Month: January 2026

Surely next time it will be different

Throughout the year, there are many jobs I put off until the holidays. My excuses stretch out like the Eyre Highway. ‘Now is not the time, it would take too long, I’m not in the mood,’ excuses ad nauseum. When the holidays arrive, I will miraculously turn into a person of great action and all the jobs that have been screaming for my attention will be completed without much effort. I will also have time to put my feet up and relax.

Every holiday brings with it the resurfacing of The List. I know I didn’t get it done last time, but this time I will. The stars have aligned, my calendar is empty and I am unstoppable. Until I stop. Or fail to get started. I stare at the list and realise it is impossible to get it all done in the time available. I’ll be lucky to get through a tenth of the jobs.

What did I get done in the last five weeks? I read two books, thoroughly cleaned and reorganised the balcony, made inroads into weeding the side of my house, tidied and sorted through the kitchen cupboards and my wardrobe AND finally edited all 172 pages of my memoir. I have visited friends, seen a movie and attended several medical and dental appointments. Did I get everything done I wanted to? Of course not! The list feels just as long as it did before the holidays!

How to solve this conundrum? Either I accept that there will always be a never-ending list, or I break tasks down to make them more manageable during the year. Or some combination of the two. This isn’t going to be some belated New Year’s resolution, but I am flirting with the idea of doing one small task each week to keep the momentum going. It might be putting up those hooks on the front door or sweeping the back courtyard. Nothing monumental. These modest wins will help me feel a little more on top of the tasks and put less pressure on the next set of holidays. Surely next time it will be different.

Love, Without Anaesthetic

Over the past year, I have replaced all my amalgam fillings. My dental visits from now on would consist of a clean and polish. Or so I thought.

I became aware of a rough edge on a back molar. No matter how much I tried to stop my tongue from exploring the area, it always returned to it like a homing pigeon with poor judgement. On closer inspection, I saw it was my favourite filling.

In December 1987, I was living in Berlin. I had met the man who would become my husband in August of that year, just before I was to fly to Germany for a year. We wrote to each other daily on blue aerograms, as thin and brittle as onion skin. Back then, the postal service worked and I received my replies within a week.

Peter was coming to visit! I began to count down the days. He was taking a train from Frankfurt and would arrive at Bahnhof Zoo in the evening. Unfortunately, I had a scheduled appointment with my dentist, Frau Dr Quast that afternoon. When I arrived with my throbbing tooth, I explained that I would be seeing my lover for the first time in months that night.

‘You can’t arrive numb and dribbling!’ she said. ‘How will you kiss him? We’ll do this without anaesthetic. Tell me when you need a break, Ja?’

Frau Dr Quast kept her word. She drilled, took a break, drilled some more, took a break, until she could finally fill the tooth. It was meant to be a temporary solution until I could go back to have it capped. I thanked her for her forethought and gentleness. This was to be my first non-metal filling. Then, as the tooth stopped hurting, I never went back. That temporary filling has lasted 37 years.

Last week, I kept the appointment with my current dentist, Dr Park. That filling needed replacing. I recounted the story of that December afternoon appointment with Frau Dr Quast. He was impressed. ‘That’s the best dentistry story I’ve heard in twenty years,’ he said, ‘but the love filling will have to go.’

The Hurdy Gurdy of Summer

Black Prince Cicada on a wall

The sound of summer in Australia is the ear-splitting drone of cicadas. On a hot day, different species may be heard, each with their unique song. The sound they make with their tymbals creates the characteristic rhythmic drone. On my walk the other morning, the sound reminded me of a hurdy gurdy used in medieval music.

The closer I listened, the more sounds I heard, including a lower rhythmic quack that punctuated the drone. Intrigued, I recorded the sound and headed home to do some research. The quack quack sound belongs to Red Eyed Cicada and the high pitched deafening drone comes from the cicada affectionately known as the Greengrocer.

The common names of cicadas in Australia are often comical. Here are some of the ones I have come across: Double Drummer, Yellow Monday, Floury Baker and Razor Grinder… They sound like nicknames acquired down the pub after a few beers.

Some years ago, I worked at a school where classes were named after a theme. One year, the whole school was named after insects and I chose for our class to be the cicadas. We collected their shells from trees and learnt about their life cycle. Children often brought in cicadas they had found and after studying them, released them in the playground. At the end of the year, each child was to receive an award which I read out aloud at an assembly. I found 25 different cicada names which I assigned to each child with a sentence or two about their personality. Parents laughter echoed in the hall as I read amusing anecdotes I had collected throughout the year. The kid who liked to tap his pencil on his desk became the Double Drummer, the Black Prince was our Star Wars aficionado. I haven’t thought about that for years.

This year we have had a strange summer. It arrived somewhat late and while there are stinking hot days, the temperatures have also plunged into the teens. It is pretty unpredictable at present. I am not a fan of the hot weather and much prefer autumn and winter, especially in Canberra where temperatures plummet to negative numbers. Yet the sound of cicadas cutting through the summer heat, loud and insistent, brings a measure of joy to even the hottest days.

One word to guide me

We had a little laneway gathering just before Christmas where a good many of neighbours came out and mingled, bringing food and drinks for everyone to enjoy. There were people I knew reasonably well but also neighbours I had only seen from a distance. The ones I knew were the dog owners whom I had met at the park or had been introduced to previously.

We blocked off the lane so kids and dogs could run up and down to their heart’s content. When an unexpected downpour threatened to end our gettogether, we simply moved into one of the garages and continued there until the rain stopped. We visited each other’s gardens to see what people had planted and admired some clever renovations. It was a convivial and relaxed celebration of the year we had traversed.

Most of the conversation was small talk, focusing on questions such as how long someone had lived in one of the two streets that abut the lane, and whether there were animals or children in the household. There were pets to adore and babies were passed around that we cooed over. About an hour into the festivities, a neighbour’s son initiated a conversation with me. He asked whether I had chosen a word for 2026. I admitted that I hadn’t thought about it and we continued to chat about a range of subjects. He moved off to talk to other people but I kept coming back to his question and began to wonder whether a single word may not be a better talisman than a new year’s resolution.

I thought about choosing a word for the next few days and realised that I had in fact done something similar in the past. The difference was that I always chose three to five things to focus on and unsurprisingly, I’d forget by February. The only time I remembered was one year when my phrase was ‘Just do it’ and this was ruined for ever when Nike adopted it as their slogan. It doesn’t help to jump up and down and cry ‘I used it first!’

I tossed around quite a few words, synonyms for words, words that focused on intention and words that act as a charm. I remembered a bracelet I was given for Christmas years ago that had the word ‘fearless’ etched on the band. The colleague who gave it to me recognised that I was often acting out of fear and she wanted me to learn fearlessness.

I played around with this word but recognised that it wasn’t quite right for me. It is not so much an absence of fear that I need but the courage to face it. That’s how I came to my word for 2026.

I want to have the courage to speak up for myself and others, the courage to initiate instead of waiting, the courage to say no and the courage to say yes to what I want out of life. One word held lightly, to guide me through the year. Surely, that is enough.