Speaker 1: You're listening to a Momma mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. Circling a thumb over
Speaker 2: a perfectly smooth pebble, a mouthful of satin, sticky, sweet
Speaker 2: salty breeze, the slow smile of someone who gives them
Speaker 2: away rarely, the unfurling of a pointy green leaf to
Speaker 2: a tendril, a flower, a fruit, the fur sip of
Speaker 2: hot tea on a frigid, cold morning, a lick at
Speaker 2: the salt on a cocktail's rim, a hand that slides
Speaker 2: inside yours without hesitation, the perfect mango that time your
Speaker 2: mum said that was a good day, wasn't it. The
Speaker 2: giggle of someone with whom silliness is never an eg.
Speaker 2: The specific pain in your stomach from laughing so hard
Speaker 2: that breath can't be caught. The way birds fly in
Speaker 2: that particular pattern, and how your legs shudder in orgasm.
Speaker 2: I'll take my little joys where I can get them now.
Speaker 2: The small ones are where it's at. The big ones,
Speaker 2: the showy ones, the firework ones that you chase and
Speaker 2: imagine one day you'll catch and swallow so they'll spread
Speaker 2: to every corner of your life, setting it all glowing
Speaker 2: by mid You know that those are the ones that
Speaker 2: flame high.
Speaker 1: And burn out fast.
Speaker 2: It's the small ones that make a mid life worth living.
Speaker 2: A fresh prawn dipped in unfashionably pink sauce, a steaming
Speaker 2: bowl of soup, noodles with a side of pungent chili,
Speaker 2: a homemade cake with Smarties on top, mashed potato with
Speaker 2: a cold sliver of butter and a dusting of spiky saltflakes.
Speaker 2: The way you feel after an hour with your closest friend,
Speaker 2: sustained eye contact with my ridiculous dot, the light on
Speaker 2: the ocean at exactly five point thirty pm, airport arrivals,
Speaker 2: arms that wrap all the way around you, winning an
Speaker 2: unimportant argument, lying in bed with a happy child, lying
Speaker 2: in bed with a transporting book, lying in bed chocolate coffee, cream,
Speaker 2: stripped of shame and guilt. It's the little things that
Speaker 2: bring us pleasure. They nourish us completely. A good life
Speaker 2: is made up of those moments. They are life, fleeting, salty,
Speaker 2: spicy sweet. Looking back at it all, it's what we'll remember.
Speaker 2: How people made us feel, what we tasted, who we loved.
Speaker 2: My name is Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, midfamily,
Speaker 2: mid meal. Often Generation X can be funny about food.
Speaker 2: We were down with hedonism before hangers became too high
Speaker 2: a price to pay. But we were also raised on
Speaker 2: a diet of cape moss, cigarettes and coffee. We were
Speaker 2: happy to talk openly about skipping meals, cutting carbs, cabbage,
Speaker 2: soup cleanses. We swam in a sea of celebrity diet tips, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, as someone who used to work on
Speaker 2: the magazines that ran those were often made up. I
Speaker 2: could tell you how many times a year Oprah Letta
Speaker 2: self eat potatoes, that posh spice would take the cherry
Speaker 2: tomatoes out of a salad, that the words guilty and
Speaker 2: pleasure were the only ones permitted to be synonymous with dessert.
Speaker 2: But also, we're busy on learning all of this because
Speaker 2: if like me, you love food and what you're gonna
Speaker 2: eat next and when and what is one of the
Speaker 2: things you think about the most, you know that the
Speaker 2: joy and pleasure and nourishment it brings to a life
Speaker 2: is not nothing. In fact, it might just be one
Speaker 2: of the most important things of all. So I'm talking
Speaker 2: food and the absolute necessity of small joys today with
Speaker 2: Virginia Treoli. Now, obviously I could be talking to Virginia
Speaker 2: a lot of different things. She's one of the most
Speaker 2: highly regarded journalists and broadcasters in Australia. She's a two
Speaker 2: time Walkley Award winner, and her voice on radio on
Speaker 2: television has lent authority and comfort to some of the
Speaker 2: most difficult moments we've lived through as a nation, which
Speaker 2: might be why today we're talking about joy. Because when
Speaker 2: you've lived till men and you have, as Virginia articulates
Speaker 2: in her new book, experienced an ordinary or extraordinary amount
Speaker 2: of loss, disappointment, fear, struggle, you know that it's life's
Speaker 2: little things that actually gets us through. That's what the
Speaker 2: book A Bit on the Side is about, because for
Speaker 2: her and for me, it has to be said, food
Speaker 2: is a part of that joy, and allowing yourself to
Speaker 2: lean into the small pleasures that make a life without
Speaker 2: guilt or shame is a radical act, really, particularly for women,
Speaker 2: when we've been taught that self sacrifice and deprivation is
Speaker 2: really our life. Slot So here's Virginia Trioli and me
Speaker 2: talking about food, but also really about love and hard
Speaker 2: fought pair parenthood and step parenthood and losing your own
Speaker 2: parents and wisdom and age and work and friendship and
Speaker 2: pleasure and letting go and those times when you just
Speaker 2: have to grow up, apologize and eat a shit sandwich. Virginia,
Speaker 2: I adored your book.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so glad.
Speaker 2: And it's probably because it dips into two of my
Speaker 2: very favorite things and my obsessions, which is food. I
Speaker 2: am very interested in food. Good to hear and also
Speaker 2: just the sort of it's not a book that's kind
Speaker 2: of you're not trying to be a guru and pass
Speaker 2: off life wisdom in that way, but there are just
Speaker 2: really beautiful nuggets of wisdom studded through this book in
Speaker 2: an understated way that just absolutely punched me in the
Speaker 2: guts at times.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, I'm happy to hear that
Speaker 1: as songs that you won't left with any major bruising.
Speaker 2: No, no major bruising. It was like foraging with a
Speaker 2: basket and you're like, Oh, that's a restaurant recommendation that
Speaker 2: I'm going to put on my wish list. That's a
Speaker 2: recipe I'm going to make green beans. I'm going to
Speaker 2: make those asap. Excellent and the cocktail, the Friday night
Speaker 2: fog perfect folded over yumen next to it, and then
Speaker 2: also these little bits of wisdom. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: start out conversation with some of those life lessons, because,
Speaker 2: as I say, you're not playing guru, but there's kind
Speaker 2: of a point of why it is.
Speaker 1: A bit on the side that's right, yes, and you're right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the main course of your life can be a
Speaker 2: hard going and unappetizing thing. Sometimes it can be absolute rubbish.
Speaker 2: Your working life, your family, global catastrophes, personal tragedies, both
Speaker 2: ordinary and unexpected, all of it. You can have so
Speaker 2: little control over any of it, and the only choices
Speaker 2: you do seem to have are often rather small ones,
Speaker 2: minor seemingly insubstantial decisions that may add a bit of
Speaker 2: pleasure to a dense and demanding situation, just enough joy
Speaker 2: to get you across the line. Little bits on the side,
Speaker 2: this is wisdom. Tell me how you came to it.
Speaker 1: I think I came to it the same way as
Speaker 1: many of us come to it, through age and life,
Speaker 1: but also given the particularities of the last few years
Speaker 1: and the last decade, has made more and more sense
Speaker 1: of a thing that it turns out, and I realized
Speaker 1: when writing it has been a personal philosophy for me
Speaker 1: at the table and in the kitchen and serving food
Speaker 1: to people, because that's where my eyes have always gone to,
Speaker 1: the little bits on the side. And then it made
Speaker 1: more and more sense as the bigger picture got worse
Speaker 1: and worse, and it was something that I can't turn
Speaker 1: my eyes away from, and my entire working life has
Speaker 1: been engaged fully with it. All those years that I
Speaker 1: was working on news breakfast and getting up at half
Speaker 1: past two in the morning and having make up artists
Speaker 1: dabit my eyes at four a. You haven't lived until
Speaker 1: they've experienced that, and Michael Roland and I increasingly and
Speaker 1: repeatedly standing at what we came to call the wall
Speaker 1: of death, because on the really big mornings when we
Speaker 1: had awful, horrible breaking news, we would stand up from
Speaker 1: the desk and stand in front of a big plasma
Speaker 1: screen and break the news to the audience that another
Speaker 1: plane had gone down or that there was another terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: The accumulation of all of that and realizing that really
Speaker 1: the big picture was beyond my control made me realize
Speaker 1: that I had an eye for the smaller nuggets, for
Speaker 1: the glimmers, as I think people call them now, and
Speaker 1: it just made total sense to me that that was
Speaker 1: how I was living my life. I was living in
Speaker 1: the city that was the worst lockdown in the country.
Speaker 1: All plans disappeared, and I realized that a diary and
Speaker 1: the idea of plans is rather like a garden. If
Speaker 1: you don't have anything planted in there, if you haven't
Speaker 1: put some seeds in for that catch up with the
Speaker 1: girls in September and that destination wedding next year, nothing grows.
Speaker 1: And it was a time where nothing grew. You could
Speaker 1: open your diary and it was just barren earth from
Speaker 1: here to next year. And so it may be a
Speaker 1: seeker of small joys critical actually, if you weren't to
Speaker 1: fall over the edge. It was critical.
Speaker 2: Because obviously, in your profession, turning away from the news cycle,
Speaker 2: which is the advice were often given when we're facing
Speaker 2: overwhelming anxiety, was not an option, as you just said,
Speaker 2: and you write quite beautifully in the book about the
Speaker 2: time during Melbourne's lockdowns when you were driving to Present
Speaker 2: radio every morning and the streets were deserted, and you
Speaker 2: and your team would talk about food.
Speaker 1: Which talks about foods so much.
Speaker 2: Which turns us to those small joys, I suppose, and
Speaker 2: that it was a call from a listener that was
Speaker 2: sort of began to really form this book for you. Right.
Speaker 2: A woman called Mary called in and she was very anxious.
Speaker 2: I love how you say in this book how and
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of us who work I
Speaker 2: mean obviously very very different world, but a lot of
Speaker 2: us who work in a connection business that sounds that
Speaker 2: sounds terrible, but well in the media.
Speaker 1: No, that works.
Speaker 2: During that time, you right, I felt like the most
Speaker 2: underqualified psychologist in Melbourne, but we were in different ways
Speaker 2: the connectors. For we were during that time the.
Speaker 1: Most underqualified but overbooked. I forever had you know, clients
Speaker 1: in my book wanting my attention, and I had no qualifications,
Speaker 1: and I kept waiting for the experts to turn up
Speaker 1: but tap me on the shoulder and say we'll take
Speaker 1: it from here. And they never did.
Speaker 2: And a woman called Mary called you and she was
Speaker 2: obviously feeling very anxious, and you found yourself guiding her.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about that moment and how
Speaker 2: it kind of informed your idea.
Speaker 1: It did. It crystallize a lot of things because we
Speaker 1: had a regular wonderful segment So Young for years, our
Speaker 1: talkback legal segment where David Whiting, who's kind of like
Speaker 1: Rumpole of the Bailey, and he would offer legal advice.
Speaker 1: But in this conversation, she was calling it for legal
Speaker 1: advice because she'd been to a local supermarket or in
Speaker 1: the very early days, distancing rules had been brought in,
Speaker 1: and she was furious because no one was observing the
Speaker 1: distancing rules and she'd been thrown out of the supermarket
Speaker 1: by the police, and she wanted to know, what am
Speaker 1: I rights here? What can I do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: What happened? Okay, well, they weren't observing the distancing rules.
Speaker 1: So I went home and I got the old bless
Speaker 1: and I got some masking tape and scissors, and I
Speaker 1: started marking out crosses on the floor at one and
Speaker 1: a half meter distances. And I could just hear the
Speaker 1: audience going, oh God, get her off, what a lunatic.
Speaker 1: Oh Karen, you know, and then the text me to
Speaker 1: just start coming through reflecting that. But as she's talking
Speaker 1: and David was about to launch into, you know, her
Speaker 1: legal rights or lack of therefore, I just jumped in
Speaker 1: and I just said, how are your anxiety levels, and
Speaker 1: she just fell apart. She just burst into tears. She
Speaker 1: had an elderly mum at home who was dealing with cancer,
Speaker 1: and so anything brought home to her because she was
Speaker 1: in the middle of treatment, she was immune suppressed, you know,
Speaker 1: could have taken her out. She had a sister who
Speaker 1: was clearly struggling, and so she Mary had full time
Speaker 1: care for her sister's daughter, for her niece, and she
Speaker 1: had her troubles as well, and she had her own life.
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, and I'm just so anxious,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, of course you are. You know,
Speaker 1: go home, look after yourselves. You cannot look after anybody else,
Speaker 1: you know, go home, focus on your own, focus on yourself.
Speaker 1: And I did. I felt like, you know, a totally
Speaker 1: underqualified person to be giving out this sort of life advice.
Speaker 1: But that's where we found ourselves. We found ourselves really
Speaker 1: peeled and proximate, really close to each other, leaning on
Speaker 1: each other in ways that we never thought we would
Speaker 1: or wanted to, leaning on strangers, being angered by each
Speaker 1: other by strangers, and this was the place that we
Speaker 1: were in for so long.
Speaker 2: Your love of food has been pretty much lifelong, it
Speaker 2: seems In this book, you talk about cooking with your mother,
Speaker 2: one of seven, You were one of seven, one of
Speaker 2: seven kids, and you write about I think you say,
Speaker 2: she's a very calm and capable woman, but that was
Speaker 2: a lot to deal with. And you're saying that the
Speaker 2: moments of cooking together in the kitchen were a moment
Speaker 2: of calm and connection. Yes, which I'm in awe of
Speaker 2: the fact that cooking for seven can be a moment
Speaker 2: of Clearly she was and then you obviously became sort
Speaker 2: of your eyes were open to all kinds of food,
Speaker 2: from travel, from going to Italy, which obviously is where
Speaker 2: your heritage is, and traveling around. What I love about
Speaker 2: this book in particular is it drips with all this
Speaker 2: love for food and bread and meat and sources and off.
Speaker 2: But there's no you don't in this book at all
Speaker 2: address It's not like guilty pleasures. You don't talk about
Speaker 2: it in terms of you know, I shouldn't. There's no rules,
Speaker 2: there's no diet talk. And that is no small thing
Speaker 2: when it comes to women and food, especially gen X women,
Speaker 2: because we kind of were brought up in an era
Speaker 2: where it was talked about a lot, you know, like
Speaker 2: absolute our weight our food, as we've found it so
Speaker 2: refreshing good that there is none of that in this book.
Speaker 2: Was it really deliberate?
Speaker 1: I actually didn't have to think about that for once,
Speaker 1: because yes, you're quite right, that's a narrative that I've
Speaker 1: learned to. We'll never leave my head, right, And I
Speaker 1: hear all the great actresses of our times talking about that,
Speaker 1: about oh the wasted space in my mind. If I
Speaker 1: could just get rid of it, to stop thinking about
Speaker 1: the size of my stomach. It's actually easier for me
Speaker 1: just to accept that it lives there, because like you,
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine reminded me of this the
Speaker 1: other day. We were swapping photographs of outfits and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think about this one, and
Speaker 1: she said, oh god, she said, are we ever going
Speaker 1: to get out of our heads? That phrase that we
Speaker 1: were taught so young and has never left us. But
Speaker 1: is it slimming? Is it slimming? Oh it's not slimming.
Speaker 1: Oh that's slimming. And I know that Jesse would just
Speaker 1: you know, roll her eyes hearing this and slap her
Speaker 1: forhead and then slap me. But I'm sorry, that's just
Speaker 1: a mantra that is just in my DNA.
Speaker 2: Jen Zad's and millennials think that our generation was more
Speaker 2: firmly marinated in diet culture, so it's just in our
Speaker 2: it is. Pause. But I always say to her, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if you I mean, I know, obviously you've
Speaker 2: got a young but he's probably a little young for
Speaker 2: this yet. But I would say to her, I don't
Speaker 2: know that it's gone away. For the young women I
Speaker 2: work with, they just don't talk about it. So they
Speaker 2: would never say to somebody, oh, that's really flattery.
Speaker 1: And slimmery, really slimmery, you'll ever say that?
Speaker 2: But on Instagram theil anyway. Was it a deliberate choice
Speaker 2: to shush that voice when you're writing about this pleasure?
Speaker 2: Or have you?
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 2: You think you've got quite a healthy, evolved attitude to that.
Speaker 1: In terms of food, I think I pitch backwards and
Speaker 1: fours as anybody does. And I absolutely have my days
Speaker 1: of self loathing, no question, and also my days where
Speaker 1: I say it to myself, well that'll do okay, we
Speaker 1: really are just doing some grilled chicken for a copp
Speaker 1: of days here because you've been hard at it. But
Speaker 1: in writing this book, no, that never entered my mind
Speaker 1: because this is a book about food and memory as well.
Speaker 1: And you know, Mussel Proust was right that that is
Speaker 1: the most powerful sense, taste and smell and memory and
Speaker 1: the way it just triggers the strongest feelings for you.
Speaker 1: You know, your first clear the very first time you
Speaker 1: went to Paris, your first bowl of pasta, the very
Speaker 1: first time you went to Italy. I never knew it
Speaker 1: could taste taste like this. This is how it's supposed
Speaker 1: to taste, and you spend the rest of your life
Speaker 1: trying to repeat that experience. So, because I'm talking about
Speaker 1: very powerful food memory connections for me and experiences, none
Speaker 1: of them are associated with guilty.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's also I hope this isn't a judgy
Speaker 2: word these days, but it's also real food, like this
Speaker 2: is our food, cooked with love, with great ingredients. And yes,
Speaker 2: some of it's got a lot of cream in it,
Speaker 2: but anyway, who has olive oil. I know I'll be
Speaker 2: back with Virginia Trioli in a moment when she's going
Speaker 2: to tell me about that time she did have to
Speaker 2: eat the shit sandwich, the first little break. The book's
Speaker 2: about food, Virginia, But then it's also about life lessons,
Speaker 2: as I've said, and the one about the shit sandwich
Speaker 2: is really interesting because it's about copying to things, owning them,
Speaker 2: and apologizing when you need to. And I want you
Speaker 2: to tell me about the experience that you describe in
Speaker 2: the book about your first and worst shit sandwich.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had a few, right, and I don't
Speaker 1: expect them to stop being served to me for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. I think they all keep coming.
Speaker 1: But the biggest one, it was one of my own making,
Speaker 1: was when I was caught on air doing the twirly
Speaker 1: looney face finger to barneyby Joyce, who was he was
Speaker 1: not a sentence and then he was a member of
Speaker 1: Parliament and a minister, and the camera cut back to
Speaker 1: me before I knew it was going to and I
Speaker 1: was mugging for the crew and for everyone in the studio.
Speaker 1: I was high as a cart and silly as it wi.
Speaker 1: All that day. I just returned from another like what
Speaker 1: felt like round one hundred and fifty two of IVF
Speaker 1: to try and get pregnant yet again. And we had
Speaker 1: an embryo that worked, and it had been planted, and
Speaker 1: this time maybe it was going to work, and I
Speaker 1: was hire as a cart and I was being really
Speaker 1: ridiculous and unprofessional all that morning, and the camera caught me.
Speaker 1: And I remember in that moment just thinking, I've just
Speaker 1: killed my career dead. I've killed it. The ABC was
Speaker 1: at that you know in this from time to time,
Speaker 1: but that time was really locked in, you know, yet
Speaker 1: another cultural battle, if you like. We were under attack by
Speaker 1: the Coalition government at that time. Everyone was on the
Speaker 1: lookout for perceived, real or bias, and that was seized
Speaker 1: upon as an example of that.
Speaker 2: Did you realize it in the moment that it had
Speaker 2: gone to air? Yes, yes, because I could see them,
Speaker 2: I could.
Speaker 1: See the monitor and it was I was I remember
Speaker 1: the entire studio just stopped. We all saw it and
Speaker 1: there was absolutely no way around it.
Speaker 2: So what was the advice for how to deal with that?
Speaker 2: And how did you decide you knew you had to
Speaker 2: deal with it.
Speaker 1: I came out of the studio just knowing that there
Speaker 1: was one thing to do here, and that was to
Speaker 1: pick up the phone immediately until apologized to varnerby Joyce.
Speaker 1: There was a slight suggestion from another quarter that maybe
Speaker 1: it be handled another way, and I remember there was
Speaker 1: a little voice in sign be going don't don't. It
Speaker 1: seems an easy option, an easy way out. Don't take it.
Speaker 1: And I rang for some editorial advice from our head
Speaker 1: of Editoral Standards, Alan Sunderland, who's one of the most
Speaker 1: calm under fire people you'll ever meet, who said, well,
Speaker 1: you just call him and you apologize. And I did,
Speaker 1: and he accepted my apology straight away, and he laughed
Speaker 1: about it and said, yes, sometimes I do say things
Speaker 1: are a bit ridiculous, which is awfully gracious of him.
Speaker 1: I think he accepted my apology before he'd actually seen
Speaker 1: the replay. I think he recruited that in time. I
Speaker 1: didn't call you back then They're like, hang on a minute,
Speaker 1: I don't know you were doing that. And I know
Speaker 1: he was crossing me for a long time afterwards. But
Speaker 1: then then the shit storm began, because of course it
Speaker 1: was all over the media. The news limited papers had
Speaker 1: a field day with me for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Speaker 1: I had people calling for my head and my resignation.
Speaker 1: And I did one smart thing. I just did not
Speaker 1: look at any of it. I made sure I didn't
Speaker 1: read it. I didn't see it, because I'm the kind
Speaker 1: of person that if it's in my head, I'll it'll
Speaker 1: never leave me. I won't get it out.
Speaker 2: And that's very disciplined. It's hard to do.
Speaker 1: Had to had to do it. I just knew I
Speaker 1: had to do that. And then the next day I
Speaker 1: made three apologies on air, one in the six o'clock hour,
Speaker 1: one in the sex o'clock hour, one in the eight
Speaker 1: o'clock out And for each apology, I remember my co
Speaker 1: host would get up and leave the couch and go
Speaker 1: and stand over there behind the camera while I sat
Speaker 1: on the couch all my and I never felt so
Speaker 1: alone in all my life, and read out my apology again.
Speaker 1: But I just how do you eat a shit sandwich?
Speaker 1: You eat it, you eat it, and you don't complain
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because it doesn't feel that there's a lot
Speaker 2: in our culture at the minute of trying to avoid
Speaker 2: the shit sandwich.
Speaker 1: I heard your discussion just the other day about Ellen's
Speaker 1: de generous and the three way argument that you guys
Speaker 1: had about it on out loud, and I've got to
Speaker 1: say I'm with you, Holly, because it would seem to
Speaker 1: me that a lot of what goes on and is
Speaker 1: often decried as unfair. Cancelation is actually consequence. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: keep saying cancelation. There's another C word there, it's consequence.
Speaker 1: There was a consequence for what I did, and I
Speaker 1: did not argue with it. It was unprofessional, it was wrong,
Speaker 1: it was stupid. I broke every rule. Every rule in
Speaker 1: a live studio is you behave all the time as
Speaker 1: if everything is live. Every microphone is hot. I knew that.
Speaker 1: So if I was prepared to play fast and loose
Speaker 1: and I was caught, then I've got a copy it.
Speaker 1: And I don't get we're using the ll An example,
Speaker 1: and I know we're segueing, but I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's illuminating here. What was the consequence? So the show
Speaker 1: was acted after many, many mighty years and great success,
Speaker 1: and now she's got a highly paid Netflix show where
Speaker 1: she gets to turn it into content.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're one hundred percent right, there's a consequence.
Speaker 2: But what comes with the criticism now is can feel
Speaker 2: and can be so personal and so outsized, Like I'm
Speaker 2: sure that there were plenty of so called enemies of
Speaker 2: the ABC who were saying horrible things about you during
Speaker 2: that time after the Barnaby Joyce incident or that are personal,
Speaker 2: that are violent, that are brutal, and so I think
Speaker 2: that it feels like people saying, do I deserve all that?
Speaker 2: As well? Do I deserve all that hate? It seems
Speaker 2: to me that the way that you're illustrating the shit
Speaker 2: sandwich is incredibly mature, responsible exactly how it should be,
Speaker 2: which is, you made the call that I'm sure was
Speaker 2: very hard to make. You did those messages to camera
Speaker 2: that I'm sure you were dying inside. Is real, and
Speaker 2: that's the right thing to do. But the wave that
Speaker 2: comes at you after a while, I think that's why
Speaker 2: people start to say, really, I deserve this too? Is
Speaker 2: that fair consequence?
Speaker 1: I think you're never going to be able to gainsay
Speaker 1: or control other people's responses. Dickets have always been out there.
Speaker 1: If they weren't going to talk to me on social media,
Speaker 1: they would have been writing me letters. And back in
Speaker 1: the day when I started in you know, old form journalism,
Speaker 1: they did and I got those letters. They're the ones
Speaker 1: with the writing that usually goes up the side and
Speaker 1: in the margins. They're just more ways for them to
Speaker 1: come at me. I'm aware, like you of you know,
Speaker 1: excessive excessive outrage and that's usually about something else. You know,
Speaker 1: that's just someone. The mob has always existed, You know
Speaker 1: that the mob goes a long, long way back, and
Speaker 1: you can easily whip up a mob. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I feel like we cry unfair and we
Speaker 1: sort of want to be insulated from the consequences of
Speaker 1: what is just foolishness. And foolishness is not a it's
Speaker 1: not a death sentence. I didn't I didn't die. It
Speaker 1: was pretty awful, and others don't as well. But there's
Speaker 1: there's got to be a price to pay. And I
Speaker 1: actually thinks that's the important part of that chapter, is
Speaker 1: that I talk about all my years of sitting in
Speaker 1: those chairs for radio on Sydney or Melbourne or Late
Speaker 1: Line or seven point thirty or and A and being
Speaker 1: well aware that sitting on the table between us is
Speaker 1: a shit sandwich, right, that politician has to deal with it,
Speaker 1: that chief of Army, that CEO, that MD and they've
Speaker 1: come on because this is the thing that they've made,
Speaker 1: and it's sitting there and I'm looking at it, going well,
Speaker 1: are you going to eat it? Yes? And they're wrestling
Speaker 1: and writhing and trying to find them and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're not going are you kidding me? Well,
Speaker 1: that's going to sit there now for another week and
Speaker 1: then another week, and it's going to get even worse.
Speaker 1: And I know you should know it's going to have
Speaker 1: to be consumed at some point by someone. And I
Speaker 1: think it goes to a question about how we raise
Speaker 1: kids to make sure they understand that they actually We
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, staks and how you learn, but
Speaker 1: are we really reinforcing with them. Look, you actually can.
Speaker 1: Not only you can. You should make a mistake, step
Speaker 1: into the moment, own it, apologize it, and I will
Speaker 1: show you how the world won't end for you. Oh shot,
Speaker 1: you may have to deal with my anger, that's a concert.
Speaker 1: You may have to deal with your friends being pissed
Speaker 1: off with you. That's a consequence. You won't die, but
Speaker 1: it will feel awful, and feeling awful won't kill you.
Speaker 2: I love that. I also think it's so in the
Speaker 2: example of the politicians and the people in positions of
Speaker 2: power and influence. I mean, you can look at American politics,
Speaker 2: the people who refuse to ever eat the sheet shit sandwich,
Speaker 2: pretend it doesn't exist, think that it's a badge, of
Speaker 2: honor actually is to double down on it. I mean,
Speaker 2: we all need a few more of them anyway, away
Speaker 2: from the smelly thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are nicer things to consume than that.
Speaker 2: And your husband, Russell, there is a beautiful chapter in
Speaker 2: there about you falling in love and the first time
Speaker 2: you go to visit him and he's working in Japan. Yes,
Speaker 2: and you describe in the most beautiful detail the first
Speaker 2: day he picks you up and you basically go and
Speaker 2: eat about five meals and drink all these amazing drinks.
Speaker 2: And then the next day in his kitchen, you're right,
Speaker 2: we ate to get He makes you past her because
Speaker 2: you need something to soak up all the booths I
Speaker 2: assume exactly. We ate together in the soft winter sun
Speaker 2: of his kitchen, all matters of the heart decided for
Speaker 2: all time. That actually made me cry that lot.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad, thank you in a good way.
Speaker 2: But I knew write about the importance of your Friday
Speaker 2: night dates and the house. I mean, when I was
Speaker 2: reading this, I was thinking, imagine if she'd fallen in
Speaker 2: love with some guy who just ate macas like, it
Speaker 2: just wouldn't work. I don't think I would have what's
Speaker 2: is it still a really binding anything for you too.
Speaker 1: Because there was a pivotal moment in that kitchen of
Speaker 1: his when I'd fallen in love with him and we
Speaker 1: both worked at the age, but he was obliged and
Speaker 1: wanted to take up his posting in Japan, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, was it just one of those things or
Speaker 1: was it something that I'm going to go and see.
Speaker 1: And so I booked a flight, said I'm coming up
Speaker 1: to see you, and I went and saw them. We
Speaker 1: had that wild first day, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the day he said to me, I want to cook
Speaker 1: you eggplant. And I looked at my watch and I
Speaker 1: was like, we've done the huge day in Tokyo. It
Speaker 1: was half past nine at night, and I thought, oh no,
Speaker 1: there's two possibilities here, and they're both terrible. You know.
Speaker 1: One is that he knows how to cook an eggplant properly,
Speaker 1: which is to peel it, cut it, salted, drain it,
Speaker 1: rinse it, dry it, cook it. And I'm not.
Speaker 2: Getting fed and it takes a lot of time and.
Speaker 1: I'm starving and I'm miserable. Or he doesn't know the
Speaker 1: right way to prefer an eggplant, and I can't ever
Speaker 1: see him again, because that would make him a barbarian
Speaker 1: of the worst sort. And of course he did know
Speaker 1: how to cook it properly coarsey blood he did, and
Speaker 1: away we went. I look, I can imagine being with someone,
Speaker 1: I can imagine being with someone who was a you know,
Speaker 1: a mac and cheese kind of person. But then I
Speaker 1: would set about, you know, subtly and carefully trying to
Speaker 1: turn them around.
Speaker 2: And do you still you know, it's cooking for him,
Speaker 2: with him him for you? Is that still a big
Speaker 2: part of your relationship and what brings you pleasure?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it really is. Yeah. We don't share a
Speaker 1: kitchen so much anymore, though He's become a much messier
Speaker 1: cook than he was as the years have gone on,
Speaker 1: And I do find myself sort of, you know, resentfully
Speaker 1: sous cheffing behind him, like, you know, wiping that up
Speaker 1: and putting away and sort of mushing under my breath.
Speaker 1: You know, can't you clean as you go? Clean as
Speaker 1: you go? It's the rule. So we'll sort of mostly
Speaker 1: do it rather than in tandem these days, except for
Speaker 1: a few specific dishes. We'll do it, you know, for
Speaker 1: each other. But yes, it's the center of our relationship.
Speaker 1: We love it.
Speaker 2: And you also write that it also helped you binding
Speaker 2: your relationship with your step children, because when you and
Speaker 2: Russell got together, he had three kids yep, twin boys
Speaker 2: and a girl. Yes, and you write about and I
Speaker 2: love this too, because I think that with hindsight, you
Speaker 2: write about how you weren't anywhere near as sort of
Speaker 2: nervous is the wrong word, but maybe as concerned as
Speaker 2: you might. I should have been absolutely about getting into
Speaker 2: relationship with about three kids. And you write, again, beautiful words.
Speaker 2: A pounding heart can drown out so much. I just
Speaker 2: thought that was great and thank god.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, but that the pounding heart in love is like, oh,
Speaker 1: it'll be fine, we'll manage that. But I'm sure that
Speaker 1: if someone can into my life right now, exactly in
Speaker 1: Virginia's situation that I was in, I would take them
Speaker 1: aside and say, girlfriend, we need to talk. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's wonderful and you love him and ye and
Speaker 1: all of that, but let's have a proper conversation because
Speaker 1: it was such a serious thing to do. I do
Speaker 1: remember right about this as well. I do remember thinking
Speaker 1: the job was serious, that I was jumping into these
Speaker 1: young kids' lives when they had no need of me.
Speaker 1: They did not want me, they did not call for me,
Speaker 1: and they just come out of the situation they had
Speaker 1: and oh, here I am, you know, in love and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and they didn't need that in their life.
Speaker 1: So I knew that I had to and I wanted
Speaker 1: to tread carefully.
Speaker 2: You do write really beautifully about that, and again you
Speaker 2: say that cooking with them and for them was part
Speaker 2: of it. But there'll be lots of women listening to
Speaker 2: this who are in blended family relationships or even getting
Speaker 2: into them. From where you sit now with the hindsight,
Speaker 2: what is your best piece of advice?
Speaker 1: I think actually one of the first princes has I
Speaker 1: think remained strong and true. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: everyone will necessarily want to hear this or will agree
Speaker 1: with it. But they were young, the boys. Rebecca was
Speaker 1: sixteen and the boys were at fourteen when I met them,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking very deliberately their relationship as a
Speaker 1: family unit came first. You know, I was an independent woman.
Speaker 1: I had my own income, I had my own career.
Speaker 1: By then, I was well on the road, and so
Speaker 1: I just had to be pretty you know, mature about
Speaker 1: this and say I can look after myself and I
Speaker 1: can also make a choice about, you know, who I
Speaker 1: choose to be with. So it was very important that
Speaker 1: they stayed fast and strong together. So it actually was
Speaker 1: about putting myself second, which I know is probably not
Speaker 1: a popular thing to say, but that worked. You know,
Speaker 1: that really did work because it wasn't about I met
Speaker 1: a woman around about that time who came to me
Speaker 1: in anguish because she was starting to go at the
Speaker 1: bloke and he had a boy about eleven, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to spend a lot of time with his son,
Speaker 1: and she was resentful of that, and you know, where's
Speaker 1: my place and I can't. I remember saying to her, well,
Speaker 1: then walk away sweeter, because it's not about you, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really not. They came first. It's a kid, and
Speaker 1: I do feel very very strongly about you know, the
Speaker 1: interests of the child need to be looked after. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you are dealing with you know, a meddling
Speaker 1: ex wife or the complexities of that, if you can
Speaker 1: put a bit of effort into making sure that they're
Speaker 1: as well connected as they can be, helping to support
Speaker 1: that connection, it actually finds you find a place that
Speaker 1: works for you and fulfills you in the end as well.
Speaker 1: You don't have just subsume yourself into it. You know,
Speaker 1: you keep your your separate friends and your lives and
Speaker 1: things that you need to do to sustain you. But
Speaker 1: it's very important, I think to think of the kids
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 2: Obviously your son. I think our sons are the same
Speaker 2: age twelve twelve. Yes, my son believes twelve too.
Speaker 1: I started very very late. It was a long, long
Speaker 1: battle for me. I tried things people have never even
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 2: You do. I mean, you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: You touch on it lightly really in the book. And
Speaker 2: as you've mentioned before, and now that he is twelve
Speaker 2: and he is, I've seen you write about parenting a
Speaker 2: little bit. And it's interesting to me that there is
Speaker 2: a chapter in the book about you as a teenager. Yes,
Speaker 2: you were an intensely independent teenager. Yes, it was a
Speaker 2: different it's a different time. She says it was a
Speaker 2: different times makes her sound like so old, But you.
Speaker 1: I don't care. It was a different time.
Speaker 2: You were clearly, it's like you found your people at
Speaker 2: school to a point, right, you come in this big,
Speaker 2: busy family, and you're obviously very smart, and you've got
Speaker 2: an intellectual curiosity and you follow it and you find
Speaker 2: your people at school and teachers, and you write about
Speaker 2: going away camping with your teachers.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a whole other story, but scandalous.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking about that as you now have
Speaker 2: a son who's on the edge of that level of independence.
Speaker 2: You write about letting out the rope just far enough
Speaker 2: and being able to pull it back. Do you think
Speaker 2: something's lost from it? Was another time, the level of
Speaker 2: independence that we all had, which was kind of like
Speaker 2: be home before it's dark, off you go. I mean,
Speaker 2: how do you feel about it? And how's the letting
Speaker 2: out the rope going? Oh?
Speaker 1: Look, I would let out far more rope if I could.
Speaker 1: He's just not as independently minded as I was, or
Speaker 1: as we were expected to be. I mean, we were,
Speaker 1: you know, chucked out like bye and go out and play.
Speaker 1: And you never even asked, you know, where or with who.
Speaker 1: You just disappeared. I don't want to romanticize it, but
Speaker 1: that's really what it was. And no one said to
Speaker 1: you at the end of the day. They were too
Speaker 1: tired and busy with seven kids to say, how was
Speaker 1: your day of virgina and what did you do?
Speaker 2: No one asked me did you go camping with your teachers?
Speaker 1: Exactly? I mean, it kind of amazes me now that
Speaker 1: my parents didn't turn around and go, no, you're not.
Speaker 1: I just told them I was off, I'm off, I'll
Speaker 1: be off, you know. And if my fifteen year old
Speaker 1: son turned around and said, oh, these September holidays, I'll
Speaker 1: be off camping with I know that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the same reaction. I'd be no, you're not, and who
Speaker 1: are they? And also I want to be with you
Speaker 1: and I spend time with you. My parents didn't to
Speaker 1: spend time with me. Our parents did not want to
Speaker 1: spend time with us. That generational change in one generation,
Speaker 1: I think is the really remarkable thing, because every other
Speaker 1: generation up until this one parents and I think we
Speaker 1: were the last gen X parents were parents and kids
Speaker 1: were kids. It's really enmeshed now, which is lovely and
Speaker 1: I love spending much more time with my son than
Speaker 1: my parents did with me. But I see the downside
Speaker 1: of it. Were probably disabling them in a way that
Speaker 1: you know that we weren't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I've seen you right, about how
Speaker 2: we were a very independent generation Generation X, and I
Speaker 2: feel that deep in me, I'm saying, I saw I
Speaker 2: left home as soon as I could. Yep, I traveled
Speaker 2: across the world. I saw myself as a very separate
Speaker 2: ANTITYP In my family.
Speaker 1: You wrote home a couple of times, you might have
Speaker 1: made a reverse charge call once, but otherwise they didn't
Speaker 1: hear from us for months.
Speaker 2: I've been months, and so you'd think that letting out
Speaker 2: the rope would be easier for us because that was
Speaker 2: our experience. But do you think that we have just
Speaker 2: completely realigned our ideas about what's safe when and what
Speaker 2: parenting is like?
Speaker 1: What's No, I don't think it's about safe for me.
Speaker 1: It's not about safety because I know that the streets
Speaker 1: are much safer now than there were then. There's no
Speaker 1: question about that. A child who puts their hand up
Speaker 1: and says he touched me is going to be believed now.
Speaker 1: If I said that back in my day, I would
Speaker 1: have been considered a little liar or you know, a
Speaker 1: bullshit artist, or I wasn't that bad, or I just
Speaker 1: wouldn't have said it actually, and we didn't. All of
Speaker 1: that has changed, and you know, the Universal Declaration of
Speaker 1: the Rights of the Child changed everything, and I'm glad
Speaker 1: that it did. I think it's also our need as well,
Speaker 1: and maybe it is a reflexive response to the way
Speaker 1: that we were raised. But we like being with our kids.
Speaker 1: I do. I had a child because I wanted to
Speaker 1: spend time with him, you know, And I'm probably the
Speaker 1: one yearning for more contact with him than he's with me.
Speaker 1: He is moving into real independence now, and so when
Speaker 1: I propose something, he'll say, well, yeah, but can I
Speaker 1: bring a friend? Or but I'd rather go and see
Speaker 1: him or you know. And I'm not the be all
Speaker 1: and end all anymore. And I keep reminding myself that's
Speaker 1: how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be that way,
Speaker 1: and he's supposed to go off into the world.
Speaker 2: I know it's supposed to be that way, and it
Speaker 2: is that way, and yeah, I wrestle with it too,
Speaker 2: but but I do think, yeah, yeah, I don't really
Speaker 2: know what I think, except I know that my fourteen
Speaker 2: year old girl, I put her on a train because
Speaker 2: we don't live in Sydney anymore. We live to our south,
Speaker 2: so we're beginning for her to make that journey on
Speaker 2: her own and the whole time she's on the train,
Speaker 2: I'm just looking at my phone.
Speaker 1: I'm going, oh, I hope she's gonna.
Speaker 2: And why you know it's it's safe for the net's
Speaker 2: ever been. But I think we've it's just all changed.
Speaker 1: But I think also because you have the possibility of
Speaker 1: knowing it's true. See our parents, there's no way they
Speaker 1: could know. But there's your phone, and there's find my phone,
Speaker 1: and you've got it turned on, and you've got the
Speaker 1: family all connected, you've got family sharing, so you can
Speaker 1: do it. If you can't know, then you don't know,
Speaker 1: and it's what you habituated to. And so we have
Speaker 1: that habit. Now we can go on instau and see
Speaker 1: that our friend is online and immediately nab them. You've
Speaker 1: got the potential to do it. But I also think
Speaker 1: it's something about desire. I do think gen x is
Speaker 1: in particular. I think we missed having parents who were
Speaker 1: really very interested in us. Actually it would have been nice,
Speaker 1: that would have been nicer, And I think we want
Speaker 1: to change that for our kids. And I think we
Speaker 1: are closer to them, more connected to them, more interested
Speaker 1: in them, And I think that's a nice thing.
Speaker 2: I'll be back with more with Virginia Tree early in
Speaker 2: a moment, but first, here's a.
Speaker 1: Little brain.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask. There was a little piece in
Speaker 2: here about aging and wisdom that absolutely flawed me because
Speaker 2: I've actually never heard someone say this before, because I
Speaker 2: don't know, how are you feeling about aging? By the way,
Speaker 2: I don't mean physically, I mean in general, it's shit.
Speaker 2: It's shit, isn't it. It's shit totally.
Speaker 1: And I reserve my riot to do anything that I
Speaker 1: could possibly can or could afford in order to make
Speaker 1: myself feel better about the inevitability of aging. So there
Speaker 1: you go. It's good.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I'd always talk about on
Speaker 2: this show is this kind of dichotomy between as you
Speaker 2: get older, you get wiser, but then somehow the world
Speaker 2: sees you as a little bit sadder, a little bit
Speaker 2: less relevant, and it's like, hold on, I know more
Speaker 2: than I've ever known, which is very much evidence by this.
Speaker 2: But there's a chapter in this about how as you
Speaker 2: age your skin gets thinner, like not a chapter of passage,
Speaker 2: And I loved it, and I just want to share
Speaker 2: it with people because you have, as you said at
Speaker 2: the beginning, dealt with some very serious moments in your
Speaker 2: journalism career, nine to eleven and COVID and all of
Speaker 2: the things in between. And you write this about when
Speaker 2: you're covering nine to eleven. You say, I recall feeling
Speaker 2: stereely cold, with anxiety about getting the fat right, doing
Speaker 2: the story justice, and most importantly, not putting my own
Speaker 2: feelings at the center of an event that had ruined
Speaker 2: the lives of so many others. Today, I wouldn't get
Speaker 2: through the introduction to the story without breaking down. And
Speaker 2: anyone who has shed ordinary life like mine, relationships that
Speaker 2: have failed, those that have thrived, births, deaths, losses, and
Speaker 2: little triumphs would feel the same way. Experience strips you
Speaker 2: of your armor. Skin doesn't thicken with age, thins, and
Speaker 2: age returns you to a tenderness you've not felt since
Speaker 2: you were a child, always on the edge of a
Speaker 2: storm of tears. Yes, it does. I feel so much
Speaker 2: more for everything, everything. It almost is counterintuitive, because we've
Speaker 2: also survived a lot of things, little losses and big losses.
Speaker 2: And as you describe, you think you'd be tough. We
Speaker 2: should be tough as old boots, Virginia.
Speaker 1: I know it was It was a counterintuitive moment of
Speaker 1: revelation for me to realize the skin's getting thinner, and
Speaker 1: the tears are close, are always closer, you know, A
Speaker 1: tissue commercial can tip me over the edge now whereas
Speaker 1: before I be rolling my eyes And I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that and I embrace that. And that's actually
Speaker 1: that's the humanity in a job like mine. That can
Speaker 1: help me connect better to the person I'm speaking to,
Speaker 1: That can help me connect that story better to the
Speaker 1: person who's listening or watching. And so it's a golden
Speaker 1: thread actually that connects us all. So that that's the
Speaker 1: part of the thin skin. I embrace, Yes, and I
Speaker 1: agree with that.
Speaker 2: I think the empathy that we have it makes us
Speaker 2: better at our jobs. It makes us better communicators, It
Speaker 2: makes us better adjudicators in confrontations and disagreements. But it
Speaker 2: could also be quite debilitating at times.
Speaker 1: Yes, and sometimes you need to really invest in some
Speaker 1: expensive skin care in order to deal with a thinny skin.
Speaker 2: You do. What kind of really old woman do you
Speaker 2: imagine yourself being?
Speaker 1: Oh? What a great question. Well, I can tell you something.
Speaker 1: A week before this book was published, my mother died.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: But honestly an extraordinary coincidence. If you put it in
Speaker 1: a novel, your editor and'd say, oh, take it out.
Speaker 1: You can't have that. You know, one chapter closes and
Speaker 1: one opens. But that's just how life always turns out.
Speaker 1: Ninety four and this is why you don't see me
Speaker 1: in a mess, because you know, she'd lived a long,
Speaker 1: long life ninety four and by the end of it
Speaker 1: she was utterly sick of it and saying, I'm totally
Speaker 1: tired of this. Let me just go, and so she did.
Speaker 1: So I saw a version of aging, which was really
Speaker 1: interesting to me because right up until a few years ago,
Speaker 1: she was an incredibly vital, very energetic, and optimistic woman
Speaker 1: who said she wanted to die face down in the
Speaker 1: violets in her beautiful garden that she tended for years.
Speaker 1: But the last few years made her very angry and
Speaker 1: very bitter and very focused on herself on what was
Speaker 1: going wrong. And so I take that as a little
Speaker 1: bit of advice about what not to do, because it
Speaker 1: seems to me that we're all born into this world
Speaker 1: with varying degrees of physical ability and prowess. And I
Speaker 1: think anyone who's born with any kind of challenge or
Speaker 1: disability is the interesting example here. You don't need to
Speaker 1: be able bodied, you don't need to have any of that.
Speaker 1: You can have missing limbs, you can have challenges with
Speaker 1: your site, with your vision, but still go on to
Speaker 1: live a positive and connected and affirming life. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing that I took from it was that, Okay,
Speaker 1: the body is going to deteriorate and that's going to
Speaker 1: break down, which means and that's just inevitable. And the
Speaker 1: world has been full of people who have had those
Speaker 1: challenges anyway from the beginning. So the whole game is
Speaker 1: a mind game. Aging is entirely, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: a mental game. How am I going to wake up
Speaker 1: and face the world today? What mood am I going
Speaker 1: to be in? What attitude do I choose today? And
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to undermine or explain away people who
Speaker 1: live with chronic pain or with genuine real challenges. And
Speaker 1: some of those painful aspects of aging are crap, and
Speaker 1: I know it because I have them in my life.
Speaker 1: But I know older people who are miserable bastards. I
Speaker 1: know I know older people who are not. And so
Speaker 1: my choice is to be the not yes.
Speaker 2: And the small joys are going to help with.
Speaker 1: That, and they're the only thing that are going to
Speaker 1: get me through there, because, yes, I know, I used
Speaker 1: to say to Mom, you know, you're ninety four, have
Speaker 1: a whiskey. Don't have a whiskey at five o'clock, have
Speaker 1: a whiskey at midday. Yes, you know, to start in
Speaker 1: the morning. What does it matter? Who cares?
Speaker 2: It's so interesting because my mother is a devotee of
Speaker 2: small joys.
Speaker 1: She always has been.
Speaker 2: She's always said to me, a series of small treats
Speaker 2: is the secret happiness, which is kind of what your
Speaker 2: book's about. I love your mother, I know, but as
Speaker 2: she's aging again, I think it's exactly what you said.
Speaker 2: I think there's a sort of depression about the state
Speaker 2: of the world that they're leaving, where she's sort of
Speaker 2: we didn't fix everything, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, I get that.
Speaker 2: And there's dealing with the loss of your circle and
Speaker 2: the people around you, and it is the mental game
Speaker 2: is very tough.
Speaker 1: It's being very tough. And I don't say that to
Speaker 1: suggest that it's easy, but that's where I'll be putting
Speaker 1: my focus. So you know, I'm doing everything I possibly can.
Speaker 1: I exercise. I try and eat well. You know, I
Speaker 1: do strength training and resistance training and all of that,
Speaker 1: and I like to stay as physically able as I can.
Speaker 1: But I'll be putting my effort into the mental game
Speaker 1: of optimism. Of connection. It's actually all about and in
Speaker 1: the end, that's what my book is about. Connection. Connection
Speaker 1: only connect as Ian forced it wrote all those years ago.
Speaker 1: And if you're not connected, I think you're in trouble.
Speaker 2: We were talking about how cooking with your mother was
Speaker 2: one of your ways of connecting. What will you cook
Speaker 2: in her memory now that she's not with us.
Speaker 1: I think every time now that I make an eggplant parmigiana,
Speaker 1: I'll be thinking of her, because oddly enough, my mother
Speaker 1: was not Italian. I learned to cook that from my grandma,
Speaker 1: who was Dad's mum, and Mum learned to cook it
Speaker 1: from her too, So Grandma and my mum they connected
Speaker 1: very strongly in the kitchen as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's often blow ups from time to time, but great
Speaker 1: love there as well, and she ended up cooking We
Speaker 1: all agree the best eggplant parmajana in the family because
Speaker 1: we all do them. I do it, Peter does it,
Speaker 1: John does it, Angela does it, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: not too competitively, but maybe a bit. But no matter
Speaker 1: who's serving it, someone will always say, yeah, Mum is better, though,
Speaker 1: so I'm not quite sure what a secret was. She
Speaker 1: made sure it was never too was never too wet,
Speaker 1: It wasn't She was really judicious with the use of sauce.
Speaker 1: I think I think it was the smart thing about it.
Speaker 1: I'm very generous with the Partamejana, and that really helped.
Speaker 1: So I think from here on in now, now that
Speaker 1: we don't have her, the eggplant parmigana will be hers.
Speaker 1: I think, so Mum wins friends.
Speaker 2: Since that conversation, I've eaten Virginia's grandma's green beans more
Speaker 2: than months. I've made her Friday night fog cocktail, and
Speaker 2: I've thought and thought and thought about her insight that
Speaker 2: our skin and gets thinner, not thicker with age, So
Speaker 2: you know, little things and big things, which is entirely
Speaker 2: appropriate response to the conversation about small joys. If you
Speaker 2: want to buy Virginia's book, a bit on the side,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't recommend it enough, particularly if you've got
Speaker 2: a foody lurking inside you. There's a link in the
Speaker 2: show notes, and if you want to go and eat
Speaker 2: some breeze right now, I entirely endorse that choice. If
Speaker 2: you want another conversation about how our attitude to nourishment
Speaker 2: and what we might cause self care is shifting, please
Speaker 2: scroll back in our feed to the chat I had
Speaker 2: with the hilarious Helen Thorn about bodies and exercise. And
Speaker 2: if some of this talk about wine and cocktails has
Speaker 2: not been helpful to you, please listen to the conversation
Speaker 2: I had with the remarkable Shanner one from Sober in
Speaker 2: the Country. And if you love mid please meet me
Speaker 2: back here next week for a conversation about dickheads and
Speaker 2: how not to be one with the most Undickheady Casey Chambers.
Speaker 2: Thank you to our team, to our ep name of Brown,
Speaker 2: whose favorite comfort food is hot fresh bread.
Speaker 1: With loads of butter and salt.
Speaker 2: To our producer Tarlie Blackman, who's all about pumpkin soup,
Speaker 2: Tom Lyon on sound, who's a pizza person when he
Speaker 2: needs it, and I hope Tom's eating a bit delicious
Speaker 2: pizza right now because he needs it. We're dedicating this
Speaker 2: episode to his wonderful dog Andy. Bye.