As I live and breath - Charity?

I spent my Adelaide Saturday thrift-store-hunting with Zoe and the Architect.  Zoe is the queen of second-hand-stores: she knows every single one of them between Kapunda and Port Adelaide, and she spends her Saturday mornings in the over-stuffed back rooms of church halls across the Barossa valley. 

            We began in a little store on the edge of Tea-Tree Gulley.  It was the best possible sort of second hand shop.  From the outside,  it was small and nondescript, just a door and a window stuffed with raveled sweaters, a box of distressed paperback romances, and a hanging rack of geriatric car dashboard mats outside on the pavement. Only inside the shop revealed its true self - nested geometries stuffed full of books and vintage evening gowns and baby clothes and antique ski-suits, light-bulbs and crockery and wooly winter beanies and scarves and ties and handbags and shoes and dinner dresses -

            Oh, the dinner dresses... all of them all glittery and spangled and most of them desperately, eye-searingly, shoulder-paddingly pleated, sequined, studded and vintage nineteen eighties.

If my suitcase were as five-dimensional as the shop, I'd have taken home an armful.

            The hats were another kettle of feathers.  A door-frame behind the cash-register, approached at the right angle, unfolded into a long shelf of aerodynamical Adelaide Cup hats, trimmed with feathers and flowers and bunches of glass cherries and crab-apples.  I picked up a fetching black Merry-Widow wide-brim trimmed with most of a  white  feather boa and admired.

            A tiny old woman with white hair piled high on her head appeared from  behind the edge of a dust-mote.

            "She used to do amateur theatricals."  She said to me, fingering the feathers.  "The owner of the hat.  When she retired her husband insisted that she give away SOME of the costumes and she gave all the hats to us.  It's nice, isn't it?"

            "How much is it?"

            "I don't rightly know.  The others are between two and three dollars, but that one's scarcely dented - it could be as much as five.  Do you see a price tag on there?"

At length, and after some difficulty, I found a tag buried in the feathers of the boa.

            "TEN dollars."  The lady read.  "That's a bit much. Clara!"  She called out to another elderly lady  - this one was presiding over the cash register. "Do you think that we could give this nice young lady a discount?"

The lady behind the cash register looked up and I noticed that she had a firmer jaw than the white-haired darling, and that her hair was cropped firmly about her neck in a stiff, no-nonsense bob.  

            "You want me to give you a DISCOUNT?"  She said to me.  "Here?  In this shop?"  Stepping out from behind the cash register, she advanced on me with a contemptuous twist to her lips.

             "What sort of person asks for a DISCOUNT in a CHARITY shop?"  She said, pitching her voice to be heard through the whole room. 

            "It's  the Royal Society for the BLIND giving you that discount.   It's Children with CANCER giving you that discount- you know that, I suppose? Is THEIR money worth that much to you?"

She sneered at me.  "Don't you BELIEVE in CHARITY?"

Elderly women were popping into existence between hats and winter coats and  peg-boards of costume jewelry.  They all stared at me, open mouthed, their heads shaking, their hands rising up and boney, arthritic index fingers raised up to point-

I fled through a door into another room, where Zoe was rummaging through a bin of wooden block toys.  Shuddering and shaking, I  poured out the whole incredible story.  Zoe let out a shout of laughter.            
            "REALLY?" She squealed. "I don't believe a word of it!"

With epic narrative timing, a third elderly lady emerged from a shoe-box behind the toy bin.  She pointed a long index finger at my midriff.  Following the finger, I saw that I was still holding the hat - tightly, in both hands.

            "What were your intentions with this hat?"  She asked coolly.  "The original owner was a noted actress in our local theatrical community.  What were YOU intending to do with it? A birthday party, perhaps?"
She flicked the hat lightly with her finger and looked at me from beneath a raised eyebrow.  Very much beneath.

Stammering slightly, I said something about a past history of fashion school, and a consuming interest in historical costumes and how this hat would make a fabulous accessory for a late-Edwardian merry widow ensemble - I don't know what had gotten into me.  My brief admiration had run its course in front of the cash register.  I wouldn't have wanted the thing if you'd paid me.

The lady considered.
            "Yee-eesss…." She breathed critically.  "That would be acceptable.  But what you have to REMEMBER" she said, pinning me with a stern look and that long index finger "Is the ORIGINAL value of the hat.  Don't you THINK that you're doing rather nicely as it is?"
She turned on her heel and swept out to the cash register.

            "Here."  I said, thrusting the hat to Zoe with shaking hands.  "Put it back for me.  I don't want them to see me do it.  I don't want to be the lady who tried to cheat the charity shop - and surrendered."

Zoe shook her head to clear it, and girding her loins, sailed defiantly into the front room, where a three-way argument was going on.

            "I saw Water for Elephants last night and I thought it was LOVELY."  The white haired darling was saying firmly.

            "But what about the CRUELTY?" The woman with the long index finger said.  "The terrible things they did to that elephant - I wept!  I would hardly have called that film lovely!  I'd never have seen it if I'd known -"

The firm-jawed lady snorted with impatience.  "It's ACTING."  She cried.  "For heavens sake!  I can't believe you were both taken in by a crew of acting animals!  They're perfectly happy!  They probably loved every minute of it!  Really, if we cried about EVERYTHING we saw up on a movie screen - you two bleeding hearts - "

Zoe must have had her jaw hanging somewhere about the level of the floor because the woman with the index finger looked at her sharply and said "Are you all right - dear?" 

Zoe picked up her jaw to answer, but a young man entering the shop behind her though that the question was meant for him and spoke first.

            "Just fine." He said.  "Thanks.  Just looking around."

            "Ooooh!"  The lady with the index finger squealed joyously.  "Isn't he HANDSOME?   And what LOVELY manners!  It's been such a LONG time since a handsome young man flirted with ME!"

Her shoulders shaking,  Zoe turned and precipitously fled from the shop into the sunshine, closely followed by the young man, scarlet faced and steaming.

There must have been something in the water.

We fled into the hills and ate lunch sitting on a verandah that commanded a view of an entire valley- olive groves and acres of vines, with fig and sweet apple trees tangling in our hair and fresh autumn winds to drive cobwebs - and white marabou feathers on black hats  - out of our heads.

Unreal.

The Addyman Plesiosaur

I am in the SA Museum on North Terrace, looking at the opalized pleiosaur skeleton.

The Addyman plesiosaur is the skeleton of a freshwater plesiosaur from the Eromanga Sea of the early cretaceous period.  Now entirely turned into opal.

It is my father's favorite thing in Adelaide, and when he lived here he took every visitor to see it.

I stop by myself, every time I am in town.

It's immense- fantastical - improbable  - and a reminder that the fantastic and the improbable and the beautiful happen all the time, all around us, every day.  We don't, or can't, always see it happening.  Not everything happens on a scale or in a time-span that we can understand.  But oceans grow and shrink and pleisosaur bones freeze into streams of colored light: worlds change all around us, moment by moment while we wait for buses on rainy streets and stomp through the day, paying bills and planning grocery lists -

It's a metaphor, you see.

Made solid and shouting "Attend!" in a voice you can't miss.

Librarians do not only help you research your school papers

 

When travelling somewhere drear and rainful,

Pack extra socks - it's far less painful.

Today I am in Adelaide, visiting friends and seeing a doctor for a post-surgery check up.  It's wet here in Adelaide today.
            In the afternoon I had an hour to kill between engagements, and I took myself to the library. The library on North Terrace has four deep window embrasures on the west wall, for which the management has invested in large blue plastic bean bags, and which they have stuffed into the cavities to make them more uncomfortable to sit in. I prefer not to sprawl (slightly sideways and legs akimbo) in front of other library patrons, so when I find an embrasure empty, I push the beanbag out and squeeze into the window behind it.  Usually someone else will sit on the beanbag and there will be two of us curled up there, reading cozily and watching the winter rains dancing on the glass.

            This afternoon there was no beanbag at all in the third window. I settled in for a comfy hour of bad science fiction paperbacks and free wi-fi, but after only ten minutes, a librarian came up to me and put her hand right in front of my computer screen.

            "This window is only for beanbags," she said.  "You have to get up and sit somewhere else."
            I was mildly bewildered.  The beanbag in question was a few feet away from the window, being used by a reading circle.  But she looked at me disapprovingly till I stood up, and once I did, events moved swiftly.  While I was bending down to collect my bags and my jacket, she was stamping over to the children’s corner to rain down an afternoon of pure hell on a family sharing a picture book.

            "Excuse me," she said, not very nicely. 

            A mother, a father and two very small children looked up at her.

            "Those beanbags may only be used by one person at a time."  The librarian said. "One of those children will have to get off."

            "But they’re small children," the mother said.  "Can’t they share the bag?"

            "Rules are rules."  The lady said, and crossed her arms.  "And the rules say adults aren’t allowed to sit on the floor.  You have to stand up."

            Bowing with the wind, the parents stood up and relocated themselves and one of the children to a set of small red chairs. The mother picked up a book and turned to face the children.  
            "It was a VERY fat caterpillar," she said. "What do you think of that?"

            "Excuse me," the librarian said again.  "Adults aren't allowed to sit on the children's chairs either. you have to stand.  I told you that."

            "How are we supposed to have a reading circle if we’re standing?" The father said.

            "Rules are rules." The lady said. "You can have a reading circle, but only children have permission to sit on the chairs."

            The father stood up again, and breathing deeply through his nose, went to collect a chair from the adult reading area.  He was stopped by a hand on his arm.   
            "Bringing chairs from other areas," the librarian said, "is not permitted."
            "I think," the father ground out, "you are being very unfriendly."

             Rules are rules." She said. "Incidentally, the beanbags are only to be used in the window seats. The other child will have to get off too. What made you think you’re allowed to sit on it over here?"

            The mother stared at her, bewildered. "Over here?  The window is all of three feet away! How could this possibly be a problem?"

            "Rules are rules."  The librarian said.  "Incidentally, your children are far too small for the children’s chairs. They’ll have to stand up as well.  And this is a library. Libraries have to be quiet.  We don’t permit reading aloud."

            The mother and the father opened their mouths, and shut their mouths, and opened their mouths and looked around at the rest of the library, where patrons sprawled across chairs, beanbags, cushions, and even their backpacks.  At the circulation desk, bells chimed and conversations were going on at all sorts of volumes.  On the far side of the room a stereo played Caribbean jazz.  And right behind the librarian, two small girls lay on their stomachs, swinging their feet and reading Doctor Seuss to each other.

            The mother recovered first.  Seizing her small daughter by the hand, she hauled the child to her feet.   
            "Come on darlings," she said in a trembling voice. "We are going to go and find a bookshop and buy some books.  Doesn’t that sound fun?"

            The father and the mother and the two small children stormed off.  Thirty seconds later, I heard seven kinds of hell being raised over at the circulation desk, and a book about a very fat caterpillar landed in the re-shelving cart with some volume.

            As I write this now, there is a very large man in a very wet raincoat sitting on a small red chair and reading a newspaper. Nobody has taken even one small bit of notice.
           That librarian needs a spanking, and there's a hardcover children's story book in the re-shelving cart that would do the job nicely, I think.

So this Canadian married an Australian in the Cook Islands…

Right after the Eurovison Final, this blog sank like England's hopes of musical glory, and the reason rather goes like this:

A Canadian married an Australian in the Cook Islands…and as husband and wife, they wanted to move to Chile....

In mid-September we are relocating to South America.  We are enormously excited, seeing this move as all sorts of good things and opportunities - not least among them  the chance to resurrect our atrophied Spanish language skills, which are not in high demand over here in Australia.

There is, however, a little problem with the visa.  A year and a half ago we were married in the Cook Islands.  It seemed like the best of all possible choices - we would be married barefoot, on a beach, and the Cook Islands were halfway between our Australian and American families, and a Cook Islands marriage certificate is recognized practically everywhere.  

Except one place, it turns out.  
There is one country that for certain and definately doesn't recognize a Cook Islands marriage certificate. 
That country would, of course, be Chile.

And a valid marriage certificate is a rather significant requirement for Mr Tabubil's work visa. 

Visa-wise, we were given two options - the first: to have the marriage certificate legalized, which would involve four offices in three countries and take - at a conservative estimate - four months to complete.

The second was to get remarried in a civil ceremony at the registry office.

My mother thinks it's hysterical. She telephone me from Canada, addressed me as MISS Tabubil, asked if we wanted linens or white goods, inquired as to who was planning the wedding breakfast, and generally proceeded to laugh herself sick. 
Laughter aside, the second option was clearly the preferred one, so with visions of boutonnieres and sentimental re-affirmations dancing in my head, I called the government wedding registry in Adelaide, where a very pompous young man flatly and non-negotiable told me that Australia recongises the Cook Islands, and that being so, re-marriage for any purpose or under any circumstances was illegal in Australia and is never done in Australia and no-one ever thinks of it in Australia unless they're up to no good and goodbye.  
And then he more or less hung up on me.

He was just the teensiest bit of an ass, so we thought it prudent to confirm his opinions elsewhere -and yes, ufortunately,  the Cook Islands marriage certificate IS valid in Australia - and that's it, tough luck.

Well, poot.  I was planning a raid on the local Op Shops for wedding veils and table decorations, and dreaming up a smart black suit that looked elegant from the back.

Ergo, we are in the process.  We have found out that we can enter Chile under a document called a Declaracion Jurada - which officially labels me as Mr Tabubil's de-facto (if only the living-in-sin sort), but at the moment everything is all very hypothetical and there seem to be several visits to the Chilean consulate in Melbourne in our future.

It's not quite as bad as something out of Kafka, but there have been a few moments that would appear to have been translated directly from one of his original German-language manuscripts...

And if a full legalization of our lovely marriage certificate turns out to be the only acceptable way to go - we're planning for an extra month or so sitting on a lovely tropical beach somewhere before we can legally arrive in Chile while it kicks in. 

Just in case. 

So count this as a warning: if this blog becomes a bit sporadic for the next eight or ten weeks - it's because I'm sifting through closets, and writing inventories, and wrestling with lawyers, negotiating with packers, and generally - moving.

Huzzah!

And in honor of tonight's Eurovision 2011 Grand Final - The Number One Eoruvison Performance of All Time and Don't Argue with Me on This because there is No Argueing with Svetlana Lodoba of the Ukraine!!!!!!!!

This has everything.
There aren't even words to describe the full-on majesty of this… I hesitate to call it a performance, because that pigeonholes. That labels.
            There's patriotism. With Flags. There's Flames. There are gladiators. And Body Oil. It's just full on overloaded, orgasmic, explosive plastic flamingos. And I love it so hard it hurts.

Ukraine, 2009 - Be My Valentine:

Eurovision Song Contest: Wolves of the Sea

No introduction necessary. A crowd of grinning grown-ups in pirate costumes mobs the stage and sings sea chanties with rock-opera-power-chords.

It doesn't get very much better than this.

Latvia, 2008 - Wolves of the Sea:

Eurovision Song Contest: SAX MAN

What's not to love? It's all purely joyful - the camera opening onto the spinning violin, the hell-for-leather drum kit, the candy colored costumes, like Lady Gaga would wear if she dressed for joy instead of avant-garder than thou, and the saxophone -
ah, The SAX.
It's all about the Sax.

Moldova, 2010 -Run Away: