Thursday 13 April 2017

Thursday

If I conveniently ignore the fact that actually there are several police officers in my workplace around the clock, I was first to work (6.45 am) and last to leave (7 pm) today. I didn't intend to stay anything like so long but there was a hideous problem with the booking system which needed to be fixed because it's creating even more hideous problems in terms of overbookings on future dates. I noticed something was wrong when I was examining what next week's calendar looks like, and I found several places where teachers have been able to book in groups of up to 120 schoolchildren in a single session, when our upper limit is really 75. I believe I managed to get the booking system fixed although we will need to try to honour the bookings that have already been made.

The weeks around Anzac Day have a terrible quality of looming disaster and doom to them. I was so buggered last night when I was packing my bag with clean clothes for work the next day that I forgot to put in any underwear. I had undies on when I rode to work but no bra. When I realised this, standing in the changing room at work at 6:57 AM, holding in one hand the very thin white silk with black spots top I was going to put on, and digging fruitlessly though my locker with the other, I thought my best option would be to hop back on my bike after shops opening time and sneak into town and buy one (I pictured myself charging into David Jones, elbows out like a three-year-old taking part in a mass Easter Egg hunt) but I actually had meetings etc until about 11:30, by which I time I thought there probably wasn't a lot of point to that, somewhat unlike my chest but there you go. I did put on a cardigan when I had to get up from my desk and do things involving facing other people. As I was trying to think through the probable causes of the booking system disaster - this was much more difficult than usual because of the aforementioned exhaustion and also because I had had a lot of coffee and gross Easter chocolate - I slowly became aware of two things: 1) thinking is easier without elastic, lace and wire grabbing you in various odd ways and b) I was absentmindedly squeezing my right breast with my left hand. I suppose this is pretty much what the 1970s were like for most women, if the evidence of Paper Giants etc is anything to go by, which obviously it's not. Don't bother writing in to tell me that. I already know that!!

On the whole I will be very glad when April is over, in a way, although regrettably I think it will also bring the end of the Canning St median strip party season with the end of daylight savings and nice balmy evenings. Thanks to riding home a lot later than usual I did get to bust out the Diane Arbus / Joan Didion combo upon this gathering:



The spokesman said they would offer me a beer but they had already dranked all of it - go them.

Hope you have a good Good Friday, or at least that your good friday is gooder than Jesus's. That's not a particularly high bar.

2 comments:

naomi said...

That's brilliant Laura. I sometimes do that when I am thinking but never thought about it and now I do think about it I wonder (a) if I did that before breastfeeding (b) is it a lady form of ball scratching.

lucy tartan said...

Ha!! I reckon it totally is. And no doubt it makes just as uncomfortable viewing.
Umberto Eco had this idea that the tightness of jeans (ironically, the ne plus ultra of casual-signifying clothing) cuts off the freedom of thought. I've written about that essay before. http://allordinary2.blogspot.com.au/2006/04/reading-and-difference-and-pants.html

I still think he's essentially right, although modern cotton / elastane denims are pretty comfy to wear.

I would like to thank you for not informing me that Paper Giants is not a good guide to women's experience in writerly occupations int he 1970s. I know it must be difficult, especially for a professional historian.