May 16

Despite my best intentions, two blogless weeks, which have been spent undergoing and organising certain rites of passage. Graduating, arranging a wedding, buying tickets for a honeymoon to Vanuatu. I don't quite believe that I'm doing any of this and a small independent voice in the back of my mind is chanting a litany of the joys of spinsterhood and commanding me to do a Google search on codependency. The part of me that faces the world has begun to discuss the possibility of buying a flat in Warsaw. Probably the majority of my panic is caused by the fact that it really does look as if it's going to go on for a long time, which requires a renegotiation of everything - no use waiting for the divorce to free up my time.

In the middle of all this Peter Carey's wife has made the front page of the Herald 'striking back' at a smear campaign against her based on an ugly divorce, claiming that she slaved away over his manuscripts for years and this is the thanks she gets. The headline runs Peter Carey's ex speaks out- I can't even remember what her real name is. Is it a reason not to get married? In my opinion it's a reason to be wary. Along with the spike in female suicides that shows up on suicide graphs for the twentieth century in the late forties as all the maimed and twitching diggers came home and started asking for their jobs back. Overall, male suicides were still higher, though women made more attempts. We are either more ineffectual or more equivocal, or maybe it's a matter the available means? Sticking our heads into unreliable ovens or overdosing on not-quite- toxic enough tranquillisers while our male counterparts went and shot themselves competently in the head. Time for work in the blazing autumn suburbs: this wave of arboreal red might be the most excitement Ryde sees this year. Over and out.