Instructions: Copy the first sentence that you posted in each month of 2006.
January
It was a textbook New Year this year: dinner in the Adelaide Hills with three of my oldest friends.
February [post head 'True Confessions' -- Ed.]
And it's a shocking one: insofar as one is stuck with the politicians one has, within the party that one must suffer to be in power, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Amanda Vanstone.
March
Groaning at my own idiocy in putting my hand up to review two different productions of the same play within four days for the Adelaide Fringe, I trudged off tonight to the seemingly bizarre venue, the SA Railway Museum, having been newly informed that no cast member of this production was over 17.
April
Longtime Labor liability Marn Fern is quoted in this morning's Age as having dismissed the poll figures on Julia Gillard's rising popularity as 'neither here nor there', while the corrupted and crippling Labor factions are, he said in their alleged defence, 'a fact of life'.
May
My closest beach, five or ten minutes' drive away, is Semaphore in Adelaide's north-west.
June
As I drove home from the vet's a little while ago with the cats singing a duet of post-shots protest in stereo (one in the back seat, one in the front), I heard something on the radio that made me blush for shame at my own ignorance.
July
This is what people mean when they talk about the fusion of style and substance.
August
Today I planted seedlings of these ...
... and one of these ...
... and some very late clumps of these:
September
Apparently the building of a new and improved space ship for another trip to the moon is going be a snip, but they still haven't found a speech therapist sufficiently gifted to teach the US President how to say 'nuclear'.
October
If at this time of year you spend a week trying (and failing) to get at least one of the four book reviews finished while you clean the house, pack for a two-day Sydney trip, prepare for the meeting that said trip is about, and prioritise above all else some time out for a fleeting visit from a distant beloved, and if you finally stagger out to the cab for the airport secure in the knowledge that you've ticked everything off the packing list (except your hairbrush; bummer) and that there are biscuits and coffee for your elderly father when he comes over to feed the cats and that there is enough money in the accessible bank accounts to get you through whatever staggeringly expensive Sydney events may arise (for Sydney absorbs one's money like blotting paper) -- if, as I say, you spend a week like this, too busy to go outside, then be prepared for chaos in the garden by the time you get home.
November
About half an hour ago I caught sight of the cats gazing more purposefully than usual out of the back screen door; clearly there was something exciting on cat television.
December
From today's online ABC news:
'A German company plans to launch a spray-on condom tailor-made for all sizes. ...'
******
Now Pavlov's Cat is very deliberately designed and run as yer average dog's breakfast (so to speak), a blog that determinedly mixes the domestic, the trivial, the political, the personal and the professional (mine, I mean, and therefore slanted toward issues of writing, literature, language, history, psychology and other namby-pantywaist humanities-type things) -- in a word, a blog with a subtextual feminist undertow, designed to demonstrate that life is not lived in labelled compartments hierarchically arranged in order of importance.
As this exercise would appear to prove.
4 comments:
I found 'June' particularly appealing.
It seems you write a lot of reviews with fierce deadlines to meet -- that seemed to be the most dominant theme.
A wonderful story about Amanda Vanstone:
In Natashsa Stott Despoja's first senate year, she gave an interview that, among other things, revealed she liked strawberry Freddo Frogs. Later, Amanda Vanstone sarcastically referred to this partiality in a Senate speech, suggesting that other senators had more important things to do than to give interviews and eat chocolate. A bit shaken, but determined to hold her head high, Stott Despoja sent a humourous-as-you-can-get-when-you're-political-enemies note to Vanstone with a strawberry Freddo included. Quick as a whip, Vanstone sends one of those *giant* strawberry Freddos back with this note:
"You call that a frog? THIS is a frog."
Stott Despoja still has that chocolate frog in its wrapping.
It's little things like that that confuse me about Vanstone. I hate having a soft spot for her, but I have to admit to it at least.
I'd love to hate Amanda but her sense of humour just gets me going. I can't fathom how she got mixed up with the Liberals, there's definitely a lefty funny bone hidden beneath those hideous blouses.
Love August, and October, and your statements of opposition towards hierarchy and labels. I think my partner needs to read that - often. I'd like to see it printed on his brain, actually.
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