Our friend Heather won the local heat of the 2012 Poetry Slam, so was competing in the State Finals at the State Library. I had avoided these high-energy events, although I did attend a local heat some years ago and enjoyed myself. That is, enjoyed myself over the top of my brain's infighting: Do it! No! Go on! No! I knew the State Finals would produce no such stress, and wanted to spend time with my dear friend whose baby had recently passed away. This seemed like a good opportunity to catch up, be with whatever there was to be with. Oddly, as I talked on the tram about my most recent visit to the oncologist, my friend commented that she had never heard someone talk about cancer with so little charge, or meaning added. It is true I am not afraid of my body's expressions of health, which I think of as systemic integrity and therefore workability. Without workability you can't perform. As I write this, I get what she was talking about!

We spent the entire train ride into Melbourne sharing back and forth. My friend kept asking, "What else has happened in the town? In the choir? Catch me up!" At the State Library, we texted our friend The Finalist but got no response. The next day I was with my sister, Heather, and it seems we picked the wrong Heather to announce, "We are here! Where are you?"!

I have to admit I loved the high energy, the humour, the youthfulness of the Poetry Slam. We agreed Heather's poem was the best, but two other people took first and second place, well-deserved too. The winners performed another poem. As we left, Heather declaimed for us, her three-member fan club, her rehearsed second poem, on the steps leading down to Little Lonsdale Street. Both her poems were seriously funny.  She said her husband would be happy she wasn't one of the winners as the topic of her second poem was marriage. And it was funny. Seriously.

Yesterday, after a day at my sister's house creating album pages for my most recent project - raising funds to contribute to the eradication of measles worldwide - I came home to cook chicken and apricot sausages. Hmm. Hot day. Potato salad. It was a most creative potato salad. Here's the recipe:
Boil two potatoes, peeled and diced, and a large carrot, ditto, for about 20 minutes. Drain off the water, replace lid, let them steam for a further ten minutes (but not over heat). Chop up cucumber, spring onions, fresh coriander, a coloured capsicum, and celery. Throw potato and carrot in a bowl and while still warm add a tablespoon of hommus (I used one with garlic in it) and stir. You can add olive oil to make the consistency easier to mix. When cool, add all the chopped ingredients and mix thoroughly. My mother loved the "crispy" potato salad, which made up for the difficulty she had finding the apricot in the chicken sausages (minimal input, it seemed).