Whoo whoo!

It hasn’t been a great month for me, with two or three exceptions. The negatives: some interviews (hard work and time-consuming to prepare) but no job offers; not enjoying work at all; and it gives me no pleasure that our first female Prime Minister, gaining power just over three years ago when our girls were taking their first tiny developmental steps in the special care nursery, has been deposed. Despite achievements like gaining bipartisan agreement to a National Disability Insurance Scheme; improving the equity and funding of education; getting a Mining Tax passed (even if it failed to deliver the promised revenue); legislating plain paper packaging for tobacco; establishing a National Preventive Health Agency to combat obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse; and a national dental scheme for disadvantaged children; and getting a price paid on carbon. Not to mention keeping our country so economically healthy through the Global Financial Crisis where most other western countries have struggled.

Why has Julia Gillard been so unpopular? The manner in which she seized power and the perception that she lied over a carbon tax. My theory? That the public could almost understand the reasons why the PM needed to be replaced but they resented being lied to over the carbon tax, and in a very personal way wouldn’t forgive it until there was an apology. And there wasn’t. I never even saw her say that facing a hung Parliament, the Opposition would have done the same to get power if they could have. I also think there has been a fair bit of sexism about how Julia Gillard has been treated and viewed. I’m sorry to say that we don’t seem to have been ready for our first female Prime Minister.

Anyway, the first exception to this dispiriting state of affairs in the nation and in my working life this month was the girls’ third birthday. The first one they have really been aware of, in which I was determined that their party be about them, not about us, and they would have a lovely day.

Steve and I shared the work involved: writing up an invite list, emailing invitations, shopping for birthday presents and presents for the party, and for the party food, Hall hire in a nearby park, and endless wrapping.  We invited only people who the girls are close to: Mum and Dad; Marcus; our nanny Heidi; godparents Di and Andy; aunty-like Helen with partner Sam; and several babies and older children. Let’s face it, Lara and Rhea aren’t interested in children their own age so we didn’t invite any. The only child their own age was Angus, and I invited him with his one-year old twin sisters who the girls have always been captivated by.

I was a bit grumpy in the morning as I tried to assemble and ice the Train Cake that the girls wanted without their interruption or meddling (Angus and his sisters had had the same cake for their birthdays a month before, so it was the only cake they could think of to request).

I didn’t consider that the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book recipe required enough cake so I doubled the quantities when I baked the cake two nights before, and neither Steve nor I could follow the assembling instructions so I just copied the technique from the photo. The engine was made out of a supermarket-bought jam roly poly and the carriages from the cake, cut up, in two layers and iced. Jubes formed the carriage links, smarties the window holes and thinly cut strips of liquorice edged the carriages and made the railway line on top of the paddle pop stick ‘sleepers.’ Some more jam roly poly was iced and rolled in chocolate sprinkles to form the funnel and, ingeniously, the recipe called for a pipe cleaner to be threaded with pop corn to make the smoke. I decided to make the cake red, orange and yellow so iced it accordingly, and there was more pop corn on top of the carriages to make up the cargo. And Lara and Rhea will no doubt always view mint chocolate biscuits as train cake wheels from now on.

I had a good time making the cake and the girls were happy with the result. I know that because a week after the party they made a ‘tain cate’ with all of the pillows and cushions in the house snaking their way along our corridor, and they still talk about it (the real one, not the pillows) two weeks later.

The second good thing that happened this month was staying for four days and nights at the Family Centre to get help with the girls’ continual night-time waking – more about that another time. I told one of the midwives that I was planning to make the legendary Women’s Weekly Train Cake for the girls’ birthday party and she told us that she had made it for her son when he was young, and had recounted the story recently at her son’s Twenty First.

She had spent hours and hours on it (it took me six in two sessions) and worked late into the night before The Big Day. It and the associated packets of lollies took up all the available bench space, and some of the stove top as well. The next morning some of her other children had been in and out of her bedroom having cuddles and playing around the house. The Birthday Boy joined them all in bed. His sibling was talking so he politely waited until they had finished (he was a well brought up boy), then said ‘Excuse me. The kitchen’s on fire.’ The children had turned on the stove tops when they were playing in the kitchen and some of the lollies had caused a fire. Luckily the train cake was OK.

Julia Gillard’s closing words in her gutsy speech following her defeat in the leadership ballot were about her niece’s baby due to be born in July, saying with defiance that she would have the most meddlesome great aunt in Australia’s history. A family touch in the sometimes impersonal and brutal narrative of politics.

By the time the girls are old enough to hear about this courageous Prime Minister, who faced enormous challenges with resilience and dignity, I hope she will have been the first, not the only female PM, and just as she said, the path for others will get easier and easier.

And the third good thing this month? I might report on that in September.