Everything old is new again
Especially when it reaches the audience with the loudest voice.
THINKING
After the budget was delivered in Parliament last week, there was more news in my feeds about who was invited to the budget lock up than about the budget itself. Social media and podcast feeds shouted headlines about Influencers being invited to the budget lock up as if that was actual news. There were people who weren’t happy about being called influencers and people who weren’t happy about influencers being in the budget lock up.
And while the invitation to the budget lock up may be a new thing, having the government reach out to a specific group of society is not a new thing. I remember twelve years ago when bloggers (including me) were invited by Julia Gillard to Kirribilli House, I also remember when some of those bloggers went for dinner with some other politicians who I don’t remember (probably because I wasn’t invited).
It’s not new, people of influence being used to speak to community members. What is new is the audience and the exposure it gets. When we were swanning with the PM in 2012 we didn’t think about the people who were doing similar things years before us. We were in our prime - the PM wanted to talk to us, we were all that mattered. Now we have been ‘forgotten’ as a new generation of people make their voices heard and look forward at what they can change instead of looking backward at what we tried to change.
It’s kind of like parenting…Stay with me here.
When you’re the parent of a small baby and you’re discovering sleepless nights and the tedium of feed, change, swaddle, sleep it’s easy to think you are are the first generation of people experiencing parenthood in this way. And the internet feeds it, shouting at you about studies into sleep routines, gentle parenting and the fourth trimester of pregnancy as if they’re brand new discoveries.
And so it goes for each stage of parenting - when it is happening to you, your generation becomes the experts. Parents of toddlers don’t want to listen to ‘old fashioned advice’, their peers on TikTok tell them what their toddlers should eat, how much screen time they should have and when they should start swim lessons.
Nothing much changes as our kids get older, we become wiser and we think the generation before us didn’t know as much as we do.
But eventually we reach an age where our voices become softer and the voices of the next generation become louder. We hand over the microphone and the soap box and we listen carefully to the generation below as they discover all the things we already know.
READING
I loved this book so much that I couldn’t stop thinking what place I would give it in my top books of all time. But then I remembered I don’t subscribe to that hierarchy because different books fill different needs and moods although Better Days seemed to fill them all.
What starts out as the story of a very successful music industry executive and her glamorous life blooms into a story about how we live our lives, the choices we make, the roads we travel and how we navigate them at the most difficult of times. It is a love story (on many levels) , an insight into postnatal depression and a polemic on mother/daughter relationships. It is a story of work/life balance and friendship and loyalty. But most importantly it is captivating and entrancing and if you read it as quickly as I did you will be sad that it’s over but delighted that Grace gets to live in a small part of your heart for ever. It is also set in Sydney and feels so familiar that I’m kind of looking out for Grace when I drive across the bridge - and that feels almost helpful.
It’s the kind of book that fills me with awe and makes me fall in love with the writer,
because it is just so compelling to read, so structurally sound and so beautiful to inhale. I cannot recommend it enough.Read it NOW
EATING
On the weekend my son sent my husband and I off to a cafe that he loves near his uni. Kafe Kooks serves roti with everything, and in case you didn’t know this eggs and roti are even better than eggs and toast. Roti is my new toast and that’s saying something. Check out their menu here
On the home front I have discovered the joy of grated tofu and am using it wherever I can as a mince alternative. The texture is quite excellent (for mince based food) and it easily absorbs the flavour of whatever you are cooking it with so it tastes just as good as the sauce you are cooking with.
Thanks for reading to the end.
See you next week
Lana