Things I have done and not done lately

Done: Read a delightful and fascinating David Foster Wallace review/essay (I mean he calls it a review but comethefuckon) of a Dostoevsky biography.

Not done: Read a word of Dostoevsky since limping through Crime and Punishment years and years ago, only realising embarrassingly late in the business that I had sort of totally confused two guys whose names were really really similar and, you know, really really Russian.

Sentences I didn't imagine I'd ever get to say #13

"Yeah I broke the heel of my brogue while hiking a closed trail in Italy."

Things that worry me about the trailer for the new The Great Gatsby film:

1. Basically everything. Oh fuuuuck.

It's a snip

The last time I had my hair cut short short it was a couple of days before I had to have my photo taken for a magazine (tragically the first and last time my face I ever appeared in a woman's glossy and, yes, I believe the world is still in mourning the loss).  This was years ago when I was living in London, still quite fresh out of uni and wondering what the hell I was going to do with an English honours degree and a thesis on the short stories of Philip K Dick. In hindsight this was, perhaps an unwise time in my life to be making bold hair decisions but at the time it felt right. This shoot – and the magazine gig that came with it – would, I felt sure, the start of something and so it seemed appropriate to have a New Kate to present to the world, as if the world actually gave two shits.

As it turned out I was both right and wrong. The gig DID prove to be the start of my journalism career and I’m forever grateful to the mag in question. As for the New Kate Haircut it was... well, okay, so again with the benefit of hindsight I have no idea why I chose to go to the random hairdressing salon whose sole virtue was its proximity to my East Sheen home - about 10 metres from the front door - and absolutely nothing else. I never saw another customer going in or out of that place during the year I lived there. But in fairness to my hairdresser I didn't half mind the cut until I got to the photo shoot and met my hair and make-up lady. Slapping on more make-up than seemed feasibly able to fit on my face and enough mascara to hold up a bridge she didn't say an awful lot until it got to my hair.

"This is... not a good haircut," she said. "It's uneven." And she pulled on different parts of my hair to... I don't know, presumably show me how uneven it was. I said nothing. I was embarrassed. I didn't know what to say except maybe "fuck you, Lady" which didn't occur to me until much later. In case I had missed the salient point she offered me a summary: "You're a pretty girl and this haircut does nothing for you." If she hadn't softened it up with the "pretty girl" bit I might have burst into tears right then. Instead I smiled for the camera, buried the photo deep in a desk drawer somewhere and never cut my hair short again.

Until this weekend when I finally lopped it all off. Tempting fate I thought it would be greeeeat fun to get it cut in Milan, bearing in mind that my Italian vocabulary is limited to asking for a table for two and/or a hot chocolate with cream please and sometimes I can't even handle that much and forget to ask for the cream (repeat after me: "con panna").

I had nothing to worry about, at least not on the language front. My hairdresser, Valentina, was both a peach and spoke extremely good English. More importantly she looked cute and tough, which is exactly the kind of person I want to cut my hair in the hope that a bit of that will rub off on me and somehow translate into my haircut. I told Valentina I didn't really know what I wanted, she assured me that she knew exactly what I wanted, gave me a pretty stellar head massage and we were off. I couldn't understand any of the Italian magazines available for reading, which was a bummer, but I amused myself by watching in the mirror as one handsome dude gave another handsome dude a haircut and, you know, day dreaming just a little bit about said handsome dudes. Valentina did a pretty good job, I think, and I was very happy right up until this bit that happened at the end.


Valentina: How do you want it blow-dried? Straight or wavy?

Me: Hmm, uh, what do you think?

Valentina: I like your natural wave, I think is great.

Me: Okay, that sounds fine.

Valentina: We'll make you look like... Betty Boop!

Me: Uh....

Have you ever seen Betty Boop after she's stuck her finger in an electrical outlet? I have. I saw her in the mirror that day. When Valentina turned me around in the chair to face the mirror (having held my head upside for the past ten minutes so she could blow-dry ten types of crap out of it) I actually laughed, which seems rude now but at the time I thought she can't be serious. This is just Step One in a series of steps to have me looking nice - it has to be. There was no Step Two and she was serious, a point she underlined by saying very sweetly and untruthfully "you look greeeeeat". 


Another person might have asked very nicely, if perhaps my hair could be styled a little less nuts so that I might walk on the streets of Milan without fear of ridicule. A more, confident, functioning member of society might have suggested that the fact my hair felt crispy to the touch may mean she'd applied a smidgen too much hairspray. It will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody who knows me to learn I am not that person. I am a wimp. I am a pussy. I have never even come close to sending back food at a restaurant and I once found a hair on my muffin in one of my favourite cafes. So I smiled, determinedly avoiding my own reflection in the mirror, nodded and said "I really like it" several times in a weird high voice that wasn't entirely mine but felt like it maybe suited the girl in the mirror with her weird high hair and fast-reddening cheeks. Then I paid up, got out of there, put on my Persols and tried to get lost in the Milanese crowds.

Today...

... I saw a woman bring her own spittoon to a wine tasting. I... just... so many questions.

Desire

Forever ago my chum, Johnsy, and I were discussing what we would be prepared to give up at gunpoint: music or books. For me it was easy - much as I would miss music like a bitch, life wouldn't be worth living without books - and for him it was equally easy, albeit the opposite answer. Most of the time I'm a hundred per cent sure I made the right call but sometimes I wonder. Take these lovely lines, some of my favourites, from the wonderful Geoffrey Hill on desire.

"One cannot lose what one has not possessed.

So much for that abrasive gem.

I can lose what I want. I want you."

(Geoffrey Hill)

Beautiful, of course, and still heartbreaking to me, years and years after I first read them. But are they definitely MORE beautiful and MORE heartbreaking than Anna Calvi on the same subject? Tomorrow I'll be back in my corner, willing to back the written word against the one that's sung every time. But tonight I just... can't... decide who said it best.

The Schlecks make it look easy.

The worst part of the bike ride was the realisation that the descents weren't going to be the cruisey parts where I could relax and save my flagging energy: they were going to be the terrifying bits where I held onto my handlebars, ignored the sweat sliding down my back and arms and face and tried not to die.

No, wait, I tell a lie: that first terrifying descent down the hill, on shitty bitumen, my bike vibrating beneath my hands, was probably only the second worst bit - the really worst bit came 33km in.

A bike ride through Tuscany accompanied by a guide to direct us towards some local sites of interest, had sounded like it could be a nice idea. Briefly I pictured an old school bike with a wicker basket on the front, floppy hats for all and a nice plinky soundtrack. Maybe some flower picking would be on the cards. I don't know. It could happen.

Then it came to the day of the ride and despite my delusions expectations I started to get nervous.

"You've told them that I'm completely inexperienced, right?" I asked Andy for about the tenth time.

"I told him you weren't very experienced."

"VERY experienced - that makes it sound like I have ANY experience."

"No, wait, I didn't say 'very'," Andy said rather hastily proving that in life, as on the bike, he can backpedal with the best of them.

I had a reason to care. It wasn't just that I hadn't been on a bike for a good decade (ok minus a trip to Rottnest where the biggest hill I had to get up was that gentle slope that leads to the Basin and is routinely bested by five-year-olds on trikes) it's that I was becoming increasingly concerned my ideas about wicker baskets and floppy hats may be... misplaced and our guide, Marco, was going to expect us to rock up in matching Lycra onesies. I did not own a Lycra onesie.

Before leaving for Italy I'd gone shopping for bike-appropriate shorts, knowing Andy would try to coax me onto one of the fuckers. I like shopping but this trip was not a fun experience because... well, the thing is, I fucking HATE shorts. I think shorts look fucking terrible on almost all women with few exceptions, generally of the long-legged and super lithe variety. Shorts turn sumptuous arses into puffy thrown cushions, perfectly regular, uh, front-bottoms into camel toe nightmares and make the owners of already stumpy legs look like front-running candidates for the Mayor of Stumpington. Even when women look good in shorts - and I see them every now and again, I really do - I feel like they look good DESPITE the shorts not BECAUSE OF the shorts. Nor did it help that the two options available in the shops when I was looking fell into one of two categories: 1) Shorts anyone can wear if they don't mind looking like their Mum does while weeding the garden, and 2) Shorts that will suit a long-legged 18-year-old who believes a half-glimpsed vagina makes the best fashion accessory.

I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't buy shorts and thus really had no cycle appropriate clothes. What I had was a pair of black leggings that - much as I'm really not onboard the whole leggings thing either (and GOD when did I become so crotchety about What The Kids Are Wearing Today?) - I figured I could pop on under one of my many wee dresses to avoid displaying the Good China to passerbys. Do I even need to mention that I also didn't have a pair of sneakers with me? No? Good. Because I know you, reader, agree with me that a simple black brogue is the perfect cycling shoe.

That was all before I got on the bike and realised that I should have worried less about my kinda ridiculous outfit and more about these kinda ridiculous hills. Watching riders do descents in the Tour de France has always terrified me because they're going SO GODDAMN FAST but at least I figure they, unlike me, know what they're doing. You know what else terrified me? Marco's advice to me before we set off, which went something like: "When you go downhill don't brake on the corners because that is the dangerous time to brake and your bike-" Here he abandoned words to use a hand gesture that I assumed was intended to signify my bike sliding sideways, sending me and it down a ravine to certain death. I nodded politely, wishing he'd mentioned this before I'd put on my helmet and straddled the bike. The upshot was that, too terrified to brake, on our very first (and, as it turned out, the steepest) descent I was all over the road, trying to avoid pedestrians (oh yeah there were pedestrians) and not even trying to stay out of the way of potentially oncoming cars because staying out of the middle of the road was not an option if I wanted to stay on the road at all. At one point Marco materialised beside me but the only words I could understand were: "slow down".

Things improved, of course they did. My best move was ignoring Marco's advice and braking like a motherfucker more or less the whole way down all subsequent hills, which cramped my hands into weird claws for awhile there but also slowed me down just enough so I could steer/stay on the road/avoid cars/stay alive. And because the scenery really was very very picturesque the flats parts of the ride were rather enjoyable. Of the ascents, the worst of which I survived only by putting my bike on the very lowest of low gears, I shall not speak.

Then came the actual worst bit, a little after our bike computers ticked over the 30km mark. I was feeling pretty good. Before we'd set out Andy had asked Marco how far the ride would be and I remembered his answer: 33km. At the time it sounded like a long way. Now, just 3km from our destination, I was stoked. I'd survived! I didn't even feel that bad. I mean, yeah, my arse hurt rather a lot, my hands were cramped and a river of sweat was snaking down my back but I had survived without getting off my bike or bursting into tears. Soon enough we hit the 33km mark and stopped at a little cafe near some picturesque hot springs where locals came to bathe.

It was then, quaffing down a croissant and waiting for my face to turn back to its normal colour, that I realised the obvious: we were not back where we had started from. Marco's words before we set off hadn't meant that the entire ride was 33km: he'd meant our destination - the hot springs - was 33km away. We still had to make it home. Shaky on my feet I brushed the croissant crumbs from my mouth and quietly expressed my concerns: it wasn't going to be another 33km ride home... was it? Marco was quick to hose down my fears in his reassuring Italian way: no, no, of course it wouldn't be another 33km, it was more like... well let's say 27km.

I neither broke down and wept nor gnashed my teeth but Andy saw my face and sensed all was not well in my world.

I won't go on to describe the ride home and the many times I wished for death, nor Andy's cunning plan, bless him, that saw me avoid climbing the last brutal hill which, I'm moderately sure, may actually have killed me or at least resulted in a very unpleasant and immature extended crying jag by the side of the road. All I will say is this: I rode 53km without shedding any visible tears, giving up or screaming obscenities and this feat is only partly diminished by the fact that I literally spent the rest of the day tucked up in bed, having consumed a giant Nutella crepe. The crepe was delicious and I will likely never ride again.

Me... want

French brainbox Andre Breton said of love: "All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name."

I think it's fair to say this is exactly the thing he could not name.

People I have met and loved in Italy

The waitress at the Montepulciano wine bar we went to several nights ago who, this evening, drove out to our B&B (a good, I don't know, 15 minute drive to the middle of nowhere) to return my beautiful Persols, which I had left behind on the table. Impressive.

People I have met and hated in Italy

The woman at one of the Montepulciano-adjacent wineries we went to today. It was not that she wasn't nice (she was), polite (fine) and interesting (sure). It was the fact that she moved to Italy three years ago to write a book and is having said book published in the summer. Therefore, clearly, my hatred is fuelled solely by bone-crushing envy and it goes without saying that I barely CHOKED out my insincere "I'll look out for your bo-ok!" goodbye. If she hadn't been a sincerely unattractive woman (sorry, lady) I would seriously be considering Single White Femaling her arse.

Things I have learned in Italy: How to be zen in the face of road terrors

This will likely surprise absolutely nobody who has had me as a (perpetually nervous) passenger in his or her car but I am a terrible passenger. I worry about whether the driver has seen that cyclist up ahead. I fret that the driver seems too preoccupied with changing CDs to notice the car up ahead that is about to attempt an ill-advised u-turn. I eye the speedo and decry the existence of this "parallax error" my Dad keeps trying to tell me about.

I trace my backseat driver wussiness way back to when I was a very little kid and my Mum rolled our Toyota en route to swimming lessons. It wasn't Mum's fault and it all happened so quickly that Dad probably got the biggest scare (by a freakish coincidence the van rolled right outside my parents' doctors surgery, where Dad was sitting in the front room with a patient) but it scared ten types of shit out of me and for months after I couldn't be driven anywhere without asking Mum or Dad to "please slow down" approximately every two minutes.

So faced with the prospect of being driven around Italy for nearly a month (there's some confusion about whether I'm listed as a driver under the insurance so, to date, I've not got behind the wheel although this may actually be because Partner Andy thinks I'm a terrible driver doomed to kill us both) should leave me in a state of unrelenting terror. Well... it has and it hasn't. Because the thing is that Italian drivers are nuts. Yes, all the stereotypes are true. I mean: what the FUCK Italy? Indicators? You have them. Staying in your lane? Look into it. Also, the weird intersections where all the traffic lights are flashing orange and everybody is just going all over the place? I genuinely don't know if it's just the lights indicating (as they would at home in Australia) that they're out of order or if that's just a thing that Italy does sometimes. Because the latter seems very very possible.

In the face of all this madness, and a handful of rather long drives, it's useless to remain hypervigilant and try to point out to the driver that the car coming towards you is in the wrong lane, doesn't have his lights on and may or may not be driven by a 12-year-old child with a dog on his lap. At a certain point all one can do is sit quietly in the seat, turn one's head to admire the beautiful rolling hills and thank fuck for a day's worth of wine tastings, which have put you into a near coma so that, should death come at a particularly hazardous intersection, at the least you'll go peacefully.

Savage by name

I'm on holidays for most of this month so my posting is likely to be a bit stop-starty because I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read me wanking on about how lovely Montepulciano is this time of year. Instead, to say thanks for stopping by allow me to direct you towards Dan Savage's latest column, if only for this truly terrific phrase which I intend to drop into as many conversations as is humanely possible. Which, realistically, is probably zero:

What you're doing is handing me a dog with a bloody, torn-up ass and saying, "Hey, Dan, I totally screwed the pooch. Unscrew it for me, wouldya?

See? Charming. You can read the rest here.

Signs I am getting old.

1. These slippers look genuinely more awesome than any of the heels I've seen in shops lately. (Photo obviously not mine but courtesy of The (wonderful) Sartorialist).

2. I'm finally come around to the fact that I would rather buy a handful of pairs of semi-expensive stockings than the cheap shitty one because my LORD do they ever last longer. Also they just feel better and, you know, my legs have been good to me and they deserve it damnit.

3. It's a little after 9pm, I'm on holidays and I'm curled up in my giant bed awaiting room service. Tie me doooown.

Things that scare me about my super posh hotel

1. There is a library. Not like a room where everyone dumps his or her battered Jodi Picoult novels but a proper library with books I am too scared to take down off the shelf. I'm not even sure you're ALLOWED to take them off the shelf. Look, there are a pair of Chesterfields in there - you know what I'm talking about.

2. On the walk from the car to our room I passed maybe seven employees and, mysteriously, no other guests.

3. One wall is a mirror that is also a television and a computer. Needless to say I cannot, for my life, figure out how to control the fucker.

4. I just ate five euros worth of nuts without realising it. They were on my bedside table! The wee jar was so little! They were kinda tasty!

To the Douchebags who stole my car

1. Thanks for not crashing it... I guess. You could have fucked shit up in the Yaris so I guess I'm grateful for the fact the only damage is a bit of weird scuffing on the back bumper I assume you incurred running over old ladies for kicks.

2. Thanks also for spilling an INSANE amount of crisp crumbs throughout the back seats. I mean, really? You had to really make sure those crumbs have made their way into every conceivable crevice? You couldn't have just... EATEN the fucking chips? Oh, that's not how they do things in Gosnells?

3. Thanks also for making sure you smashed up the beautiful china tiered tray that I had (stupidly) left in the backseat after using it for a party. I mean, you probably had to go out of your way to really smash that up so good work, guys, hope you're feeling good about that. Real classy fucking move.

4. Look, I COULD explain why there was a pair of knickers in my glove box but... I won't. Yeah I hope it's fucking EATING YOU UP INSIDE wondering what a pair of bonds briefs was doing in there along with the car manual and my spare pair of sunnies.

5. You are a blight on society and I hope one day I get to, I don't know, cut you off in traffic or bump you really rudely in the street and not apologise. Hey, maybe I'll even get to the bar at a pub after you and not tell the barman you were there first when he tries to take my order. That's right: I WILL SAY GOOD DAY TO YOU SIRS.

Dear Roman Girls

Please, PLEASE stop rocking those amazingly cute bob hairstyles AND that whole thing with the short skirts and the Dunlop Volley-style sneakers. You're killing me. Not only do you look super cute and make me jealous but you're starting to delude me into thinking that I too could pull of said look. Which I could not. That is all.

The Limitations of Books

Things The Talented Mr Ripley Taught Me About Positano

1. How to hire a boat.
2. How to kill a man on said boat, assume his identity and get away with it.


Things The Talented Mr Ripley Did Not Teach Me About Positano

1. Whether it is possible to have large quantities of food delivered to my frankly amazing balcony so I never have to leave it.
2. Whether any of these precarious cliff-side buildings have ever just fallen off into the sea.
3. How to rearrange my life so I can move here and never leave.

Avenge THIS (no I don't know what I meant by that)

You know how people in emotionally or physically abusive relationships can get so fucked up that they wind up thinking they're the one with the problem, even as their Significant Other uses his or her chest as an ashtray? Yeah that's basically how I feel about The Avengers. I mean, I love a good superhero movie and I have a deep and abiding love for Joss Whedon but this movie... left me cold. I was bored. BORED. Which is, to my mind, the one thing you shouldn't be while watching a rompy action film. And yet the positive, glowing reviews keep coming and each day I ask myself again: am I the one with the problem?

It really sucks that

My Uncle Jack has to die and yet so many useless pricks get to live on. I know this is kind of an obvious, fundamental life truth most people grasp at the age of about 10 but STILL.

Question

Are Roman boys actually super cute from birth or is it just that they know how to dress and they're not afraid to spend time on their hair?