A couple of un-ordinary days

Well, I gave the plumber until 5 minutes after 8 yesterday morning, and then had to bolt to get to my great First Aid Course by 8:30. I raced into the building all hot and sweaty and who should I meet waiting for the lift but Warwick de Jersey (the rector of St Matthias Church), and it turned out that we were doing the same course.

So I wasn’t so late, which was good. It was nice to see a familiar face and we sat up the back like rebels. But you’ll all be pleased to know that St Johns has a policy of girls working with girls and guys with guys, so I didn’t practice CPR or rolling people into the recovery position on him!

The morning went along fine and we all did a “great job” on our CPR assessments and everybody asked “a very good question”. We got a break to head for the nearest coffee mid-morning and then I found myself eating lunch with two girls who work for the Sydney Festival, and an interesting chap who did a spot of shopping on Oxford Street and bought himself some shoes, in a pink bag, then explained to us how he was going to alter them.

After lunch I just wasn’t feeling so fabulous, so during the afternoon tea break I thought I’d race down a level to find the vending machine and get a coke. All I could get out of it was Coke Zero, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind (I wanted sugar with my caffeine!). I opened it outside the course room, because you weren’t supposed to be in there with drinks, threw my head back for a sip (I have never enjoyed trying to drink out of cans!) and the first one started going down with that horrendous pain that sometimes happens when something goes wrong during swallowing (does anybody else ever get this?). I remember leaning on the wall to wait for the moment to pass, and then I woke up slumped at the bottom of the wall with coke all over me, and coke all over the floor and a squashed can nearby. Unbelievable. I mean, what sort of person faints in the middle of a first aid course?! My facebook status yesterday said "Alison Payne fainted in a pool of coke today. In the afternoon tea break of a first aid course. You wouldn't read about it". But you, dear readers, just did.

Warwick kindly hung about till I was back in my chair, while others mopped up the coke and made situational first-aid jokes, and I sat against the wall trying to comprehend it and feeling like a very big idiot. One girl came by and matter-of-factly gave me the name of what she thinks was my problem. She might be right, because of course I did the obligatory google search, and it adds up a few things, but what sort of person would faint in a first aid course then do a google medical self-diagnosis and blog it?

So that was a curious little episode in my day. I came home and ate a few handfuls of sultanas, and then went for a jog, so I think I shall live.

Today we had more complicated and grisly scenarios and did a lot more acting out and then the big theoretical assessment: 20 multiple choice questions. You'd have to be very inattentive not to get the required 80% in that test, but I guess I should wait for my results before I spout such things (and there were a few trick questions, really). All up it was a very instructive two days, and I met some really interesting people - today it was a woman who lives in community and teaches interactive drumming, a long haul flight attendant, a mother married to a fellow who runs a gourmet cheese business ...

You also realise that some seemingly obvious first aid ideas are a long way from helpful. I feel semi-ready to be of some use in the event of disaster now, so long as it's not a mangled person caught in a piece of machinery - somebody else can deal with that. I've just got to find out where the first aid kit actually is in my office.

A first aid course and a plumber

Some time ago, after a visit to the physiotherapist renewed a passing interest in biology, I volunteered to be the person on level four of my workplace that they were looking for to be the new first aid officer. Consequently I now need to spend the next two days on a St John’s Ambulance first aid course. So you never know when I might be of some life-saving use to you.

It is, however, a total bother because I temporarily forgot about this course when I told a plumber last week that I could be home on Monday to let him in. I even brought work home to work on. (My working life is usually so predictable that I don’t need to think about it.) So now I am facing an as-yet-unresolved Monday morning logistics problem, and need to take two large towels with me for I know not what in the next two days.

Literary Calvinism in Marilynne Robinson

I have previously mentioned reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson on this blog, and how much I enjoyed it. I haven't yet read her latest award-winning books Gilead and Home, but they are on my highly anticipated list! So, the other day when I stumbled across this article on the Literary Calvinism of Marilynne Robinson (H/T Justin Taylor), I read it out of interest. It's a good read for those interested in any sort of concept of "faithful writing" in fiction (and has a nice little analysis of a fine piece of writing).

The Great Divorce movie

Apparently CS Lewis's The Great Divorce is being made into a movie. That is going to be interesting. From here:

Beloved Pictures has secured the film rights to C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce." This is from the bestselling author who gave us "The Chronicles of Narnia" series.
...
"The Great Divorce" is an adventure tale about one man's journey from the post-apocalyptic world of Grey Town to the outskirts of heaven.

Beloved has hired director David L. Cunningham ("To End All Wars," "Seeker: The Dark is Rising") to helm.

The cardinal and the darkling thrush

There is a poem I somehow learnt by heart as a teenager, just by realising one day that I could recite it (and still can, to my own amazement - where is that place that things stick?), called The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy. It is also the poem with which I launched Poetry Friday on this blog, way back here.

I have always loved the poem, for what it symbolised to me, and I am fairly sure the poet intended it to be so. Then, I have already mentioned downloading the new Sara Groves CD, and on it is a song that immediately called to mind Hardy’s poem, and is now one of my favourites on the album (maybe Sara read the poem - I won't know till I get the actual CD!). I shall give you the poem, followed by the song, and I don’t think you’ll have to join many dots.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

And the song:

From this one place

I was about to give up and that’s no lie
Cardinal landed outside my window
Threw his head back sang a song
So beautiful it made me cry
Took me back to a childhood tree
Full of birds and dreams

From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else

I don’t know what’s making me so afraid
Tiny cloud over my head
Heavy and grey with a hint of dread
And I don’t like to feel this way
Take me back to a window seat
With clouds beneath my feet

From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else

He just threw back his head and sang a song
It was beautiful

Sara Groves

* The top bird is not a thrush, just a bird in the snow, but the bottom one is a cardinal.

Happy Birthday Eli

My nephew Eli turns 1 today. He is such a smiley little sweetie. Here are fews pictures. He is opening his first birthday present ever in the bottom one, not so long after his first haircut.

Shiny new thing

By the way folks, I did the deed and bought a new computer over the weekend. And I did the bigger deed and bought a Mac - a cutting edge one that's only been out a week (for no other reason than because all the new Macbooks have only been out a week). So I am very cool.

Once you decide you're getting a Mac it's a whole lot easier than deciding between about three million PCs - the choice was paralysing. I may become a Mac person for no other reason.

It seems I have to relearn lots of little things, but I am getting there.