Daddy Cool

It’s Fathers’ Day here in Australia, and what better day to write about my dad, PapaK.

There are lots of things I could write about my dad. I could write, for instance, about how he sets the (very high) bar for all the men in my life.

About his limited grasp on pop culture, which, over the years, has lead to dad:
a) searching for Pearl Jam in the Spreads isle of Woolies;
b) summarising the Harry Potter books/films thusly - ‘the bad man put himself in the snake’;
c) asking for an ‘Ub (rhymes with Hub) four-oh’ CD and being told in no uncertain terms by the sales assistant that ‘actually it’s UB40, sir’.
d) responding to my excitement about Beyonce and Jay Z’s pregnancy by suggesting we could throw the baby shower at Chez Papa/MamaK – ‘we can fire up the BBQ and put the big table under the shady tree’ – not realising that Beyonce and Jay Z are: i) not people I actually know in real life, ii) mega famous, and, iii) probably not BBQ-and-a-big-table-under-the-shady-tree people.

(On that last point: I’ll admit my excitement was a little over involved and dad could be forgiven for thinking that Bey and Jay were close personal friends of mine).

About his endless texts, phone calls, and emails from overseas that make you fell like you’re right there with him – down to what he had for breakfast (cereal).

About how he can’t read maps. At all.

About the time in the early 1980s that he king hit Michael Hutchence, of INXS fame (believe).

About being sent to school with his instructions to Learn Three Things and Be Good.

About his complete inability to understand what’s going on in a film, or remember its title (‘it’s the one about the house – YOU KNOW’).

I could write about all of those things, and more. But today, I’m going to write about his excellent taste in massive, oversized, el cheapo sunnies from South East Asia.

My dad, like all good papas, brings home presents whenever he travels overseas. Along with duty free perfume, that special Jurlique hand cream MamaK and I love, undies from Marks and Spencers/Victoria’s Secret, and fancy tea and chocolates, you can bet your bottom dollar that somewhere in his luggage is a sunnies stash.

There’s nothing subtle about PapaK’s taste in sunnies. He’s a Leo: the only subtle Leos do is the meat axe variety. Any yet, he knows me well enough to pick the outlandish, oversized, embellished, ridiculous glasses that will stir something in my shy, retiring Piscean soul. He knows which shades will make me feel instantly fabulous - like Sophia Loren/Madonna/Farrah Fawcett/Dianna Ross/Jackie O - the moment I slip them on my face.

I’ve got a whole stack of shades on my dressing table, all chosen by PapaK. I wear them every day. And whenever the coffee guy, or the girl at the gym, compliments me on my awesome shades, it gives me great pride to say that:
a) they cost a grand total of $2 in a market somewhere in SEA; and
b) my cool dad chose them for me.

I’m one lucky girl to have a dad as cool as PapaK. Happy Father’s Day dad: thanks for the awesome shades, and for everything else.

The Nativity Story

Last Christmas (I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away…)
Excuse me, Wham! and I share a profound spiritual connection. Anyway, last Christmas, I wrote about how much I love the silly season here on this blog. This year (to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special…) I would like to share with you again my yuletide yearnings.

Christmas, in my family, is the big kahuna of celebrations. And in a family that celebrate exceptionally well and regularly - we end every week with a Sunday night feast - the big celebration really is...big! Maxtreme is probably a closer definition.

To give you an idea, MamaK’s list of Christmas baking (this is just for us, not Christmas gift baking, or Christmas deserts, or Christmas main meals, or Christmas snacks…), consists of the following items:

Shortbread
Cranberry Macarons
Pistachio Macarons
Amaretto Macarons
Almond Pears
Rum balls
Biscotti
Marmalade and Macadamia Cookies
Nigella’s spiced nuts
(This list has been revised downwards from previous years. Believe.)

It has been ever thus in our household, and here begins our nativity story. From my earliest memories of Christmas, we’ve had this nativity set. I don’t know where MamaK got it from, although I believe she’s had it since before she married PapaK, which makes it pretty old.

Anyway, the ceramic figures of Mary and Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds, the angel (my favorite) and Baby Jesus, whose face had been lovingly glued back on after a minor face-separating-from-body mishap, were the most special part of decorating our house at Christmas time. After all the other decorations had been placed carefully, after all the cards were hung on strings around our house, after I’d draped myself in itchy tinsel and admired the effect, the nativity was taken from its special bag at the bottom of the suitcase of Christmas decorations. Carefully, we would unwrap the pastel tissue protecting each piece, tissue as soft and filmy as silk from careful folding and refolding, year after year.

In the Disney version of family:

We’d then gather around, hushed and reverent, as MamaK retold the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, and the birth of the baby in the manger. My two brothers and I would be filled with wonder at the birth of the Christ child, and proceed to sing Silent Night in perfect harmony, as we gazed upon the serene faces of Baby Jesus and Friends.

What actually happened in the real life version of our family:

We’d have an epic, EPIC battle about who got to arrange the nativity. Which would inevitably end in a truly un-Christ-like morass of hair pulling, sulking, screaming and pouting. I don’t know why arranging the nativity, of all things, was the pinnacle of Christmas decorating (see my earlier comments about my tinsel love), but the chief nativitiser was a bitterly sought after position in our pecking order. The losers would inevitably profess that life was so unfair and that they never ever got to do anything they wanted to do, EVER. Poor MamaK’s please for sharing and being nice would fall on six deaf little ears.

Things simmered down a bit as we passed into our teens, although the nativity always occupied pride of place in our Christmas display, and everyone freely expressed their opinions on where it would be best placed. So, it was with much surprise that MamaK and PapaK, over ciders and schnitzels at the Durham (again, celebrating – the cause this time? Because it was Wednesday), announced that their new nativity set had arrived.

What? New Nativity? But what about the old one?? We all cried in perfect harmony.

Well, we don’t need two…the parental sheepishly said.

The thought of Mary and Joseph, wonky Baby Jesus, the shepherds and the wise men and the angel, sitting in the bottom of the Christmas decoration suitcase, ensconced in their silky tissue, unloved and un fought over, was clearly too much for my brothers and I to bear.

Before I could open my mouth with a suggestion, my BigLittleBrother suggested that perhaps, now we were all living in our own places, we could have a shared care arrangement of the nativity set, each of us having custody on a rotating basis. And in refutation of our lifetime-long nativity rivalry, my brothers both suggested that I should have the nativity in this, the first year of its rotation, as I am the eldest.

So, this year, I’m looking forward to having Baby Jesus and the whole motley crew in my apartment, watching over my Christmas. But more importantly, I’m looking forward to wrapping them in their crumpled, soft tissue, and passing them on to my brother and Tessy Halberton next Christmas, to watch over them in their turn. After all, Christmas is all about sharing and being nice. We know this now.

To Be Clichéd…

I wore a cute outfit today. Here’s a picture.

The dress is vintage – I modified the skirt from an a-line to a pencil shape after watching Christina Hendrix’s Joan in Mad Men. The neckline detailing, though, is what makes this dress – that little flash of cream at the neck and sleeves really lifts this frock.

The shoes are my summer-go-to sandals I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

The bag is a favourite Skipping Girl from years ago that Mamma-K and I share.

The jewellery is a mixture of favourite pieces, but I like the way that the round shapes pick up and accentuate the darling fabric-covered button detail from the neckline of the dress.

All in all, a pretty picture, wouldn’t you say?

But, aye, here’s the rub. This isn’t the outfit that I wanted to wear today. It’s valentines day, and I wanted to wear this outfit. Here’s another picture.

The dress was a $20 bargain from DFO, made all the sweeter because I had been eyeing it off at five times as much in the retail store. Notice how from a distance the print looks like polka dots, but, up close, it’s actually love hearts? Blows my mind.

The earrings – adorable – were $3 from Diva. There’s a rather large part of me that enjoys ghetto name jewellery a little too much. Until such time as someone gets me massive earrings with ‘Peggy’ emblazoned in 9 carat, I think these ‘love’s are a workable compromise.

The bag is my daily lug-all, but picks up the red from the dress’s heart print. So, reader, why did I go with the former, rather than the latter, outfit?

It all comes down to expectations and clichés. About conforming to expectations – in my own way as much as possible – and avoiding clichés.

You see, as I was kneading bread yesterday afternoon (I have become a sourdough tragic – but that’s the topic for next week’s blog), it occurred to me that in addition to my usual fieldwork commitments, and, of course, valentine’s day dinner at mine with the Dreamboat, I was due back at Yooni for the semester’s official kick off. I had a departmental seminar to go to, and, like any season’s kick off, everybody was going to be there.

‘Well, Peggy, wear the Love outfit’, I said to myself, ‘It’s not like anyone there will notice, and, if they do, they will surely enjoy the outfit for its campy kitch as much as you do.’

‘But, on the other hand’, I said to myself, ‘What if people pick today to notice outfits? What if they don’t get the campy kitch message that, I believe, this outfit conveys? What if, by its femininity and its cliché young-girl-in-love-on-valentine-day connotations, my special outfit goes from cute and fun to silly and immature? Is that really a semantic risk you want to take?’.

This dilemma kept me occupied until my bread was kneaded. And I came to the conclusion that, sad as it made me to dismiss my Love outfit on this, the most appropriate day of the year for it, I knew that it wouldn’t make me comfortable in the seminar.

Nobody gets dressed in a vacuum. This would be quite difficult on a practical level, from my meagre understanding of physics. When we get dressed, we are participating in a network of cultural symbols and contexts. Furthermore, our bodies, without us being able to do anything about it, also carry symbolic cultural value, via our genders, sizes, ages, and defining features. As much I would like to be able to wear whatever I want to, where I want to, whenever I want to, I’m not able to escape the cultural connotations of my clothing choices, and how they interact with the way that people ‘read’ my body. Perhaps this is more to do with being a cowardly custard on my part – and I accept that I am not a particularly brave person – but I simply can’t bring myself to throw sartorial caution and the opinions of others to the wind. I will always dress for myself, but I also dress for others, and I think, in some way, we all do that.

Although, maybe I could get away with the ghetto fabulous earrings…

Purple Prose for a Purple Jacket

It can strike at the most unexpected times.

Walking home from a late night movie, the stars twinkling in the sky, a cool breeze lifting your hair and leaves crunching underfoot. You see it - in a shop window. That purple velvet blazer-cut jacket you’ve been waiting your entire life for.

You edge closer to the shop window – it’s night-time, the shop is closed. You press your face to the glass to get a closer look at the object of lust. Your breath makes a cloud of condensation on the cold pane of glass.

Days pass. Life conspires to keep you apart – meetings with academic supervisors, classes to attend, work – and you fill the time pining after your love, torturing yourself with thoughts of how it’ll never work. The jacket is too impossibly perfect for the likes of you.

But what if – what if – it did work? You allow yourself – reluctantly at first, but the fantasy gathers its own momentum - to imagine the life that you and the blazer will share. The smart casual functions. The trips overseas. The late night rendezvous. The boots, the bags, the dresses.

You imagine your future together. It is fabulous.

You work up the courage to approach the shop and try on the object of your affections. Your soul is in agony – will it, won’t it, love me back? You take it off the hanger. The moment on consummation approaches. The velvet caresses your fingertips, the shade of purple enticing you. You slip it on.

And that’s when it all goes hopelessly pear shaped.

It slumps around your shoulders. Its buttons are wrong. The sleeves are too short. Its too hot. It makes you look like Austen Powers.

Your castle in the air has been blown apart by hurricane of hideousness. How can something so right, that works so intuitively with your innermost sartorial desires, be so…wrong? Is it me? Is it the jacket? Is it both of us? Is the timing wrong?

You take off the blazer. You put it back on its hanger. Your hand lingers on the velvet, a parting caress, but the magic has gone. You walk out of the shop without a backwards glance, and you banish those evil questions from your mind.

Because there are plenty more jackets in the world, which will repay the love that you expend in equal measure. It’s not this one. But there are plenty of jackets in the world that will love you back – and will worship you exactly as you are. And it’s worth holding out for exactly that.