slapping paint around regardless. It was a joy.
I’m here to tell you if 2025 looks a bit tense, I highly recommend finding a pastime you don’t need to master. Find something you aren’t going to be good at. That has no purpose. No potential for commodification. Do something solely because you might enjoy it. For fun. Chances are after a while you’ll start to experience something magical, a gentle stirring in your soul.
I am starting to remember what that stirring is, and why it’s lovely.
“We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it.” Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.
For me, good writing is more than a great plot and gripping characters, it’s the details that bring vitality. Ordinary moments tell you so much; a chip in a china teacup for example, a frayed edge on a blanket, whether an elderly gentleman’s shirt has been pressed, the way a character folds their hands neatly in their lap as they wait for a train. Small, specific details can lift a story off the page. I think it can be so useful to get into the habit of recording these specifics as part of your writing practise. You develop a keener eye for minutiae. It’s like exercising any muscle, it becomes part of your process, ingrained.
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Mary Oliver.
There are lots of excellent ways to polish your skills. A journal is an obvious start, but diaries are often quite self-reflective. It’s important to look outwards too, to pay attention to everyday details around you. One of my favourite exercises for this comes from author and creator of the Writing in the Dark newsletter, Jeannine Ouellette who practises so-called daily incantations. The idea is to spend five minutes each day in pure observation and note down what you see, in simple, clear language, in fragments rather than complete sentences, no metaphors, no flowery descriptors. I choose a spot and set my alarm, so it’s focused.
When you’re done, choose five observations that resonate with you for any reason, and put them in sentences in the form of a poem, starting each fragment with I am …. or You are….
It’s an easy, fun way to write without any pressure. It’s mindful, it sharpens your observational skills and encourages plain, clean prose, which is the cornerstone of good writing in any genre. Give it a go. And, do check out Jeannine’s website or sign up for her newsletter. It’s full of tiny diamonds that will stir your creative soul and remind you that sometimes the process of creation is more important than the outcome.
Here’re a couple of mine.
From the Window on the Bus to Eaton
I am a green-striped silver train.
I am a distant city, obscured by smoke.
I am a small grove of trees, burnt black by fire.
I am a clear, high blue sky.
I am a yellow car, from another era.
Hospital Waiting Room
You are a bear sitting in a paper plane, travelling across a night sky.
You are a neatly folded pile of crocheted blankets.
You are light falling on a beige formica side table.
You are a silver teaspoon, coffee stained.
You are an exit sign, green man running on a white background.
Some highlights in brief of a year traveling, writing and engaged in glorious conversations. In 2024, I’m looking forward to teaching my first writing workshop at the Society of Women Writers WA, hosting at Writers Weekend for Perth Festival, the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival, judging the Ethel Webb Bundell Award for Short Stories and hopefully, fingers crossed because I am deeply lazy, writing more short fiction.
Reading from Into Your Arms, Nick Cave’s Somgs Reimagined at the Fremantle Press Author Showcase for Fremantle Arts Centre’s 50th anniversary.
The first half of 2023 was a surreal delight. We travelled to England, Scotland, Norway, Germany and then spent five months living in France. I didn’t do a huge amount of writing, I drank too much rose, painted badly, baked bread, and stalked vultures and flamingos with my camera. I saw the ABBA Voyager concert in London with one of my beautiful best friends, Niomi. It was glorious. I spent every single day for the entire trip with my husband and I still quite like him. I might even do it all again if he asks me to.
Aydius, Pyrenees France.
We also welcomed a new family member this year, her name is Lucy Maud Montgomery, but we call her Monty for short. She is very naughty and cheeky and I love her without end. We still miss our boys every day. When you love without measure your heart expands beyond limits, not even the universe will contain it.
This year I have felt a little like a spiderling in my writing world of short fiction, casting my spindle webs to the winds and seeing where they drew me. I have found new and deeper connections through all my writing groups. Both here in Fremantle, with Meg, Bella and Lissy and also online with friends from all over the world providing endless encouragement, sharing skills, support and inspiration. I aspire to be half as creative and talented as every one of them. So wonderful to also meet two of my online writing friends face to face for the first time in London. I can’t say enough about finding your people. It is such a lift and beyond priceless in learning more about the craft at every level.
Writing buddies, Sara Hills (left) and Electra Rhodes (right) in London.
This year I was beyond honoured to have a story chosen for the international Best Small Fictions anthology, a collection of work from 110 authors from all over the world to showcase the best hybrid fiction in a given year. An unbelievable dream. Thank you to the editor who nominated me. I wish I could hug you. My story, In This Tale of a Suburban Tiger, the Part of the Mother is Played by a Bird was originally published in the Irish Journal, Splonk. The anthology is out this month. Find out more and preorder here.
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I contributed five micro stories to the ravishing anthology, Into Your Arms, Nick Cave’s Songs Re-imagined, edited by Kirsten Krauth, curated by Neil A White and Mark Smith, published by Fremantle Press in late October. The Albany launch was an absolute joy. Organised by contributing author, Jon Doust, we were charmed and moved by Simon and Tammy London’s music, with Caleb and Ted, and Uncle Lester’s generous Welcome to Country and funky bass. Order here.
With author Jon Doust at the Albany Entertainment Centre for the launch of Into Your Arms, Nick Cave’s Songs Reimagined.
Thrilled to be invited to host at Writers Weekend for Perth Festival in 2024. I’ll be facilitating the panel On Beauty, talking to Christos Tsiolkas, Holden Sheppard, AJ Betts and Madison Godfrey. The event takes place on February 25th at 3pm in the Discovery Lounge at the State Library. Tickets are pay what you can but you MUST book. Full program and ticket details here.
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It’s been a really good year for writing. I haven’t been particularly prolific, but I have had some great highlights. I won the London Independent Story Prize for Flash Fiction for a 300 word story, Let Him Bury His Face in the Dust. It will be included in a print anthology out soon. You can read my interview here. I won the Fractured Lit Anthology Prize for my story, Into the White, you can read it here. There were 20 winners chosen for the US journal’s third anthology. I came second in the UK Flash 500 Award with Pumpkin and second in Aniko Press’s short fiction competition for my Wild themed piece, 1989. I have work in the upcoming Night Parrot Press memoir anthology and New Zealand Flash Frontier.
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Charlotte Wood spoke to me about her new book, Stone Yard Devotional in November, a mesmerising account of a woman who gives up everything, home, husband and work to go and live a cloistered existence in a monastery outside Monaro. I found the form of this book, fragmented and quiet, absolutely compelling. My pick for best book of 2023. Thanks for inviting me, New Editions Bookshop. Obviously, I am now even more in love with Charlotte than I was before which was quite a lot.
With Charlotte Wood at the Old Courthouse in Fremantle
Fantastic conversation at UWA with Anna Funder, author of Wifedom, the story of Eileen O’Shaughnessy who was married to George Orwell. It’s also the story of how patriarchy renders the work of women invisible. I loved this book. Her writing is sublime. I was in a feverish feminist rage for months after. She’s so impressive. Thank you for inviting me, Boffins Books.
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Charlotte Ree spoke to me about her memoir and recipe book, Heartbake at the glorious Open Books in Mosman Park. Charlotte was a delight, full of raw candour and hilarious wisdom. And really good recipes. It was also one of the several times I was lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of Kristy Diffey’s biscuits. She is a baking book biscuits legend.
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What a heart bomb! Launching AJ Bett’s new book, One Song at the Fremantle Worker’s Club. A group of teenagers have just one weekend to write and record a song to enter Triple J Unearthed High. A joy of a book about finding your own path. AJ is an incredible writer, full of intensity and passion and I love her work. I made a bad joke in my launch speech but I think I got away with it.
With authors, AJ Betts (left) and Belinda Rowe (right) at the Charlotte Wood event, November 2023.
I’m taking a bus to Eaton, going old school down the Forrest Highway to see my father. I have an hour wait at the Cockburn Train Station first, so I’m whiling away the time making small talk with my fellow travellers.
There’s a middle age couple holding hands on the bench directly next to me. Like me, slightly overweight, wearing comfortable shoes. We didn’t take much trouble with our outfits. She is tapping in her phone and sighing. I think the grandkids are being troublesome. He’s stroking her hair and she’s worried he’ll loosen her scrunchie. When I was younger I would have thought them beyond capacity for romantic love. Too old. But he’s watching her like she’s the Joanne Woodward to his Paul Newman, he can’t contain his delight in her, he’s planted a kiss on her head and the scrunchie is history.
An older man in long denim shorts, a pressed check cotton shirt and a neatly clipped grey goatee wants to make conversation. He has a heavy, ornate silver bracelet weighing down his wrist. It looks bespoke. Maybe a gift from a girlfriend or perhaps his daughters clubbed together for his 60th birthday to get him something special. He’s from Victoria and doesn’t understand why Bunbury doesn’t have an airport and the train takes almost five hours. He tells me you can fly further south into Busselton in less than an hour then drive up the highway but it feels like going backwards. He asks me to watch his bags while he goes for coffee and I say yes, then worry he’s a terrorist. Then I figure he’d be more likely to choose a bigger crowd if so. Three victims waiting for a bus feels like a pretty limp effort, even for practice. Still, I’m on edge until he returns.
I read the latest newsletter from my flash fiction heroine, Kathy Fish and she sends me down a Mary Robison rabbit hole. Mary Robison is a so called ‘minimalist’ short fiction writer from America, but as part of my burrowing I find an interview she gave to Bomb Magazine where she gives the suggestion short shrift. Along with the suggestion she pioneered the genre ahead of Raymond Carver. ‘That’s hooey,’ she snorts in response to the Carver claim and then she details why minimalist is a lazy description for her form and never considered it a compliment.
“I detested it. Subtractionist, I preferred. That at least implied a little effort. Minimalists sounded like we had tiny vocabularies and few ways to use the few words we knew. I thought the term was demeaning; reductive, clouded, misleading, lazily borrowed from painting and that it should have been put back where it belonged. However, it did a lot for me (laughter) in that I received some attention other deserving writers did not.”
Then she says something about hanging out with Richard Ford and alligators and I download all her books.
The bus arrives, I get two seats to myself and it feels like a win. From my window seat the Perth sky is softened with scattered cloud, a relief after a summer of unrelenting blue.
I feel like I’m having a small adventure. I’m 17 again travelling on the longer haul bus from Perth to Melbourne. I’m running away. On my way over the Nullarbor with my thermos of cold tomato soup and a box of Ritz crackers which is all I can afford for the three day trip. The bus is full and I’m trapped beside a Saint Kilda bogan who wants to play me audio on her Walkman from all the parties she’s attended on her holiday. I don’t have the confidence to say no. It’s all Jimmy Barnes and jangled roaring for joints and cans of Bundy rum.
I don’t know yet what it’s like to long for home and for my mother.
I feel like I’m back in France again on a six month trip just a year ago, taking the bus to Barcelona with my husband, a last minute dash for transport when a train strike caught us by surprise. It’s also crowded and cramped, my knees are pressed into the back of the seat behind me and a smell of old sweat is embedded deep into the upholstery. But our hearts are full of plans for catching up with an old friend, touring tapas bars and long walks through historic neighbourhoods.
I don’t know yet that when I see Gaudi’s masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, I will be overwhelmed by its ornate beauty and I will stand in its cathedral halls bathed in coloured light, and cry.
I don’t know yet when I walk outside the Barcelona sky will be an unrelenting blue to rival my home city, and I will hold hands with my love and he will brush a small leaf from my hair and I will kiss his face, because I can’t contain my delight in him.
“Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat.
We smoked the last one an hour ago.
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine.
The man who inexplicably asks me why I’m not wearing goggles when I’m swimming breaststroke. “If that’s what you call what you’re doing.”
The man who pressures me to explain my injury when he stops me mid lap, unsolicited, to correct my flutter kick.
The man who joins my lane after I have begun swimming, then lets me know another lane has become free which he thinks “I might prefer.”
The man who ignores the ‘no diving’ sign and enters the pool with a flying leap and a bombie, sending a wave of water into my face and into the faces of the three elderly people who are walking in the lane next to mine.
The man who uses the water as a repository for the contents of his ‘bushman’s hanky.’
The man who says nothing when his son ducks below the water to grab me roughly by the ankle, and emerges without acknowledgment to share a laugh about it with his dad.
The man who sees the pool is busy and chooses the lane set aside for slower swimmers, the lane I am swimming in, then powers up and down in a ferocious freestyle, unapologetic whenever there’s a collision.
The man with the silver chain around his neck who takes regular breaks to survey the swimmers, who interrupts my laps to ask me how much longer I’ll be, who calls out, “I’ll miss you,” as I leave the water. “Don’t worry,” his mate tells me. “He says that to all the girls.”
“Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.” Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.
There’s a scene in The Wind and the Willows when Mole, despite all his exciting adventures with Ratty and Toad and Badger, is unexpectedly reminded of home, and then that’s all he can think of. Badger’s Wild Wood and Toad’s Hall lose their shine. He just wants to go home. He longs for it. But his travelling companion Ratty is distracted by something new and Mole loses his chance. It’s wrenching; both because Ratty realises he’s inadvertently broken his friend’s heart and for the violence of Mole’s grief.
‘I went away and forgot all about it–and then I smelt it suddenly–on the road, when I called and you wouldn’t listen, Rat–and everything came back to me with a rush–and I WANTED it!–O dear, O dear!–and when you WOULDN’T turn back, Ratty–and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the time–I thought my heart would break.’
Mum used to read this book to my sister and me when we were kids and I found it completely devastating. It imprinted itself on me as one of literature’s great tragedies at the time, and it has stayed with me. But I’ve had my own problems this week. Overnight, I went from flitting gaily through Montpellier, bonjouring anything that looked in my direction including random pigeons, to curled up in bed wracked with homesickness. I cried. Told my husband I wanted my mum. Cried again. Stuck my head in the bag of lemon-scented gum leaves my sister sent me for Christmas for so long that I nearly asphyxiated. Read old books. Not The Wind in the Willows, obviously. I’m not a masochist.
I embraced the sensation as passionately as I had embraced being a visitor in a new and beautiful city only the day before. But even as I pined, I felt a little bit embarrassed. There’s a kind of insubstantial air to the whole idea of being homesick in my case. I’m not young, leaving for the first time. I have a home to feel sick about, I can leave by choice and know it’s there to come back to. I’ve never been displaced or uprooted, home has never been too far or too dangerous to return to. My daughter is grown up and my grandkids have stopped wanting sleepovers. My husband is here to offer his shoulder and top up my champagne.
Homesickness for people like me, well steeped in comfort, brings to mind insipid things like, ‘having the vapours’. In my mind’s eye, I might as well be wafting about in a tie-dye singlet dress, pining for a pie and sauce, reading Tim Winton wistfully on a park bench, hoping someone who speaks my language will happen by and coax me into a game of footy or pour me a large glass of wine. White with ice, please.
I’ve noticed it doesn’t take much to set me off on a bout of mal du pays. Especially in a new country where I don’t speak the language and people I meet don’t speak mine. The following incidents reduced me to a wreck this week;
A young boy working at the supermarket laughed in my direction while I was packing my shopping bags. (Here, clearly I was doing something foolish in his eyes, when I had been trying so hard to either fit in or be politely invisible. What an ill-bred tosser. Laughing at a vulnerable old lady. His mama et papa would be mortified, no doubt.)
A woman in a fabric shop emitted a definite air of being annoyed or at least not effusively thrilled to see me when I walked in and wandered around browsing. So much so, that I approached the counter so she wouldn’t think I was a time waster, babbled something and mimed in a kind of hacking motion with my hand – do you sell cheese knives? She said coldly in English. No. We don’t. Which, to be honest, I took as a bit of a slap in the visage. And then when I left I accidentally banged the door really loudly on the way out, so in an effort to be conciliatory I pushed it open and shouted pardon! she didn’t wave or smile or in any way acknowledge my largesse. (Speaks for itself.)
The Irish man at the local we have begun to frequent because, let’s face it, sometimes you just don’t feel like trying, politely asked us to sit somewhere else because we were blocking the service counter at the bar. (This was the worst. When one of your own turns on you. Likely he was hoping to insinuate himself into the affections of the locals at my expense. I’m onto you matey.)
The combination of all the above was enough to tip me over the edge. The uncomfortable whiff of someone not too far from where I’m sitting being tres sensitive doesn’t help. It only makes me more snivelly than I was to start with and adds a day or two to my recovery. Someone has to feel sorry for me and I have endless patience for the job.
Happily, previous experience has made me aware I’m vulnerable to both homesickness and a tendency to lean in to even benign misery and I had done some preparation in order to get mon tete out of mon cul. Before it set in too firmly.
Far from my romantic visions of self drifting through French flower shops smelling the imported wattle and shedding the odd elegant tear in response, homesickness makes me nervous as much as anything else. I think I underestimated how tiring it can be to brace yourself for everyday tasks, well, every day. Once the novelty wears off, it gets to be a bit of a slog. It becomes more of something that’s good for me and I have to do, unless of course I don’t want to eat or I’m happy to let my husband treat me likeles enfant.So setbacks so minor they could be mistaken for entirely fabricated become wearisome.
I indulged myself with tissues and sleeping in and calling my mum but I also noticed other side effects, nothing fatal, but certainly more insidious. I was feeling anxious about going outside, tackling the tram system, going to a shop I didn’t know, trying to make myself understood, preferring to stay in. The idea of facing the market I’ve shopped at most days, felt, if not terrifying, a bit of a bridge too far. The Post Office, ok, definitely terrifying.
A friend at home, who is very well-travelled, unlike myself, tells me homesickness comes in waves, and just when you think it’s unbearable, it changes and turns into something new. My oldest friend, who has been living in Germany for several years now, takes the same approach. And my mum once described childbirth in a similar way, just before I was going into labour with my daughter, and it helped me then too. If you aren’t managing, hang on for a bit and things will change. There’s a lot to be said for pushing it a little bit. Not trying to do everything, but also not giving in to the urge to do nothing. It’s not about feeling completely comfortable or completely uncomfortable. It’s about trying something small to get going. Even when you don’t feel like it much. Especially when you don’t feel like it much.
So, after a fabulous start to my travels, then a tiny, ok big, bout of homesickness, today has been good. I took the tram for the first time on my own to shop, I had a lovely chat in broken French and broken English with a woman at my favourite fruit and vegetable stall and I braved the dreaded Post Office and bought a box and stamps. Huzzah! I couldn’t make myself understood well enough to find envelopes but to quote the great philosopher, Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day.
I miss you beautiful Fremantle. I miss my loves, (my other loves). I can’t wait to sit on my back deck at home under a high Western Australian sky and breathe the salted air. It’s where I always feel safe. How brilliant right now though, to be a little scared, sometimes.
“Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.”Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.
I had all sorts of lofty plans to do more writing when I got to Montpellier, but I have been unable. I have forgotten how to speak English. I even forgot this isn’t new, whenever I go to a country where I don’t speak the language I somehow forget how to speak my own as well. It’s like a syndrome or something. I have stood at shop counters and in bars in countries other than my own waving my hands around and – this is deeply embarrassing, please don’t tell anyone – I have been known to utter the words…’ow you say..’ in a bad accent of questionable origins while searching for a word in a language I don’t know. Like a cartoon version of myself. As though mauling an accent makes me more likely to be understood. It is a testament to the enduring patience of the French people that they haven’t yet cancelled my visa.
It’s not just language, my brain doesn’t work quickly with anything when I’m travelling. I certainly don’t know how to function as a French person and I forget how to function as an Australian too. Small things. I walk on the wrong side of the road and faced with even the slightest hint of someone coming in my direction, I dart in front of them in a panic. I cry in public, as noted in previous musings, overwhelmed with beauty in the form of…. well anything really….small children saying ‘papa’ in French accents, dogs in handbags, anyone holding a baguette obviously, bridges set me off for some reason, old buildings, chefs in aprons standing in doorways smoking cigarettes and scowling. I’m apologetic for taking up space. I wear unattractive shoes.
I am slowly improving. This is after a harsh lesson on my honeymoon in Paris in 2012, learning after a month the mea culpa phrase I was saying to endear me to the locals, Je suis desole queue tu ne parles pas Francais, parles tu Angalis? was in fact informing native speakers of the language how sorry I was that they didn’t speak French and did they speak English? If I was looking for an easy way to make a tit out of myself, I may as well have taken to shouting ‘garcon’ and clapping my hands to get a waiter’s attention in restaurants.
In Montpellier where I have landed with my husband for the next ten weeks, the locals are a delight. People have been so friendly and kind. Not everyone speaks English, or they only speak a little, so I’m challenged a lot trying to bumble through basic life tasks I never have to think about at home. It’s a beautiful city, the Old District where we’re staying is a glorious rabbit warren of rambling, narrow streets that shoot off every which way, seemingly at random. It’s easier to get lost here than in any other city I have seen. After a few days, it makes its own kind of sense and it has a fascinating history that explains the layout of some of the original areas that were built in medieval times. I love it here.
I’m trying to use my best manners. I’m sorry to say it’s my fourth visit to France and it only just occurred to me this week that I might make an effort to find out what might actually qualify as good manners as opposed to assuming I know because, yunno, isn’t it obvious? I started by researching ‘etiquette in France,’ and by ‘research’ I mean I googled so I realise I won’t be getting a Legion d’Honneur medal anytime soon. I did read across many sources that it’s both normal and good manners to say hello and thank you and goodbye, have a nice day, in almost every public encounter, from asking directions to buying bread. I’m also sorry to tell you that in the past unless people were smiling broadly at me and sounding clearly friendly when they were saying bonjour, I assumed they had clocked me as a foreigner and were being sarcastic. But here, even people who look like they’re having a crap day and can’t be bothered with you, will still be polite. It’s shamefully revealing that using basic niceties when you approach a stranger has been a huge revelation. And even for someone who is terrible with language, it’s not so hard to learn hello and thank you.
I’m having a slight crisis of confidence where I’m suddenly remembering many, many instances of appalling manners I have displayed not just in the last week, but in the entire 56 years of my life. My brain may be mostly mush but oddly my memory of my own disgraceful behaviour is sharper than ever. So there’s that discomfort. But I’m also loving it. My life has become so much simpler, really fast. I feel like I’ve regressed to some kind of inner childlike state that hippies I grew up with in Fremantle would pay thousands to replicate. I’m moving slowly, I’m not collapsing on street corners howling into my hanky so much, but I am pausing to appreciate so many small moments of wonder I come across all the time. Things I’d overlook at home because of the familiarity or because I’m busy. I face the day with no loftier intention than wandering through beautiful Montpellier, going to the market, buying milk for coffee and not being an asshole about it. I considered it a highly successful series of events yesterday when I found the local swimming pool, bought a ticket and swam. I had a nap to recover. It was glorious.
So I beat on, a boat against the current of my own ignorance, to misquote F Scott Fitzgerald. The impact of my learning on the lovely people of Montpellier is not completely lost on me, so I’m trying to keep my footprint small and spend my money as liberally as I can afford and as locally as I can. I’m trying to learn as much of the language, even badly, as I can manage in ten weeks. I’m in a lot of uncomfortable situations. But also, I’m having so much fun. I haven’t been so effortlessly mindful in years. Decades. I feel happier, less shy, less fearful. And not in any way that means anything at all to anyone but me, I feel a tiny bit braver than I did a month ago. Although I did just that second have to check if I’d spelled ‘braver’ right because it looked weird on the page.
I’m in storied country. Fort Augustus at the edge of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. The stones that line the shallows of the Loch, the trees dripping with lichen lace, the fir trees dressed green and warm for winter. Everything is steeped in myth and you can feel you’re walking ancient paths. It’s so beautiful.
We are staying at an old converted Monastery on the very southern shore of Loch Ness. Today we woke to see the mists rise off the water and settle around the crest of the hills that surround them. They’re not so tall as the mountains, we passed Ben Nevis on our way in, which was mountain country, snowy and rugged, with waterfalls at every turn and the high arched stone bridges you see in movies. Spectacular. There’s no snow yet on the hills around Loch Ness where we’re staying, they’re red with what I assume is heather and lined with the firs. The lichen is such a delicate pale green it’s nearly yellow, it frills everything that isn’t smothered in moss. We saw an apple tree dark with frost, it looked dead except for the russet apples still clinging to its branches. Like a spell had been cast. You wouldn’t be surprised to see a witch slink from the shadows nearby.
We haven’t ventured any further afield today than a short walk around the village. There are five locks on the canal that runs through town and a swing bridge that literally swings away from the road to let tall boats through. There was a ribbon of traffic winding through the whole town today waiting for the man working the bridge to signal for the closure to reconnect the bridge with the road. He did this, not via any technology though I’m sure there’s a lot involved, but with a clear shout that rang across the canals like a bell.
I stalked a robin near the boathouse. Hard to get a good shot, they move so fast. The birds look hardy. The deer stood still for me and the ‘hairy cows’ barely blinked in my direction.
I could stay here a while. I can feel it in my bones.
Gillian O’Shaughnessy 