revelations, the rapture, radelaide

Back in Sydders now after week in radelaide/ fabelaide/ oh-I'm-glad-adelaide... (etc). Random things that I chrystallised in that visit (metaphorically, natch, I was not in a biker speed lab):
- I heart Lily Allen - revealed as a main stream pop lamo for once and for all, me.
- I flounder around in the aftermath backwash of the giant waves of other people's fraught relationships when I'm around my family. It's much more peaceful when I'm not. Despite that there are some small pleasures in being there. It gets easier, I feel somehow more resillient each subsequent visit - the longer I am away perhaps? the older I get? the more they each deal with their pasts?
- My Grandparents are all getting on, and my Grandmas in particular are now the Queens of the blunt comment. 'You've lost weight - you'd be a size X now?' one says. The others says' how old are you? So, you're not having children then?'. My gradfather says 'so you have a boyfriend I hear. That's nice. Because it was so long really, wasn't it? Like really quite a long time'. Sheesh guys.
- I am somehow Switzerland, the confidente. 'I'm going to confide in you something' one Aunty says. The other one says 'I wouldn't tell anyone else this, but this morning I heard..'. In response I start to feel like being a simpleton and saying what I think and hear: 'Um, everyone says you're drinking too much and being mean to --. Is that true?' or 'So, I hear you owe thousands in school fees and that's why you moved - is that true?' or '-- says you swear too much around the kids and should tone it down.' I figure that would be a surefire way to have people stop telling me things they don't want to get back to people. Maybe it would open up the doors of the family abode, let some fresh air in, help all the dark musty corners dry out and bleach pale in the sun.
- Ex partners haunt old towns. Even when you're well and truly over (over, over, over) and years (years and years and years) out of the relationship, it is a shock to hear they and their new partner and baby bumped into your Aunty in Coles shoppping for dinner. Well, maybe for better adjusted people it's not a shock, but it was for me. Kind of creepy. Everyone knows difficult exes are meant to gracefully fade away and out of your field of reference, right?


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Today I was at a popular Suydney beach, sitting in the sun. SITTING IN THE SUN! Amost my least favourite thing to do in the whole world, because it is just too HOT, and I feel so BAKED, and everything is so bright and shiny. But actually on my old aqua borrowed towel, and in my pinching rouched aqua and purple granny bathers, and with my glasses off and my non prescription sun glasses rendering the world shady and blurry, the multitudes blending into dappled shade on the beach, I felt quite happy.

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Saw an old friend, from many many years ago - maybe 10 or 15? And was dazzled by her bright blue eyes popping out of her brown face, and her animated converstaion, and her honesty, and the expanse of conversation, and slightly self aware (am I being in awe of her because she's in the entertainment industry? Am I acting different?), and almost was able to forget until straight after eating someone came up and gushed at her about her music. And I say 'is that normal.. Does that happen all the time?' and she kind of shrugs and and grimaces in a 'what can you do, life is wacky' kind of way, and I go 'wow that's really surreal', and we leave. And I have this tiny thread of connection to her life and its rhythms, and in what ways it's different to mine, and in what ways it's the same.