Sarah Wilson

good thing to do #1: stare at yourself as a kid

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I found this photo recently. I’ve just finished making my Dad a coffee-table photo book about his life for his 60th birthday (actually it’s mostly about his six kids because that’s what he took pictures of for most of his life) using Blurb.com. Which is another story. For another day. Anyway, I found this picture … Read more

sunday life: “it’s meant to be”

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This week I contemplate whether it’s all “meant to be”.

Have you noticed everyone is saying this a lot lately?

The sales assistant at Domayne tells me the mattress protector I’m after is the last in stock. “It’s meant to be,” she says, giving me a knowing smile. The only available seats at the Cineplex are for Ugly Truth. Not an ideal conflation of events, but I run into a peer who later sets me up with a sweet speakers gig in the row behind me: “It was meant to be”. Someone’s eaten the last Mint Slice: “It’s not meant to be”, yells Dad from the lounge during a recent visit.

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golf. it’s good. in a lemon plaid kinda way

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Right now I’m on a hobbies rampage. It started when I declared that I like men with hobbies. I had a cup of tea with a guy the other day who just started painting and I was immediately attracted.

A hobby denotes an ability to shut off from what “you’re meant to be doing” and to suspend for a bit doing something out of curiosity. There’s no pat-on-the-back-able purpose to it. It’s just about being with yourself and seeing what comes up. People who take the time and effort to open themselves up to this exploration are wonderful people to be around.

I realised I haven’t had a hobby for a while. Mountain biking was it for years. My adventures up and down hills were a great space for me to explore what made me “me”. Oh, the places I went (I’ve ridden around NZ, Tasmania, Brisbane to Cairns, California, Spain, Vietnam…all on the same saddle; the most reliable, stable thing I’ve probably ever put between my legs…).

24-hour moutainbike race, Canberra
I’m the one in pink. Lap 3 of 24-hour race, Canberra.

But to golf. I had my first lesson today. I think it could be a good hobby.

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good thing noticed #1: flowers with your books

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On Saturday mornings in Ariel bookshop, Oxford St, Sydney, you can buy a little posie of flowers for 3 bucks.  I love this. They wrap them in brown paper for you. It clearly isn’t a profit-making exercise! But the good-will, well, it got me wanting to spread it. The kooky girl behind the counter who … Read more

i now blog. finally.

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I’ve been toying with the idea of a blog for three years. You could say I’m someone who likes to review all my options. And who likes to ensure something isn’t a fad. When email first arrived I was convinced it was a passing thing. Ditto MP3 players. And hyper-colour T-shirts. I was also waiting … Read more

sunday life: in which I commit!!

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This week I learn to commit. With a wedding.

I have a friend who, each week, around Thursday afternoon, sends a perfunctory email suggesting we catch up “some time” over the weekend. I attempt to narrow the parameters: “Sunday brunch?” She’ll then reply, not with a concrete time and place, but again loosely: “Cool. Will buzz you Sun AM.”

Invariably, Sunday comes, she doesn’t call and around lunchtime shoots a text, “Sorry hon, can’t make it. Next week?” And so it goes.

The whole flaccid caper drives me rather mental. Her invite is as flimsy as a philanderer’s promise; she wants options to be available for the weekend, but she won’t damn well commit!

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sunday life: cos it’s cool to be calm

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This week I took wise counsel from a bunch of nice 22-year-old blokes in Ramones T-shirts.

On Friday night I found myself in a down-an-alley-way-up-a-rickety-staircase bar brimful with young men born since the advent of personal email. They wore winkle-pickers and their older sister’s cardigans and drank longnecks of Coopers. It felt like it was 1983; I knew the words to all the songs.

At the expense of sounding creepily like Germaine Greer (remember that weird book The Beautiful Boy in which she infatuates over barely-adult boys?), I’ve been in the company of very young men a lot lately and find them intriguingly charming. (A shout out to their mothers – you’ve done a stellar job.) I also find them curiously relaxed.

This, in spite of the fact they all seem to be juggling a crazy array of blog design start-ups, music piracy operations and 17 Twitter accounts. “Do you ever get stressed?” I asked Mike, a cherubic kid who runs two street art galleries and DJs at weekends. He adjusted his ironically dorky glasses and said, “No, because these days it’s cool to be calm”.

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sunday life: fashion and my fraud complex

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This week I make my philosophical peace with fashion.

If I may, I’d like to indulge in a run-down of my surreal fashion experience this week. It has a life-bettering point, of sorts, toward the end.

So, Wednesday I find myself tricked up with hair extensions and smoky eye, parading down a catwalk with a dozen professional models half my size and age. It was for charity and all terribly Sex and the City, specifically the episode where SJP trips over doing a charity parade in New York. Mercifully, I merely veered off course briefly, to make way for a model charging at me doing that curious “donkey gait” that models do.

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sunday life: my interesting chat with a boxer

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This week I drink chai with a man who used to beat people to a pulp for a living, to see if he knows how to make life better.*

There’s this thing I’ve been doing for a while now. Every fortnight I invite an interesting stranger to share a cup of tea or a wine, so I can learn more about how this mortal coil spins. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. One time it might be an academic I admire. The next a disagreeable blogger I want to understand better, or a work contact I’ve only ever dealt with via email who I keep saying I should actually meet some time. Some time never happens, of course, unless you got off your bum.

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