Making things in small spaces

& the soothing nature of French cooking videos

“It's a question of finishing everything you start. It's as simple as that.” - Colm Toibin

Lately I’ve been watching reels on social media of a French woman making adorable French cakes. She’s a professional baker so there’s a lot of softened butter and glossy chocolate and copper saucepans, and the cooking is sometimes interspersed with her making her bed or tucking clothes into an antique chest of drawers or sitting on the couch with her fluffy lap dog. I find them soothing, and click on every single one, so The Algorithm, in its all-seeing wisdom, keeps giving me more.

In a recent iconic example, she produced 250 amuse-bouches in her tiny, tiny Paris kitchen for a last-minute client, despite the fact that her bench-top oven looks like something you’d find in a toyshop. She just keeps going until it’s done!

I’m possibly finding her focussed industry so inspiring because, after years of being a freelancer, I recently re-joined the salaried workforce four days a week as a writer and editor for a non-profit organisation, working on their quarterly magazine and writing blogs about what they do, which is a lot.

This urge to go back to work was sparked by volunteering in my son’s canteen and realising how happy it made me to put in five hours of work, get paid (with a $6 food voucher that my son would liquidate by the end of morning recess) and go home to relax. Leaving the house. Learning new things. Talking to people. Contributing ideas. Instant coffee in a clean mug. No invoicing, which drained the dopamine right out of my brain cells at the end of every month.

This unexpected professional development was also sparked by a podcast between a grandfatherly property commentator, Michael Yardney, and a German demographer about Gen Xers.

They more or less said, Gen X, it may not feel like it but your time is now. They called us a ‘quiet, resilient force shaping Australia.’

This is not how Gen X is traditionally viewed in my experience. We have big, loud, confident generations on both sides of us and we do get a bit forgotten. We’re the family fuck-ups, skulking in the corner in our Cure T-shirts at the vegan gender reveal picnic or the 80th birthday party with its five-course tasting menu and paired wines

And yet, according to the podcast, we’re in charge! We’re now a driving force in society but, because we don’t really do selfies or stealth-boast Facebook posts, no one actually noticed, least of all us. [NB: I’m exaggerating a bit, and I should say I love and admire Boomers and Millennials.]

So, feeling puffed up, I sent out my CV for a job I never thought I’d get, and I got it. It’s been a steep learning curve but I recently sent my first magazine to the printers and am working on a second. It’s also neatly solved my ongoing dilemma of whether to retrain and work in health, because it’s a health organisation.

This has meant less actual time for my writing writing (hence my absence here) while I got my head around everything. And that’s possibly why I’ve been loving these French cooking videos. They are relaxing and predictable and orderly - all things my life and the world in general right now are not. And they remind me that you can, in fact, do a lot in small spaces if you are focussed and know what you’re doing, whether you’re producing a coffee eclair or the first draft of a novel.

A few weeks ago I went to a brilliant SmokeLong Quarterly & Night Parrot Press flash fiction workshop at the State Library that reminded me of this same thing. A metaphor the teacher used was that writing flash is like being a diver: you need to execute your turns and spins in that brief period of time before you hit the water. You don’t have much space, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It forces you to summon all your energy and experience to get something done in the time you’ve got. You have to finish what you start.

What I’ve been reading

I adored We Are Wolves by Katrina Nannestad. It brings to life the experience of children left without their parents in East Prussia in the aftermath of World War Two, who lived in the forest alone, sometimes befriending Russian soldiers, ransacking abandoned houses and always, always looking for food. It has that feel of a classic almost fairy tale, but based in real life events.

Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane was also wonderful. Her writing is beautiful and this theme is so rich - the impact of a serial killer on the wider community, told in a series of linked short stories. It’s a crime story, but without the cliches. It looks not at the murderer but at everyone impacted by him. This book made me remember how much I love short stories.

The Lasting Harm - Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley was also gripping. Her dedication to telling this story is incredible, getting up at 1.30am for months to claim a journalist’s seat in the courtroom. It shares similarities with the recent revelations around Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer - that same sense of entitlement, that same ability to pinpoint the vulnerable with uncanny accuracy. These people walk among us. It gave me a lot to think about for my own work in progress.

Have a good Sunday! Thank you for reading. I will try and post again soon.