In which I wear a hat to a wedding

Sunday was very hot, with a vile blustery northerly wind that would send a branch of our eucalyptus citriodora crashing down onto the clothes line. But our minds weren't on the weather: rather, a wedding between D and A, a woman from Timor l'Este who's bravely marrying an Australian and moving, mostly, to Australia.

The service was held in a little catholic church in Rosanna. Everything about it was perfect, modest and thoughtful. No grand organ; no grandiose flowers; no strings of bridesmaids in stupid dresses. A handsome dark suit with silvery grey tie; a delicate and sleek white gown with a simple train that could be looped up around A's wrist: a veil that D himself lifted. It was just impossible for any of A's family to be here; and they will hold a second, traditional Timorese wedding with her family in a few weeks time. A's long dark hair was caught up in a simple knot; the veil held by just the right amount of sparkliness to match her necklace.

They had been planning this wedding with the priest for a long time, and he was so discreet, generous and welcoming with the largely non-Catholic congregation: explaining about the responses, and inviting us all to join in, as witnesses to D and A, and as part of our well-wishing to them. They walked slowly down the very short aisle (the church was circular), but I was so struck by the difficulty they had when M invited them to take their seats in front of us. They were both so nervous, and so caught up in the momentousness of everything, and the formality of their ritual clothes, that it took them a long time to turn their bodies into the right position for sitting down; and then to sit down. Not that there was fuss or discomfort; just a sense of ceremonial weight sitting heavily, perhaps especially on A's shoulders.

The Old Testament reading? Rebecca, of course, who leaves her family and homeland to marry Isaac. For the record, yes, I found it hard not to cry as they walked down the aisle, as they took their seats, as they recited their vows. And how lovely: D repeated his vows, phrase by phrase, after the priest. A, who is still learning English, spoke hers softly, but without prompting.

Palpable relief as they left the church to Pachelbel's Canon and headed out into the wind. Storm clouds gathered as we drove to D's house afterwards, and they decided to have the speeches first, before the rain came. D's mother spoke so warmly of A, and her love for her, and her pride in her son. D translated into rapid Tetum for the video cameras, then A read her beautiful warm speech in careful English. It was starting to rain, then, so D thanked us all for coming and they agreed to do the Tetum versions inside.

Everything then gradually transitioned into a casual family-and-friends party in the backyard: D's brother did the roasts and salads; and *his* daughter had made the cake, complemented by an extraordinary pavlova. D and A changed out of their formal clothes; some of the guests who live close by did the same; some of the family were already in shorts. I took off my hat - and shoes, at one point — and Joel removed his tie and braces.

The rain came pouring down, and at one point all the little kids were out it in, happily getting soaked to the skin. One boy stood under the tarpaulin, where the rain was dripping down, utterly mystified by the sensation of rain and water dripping down so luxuriously, holding out his tongue, looking up in wonderment, not really minding at all that a bunch of adults with cameras were taking his photo.

I think A and D are going to be very happy together: but it is not going to be easy. I'm not going to bang on and on about the cultural gaps between their worlds, though they are truly immense. But if their wedding was any indication of the thoughtfulness between them and the loving support of their friends, it augurs well.

New Year, Traditions

Over at In the Middle folks are discussing their New Year's Eve traditions. They seem to involve civilised things like watching the television.

Down here, chez nous, that's for Christmas night, when we invariably and inexplicably watch the dancesport championships and try and predict the verdict of the unseen judges, as to who can do the best samba (from positions of pure ignorance, you understand). A day or two later, it's time to start cleaning up the garden, moving the furniture, shopping for extra glasses, having delightful conversations with the girls at Flowers Flowers on St Georges Road (no website; but thoroughly recommended for unusual and startling flowers and brilliant ideas) and cooking up a storm. We have had a party every year since the millennium, with the exception of 2006 when I was coming to the exhausting end of the radiotherapy, and we just love it. We end up doing odd things, though, like cutting plastic cups in half and using them to float 50 citronella candles in the fishpond (it looked fantastic), and setting bamboo flares alight with a little too much lamp oil. We also wear out our legs and feet and sometimes get a bit exhausted by the scale of things. For Paul it was the number of mangoes he cut up; for Joel, the garden lights that kept getting in a tangle; for me, it was the last three stuffed peaches, the last three cheese profiteroles, and the last three pastry tartlets filled with smoked salmon and dill-flavoured cream cheese. But people bring such good cheer to a New Year's party that it is always a delight. They bring wine; some bring food; and some bring friends and neighbours.

It's not such a late night as it used to be. I can remember Joel sitting up with his grandmother watching television as the new millennium dawned over the Sydney Opera House: singers and musicians calling in the new year with eerie, otherworldly sounds. But it is summer here, and not far from the summer solstice, so New Year's is a lovely time to be outside and up late. And up early, if you have the energy.

We are still cleaning up, though, slowly moving the furniture back into place, soaking the tablecloths in bleach, eating up leftovers, and making sorbet from the left-over fruit...

One of the best things, too, was finding the little vegetable knife Maggie Tomlinson had given me years ago. I thought it had disappeared, but it was just in the back of the cutlery draw. When she gave it to me (a wedding? a birthday?) she pasted a small coin to the card. I didn't know this tradition: that if you give something sharp like a knife or scissors, the coin stops the blade cutting the friendship.

Oh, and if you are reading this blog and wondering why you didn't get an invite to this party, I'm very sorry: we are much better at the food than we are at the invitations. Drop me a hint and I'll do better next (i.e. this) year.

Happy New Year to all.

Mind, Matter, Nature: Paper, Scissors, Rock

On my walk this morning, I came to the spot where I regularly pause, and make a modest obeisance to the goddess, and breathe deeply and in the morning sun visualise any cancer cells being rinsed from my body and passing down the creek. As I approached the spot, I saw there was a little clump of brown mushrooms glistening in the sun.

Oh good! I first thought. Here's a sign that something is working: a kind of energy field I have tapped into, or produced (honestly, I'm not normally one who goes in for this kind of thing, but the radio was full of Jane McGrath and breast cancer and death, so I reckon I'm excused).

But then I thought. Oh no! This clump of mushrooms is almost exactly the same shape as the image of breast cancer cells I had also posted about. Was this an omen of a less positive kind?

But then I thought. Oh good! This means my meditations are working; as the cells have been expelled from my body.

What an elaborate mental game of paper, scissors, rock to play with oneself, reading and re-reading signs from nature in this way.

I also had a dream about Glenn McGrath last night: we were saving some dolphins, or discovering some new ones after another had died. Vague, shifting memory I can't fully recall now. Perhaps also coloured by anxiety about my child, now heading in to the ninth day of a horrible flu.

There's obviously something here about the power of celebrity death to cathect emotion. But I don't have time to process it further: just entering the chaos of the last week before going to England for three and a half weeks.

Garter curtain ties

I'm replying to Highly Eccentric's comment on the previous post in a new post, as I wanted to show some pictures. This is Edward, Prince of Wales, from Bruges' Garter Book of c. 1430, with a much older version of the ties holding the mantle:



And then by Charles I's time, they had become so long (especially on a young man: here he is as Duke of York) they had to be looped up into his sword belt:



At the Restoration, Charles II regularised the Garter "underhabits" with "the old trunkhose" of cloth of silver, which persisted at least until Edward VIII's time (shown here as Prince of Wales, complete with enormous ties):



And yes, you are right that the blue ribbon is worn when the full robes aren't being worn. The image of St George on a ribbon is called "the lesser George", and replaces the big chain, or collar, with the little model of George killing the dragon you can see hanging on William's chest in the previous post. By 1508, it was recognised that this collar was to be worn only on feastdays, and "on the other days the image of St George shall be worn at the end of a little gold chain, or in time of war; sickness or on a long journey, at the end of a silk lace or ribbon." In the early seventeenth century, it became customary to put it over the left shoulder and under the right armpit, "for conveniency of riding or action" in Ashmole's words. You sometimes see this in portraits that emphasise the military accomplishments of the knights.

As ever, I'm indebted to Peter Begent and Hubert Chesshyre's authoritative book, The Most Noble Order of the Garter: 600 Years, published by Spink in 1999, for many of these details.

Dreaming about the Queen

Apparently some enormous percentage of Britons have dreamed about the Queen. I suspect the number is similarly high in Commonwealth countries; and proportionately lower in the US and Europe.

Last night it was my turn. I dreamt of a kind of tournament/sports carnival. OK, that's easy: I'm teaching A Knight's Tale next week; and was also reading about the Eglintoun Tournament of 1843 in Michael Alexander's Medievalism last week. But then I was taken into a seminar room at the back of the grounds, and there were the Queen and Prince Philip. I stumbled over the appropriate forms of address and Her Majesty smiled patiently and said she was looking forward to reading the chapter of my book where I wrote about her opinions of the Order of the Garter. I started to mumble something about the way I thought that insiders were able to make fun of or mock the Order, and she said that sounded interesting. And then I woke up.

Fantastic! A few weeks ago, my mother also showed me the David Campbell poem, "Australian Dream" which has the Queen, Duke and Queen Mother turning up to stay the night.

In fact I have been thinking about the Queen as an example of Bourdieu's "institution-made" subject. She's the pre-eminent case of someone who is completely formed by the institution she serves.

But then, if we are dreaming our books, what does that say about our unconscious?

How to Write a Book

The way books (or theses, for that matter) get written never ceases to amaze me. I'm always intrigued by the different ways my graduate students go about putting words together, and how they strike their own balance between reading, writing and talking about their work.

For me, the most fun part by far is the writing. I'm dreadful at the filing and organising my notes; and often put off the necessary reading, too.

The book I'm writing now is a little like my book on Chaucer, in that it runs from the fourteenth century through to the present, but this time it ranges over much broader cultural fields: literature, ritual practice, costume, religion, historiography, tourism, etc. My shorthand answer to the question "what's your book about?" is to describe is as a cultural history of the Order of the Garter, but it also stems from my interest in how the medieval is figured and re-figured as the point of origin of this more or less continuous form of ritual practice.

I gave my first paper on this topic way back around 2001; and have only just recently locked my chapter structure into place (I've nearly finished drafting the fifth of seven chapters, so there's still a way to go). How am I going to balance the imperatives of chronologies and histories against the thematic threads I want to draw out? I think I have a solution; and am grouping the first three chapters into one section, "Ritual Histories"; and the next four as "Ritual Practices". Neat, eh?

But this struggle has taken place in a part of my brain that has repressed a memory. In the latest edition of Studies in the Age of Chaucer, I've reviewed David Wallace's Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aprha Behn. The title alone will give you an idea of the scope of this book, if you're not a medievalist. If you are, it's certainly come across your horizons. In part, I wrote:

Wallace’s practical method is dizzying, as he moves through what must be an extraordinary archive of filing-cabinets filled with photographs, maps, references and allusions to events, emotions and memories of these six locations across several centuries, and from many different kinds of writing. He lays a rich and fascinating wealth of material before us in this book, as he traces the patterns of remembering and forgetting that influence the cultural histories of place and period.

This is not a narrative strategy without risk, however. Premodern Places is a wonderful and practical exercise in the multiple temporalities invoked by postcolonial criticism, in critiques of periodisation, and especially by scholars working in the fascinating territory between the late medieval and the early modern, a problem neatly solved by the inclusive “premodern” of its title. It is a book preeminently concerned with the shaping power of broad cultural forces, and many will find it an inspiring, even liberating project in uncovering multiple forgotten histories, places and voices. Wallace is interested, after all, in the way literary scholars can sometimes fall silent, and let texts speak “in the past’s own idiom”; indeed, he gives the last word of his book to the pseudonymous poet “Tryphossa”, writing in 1973, in the hybrid language Sranan: “Èn beybi-Jesus krey a fosi: yè-è-è.”

Nevertheless, the book depends on an extraordinary mastery in marshalling and organising its materials. Wallace’s narrative voice is engagingly candid and modest, but the hand of the compilator remains firmly in control. Moreover, the impulse to write of the superego and the id of the Renaissance, for example, to speak so broadly of what history, or cultural history represses, skirts dangerously close to re-instituting the unfashionable grand narratives of modernism and colonialism. Perhaps it is impossible to write this kind of long history without such perspectives. Premodern Places will undoubtedly stand for a long time as a important test-case for this method.

Apart from my propensity to over-use the word "extraordinary" (an early draft had a third usage in these three paragraphs), what strikes me only just now are the obvious similiarities between David's book and what I'm trying to do in mine — though my prospective publisher has indeed suggested I take Premodern Places as a model for a book that might appeal to a somewhat broader audience than a narrow specialist one. This is daunting indeed.

But perhaps the filing cabinet I had in mind when I wrote the review is my own. I have drawers and drawers of Garter stuff: books, articles, pamphlets, photographs, newspaper cuttings, even a drink coaster.

So my questions are ones about mastery. How do we master these vast and complex archives without re-instating master narratives over them? Or perhaps a master narrative is appropriate here? Does the last paragraph of my review speaks more to my own anxieties? And perhaps they are more about my fear that I won't be able to find a grand narrative.

So as I often say to myself, Beckett-like, when writing: "I can't go on. I'll go on."

Excruciatingly Personal Blog Post No.3

The first stage is always the hardest. I'm struggling to climb up a steep hill which is covered in boulders of grey stone. They're loose, and keep tumbling down. Eventually I'm able to get higher, where the ground levels out a bit, where the stones stop sliding, and where tufts of grass start appearing between the rocks. Another effort of will, and I'm further on, where the ground is covered in grass so I can walk barefoot. A month or so later, I look up in surprise one day and see a tree, like a small birch, with leaves of green and silver flickering in the sunshine. Another day I see a little yellow flower like a dandelion; or a small yellow or white butterfly.

I walk along further and come to a little spring of water, flowing swiftly enough for me to sit on the edge and wash my feet. I walk along upstream against its gentle current, a mixture of bathing and walking, until I climb up into a deeper pool. At first this was pretty austere, surrounded by grey stone, but as the months have gone on, the pool is now surrounded by columns of golden stone, intricately carved, and interlaced with shiny green vines and climbing plants, and framing skies of Athenian blue. I swim here, quietly, stretching out, cleansed, in the pure water, fed by another spring.

And then I am summoned. A woman comes for me and I walk with her into a place of sun and light. I look up and feel myself bathed in sparkling light, a crystalline shower of light and water, and feel myself blessed and cleansed by the goddess, who is both invisible, and yet somehow radiant.

I walk on, inside, this time, into a dark hall with large doors that stand open into the sunlight. I find a large recumbent statue — a Buddha, I suppose — with an extraordinary property: I climb into its lap and whatever position I assume there is instantly peaceful. I stay there and sleep, or lie still and watch the motes of dust entering the room down shafts of sunlight.

And this is as far as I have got.

When I was reading my way into the world of breast cancer, I read about meditation as a form of pain management and relaxation. I took to it reluctantly, and still struggle hugely to still my mind enough to stop fretting about all those other things, the boulders that tumble down on me in the first stage. I'm also deeply dependent on my physical surroundings: sunlight and warmth figure hugely in this dream-vision narrative, and so I often need to be sitting outside, feeling the sun on my skin before I can begin.

But the true beginning was actually in the radiotherapy chamber. At the time, just over a year ago now, I wrote about my daily trips to the hospital here and here, but when the technicians had left the room, I would close my eyes and try and visualise the effect of the rays on the cancer cells. Years ago, I read about cancer patients playing Space Invaders with their cancer cells, zapping them into oblivion, fighting the evil invading cells as if they were so many aliens. I never felt comfortable with such military analogies, and so I visualised the machine showering me with health- and life-giving radiance, like a shower of pure water glistening in the sunshine, a shower that would wash me clean, would rinse and wash away the damaged cells.

So now, when I take my walk, I get to a certain point along the creek, and I stand and breathe in and hold my breath, and as I exhale I address any remaining cancer cells. I know which ones they are: the ones that the Tamoxifen has "locked" against oestrogen. So I say to them, "loosen; detach; dissolve", and they do; they slip from their moorings, move into my bloodstream and out at my feet into the waters of the Merri.

When I visualise the waters of the Merri moving down to Dights Falls, to join the Yarra, and out into the bay, I think I am seeing satellite images from Google Maps to help me. When I think about my dream-vision landscape, I think about the bits of Jung I have read. When I visualise moving into a large hall, with the possibility of moving through its doors into the sun again, I think about Joel's video games, the endless chambers and corridors of the Zelda games. When I think about being cleansed and showered with light and radiance by the goddess, I'm embarrassed, but I think about a whole range of conversations with various folk about health and peace and the world of spirit, which is not a world where I have spent much time at all. If I call her Athena, and think of her as goddess of learning, it helps a little to find something - a being - beyond myself, who has only my interests at heart. And indeed, I wrote about my wonderful
surgeon as a figure for Athena, too.

But if this landscape needs those external triggers, it's also a landscape I can take with me. In September last year, I climbed alone to the One Tree lookout over Ormiston Gorge, west of Alice Springs. I reached the top and looked over the other side of the gorge, and saw the rocks and grasses of my visionary landscape. I even poured a libation to Athena from my water bottle into the red sand of the cliff, and watched as steam rose up instantly from the hot rock. This was a week before my first annual mammogram and ultrasound. I then climbed down and swam in the dark waters of the gorge, in afternoon light.

Several weeks ago, too, I drove to Barwon Heads and walked along the beach to Ocean Grove and beyond. After about half an hour I turned back, and walked into the afternoon sun. The tide was out, and the flat smooth beach was covered in sheets and sheets of sparkling water, as shallow waves spread up the beach and receded, washing the beach again and again. Easy, then, to still the mind once more, and be transported into a state where I could sense light and water cleansing me of disease.

I'm encouraged, too, by the sudden appearances of a flower, a butterfly, in my dream-vision (I'm calling it that because that's the term we Chaucerians use: there is something not totally un-House-of-Fame-ish about this sequence of rooms and landscapes). If I concentrate, if I keep going, even if I need the sun on my neck, or the sound and sight of water, I feel there might be more of this landscape to discover.

An abrupt ending. I don't know what the next paragraph is. This was the third of the three difficult and personal posts. And now I don't know what the next post will be. But then, I never do, anyway.

More strange conjunctions: Welcome to Country

Two days ago I was speculating on the uncomfortable yoking together of my work on the Order of the Garter and the prospect of John Howard joining the Order. David put it brilliantly: "two things you've had more-or-less emotion-charged relationships with in separate boxes suddenly tipped into the same compartment."

Today, another odd conjunction. This morning I was down at the State Library, reading John Nichols' edition for the Roxburghe Club of Edward VI's Literary Remains. (Does anyone else familiar with the Roxburghe Club frontispiece think that the man with a forked beard, wearing a floppy cap, and a long, wide-sleeved robe sitting reading looks a lot like Chaucer?)

Soon after he was crowned, Edward, at the tender age of about 14, set about reforming the Order's statutes, to get rid of all traces of "poperie and naughtines" (Ok, that was his first draft), like the references to St George. He insisted on the Sovereign's rights to make changes to the rituals and the Statutes whenever he wanted. His reforms were dramatically overturned when Mary came to the throne and restored the king her father's, Henry VIII's, Statutes.

What a contrast to proceedings in Canberra this morning. The opening of the new Parliament retained its long traditions, but began with a welcome to country for the first time.

It was done quietly, modestly, without undue fanfare. (I'm trying to find a video link to post, but have had no luck yet: if I'm successful, I'll update this entry.)

Quiet music of didgeridoo, sticks, and a shell accompanied Matilda House-Williams' dignified welcome to country, anticipating what we anticipate will be an even more dramatic and difficult piece of "sorry business" tomorrow, when the Parliament will make formal apology to the stolen generations of Aboriginal people. It is amazing, really, that it has taken so long for this ritual, now not uncommon in universities, cultural ceremonies, even the Commonwealth and Olympic games, to be performed in Canberra, but it was wonderful, even so.

Rudd looked moved, almost to tears, I thought (or was that just me? or was he offering up a quiet prayer?) as he sat holding the message stick presented to him by the grandchildren of Matilda House-Williams. He spoke to thank her, and hoped this would inaugurate a new custom for the Parliament, which was greeted by loud applause. Not a bad way to effect institutional change. Brendan Nelson, leader of the opposition, also spoke quietly and modestly, acknowledging human imperfection and agreeing that as long as he had anything to do with it, "we will have a welcome from Nunawal and their ancestors." (Is it churlish to remark that it might have been more graceful to say that they would always ask for a welcome?)

Then it was down to another form of traditional business, as the two houses gathered in their respective chambers; and then the Governor-General sat in the Senate and sent Black Rod off to summon the Reps for a joint sitting.

The Federal Black Rod seems to have dispensed with traditional court dress, perhaps when a woman took over the role? She was wearing a very subtly cut dark suit, with longish flared skirt, not unreminiscent of the shape of a frock-coat, with an elegant aubergine silk jabot. She walked out of the Senate, as straight and tall as the Rod she held upright, and the camera followed her down the deserted halls, corridors and courtyards. Her heels clicked authoritatively on the polished floors. When she arrived at the doors of the lower chamber, she raised the Rod to shoulder height, and held it perfectly level. She then tapped with its lower end on the door, and spoke her request. The doors could not be slammed in her face, as they do in some other Houses, because they are swing doors! Still they closed the doors and made her wait a moment, though, as is customary. But once she had delivered her message, the House then rose and followed her back down the corridors. It is sometimes traditional in Westminster for the lower house to take its time on this walk: there was no such show of autonomy and resistance to royal, or vice-regal command here.

As the members of the lower house came into the Senate and took their seats, I saw Julia Gillard (new Deputy PM), and I thought, she had gone to the wrong side, such was my habitual view. But of course, she now sits on the Government side! She and Rudd could clearly be seen waving happily over at their opponents on the other side of the chamber, and I bet that's an unofficial parliamentary tradition on a change of government. This is only the sixth in sixty years.

At the moment I'm working on the idea of "ritual change" in the Order of the Garter: the way the Order reforms and revises itself, and the way it so easily accommodates radical, even violent change. The official modern view is that the Order is sufficiently flexible and responsive to the demands of modernity that it can accommodate both tradition and innovation; an almost heroic blend of old and new, medieval and modern. This morning's ceremonies in Canberra look like a textbook case. Traditionalists will lament the loss of court dress, white lace, breeches, and marquisite-embuckled shoes, but quite frankly, I don't think a possum-skin cloak ever looked so good.

[Update: Pavlov's Cat has found a link of the first part of the welcome: the video skips a bit and goes back to Skynews, but if you persist, you get to uninterrupted footage:

More weekend rituals

Another weekend of ritual practice.

Saturday was the graduation of my PhD student Larissa, so I joined in the academic procession, via the "robing room" where the mysteries of my academic hood were resolved with a bunch of little gold pins: seems to be much easier to get this to look right if you are wearing a tie. I also had to interrupt my own robing with an undignified dash to the mirror with my hairbrush, since it was a very windy day and I had arrived rather bedraggled and flustered. Still, once I had been pronounced presentable by the protocol office, it was not unpleasant to muster in the cloister, tucking our arms into our robes against the wind, greeting our students as they received their lesson in "doffing", and catching up on a bit of gossip with colleagues. They then marshalled the procession in its careful hierarchies. The BAs and MAs were already in Wilson Hall, but the new PhDs were lined up in alphabetical order on one side of the cloisters, and the academics on the other, in even more scrupulous hierarchy. First the Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Associate Professors, then Professors all ranked according to the date of their promotion: you have to include this information when you register to take part. Then the Deans, Vice-President of Academic Board, the visiting speaker, the Vice-Chancellor, the Esquire Bedell, carrying the Mace, then the Deputy Chancellor. My informant tells me that even the University of Sydney, Melbourne's equal in tradition and formality, doesn't rank its procession in this way.

Other academic bloggers have written about the rituals of graduation, with a mixture of feelings. I must admit I quite like taking part once a year or so; and to my delight, it was also the day when a recent MA graduate and an honours student, now doing an MA with me were also taking out their degrees. It was lovely to see Michelle and Andrew, as well as Larissa and her family, especially her two children born over the course of her candidature, along with her parents and her grandmother. I saw several colleagues who attended the ceremony but did not process. But I think if you are going to go, you may as well dress up in a funny hat and experience the ritual moment.

Our ceremony takes place in a high modernist building, built in the 50s after the gothic splendour of the old Wilson Hall was destroyed by fire in the heat and wind of a hot January afternoon.

My guide says there was considerable debate about the style of the re-building: to rebuild in gothic style and affirm the ceremonial links with the medieval period; or to trust in modern engineering and architectural style. Apparently the cost of building in stone was prohibitive, and so the current building was designed to capture a sense of modernity. Of course it now looks completely dated; perhaps just entering its retro phase now. In fact, it's recently been registered as a Historic Building.



The standard speech of welcome and the accompanying brochure both stress the continuity of our procession, our gowns and hoods with medieval universities, and of course it's true, though it seems very easy for the modern practitioners of this medieval ritual to pick up or set aside this inheritance almost at will.

My second ritual for the weekend was a football game in Geelong. Paul and I had been invited to the Pivotonian Club at Kardinia Park. It's a much smaller ground than the MCG, but their rituals are just as strong. We were in the second ranked club (first is the President's), but the dress code specified tie and jacket, and no denims. As we waited in the car for the rain to stop I saw a number of women heading in wearing high heels and sheer stockings (I admit; this was my dress choice for the graduation, but I couldn't come at it for the footy!). We sat down to a three course lunch with "silver service" and some excellent regional wines from the Bellarine Peninsula, and little place names (one of the very few times I've had to answer graciously to "Stephanie James"). The MC for the lunch was Ian Cover of the Coodabeen Champions, and long-time Geelong supporter; and the guest speaker was -- oh! Rodney Hogg, former fast bowler for Australia, and the rather debonair and stately Rodney who was sitting at our table. After lunch, we all trooped out into the stands to watch the game. There was a glassed-in enclosure where you could watch and be out of the wind, but my table said "you're not really at the footy if you're not outside", and so we sat down at the front of our little area. I have to admit they were brilliant seats. The ground is small, and the stadiums aren't all that high, and our box sat out in such a way that you felt you were really on top of the action. These are not fantastic photos, and this is not a very powerful camera, but you can see how close we were:



That's Nathan Ablett, by the way, No. 45.



We were so close that when the boundary umpire had to put the ball back into play, he was facing us, and I could see the intensity of his expression as he put his head back to take in a deep breath, then bring the ball almost down to his feet before leaping back and sending the ball flying over his head in a perfectly round arc. A few minutes later there was a dispute over his awarding a penalty to Adelaide, and the man in front of me, wearing an immaculate suit and dark glasses, called out distinctly, and loudly, and I swear the words came out of his mouth in capital letters: "YOU ARE A COCKROACH!"

One funny moment, too. Early in the first quarter the Cats put on four or five goals before the Crows had even troubled the scorers. Adelaide tried to buy some time by passing the ball backwards and forwards along the 50 metre line, to the jeers of the extremely partisan crowd. Ian Cover called out, "there's a man out there in Moorabool St", the main road that runs alongside the ground.

At halftime we went back into the clubrooms for afternoon tea: scones with jam and cream; and little meat pies. Because, as several people said to me, "you're not really at the footy if you don't have a pie." Such fun, to be in this dangerously liminal territory: to be in the clubrooms of one of the oldest, most traditional clubs in the league, and to be flirting with the idea of not really being at the footy, of taking part in the ritual, but at the same time, not taking part in the ritual.

My poor old team, the Bombers, having dumped their coach of 27 years, are floundering down in the bottom half of the ladder, and so I'm fast losing interest in the AFL for this year. Still, by the time we got to my parents' place for tea, and to pick up Joel, my neck was completely tense from the concentration of watching the game. I think I need to go to more games, to learn how to relax into them a bit more!

Evensong

Another unaccustomed dark and rainy afternoon in Melbourne. Time to tune in to choral evensong from the Temple Church in London, where my nephew James is a chorister.

This recording will be on the BBC website for just a week. Turn up your speakers and hear the sonorous voice of the Master leading the prayers from Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer (I heard him preach a 15 minute sermon in perfectly phrased sentences and cadences from a single tiny page of a notebook in April), and concluding with a detailed prayer for the Queen. Thrill to the beautiful introit by Thalben-Ball; and marvel at the extraordinary passion and urgency in the singing of Psalm 77 (... "Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?") in the setting by Day; hear the account from Genesis of Jacob wrestling with the angel and naming the place Peniel ("for I have seen God face to face"); marvel all over again at the incorporation of the Song of Solomon into the Divine Service with the anthem by Purcell, "My Beloved Spake". You can also shut the door of your room and sing along with the hymns: "Come Down, O Love Divine" and if you must, the rather unCranmerlike, "God is Working His Purpose Out".

Yes, I know that few of the readers of this blog will be Anglicans. But I reckon there'll be a few like me who are fascinated by this beautiful language and the extraordinary ritual of canticles and sung psalms and responses (even if they don't have a nephew or a grandson in the choir), and by the liturgy. It's hard not to identify with this, for example: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done."

I'm playing it now for the third time....