The "wad of toilet paper falling from my undies on a catwalk story" resurfaces

Yet another strange, looping story from one of my books, plus London calling and Paris joy

Today’s post is a tumbling of PSAs and some interconnecting stories.

Last night I met with subscriber

Dr Chloe J Hill

who was visiting Paris from Amsterdam, via Texas. There is a long, looping story involving family members, a copy of my book This One Wild and Precious Life, trauma confrontation and a very new baby that brought us to a terrace in the 6th where the gallery owners of Saint Germaine play cards and smoke cigars. We talked collapse. And joy. You might want to check out her community nourishing futurist project We Are the Dots. Chloe, like so many of us here, is trying to find ways to “only connect” (see below).

On my ride home I spotted three young, very cool Catholic priests on Pont Neuf whooping to a busker, a couple in their seventies pashing and police on horses chatting to tourists. The E.M. Forster opening line in Howard’s End, “Only Connect”, just keeps on coming to my mind and reminding me how to live a life.

Speaking of collapse, connecting and joy…

London friends, want to have a glass of wine?

I’m coming to London (to meet a former Australian Prime Minster and to speak at this conference HowTheLightGetsIn on Sunday 22nd of September) and would love to squeeze in a meet-up if there is enough interest. Send me a message with a solid YES and we’ll send you details.

Details so far: Thursday, September 19 6:00-7:30 pm, Notting Hill or Soho locale

Right, so here’s a very funny story (the wad of toot paper one)

I’ve previously shared funny, looping stories of ridiculousness where a phenomenon from one of my books has resurfaced in my real life, such as this one about the Lady in Red in the cafe at Ljubljana. And this one with Mammoth Guy:

Today I share another such tale, looping in another subscriber.

In First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, I write about the supremely suburban and cringey story of how I became a model in the late ‘80s after being invited to compete in a shopping mall beauty pageant (effectively). Here are some messy screen grabs of the bit from the book:

Anyway, yesterday I got this text from

Emma Macdonald

, a close friend:

Emma, a multi-Walkley winning journalist with an OAM for founding Send Hope Not Flowers, then sent the below video capturing me at the god-awful afor mentioned Miss GeeBee competition. You might need a sturdy surface, too:

To explain (and this story gets more “Canberra circa late ‘80s” by the second), I had no idea there was actual visual evidence of this moment out in the world (I’m not sure I’d seen a home video before). Nor that Emma was there that day. She was actually modelling professionally in a parade that preceded the competition part of the event and we didn’t know each other at that stage; we became friends a year or so later when she was charged by an agency (I wound up with a contract anyway) to teach me how to, well, model (walk, spin, apply makeup and absolutely never-ever again do that weird kangaroo paw pose on the hip thing!).

Still following?

Anyway, also down the track, Emma wound up becoming friends with the person who filmed the footage.

Emma and I a few weeks ago when she visited me in Paris

Cut to earlier this week and this videographer was cleaning out things at her parents’ home, found the video, saw that Emma was on it and gave it to her. Emma and her husband Paul (also a subscriber here) dug around for a video player…and behold! Emma discovered me doing my insanely awkward kangaroo paw trot on the catwalk halfway through.

We sat on the phone yesterday and laughed for an hour.

A few things that got us going:

• Sadly, my second turn on the catwalk (the bit with the toilet paper) is not documented. But I think you can make out the padding in my bra and on my hips (zoom in).

• The kangaroo paw pose…where did this come from? I’d never witnessed a catwalk parade before, and there was no Internet. Indeed, where did anything ever come from pre-internet?

• I was clearly asked to cite my hobbies to someone. And evidently I cited “school”. Which leaves me feeling so sad.

• I should flag, I’d never done public speaking and Lyneham High back in 1989 most certainly did not offer law and philosophy. However, I did have a very regular habit of spending my lunch on the public phone out on the street ringing different businesses (law firms, graphic design businesses) that I circled in the YellowPages and asking whoever picked up the phone to tell me if they liked their job, what degree they did, etc. Which also leaves me feeling sad.

• One thing I did not include in the book: When the lingerie attendant took my photo, I was, in fact, keeping watch while two of my friends flogged bras two aisles away. I was never a shoplifter. But my stern, too-adult composure was called upon by “the other girls”.

And one other looping aside, Emma and her family travelled to the small village of Damme near Bruges a few weeks ago to view the oversized bronze triptych sculpture of my head in the centre of the village. This frantically looping story is documented here and that’s Em, below, with my rusting noggin.

The funny thing is, this kind of loop-y shit happens to both Emma and I frequently. As I said to Emma yesterday, coincidences happen all the time; life is a whole bunch of extraordinary, magnificent coincides strung together. The art of living a loopy life is to be alive to notice them, marking them as special and revelling in the awe of it.

Wanna help me with this Wild episode

Someone in this community asked that I get global ecologist Corey Bradshaw (based at Flinders University) on to the Wild podcast (he recently appeared on Nate Hagens’ podcast talking about species extinction, including human species extinction). I try to do as I’m asked. I’ll be interviewing him next week. If you have a question for Corey regarding fertility collapse, overpopulation etc, add to the comments:

Some of you have already sent some through:

Vanessa Griffiths: As an Aussie, I'd love it if he could recommend any other local scientific/educated voices we can learn from, network with etc

Shaska Martin: In thinking about how we have come to be where we are now… I would be interested in his perspective of our next Songlines – what does he think our collective story needs to develop and tell.

Alaina: I'd love to hear him on Wild. The bit that finally made me cry was near the end, when he (shared) about his 17 year old daughter and her generation, how they don't want to drink or do drugs or drive, 'they're just focusing on being good people'. There's something heartbreaking beautiful about that. Dealing with a terrifying future and taking the high road!

That was long. Thanks for bearing with me. I’ll get back to the Ask me Anything videos next week. You can ask me your burning question here and I’ll try to cover it off.

Sarah xx