Back from the Brink

For the last four months or so I’ve been going slowly downhill. Not surprisingly my blog has reflected a growing distance from self. Sometimes it is impossible to write about something when you are in the midst of it, because you actually lose sight of what is happening.

Insight is a strange beast. When it comes to my evaluation of my own illness compared with those of other sufferers, it seems everyone else is genuinely suffering but me. I’m not mentally ill at times like this, just a mass of self-loathing surrounding a collapsed ego. There is no me left to say ‘Don’t worry – you’re just having an attack of whatever it is’.

And when I emerge into the light, and find that self again, the eternal self that hid from me, I wish I could provide a magic thread from that knowledge to the collapsed me so that the collapsed me would always know that the real self would emerge sooner or later.

I still don’t know if this latest outbreak is caused by OCD alone or from low-level OCD with, say, GAD and depression thrown in. But who cares? It’s my unique version of room 101 and my psyche cannot seem to let me off the hook.

Now that the antidepressants are kicking in, I look back and realise that I have been playing around with them almost from the very beginning. Still in thrall to the idea that they would harm both my short-term functioning and the long-term ability off my synapses to fire up. All I know now is that without drugs my brain is not a nice place to be any more. It’s a murky, guilt-wracked quagmire of morbid fears and misplaced connections. I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy to live there, let alone me.

With drugs, in contrast, my brain is like one of those characters in a 1950s Alfred Hitchcock movie - you know how in those movies everybody, even the extras, is so controlled as to seem to be obeying some invisible, internalised authority? Clip-clopping along in their hats and trench coats to whatever official or unofficial desk or meeting they're due at next. Even the crims - especially the crims - seem obsessively organised in Hitchcock movies.

I have a lot of vague hope right now – hope in my brain’s ability to renew itself, partly through chemical means but also through natural means – physical exercise, emotional support and perhaps some kind of mental exercise.

I picture a profound healing medium. It is an electric liquid, inkily reflective yet not wet – when you immerse yourself in it, it parts like a curtain. It is thick and dark but also ice-clear, not murky. A substance not of this earth but constituting it. A mysterious medium that renews and reawakens the essential self. Perhaps picturing this in my brain is helping me to move towards whatever healing the world might be able to bring.

If you enjoyed this blog entry, you might also like New and Improved Version? Or Slightly Nutty Does Drugs and Tiny Steps up the Mountain: Exposure and Social Phobia Recovery.

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Facing Machiavelli: Nicole Kidman’s Botox-Flavoured Success

I’m currently at the tail end of a mild obsession with Nicole Kidman. It started when I watched a DVD of The Hours and realised that there were moments in that film when she transcended Nicole Kidman-ness and became a serious actress.

And even times when it was possible to admit that not only did she successfully portray a fictional neurotic, English writing genius resembling Virginia Woolf but that it was fair to say she successfully portrayed Virginia Woolf herself, despite the double insult of her wildly unsuitable physical appearance and ridiculous fake nose.

If someone in the public sphere attracts your attention it may be because they portray a characteristic you've not developed fully. When it comes to Nicole Kidman, I have no trouble working out what it is – her untroubled, lighter-than-air Machiavellianism. This basic human trait (well, primate trait actually) is something I’ve always struggled with.

It also interests me because the sister just below me, I’ll call her Frances, has always had a very healthy Machiavellianism – perhaps even a bit too developed. And I hated her for it. I thought she was outrageous and I fought her bid for status and attention every step of the way. I have no doubt that my hostility, from the time she was only about two, strengthened that Machiavellianism, hardened it in her and made her see life as a fight to survive in the world.

I wonder whether my own Machiavellianism is somehow stuck at this early stage. Even now competition for me always has a pathological aspect. There is a bitchy, childish side to my dealings with the world that sees success as a zero sum game – I’m still working on the template of: if I win, Frances loses; if Frances wins, I lose. What about cooperation in an environment in which it’s safe to reveal you own skills? Other people seem to be able to do this effortlessly, yet it’s a mystery to me.

It’s not that I was devoid of Machiavellianism in the wider world; at school my social phobia meant that I was ultra-conscious of social hierarchy. I was just incapable of using this knowledge to advance my cause, my life, myself; indeed I used this knowledge against myself: I was low on the social hierarchy at school, therefore counted myself as lower in value. There is such a thing as good, healthy Machiavellianism. This is what I find so intriguing about Kidman: is her Machiavellianism pathological or not?

My sister actually looks a bit like Nicole Kidman. I watch Kidman in scenes with the great actors of ‘our day’ – Jude Law, Shirley MacLaine, Miranda Richardson – and wonder: how does she dare? (How come my sister is so different from me? How come she is, partly due to my early influence, Machiavellian to a fault?)

When I started researching this topic, what I discovered surprised me. Machiavellianism is almost always portrayed as a negative thing, a pathology. Wikipedia reports that it’s now lumped in with narcissism and psychopathy as part of a Dark Triad, with researchers claiming that there is significant overlap between these traits; some psychologists believe it to be a subclinical version of psychopathy. Yet interestingly it's never been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Does this suggest some ambivalence about it on the the part of researchers?

This illustrates what bugs me about the way psychiatrists look at personality. With a focus on pathology, they don't seem interested in character for its own sake. Yes, they talk about 'subclinical' and bicker over what that means. But surely a characteristic such as Machiavellianism is fine within a constellation and only a problem when it gets out of hand? And perhaps insufficient amounts of it could also be a clinical problem? A lack of Machiavellianism – taking everything at face value – could be the very definition of unworldliness. Perhaps mental health researchers need to start concentrating on the factors enabling societies to grow balanced human beings with the right proportion of each characteristic.

Defining Machiavellianism

But what is Machiavellianism anyway? Wikipedia defines it as 'a duplicitous interpersonal style associated with cynical beliefs and pragmatic morality'. I’ve always had a more benign view, assuming it was simply the human desire to advance your chosen interests, combined with the social skills needed to assess the environment you’re in and to use it to advance those interests. That usually means being part of a group, and using the group to get ahead. Even at a non-pathological level, Machiavellian motives have the potential be in conflict with the interests of the larger group.

That all sounds calculating and negative, makes Machiavellianism seem an unpleasant fact of life; perhaps it also demonstrates the gap between the way the world operates and the way we would like it to. Many workplaces are seething hotbeds of the overambitious; the more unequal society gets and the more tears in the welfare net, the rifer Machiavellianism will probably become.

But Machiavellianism is clearly necessary for the complex social groups primates form, and the advances we have made as humans. And we label people who don’t have this ability as having Aspergers, and all too often we let them know in no uncertain terms that they don’t belong.

Machiavellianism is not the same as personal ambition. Someone could have a great deal of ambition, a great desire for success, and be hopeless at using social groups and people to advance those ambitions, or just be average at it.

But nor is it necessarily always about self-interest. If it involves a knowledge of how power works, much depends on what you do with that knowledge, and whose interests you try to advance in using it. Bob Brown, former much-revered leader of the Australian Greens, was and is Machiavellian down to his last pore, but not in a venal way. He wasn’t interested in accumulating money or power. Instead, he cleverly used the structures of power – parliament in this case – to advance the interests of a larger group: his fellow Australians and indeed all the future citizens of planet Earth. Not only that, but he tried to use his position not to consolidate his own power, but to share power around more freely – to make Australia more democratic. So simply a knowledge of how groups work and using that knowledge to advance your cause doesn’t make Machiavellianism pathological.

Perhaps we have to distinguish between the Machiavellianism of a Bob Brown and that of the average, self-interested person who wants their share of power and wealth – let’s call this self-interested Machiavellianism. Even here, it isn’t easily divisible from a healthy interest in one's own welfare and that of one's family. At what stage does Machiavellianism, whether self-interested or not, descend into evil rubbing of palms together and a sinister cackle? At what stage does the calculating type become the stereotypical villain? 

Perhaps this depends on what exactly you’re willing to do with your knowledge of power structures to advance your cause. Are you willing to manipulate others? Pit people against each other? Sabotage their careers? Lie about them? This is clearly Machiavellian behaviour at the unhealthy level, regardless of whether your motives are selfish or selfless. Perhaps a healthy institution is one in which an individual's ability to succeed depends on their ambition, hard work and talent more than it does on their degree of Machiavellianism, whether healthy or unhealthy.

Bob Brown’s version means that his own personal ambitions are not easily separable from those of the larger human group; he positions himself and his struggle as part of the struggle of humanity for a better world. But self-interested Machiavellianism, however seemingly benign and non-pathological, always has the potential to be in conflict with the needs of the larger group.

Botox and self-interest

This leads me back to Nicole Kidman. She is obviously ambitious – nothing wrong with that. She has worked very hard and taken carefully calculated steps to build her career. She has done so to the extent that if you think of her mainly as mediocre, as I do (not in lighter roles – she is perfect for light comedy), her success has prevented much better actresses from playing the fascinating gamut of characters she has portrayed. Who knows what Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton or even Cate Blanchett might have done with some of her juicier roles?

This is not something peculiar to her of course. Gwyneth Paltrow did the same thing for many years. Remember her in Sylvia?

Despite her very public breakup with Tom Cruise, Kidman has always struck me as someone who, when compared with a lot of other celebrities of similar prominence, had a high degree of psychological health. Her father is a psychologist, her mother a teacher; the family are close, and Kidman talks about her parents and sister with great warmth. She has never appeared to have a serious drug problem, made inappropriate remarks, or fallen into the traps of celebrity, except in one area – her use of Botox and other ‘fillers’.

And this is part of the question that exercises me – given her apparent psychological health, why has Kidman been willing to distort her face to the extent that she is now the butt of unpleasant YouTube videos? Her balanced personality sits at odds with this extreme.

My answer: Kidman's obsession with Botox isn't the result of some deep-seated childhood emotional deprivation. She's simply Machiavellian enough to know that in a toxic industry that rewards youth and cookie-cutter Barbie Doll beauty, her career will benefit from the regular application of Clostridiuim botulinum. And this canniness has paid off: at 44, she landed the role of Grace Kelly in the forthcoming film Grace of Monaco, directed by Olivier Dahan, a role every female actress in Hollywood was surely drooling over.

I say this not to denigrate her but to acknowledge that Machiavellianism is the ability to judge the particular environment in which one finds oneself and to work out how to succeed within it. That Kidman has judged her level of Botoxification necessary demonstrates that her healthy Machiavellianism is at the upper end of the scale; but also perhaps that the environment she is working in is toxic for women.

Now, bear with, as Miranda would say; this is where things get interesting. As I’ve said earlier, self-interested Machiavellianism is usually in tension with the broader interests of the group. While our toxic societies tend to reward unhealthy Machiavellianism, in our public discussions we applaud those who put the interests of the group ahead of their individual advancement. Not everyone has to make this choice of course, but sometimes a clear choice has to be made. And Kidman, while seeking her own career advancement, is a tiny bit responsible, along with the other legions of the facially adjusted, for making it difficult for women as a whole, and female actresses in particular, to succeed without taking a syringe to their faces.

So, while her Machiavellianism is not pathological in itself, the decisions she has made to appease it are the result of her immersion in a toxic environment. If we still insist on seeing Kidman as part of a community, part of a society, she has failed us. Not only by making an ironed face the norm, but by providing a poor example to the millions of young women who consume Hollywood gossip. Stars are role models, whether they choose to be or not; Kidman has put her career above this consideration.

This is not to say she makes decisions any different from a number of stars. Kate Moss posed topless in a blonde wig for the December 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, in photos accompanying a long  article exploring her career longevity; now that we're saturated in porn culture, it's simply what you do to stay ahead if you're a supermodel. In 1994, Kylie Minogue went raunchy in the video clip for her single 'Confide in me', and stripped naked for the follow-up single, 'Put yourself in my place' (below, looking uncannily Kidmanesque). Unfortunate choices, but plenty of men would have done the same if facing the same constraints; women are no more Machiavellian than men, we just make choices within more difficult circumstances.

Yet these are choices, albeit made in misogynist environments. I don't want to give the impression that you need to do bizarre and antisocial things to succeed in life. Some people are strong and talented enough to carve out their own niches simply by being very, very good at what they do. Australian comedian Magda Szubanski has had a self-admitted weight problem since the year dot, yet through sheer talent, and probably a healthy dose of Machiavellianism in other areas of her life, this aspect is part of the charm she brings to her most memorable characters.

So why was Kidman so damn good in parts of The Hours, I hear you ask? Ha! That's another story and another blog entry.

And, no, my sister Frances doesn’t use Botox – as far as I know.

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Relishing Life's Teachable Moments

In a community building in a buzzing city laneway resides the University of the Third Age, where retired academics and teachers volunteer their skills in a variety of courses and the cost is nominal. If you’re over fifty you can immerse yourself in Renaissance Italy, discover the differences between Left, Right and Centre, or learn how to unleash your buried creativity. Two members of a personal growth group I attend, both in their seventies, are learning meditation there.

Is it a symptom of getting older that you start to look at all your relationships and your life itself as somehow involved with teaching? Perhaps, rather than being happy and having a family, the main purpose of life is simply to teach and to learn; we’re all moving between the roles of teacher and learner throughout our lives.

I come from a family of teachers. My father and two of his brothers are teachers, and two of my sisters are. One of those uncles married a teacher. Three cousins on my dad’s side of the family are either current or past teachers. Another sister - well, you you get the picture. My mother wanted to be a primary teacher before she met my father, but she married him instead.

My dad as I grew up was always in teacher mode, always instructing, always giving advice. I was determined not to follow in his footsteps, to forge my own path in life. Yet, not only have I ended up being a bit bossy and teacherly myself, but somehow I’ve found myself editing web-based resources for teachers.  I've also done a bit of English tutoring over the years.

One of my sisters, a former childcare manager, talks jokingly about ‘teachable moments’ for her children – times when opportunities arise to impart a little wisdom.

Teachable moments are not confined to parents and children. In my twenties I learned important things from housemates: which spices to grind for a superlative pumpkin curry; how to marinate tofu; how to arrange items on a clothes airer so they dry quickly in winter; the importance of tipping out the water after using an iron. Some skills were taught directly, some picked up by osmosis. Tanya, with whom I shared an enormous old-style St Kilda apartment in the late eighties, had a great sense of retro fashion style, a little of which rubbed off on me.

I’ve also been incredibly lucky in the mentors that have turned up in my life at exactly the right time, either role modelling what I needed to learn or teaching me directly. In my case they were mostly informal, or had another role, such as boss or coworker. Without them I wouldn’t have had any career success at all.

One of my many housemates also played the role of informal mentor. Mem was completing a Masters degree, something I’d wanted to do for a long time but felt I couldn’t achieve; seeing her day after day patiently cogitating at her desk in the neat little room across the hallway, dressed in her Japanese housecoat, must have had its effects because I finally managed to complete my Masters in 1998, six years after I’d moved out of the tiny half-house in Richmond that we shared for two years.

I continue to learn from my friends, and they from me. Simon, a telecommunications engineer, occasionally sends me short pieces of text to edit from the website he’s developing. Meanwhile he instructs me on anything to do with the mysterious workings of mobile phones and email, buying a new notebook PC, and improving the sound and picture on my telly. And we both learn from the heated political discussions we hold on the phone so frequently; some views of mine are really an amalgam of the ideas of both of us.

Another friend of mine is extremely knowledgeable about exposure therapy, a treatment for anxiety disorders that involves gradually exposing the patient to the feared object or situation. He has helped me see the emotional and social hiccups of life not as embarrassing disasters but as part of the mental toughening-up process that exposure is all about. (I don’t mean toughening-up in the sense of repressing feelings, but in the sense of mental resilience.)

Teaching is not always benign. Gender is taught by osmosis. We are constantly telling children subliminally what we expect of them as boys or girls, and surveilling their behaviour to ensure they don’t flout the gender norm. A father in a department store keeps calling his four-year-old daughter ‘princess’ when she nags him to buy every object she sees; a fourteen-year-old boy is told to ‘man up’. There are now kindergartens and that work very hard to be gender-neutral, allowing each child to flourish as an individual first.

Scripture teaching versus ethics: the fight for children’s brains

One of the greatest hopes for the future is the teaching of ethics classes in Australian primary schools. This simple enough idea is mired in controversy, because the churches traditionally have a deep hold on state governments, which administer the school system in Australia. In some states, including Victoria and  New South Wales, there is a compulsory thirty minutes of weekly scripture teaching in government primary schools. Students whose parents object simply twiddle their thumbs or read a book for the entire weekly lesson.

The schools and parents themselves have no choice but to let the proselytisers in; so much for the separation of church and state. Ninety-six per cent of the classes in Victoria are given by Access Ministries, an evangelical organisation whose rather sinister name is a perfect fit for its stated aim – excised from its website since controversy struck – to ‘reach every student in Victoria with the Gospel’ and ‘transform the nation for God’.

Unlike scripture classes, ethics classes teach children how to think. Rather than impose a moral standpoint, they encourage children to develop thoughtfully their own positions on ethical questions. The children explore topics as diverse as bullying, animal rights and homelessness. Along the way they learn the importance of listening to and tolerating the viewpoints of others within a respectful 'community of inquiry'.

Angry parents who object to scripture classes have pushed for their children to be offered ethics as an alternative to the compulsory weekly scripture class. There are pilot programs, but NSW is the only Australian state to offer ethics classes systemically. The drawback is that parents have to formally opt out of the scripture program.

Since NSW introduced ethics classes in 2010, there’s been a huge demand for these classes but Primary Ethics, which delivers the program, has lacked the resources to train enough volunteers. In contrast, Access Ministries has had no such trouble because of its ability to collect tax deductible donations. However, in April this year the federal government reversed its decision not to allow Primary Ethics to collect tax-deductible donations. This means the organisation will now have the funds to train the many volunteers who have registered their interest.

Some parents want ethics to become part of the Australian Curriculum instead of being an alternative to scripture classes. They'd like to see the classes themselves become a study of world religions, teaching the children tolerance and understanding of other cultures.

Let's hope that the importance of what's been achieved in NSW doesn't get lost in the debate. Disenchantment with politicians is at record levels; the media tell us to vote for the party that will put the most money in our pockets; multinational corporations are trampling over our democracy more flagrantly than ever. Teaching our children to come to reasoned, empathic, morally thoughtful positions is one way to produce citizens whose hearts and intellects are united, and who can understand the notion of a public good beyond their own narrow interests.

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Free Offer: Review Copy of Memoir

I'm offering 10 readers a free copy of my memoir, Compulsive Mind: A Memoir of Panic, Social Anxiety and OCD.

There's just one condition – that you promise to provide a review of the book on the Amazon website. This means that you need to have an Amazon account, and to have bought something using that account in the past.

At the moment no-one has reviewed my book on Amazon, despite it having been in the top 100 for Kindle mental illness categories many times. The fact is that many – perhaps the majority of – Amazon reviews are either set-ups, or an expression of extreme reactions to a book, whether positive or negative.

Of course I want reviews so that potential readers will have something to go on and feel more comfortable buying the book. But as a writer I also crave feedback. I would love to know what works about the book for readers, and equally what doesn't.

I want any reviews of my book to be sincere. I don't expect you to review the book positively, just honestly. And reviews don't have to be time consuming – Amazon reviews can range in length from a short article to just a few lines.

If you're successful I will send the book in the form of a mobi file, so you need to have a Kindle reader. But you don't need a Kindle – you can download a free Kindle reader for iMac, Windows and many types of smart phone and tablet, including iPad and iPhone, from here.

About the book
In this sex-saturated world, imagine for one minute that there's something you're more terrified of than anything else: love and intimacy. And that a nasty case of social phobia and low-level OCD lurks behind your terror.

This moving, often confronting memoir reveals how a devastating and complex anxiety disorder exploded into the life of an intelligent, creative young girl struggling to reach maturity in the Melbourne, Australia of the 1970s and 80s.

Adrienne McGill grew up with undiagnosed social phobia and OCD, and developed panic disorder at the age of twenty. The toll her untreated illness took on her career, relationships and emotional development is related here in sardonic, sometimes relentless prose that packs a punch.

This book is essential reading if you:

• want to better understand the dynamics of anxiety
• feel that your anxiety disorder doesn't fit neatly into the standard definitions
•  love memoirs of the 1980s
• are looking for a memoir about blushing
• suffer from more than one disorder. 

How to request your free review copy 
Write to me requesting your free copy at caetem@yahoo.com. I'm only giving away ten copies, so be quick! I'll amend this blog entry when the offer is no longer valid.

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The Afternoon Belongs to the Sleepy

I heard a saying once: the morning is for God, the evening is for humans, but the afternoon belongs to the devil.

Whoever wrote this had a circadian rhythm similar to my own – bright and shining and preternaturally alert in the early morning, lapsing somewhat around 10 am but functional till lunchtime, then going to hell in the afternoon.

The afternoon: when things that have been left unfinished in the morning are visited on the weary soul like the returning curse of a bad fairy. The afternoon, when you become an existentialist. When the garden sinks into an endless trance, except for Ferdie, the kelpie cross from the flat around the corner who, tail wagging in delight, poohs on the generous grass of my front yard.

He knows he's not supposed to, so, lacking the moral rectitude of many in the canine world, he confines his doings to areas of the yard that are outside the sightline from my office window. Perhaps he is a kind of devil – his peculiar pale-rust coat and disconcertingly light eyes suggest this – but I know the impression is misleading because, after chasing him around the corner once, I got close and thought he was cringing until I realised he had picked up a stick in his mouth and was throwing it on the ground in front of me, urging me to play catch with him. Not a devil perhaps but certainly devil-may-care.

The trouble with afternoons is that they often mean deadlines, but I'll do almost anything to avoid having to send a completed job to a client at this time of day. What horrors of sloppy diction are laid bare, what ridiculous mistakes and omissions have been left unseen by my oxygen-depleted brain when something is sent off before close of business (ie 5 pm)?

Better to be ahead of the game, to have most of the thing finished by the morning – what a shining time to get things done! My brain is like a purring engine that's just been serviced. It runs smoothly with minimal noise. Small errors that escaped my attention jump out at me. Creativity is at its height. I treasure these few hours. They are the secret to any kind of success I have in my career.

The zombie-like nature of afternoons can be minimised by judicious planning. The trick is to reserve this time for things that require only small amounts of either mental or manual labour. It’s quite a good time for starting new work tasks – to freewheel a bit, do some basic research, produce creative insights and provide an extremely rough first draft, but not to draw all the threads together or supply rigorous logic. One non-professional task I like to do in the afternoons is weeding the garden – it's mindless and refreshing. Clearing out the email in-box is also a productive way to pass the time when blood-sugar challenged.

Since I started taking antidepressants there is an added complication to the afternoon. At around 5.30 pm I like to stop work and fling myself onto my comfortable old couch under the large window in the spare room. It’s the lightest, airiest room in the house and I can't be seen from the couch when I'm lying on it because of the upward slope of my front yard (but I can poke my head up and check for Ferdie's arrival).

It's a perfect place to read by the bright light of the late afternoon sun, except that, with the drugs in my system, between 5 and 6 is the time my mental energy is at its lowest. Yet when I close my eyes, hoping for half an hour of sweet oblivion, my brain seems to be trapped in a halfway house, too tired to think but not tired enough to sleep. It feels a bit mangy, a bit old, as if it doesn't know how to either turn itself off or keep itself on properly. TS Eliot wrote:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

He seems to have uncannily predicted the effects of Luvox on my early-evening mental state.

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A Few of My Favourite Sayings

Some aspects of getting older are boringly predictable. You find yourself, like generations past, lamenting the language young people use – the poor grammar, the ridiculous sayings, the odd pronunciations. It puts things in perspective to realise that the Ancient Greeks had a similar complaint; the poet Hesiod, thought to have been active between 650 and 750 BC, railed about the ‘frivolous youth of today’.

I sound like on an old fuddy-duddy. Does anyone use that expression any more? As part of my editing work I recently watched a video of kids in a classroom reading out loud together the story of the billy goats Gruff. The wicked troll yells to the goats ‘Be off with you!’ I found myself pleased that the kids were being exposed to this quaint expression.

Anyway I was not going to spend this entry complaining. Except for one use of ‘like’ I hate and probably everyone my age does too: ‘like’ instead of ‘said’, as in:

She’s, like, ‘He’s not my boyfriend any more.’

And I’m like, ‘Since when?’

I don’t like ‘like’ in this context because it makes speech unnecessarily drawn out, clumsy and difficult.

Why not use ‘said’ or, if you want more immediacy, ‘she says’? Even, if you must, ‘she goes?’ Both trip off the tongue.

I had to get that out of my system. The main thing I want to talk about is sayings I actually, like, like. And interestingly, many of these come from the USA, so often decried for spreading  grammatical no-nos (‘lay’ instead of ‘lie’, not saying ‘of’ after ‘couple’, removing ‘-ed’ from participle adjectives like ‘old fashioned’ and ‘cliched’ so they become nouns, eg ‘a cliche piece of writing’, ‘an old-fashion girl’ – okay, no more complaining). (I hope my US blog readers will forgive this outburst, which I’ve needed to get out of my system for some time – there are many things about US English I prefer, eg ‘jail’ instead of ‘gaol’.)

So here’s my list of favourite sayings for your linguistic delectation:

Here’s the thing.

Why do I love this so much? It’s incredibly economical, not to mention understated. There’s also a bit of empathy in it.

It says, in only three words, ‘That’s all true, but there’s another factor that trumps all that, and I’m about to tell you what it is.’ It’s a polite yet unassuming signpost that prepares the listener for what comes next. What’s not to love? (This latter saying is something I’m not crazy about, but I don’t hate it either.)

Moving right along ...

I have always loved this expression, ever since I first heard it said in first year uni by a friend of mine. Again, it’s very economical but with some very low-key humour in there. It basically says ‘What we’re talking about is a bit embarrassing so let’s drop the subject.’ But this ‘translation’ doesn’t begin to describe the essence of this phrase, which has a dramatic performative quality that is humorous but not so easy to deconstruct. I think of an overanxious teacher in front of a classroom of students with their ears wagging at some salacious reference, and the teacher saying brightly ‘moving right along, does anyone know how to  ...’ There’s a note of panic, of let’s-get-out-of-here-before-we-get-tripped-up, a hint of awkwardness in the face of dauntingly  sexual[?] overtones. But users of this phrase are not usually as embarrassed as the teacher; rather, they’re ironically performing the teacher role, implying ‘I may be in fact a little embarrassed at what I’ve just said but I will laugh at my own embarrassment.’ Despite the postmodern complexity, this expression manages to be fun and lighthearted.

The ego has landed.

This is a pun on the title of a bestselling book, The Eagle Has Landed, a war thriller by Jack Higgins. I’m like a child with some humorous sayings – no matter how many times I hear or say them, I still find them vaguely funny, and this is no exception. Applied to anyone with an inflated sense of self-worth, its humour lies in its applicability to that particular individual, so there’s a freshness to the saying each time. Most recently I found myself thinking it when watching a documentary about an English plastic surgeon, originally from Pakistan, who was returning there to do some altruistic cosmetic surgery on the faces of female victims of battery acid attacks. Much as I admired this man it was clear from the first frame that he was, as we say in the Antipodes, ‘up himself’ (a saying I’m also very fond of). As usual I found  it funny to pronounce ‘the ego has landed’ about this man, despite his kindness. The present tense of ‘has landed’ gives the expression a drama and immediacy that I really like.

You don’t care for that.

Ah, how I love this one. I first noticed it as something distinctively American in a memoir written by one of my favourite authors. It was in a piece of dialogue between the author and her very empathic psychiatrist. She is revelling in a heightened mood during a bipolar episode and doesn’t want to come down to Earth: he’s trying to convince her to take her mental health seriously. It’s old-fashioned and euphemistic – instead of saying ‘don’t like’ or the stronger ‘hate’ or ‘despise’ etc,  you say ‘don’t care for’.

Why is this euphemism attractive to me and not simply annoying? Because of the word ‘care’ perhaps? Or the fact that regardless of whom the subject of the sentence is, I, you or a third person, there’s a charmingly old-fashioned delicacy and politeness to it? It seems to want to spare the listener rather than, as in the case of ‘moving right along’, the speaker. It refers to a sensibility that can discriminate, and is discerning: what we do or don’t care for being what we like and dislike (or, I suppose, care about).

The young – always with us

I couldn’t find this on Google – apart from the more general ‘always with us’ – which upset me a bit because if I can’t find something on Google I tend to think I’ve made it up. For some reason I’ve always assumed that this old-fashioned expression is British. If that’s so, it expresses what is a cliche of various aspects of the traditional British sensibility – an acceptance of adversity combined with a difficulty in enjoying life.  There is a resigned tone to this saying, but also, importantly, a radical acceptance. I can almost see a middle-aged woman in a flowery hat and with one of those rectangular sixties handbags hanging off her arm sighing as she says it. It could be in response to just about anything – a child acting up, or a teenager being too boisterous or simply saying something funny or striking. It is not a complaint but an observation that has something of the long-suffering about it as well as a subtle sense of a close community, and one that is headed by its elders.

I have it.

Okay, so this expression may seem so incredibly inane that its inclusion is incomprehensible. Bear with me. This is a US saying; Australians say 'I've got it' instead. This is an ugly expression, hard on the ear. How infinitely more elegant is 'I have it'! Give me that any day. Once you've given it to me, I can say 'I have it'.

There are plenty of other expressions I’m vaguely fond of but none that tickle my fancy like these ones do. Readers are more than welcome to send in their favourite expressions, and to pick my grammar apart and highlight any errors!

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Back, Again: The Tyranny of the Bad Back

I started writing this piece sometime in mid-January after being temporarily debilitated by a minor back injury. It’s all better now but I’ve learned a lot from my experience.

I half-sit, half-lie on my right side. My torso is twisted awkwardly, my arms crooked, palms pressing into the sheets on either side of me. The sheets are tangled. The lamp casts its sickly yellow glow over the small room. My hands depress the hopelessly too-soft mattress beneath me. I’m wondering what to do with them next, which part of my body to use to haul my torso up and behind me so that I am sitting on the edge of the bed – the vital position before I can get up from it.

I’ve managed to sustain what is probably an abdominal strain. There are a number of abdominal muscles, and I think I’ve pulled the deepest one on my left side, the transverse abdominal muscle, which is involved in coughing, laughing and sneezing. It’s a strange injury – in my case there’s little pain, apart from soreness, as long as I keep still and sit or stand in the right position. The killer is the accompanying muscle spasms – an involuntary clenching high up in the wall of the chest when I so much as bump into something or move too suddenly (this clip from the IT crowd captures both the feeling itself and the dread of the feeling).

I must have a mild strain because I can breathe without pain (although laughter and coughing present problems) and even the muscle cramping isn’t all that painful. It’s just weird and scary, makes me feel like an invalid, leads to soreness and stiffness, and reminds me that something is awry.

I have an overly soft and comfortable bed, and having to lie in the one position on my back all night since the injury has been disastrous for my lower back, which is probably a map of muscle knots and old strains. I’ve had to stop doing my daily exercises too of course, further weakening my back. The spinal chickens are coming home to roost and I, it seems, am a sitting duck. Since the days after the strain, I’ve gradually lost mobility, and now hobble around like a superannuated courtier in a Shakespeare play. I think of my grandfather, his pot-bellied body stooped and pain-ridden in the weeks before he died of cancer.

Without my back able to propel and support me, my entire body image has changed. I feel fragile, elderly, vulnerable to further injury. I am hopelessly separated from the bulk of humanity, which, on the face of things, appears to take its collective back for granted, while at the same time feeling more bonded with the human race – for who among us hasn’t, at one time or another, had a back strain of some description? Despite the fact that my problems are all muscular, and therefore minor in the scheme of things, I am scared of the future. I want a prognosis. Worse than all of this, I am missing out on precious summer days, the kind so warm they give you the illusion that life will always support you, that you need nothing. Half the time I’m so worried I can't even read.

Frightened to laugh or cough, a thousand giggles and splutters are trapped in my tummy and facial muscles. Ricky Gervais, in a repeat all the way from 2004, causes me pain when he speculates about the attempt to fix Humpty Dumpty. ‘Horses? Why would you use horses – to fix an egg?’ he queries in his slow, droll way, drawing out the absurdity through superb pacing. ‘And all of the king’s horses? What if there was an invasion? Oh, we can’t send the troops because they’re trying to put an egg back together.’

I’m terrified something else will go wrong. I am hanging on to my independence, but last night it was a struggle to do the dishes. Further debilitation would mean a return to the family home, the worst outcome possible for my sanity.

How stubborn this injury is. In the past even the most debilitating back strains (usually lower back) have only been at their worst for a matter of days. Rest has always been the magic, quick cure for any problems. Yet rest doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect this time, or perhaps the progress is just too slow to measure. In fact, the abdominal strain is improving, albeit at a glacial rate, but my back seems to be getting worse.

In desperation, I go to the first physio I can find. Truth to tell, this one is participating in a scheme by which my extras health fund pays the entire fee for the first visit. But we won’t go into that, and I battle to avoid it during the session. He keeps asking how I found the clinic. Who cares? I trust him, he’s excellent at what he does; the clinic is his practice (whatever that means in relation to a group clinic) and he’s been a physio, the receptionist informed me when I made the appointment, for thirty years.

He can see there’s nothing seriously wrong. ‘I want you to feel relaxed and that you can walk around without worrying’, he tells me. By the end of that first session – not more than around twenty-five minutes long – I do walk out normally, if slowly and gingerly. I no longer cringe in fear at the dreaded spasm. That night I have one more of these horrors while walking with my friend Simon in the park. Then they’re gone forever, never to return.

I am watching a blu-ray at his place to see in the New Year, and I masochistically choose This is Spinal Tap, a digitised print that is unbelievably fresh and funny after thirty-odd years. I torture Simon by continually begging him to please turn it off, I’m trying not to laugh. I still feel cheated of this movie: there were so many humorous morsels to savour and I was scared to let them tickle through me for fear of the pain.

Second time at the physio and my back’s back. It’s in good form. He is very paternalistic. ‘Good girl’, he says. I don’t care. I’ll do whatever he says, within reason. I ask for some exercises, he gives me two to do morning and night. ‘I’m very motivated’, I tell him and I mean it. My precious independence is beckoning. At the end of the visit, the physio says he wants to see me one more time.

When he’s giving me treatments I understand why I haven’t been to a physio for 20 years. It’s terrifying. He levers different parts of my spine up and down, up and down, and I am scared I’ll panic. I had contemplated telling him I had an anxiety about being touched in a professional setting and then decided against it. Luckily he seems to think my clear discomfort is about a residual fear of muscle spasm.

Ah, physios. What a worthy profession. I used to have a friend who was a physio and while in training she would occasionally come round and practise on me. At the time I wondered why on earth anyone would do such a long and intensive course in an area that seemed so pedestrian. Now I can’t think of anything more worthwhile than watching someone hobble into a consulting room, and later waving them goodbye as they depart with a spring in their step. Not that this happens every time of course –  clearly in my case I was suffering from nothing but strained muscles, easily assuaged by the treatment  – but improving mobility is a noble pursuit.

After my third and final visit to the physio I’m a new woman for a day or two, but my troubles aren’t over yet. The back strain has been worsened by too many hours spent slaving over a hot computer in the last few weeks. My back is angry and painful, and I can’t seem to get on top of it; I’m doing the exercises the physio has recommended, but am still not back to my old exercise routine. One Friday afternoon after meeting a demanding work deadline my back seizes up to the extent that I can hardly walk.

Determined to get my back back, I start walking laps of the oval at the local park. I buy a cold pack, use a wrapped towel as a lumbar back support when I’m working, consider buying a $200 back rest for watching tele. I religiously leave the computer and curl up on the floor when the strain starts to feel serious.

And then it just ends. It stops. My back is back to normal, in fact probably better than normal because of the physio's intervention. There’s no rhyme or reason, I’m not sitting any better or doing anything different, although I have started my old exercises again, which is probably strengthening it further. Perhaps I had actually strained it quite seriously as a consequence of the original abdominal strain, and it’s only just fully recovered. It’s working so well that I’m happily mildly mistreating it again, twisting and bending and struggling to make the effort to crouch down when I pick something up. The garden’s looking better, the car is clean.

But I will never take my back for granted as I did before, and I’ll continue to build it up with strengthening exercises. I need my back and I’m not going to let it let me down again if I can help it.

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