Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Wax That Melts Our Wings

I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.

The Wax That Melts Our Wings
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise

Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.

The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
Love Me Tender

Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle. 

"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked. 

"What?"

"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."

Love Me Tender

2012

Back Down The Rabbit Hole

It has taken being at 'home' here in Tasmania for a few days - and it has been a very brief visit - to truly make me realise something.

The people that I most like - well, love really - in my life are all as weird as hell.

It's ace.

I have written in the past about embracing your own personal peculiarity, but I don't think I have ever said how much I appreciate, and am grateful for, the weird and wonderful ways of my friends.

The eccentric and the elusively ironic are far more interesting than the straightforward. And they are not any the less steadfast or true; they just don't often show their smooshy or sentimental side publicly, but keep the private, private - with an occasional leak in the dam wall admittedly in my case!

The thing is, it is usually those who are a little off centre who have the most creative and fertile minds. Who have the wicked sense of humour. The Machiavellian mastery of the written and spoken word. The crystal clear clarity of Top A on a violin.

I wish I could count myself in this kind of exalted company, but I am just odd. Thankfully they let me lurk on the sidelines and clap like a monkey.

Did I mention kindness goes with weird?

And my goodness, if 2012 taught us anything, it was that the old saw of 'being mad to work here isn't compulsory... but it certainly helps' is pretty much on the money, if we just change the wording a little.

Being mad on Planet Earth isn't compulsory... but I am grateful that I am.

Because it definitely helps.

And it makes this a lot more fun.

With added fun. And sparkles!