The fascination of road kill

I lived in the United States as a teenager, and I have since found its politics fascinating, although the fascination is akin to that fascination one feels towards road kill – one can't stop looking at it – or perhaps even a poisonous snake.

In my first week in DC, I was physically nauseated by the sights. Here in the capital city of the richest country in the world, homeless guys slept over air vents and used the traffic circles as extremely public toilets even as the limousines and cavalcades rolled by. People stank, really stank, and held out crumpled paper cups for spare change. Meanwhile, women wore fur to dine at the elite members-only clubs that dotted Washington; I know, because I was invited to some of those lunches and was always underdressed.

Later, I joined a volunteer organisation which delivered groceries to the needy each month. I visited rat infested apartments that stank of gangrene and rot and talked with residents who were always so gracious, so grateful, despite nephews killed in shoot outs and feet amputated thanks to diabetes. Me, I would have been screaming at anyone who came near me to get me out of this nightmare.

I couldn't believe – I still can't believe – that such a rich country could so obviously fail to look after so many of its citizens. I never got over the sense that here was a very poor country, even if it was the richest country in the world; that many people were startlingly ignorant, frequently misinformed and completely lacking in critical skills, yet were also stridently opinionated – often on subjects that lead to war; that there were clear divisions of education and class, although it claimed to be a classless society; that despite the separation of church and state, fundamentalists of all stripes were doing everything they could to infiltrate the state and inflict their own mores onto everyone else; and that despite rallying calls for freedom and democracy, there was very little of either here.

And I never got over the sense that all this was obscene in what was supposed to be the most privileged country on earth, a country moreover that prided itself on being God's gift to the world. As soon as I came of age (well, 17), I moved out of home and fled back to Australia with a renewed fondness for its more egalitarian secular state.*

Of course, how I felt about the US was rarely coherent; it was all muddled up with being a miserable and lonely displaced teenager with an acute case of homesickness. I felt sick with guilt just for being middle class, when all around flowed oceans of poverty. As I walked past women huddled in blankets on the sidewalk near work, church or museums – all downtown – I felt deeply ashamed of my wealth and my escape across the river to the relative safety of my home in Arlington. I was churned up with pity and confusion and frustration, and I was scared. The gap between haves and have-nots was more than unsettling; it was sickening, it was frightening, and I was just a young teenage girl trying to understand where on earth I had wound up.

I only wish that Joe Bageant had written Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War back then – it explains so much, and would have been my essential guidebook in navigating this strange and violent country.

Bageant describes himself as a working poor redneck. He left his hometown to study and work as a writer and editor, but returned years later to live. He found that in the decades he had been away, the people of his town had tumbled down the economic scale; the opportunities for which he had scrabbled (especially college) were now completely out of reach of his demographic. He also realised that this was the demographic which had propelled George W Bush to victory and would again, even although Republican policies had so corroded their community. Bageant goes on to investigate how and why this demographic supports the Republican party, and how the wealthy keeps it struggling – and keeps it Republican – in order to maintain a privileged lifestyle.

The result is that access to education, health care and a living wage are becoming the domain of the elite, and everyone else is being left behind. For many Americans, the only possible access to these once foundational aspects of the commonweal is through military service – what he describes as 'economic conscription' – and even then it rarely comes through.

Bageant suggests that this is a class war – and yet, he claims, most poor Americans are unable to interpret their situation in this light because they lack the insight and skills to reflect on their situation. Bageant is scathing about American education. Many do not finish high school, and even those that do often lack critical thinking skills. Something like one quarter of Americans are functionally illiterate: they may be able to read a sentence, but they cannot follow the thread of an idea through five paragraphs. Such a population is unable to critique their political leaders; for that matter, it is barely able to distinguish between political statements, news programs, entertainment and advertising.

The lack of critical skills is compounded by the brutality of life for the working poor. Wages are so low, and working conditions so insecure, that many work two jobs just to make ends meet; even so, one or two unforeseen medical bills can send a household spiralling into debt, even bankruptcy. In addition, in the competition for extra shifts or just to stay employed, the working poor are usually pitted against one another in their workplaces. In this climate, they lack the time, energy, education and culture to reflect on their situation, and from there to organise themselves and others into a movement for change.

He suggests, too, that the sedative powers of television and sport have rendered the population even more passive. The average American spends a third of his or her waking life in front of the box, where conservative agendas are rampant and a sound bite is valued more highly than a complex thought.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, and Bageant's book at times veers into places where I am not entirely comfortable. For example, I am not sure how intentional the subjugation of the working class has been, or whether it is a more incidental, if not unimportant, flow-on from an economic system which prioritises corporations over people. However, his insights dovetail so closely with my own observations that I find most of his claims very convincing.

And overall, the book is fascinating. As one who was born in a small poor town but went away for many years, Bageant writes about his people with a lively insider / outsider perspective. He uses rich and fruity language, telling many stories along the way, that make it a terrific read.

Deer Hunting was written before Obama was elected, yet my sense is that Bageant would be no less scathing about the current situation. After all, the problems that Bageant names are deep-rooted and require a complete restructure of society: a wresting away of power from corporations, and a revolutionary investment in education and healthcare. No modern politician appears to have the guts to challenge, really challenge, the corporate state, nor, for that matter, the grab for power by Christian fundamentalists.

I gather Bageant is not currently hopeful as, according to his blog, he has escaped the hellhole that is America and is living in Mexico where he lies around feeling depressed and drinking heavily, emerging only to post the occasional rant. As I am writing this at my local pub, listening to sad songs with a beer close at hand, I feel some sense of affinity.

*Of course, Australia's track record, particularly regarding our indigenous population, is not great either – but it certainly felt better to me back then!

> Joe Bageant Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (North Carlton, VIC: Scribe, 2007)

Chocolate, no, make that pistachio

Even now, I still have no idea what I really want; I even struggle to pick a flavour of gelato. There are days when I love being married, and days when I long for solitude; days when I enjoy being home with my children, and days when it feels like a prison sentence; days when I know what to do, and days when I haven't a clue. Most weeks, I just do what needs to be done, and aim for a little reflection and gratitude. After all, by virtue of birth, education and marriage I have power, money and choices that would make most women in the world ecstatic; I suspect most of the frustrations I have about my life result from too much choice. The grass is always greener.

From this little muddle, I looked forward to reading Susan Maushart's book What Women Want Next. If I don't know what I want, does she?

Of course, Maushart's answer is not, and cannot be, straightforward. Despite the myriad opportunities available to them, Maushart points out that many women do not feel fulfilled – in fact, they tend to feel more guilty than anything. She goes on to draw from a wealth of sociological studies to investigate why, looking at work, parenting, homemaking, partnership and old age.

Maushart starts from the assumption that, post the revolution, life is what we make of it. For example, she argues, we can work if we so choose; any absence of women in the professional fields says more about how women make choices than about the options open to them. Maushart notes studies that show that many high-achieving women drop out, either to have children or to pursue more holistic lives; and as women have less of a tendency to grant work an all-encompassing role in their lives, their career paths are not limited by external factors, but are self-limiting.

In theory and in law, Maushart's initial assumption may be correct. In practice, however, many workplaces play out differently. More than one of my friends has been sidelined at work, explicitly told that they will probably have kids so the firm won't invest in their future. This is illegal, but it is difficult to prove or prosecute – and who wants to take on one's employer on such an issue? It just leaves one working in a hostile workplace, vulnerable to the next wave of redundancies. More subtly, the lack of job sharing or permanent part time positions at management levels means many women with children never advance far beyond entry level roles as they are committed to collecting their children from school and meeting other family responsibilities. I'm not convinced that our options are as open as Maushart states; many workplaces are structurally hostile to primary caregivers (and they're usually women) whether in overt or more subtle ways.

So I disagree with her initial assumption. Despite this, I do concede that we have significantly more choices than women of two generations ago, and I accept her claim that much of the responsibility for our happiness now rests on our choices.

This revolutionary freedom of choice is wonderful; yet Maushart suggests that it is perhaps an impediment to a sense of fulfilment. Like me, at home with kids for years now and wondering if I should instead be working, while many of my working friends no doubt wonder if they should spend more time at home with their kids, many of us find decision making difficult. With this in mind, Maushart suggests that one thing we want may be the wisdom to make our decisions well and the courage to live them out fully.

Maushart's investigation into what women want focuses on happiness. This raises a deeper question for me: is happiness so important? There are times at the gym when a great sense of wellbeing descends and I feel intensely happy, even although I am bored out of my skull. At other times, I may write something difficult and good, something that makes me weep or rage or both, that leaves me feel empty, fragile and vulnerable. I can't say writing it makes me happy, but it invests my life with meaning in a way that dumbbell flies never will. Of course, I keep going to the gym to get the endorphin kick – but I can get along without it. I'm not sure I could live without putting words on a page. I even wonder, feeling terribly subversive, if it's possible that happiness is just a teensy-weensy little bit er... boring?

Maushart doesn't investigate this, and although she does touch on our desire to infuse our lives with meaning, it's in light of its contribution to happiness. Yet I'm not convinced that a sense of meaning always contributes to a sense of happiness. Many people make meaningful life choices knowing they will be painful and difficult. Ministers of religion and artists are often cases in point; people holding fast to difficult relationships, another. I find myself wondering how important happiness really is, and whether other, deeper, values drive our lives.

However, I am a reasonably happy person (even if bored at the gym, driven crazy by my children, and forever consumed by doubt about my choices) so perhaps I underestimate the pall of an unhappy life, or the effect on overall wellbeing that meaning-making gives me. Then again, Maushart writes that dancing, exercise, volunteer work and religious participation are major indicators of happiness for a woman; I do three of them, so perhaps that accounts for my mostly even keel.

While I certainly don't agree with all of Maushart's conclusions, or even her premises, What Women Want Next is funny, feisty, informative, confessional and engaging. Maushart intersperses questions of women's liberation with stories of her daughter, age six, dressed in a bridal gown vacuuming the front hallway, and discussions about sex with jokes about blow jobs and notes on her own sex life; and she is never averse to a wry one-liner (a section on how to negotiate housework and relationships ends with, "Of course, I am single."). As I have come to expect from Maushart, What Women Want Next is a pleasure to read, and provides much food for thought, not least the revelation that sociology can be sexy!

> Susan Maushart What Women Want Next (Melbourne: Text, 2005).

The heroic Hausfrau

Years ago, when my six-year-old was not quite two, my husband stubbed his toe. Being a mild-mannered bloke, he shouted "ouch" and hopped around a little. And my angelic-looking daughter hopped beside him yelling, "Fuckit! Fuckit! Fuckit!". "That's an interesting word," he said, deadpan. "Who says that?". My disloyal daughter beamed at him and drawled, "Mama!".

Naturally, I was in disgrace – and since then, I have drastically cleaned up my act. But it's one of those stories that live on, told over dessert when the kids have gone to bed. It's also one of those stories that, even as it makes me laugh, embarrasses me somewhat, along with the time I stepped in a turd deposited by one of my children; the time I realised the baby had head lice nesting under the cradle cap; the time we all had worms, and so on.

So it was with enormous pleasure that I recently read Nicole Chaison's The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated. It's an autobiographical work recounting her experience as mother, shaped around the classic hero's tale. Chapters address A.D. (After Dilation), the LabOrinth, The Fourteen Labors of the Hausfrau, Tales, Atonement, Resurrection and so on. My favourite labour was 'Home Renovation, or How It Came to Be that I Sat in Cat Diarrhoea' – I laughed so hard I cried.

Chaison's labours feel all too familiar: cleaning maggots out of a car seat, dealing with head lice, accidentally letting kids see an R-rated movie and wincing as they practice the expletives, and realising one is tragically and forever unhip. She describes her self-medication regime – coffee all day, wine all evening – and writes openly about things many of us keep under wraps: she drinks too much, she had head lice, she screams at her husband when he suggests they get a cleaner, her libido has been MIA for years, PMS turns her into a psychotic bitch from hell, and her pelvic floor has never recovered from childbirth: whenever she coughs she wets herself. Chortling away, I read out great chunks to my husband, no doubt terribly annoying as he was reading the very sombre In Cold Blood at the time.

Yet it's not all fun and games. Chaison also reflects on the frustrations and humiliations of motherhood. She is humble enough to let her children teach her, such as whether an eight year old needs a note in his lunchbox saying I Love You!, and she writes achingly about the small crucifixions she experiences as she endures the cutting pain of self-knowledge. Small children, after all, are the masters of slicing through illusions and leaving us laid bare.

Like a true hero's journey, moving through the labours and stages reflects her journey to self-knowledge. Chaison comes to realise not only that she is a writer, but that she has already written a book: her journal, which forms the foundation of The Passion. And like any true hero, she has a guide: her beloved grandmother, Grammy Mil, who gives her three gifts: the journal, a quote, and a destination.

Each page of the book has a cartoon panel down the side. I am not a great fan of the current cartoon fad, and these are pretty rough. Despite this, I have to say that they add to the book; they embellish and extend the text. If you skip the cartoons, you miss the punch lines – and her husband's suggestions for a male parenting magazine which really made my partner laugh.

It's not often that a book makes me guffaw with laughter, or wipe away a heartfelt tear. But this one did. It's a book for people in the thick of it; adults without children would be appalled. Witty and confessional and outrageous and wry, it reminds me that I am not alone. Others live this messy life with kids, and also find it good.

> Nicole Chaison The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated (New York: Villard, 2009).

Think you ought to run the country?

The theologian Karl Barth advised Christians to carry a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. That is all very well, but for years my city's two newspapers have vied to pack in the most celebrity gossip and I'm not sure that's what he meant. One cannot turn a page without being confronted with images from Fashion Week, or a quote from the latest vacuous stick insect who hasn't eaten a sandwich since 1993. For a while I told myself just to ignore those articles and concentrate on the real news. But like a dog fascinated by its own vomit, again and again I found myself reading celebrity drivel. I was fascinated and appalled at their doings, and horrified that their excesses and fad diets and inane comments ever made it into print, let alone into something calling itself a broadsheet.

Some years ago, we became so sick of the fluff and the paucity of other news that we cancelled the paper. We went online, but in between articles found ourselves being barraged by flashing ads featuring busty women and shiny cars (many on the website of what purports to be Melbourne's serious newspaper). So we soon gave up on that, too, and looked for another option. We took out a trial subscription to The Guardian Weekly (first four editions free!) and never looked back.

Having just worked my way through the eight editions that were delivered while we were away, I feel the need to rave. There is a whole world out there! Every edition has news and reviews from all over the world: Africa, Asia, South and Central America, Europe, as well as the more usual sources of news, the US and the Middle East. Although the paper has an understandably British bias, it features lengthy articles from areas often overlooked by slimmer papers. One recent edition alone included news from Bangladesh, the Congo, Costa Rica, Iceland and Finland. As well as more traditional news stories, the paper regularly reports on the myriad challenges facing the developing world.

The Guardian Weekly has reported on issues in Australia which barely made it into Australian papers, including a case which was placed under a super-injunction. I find it fascinating (and horrifying) that we initially heard about it in an overseas newspaper. The paper also broke the story of Trafigura's dumping of toxic waste on Ivory Coast, despite that case also being placed under a super-injunction and a related question from Parliamentary Question Time being suppressed. Although the paper was initially prevented from running the story, when details were released to Twitter and Wikileaks the cover blew off.

Its editorial stance is staunch left, somewhat progressive and deeply middle class. I find this comforting in a world where many press organs are far-right to the point of compromise. While I certainly do not hold with all its editorial opinions, the paper regularly challenges me to consider my own stance on an issue.

Each edition includes extracts from and reviews of up and coming books, plays, music, movies and exhibitions; reviews are often long and thoughtful.

On a lighter note, the paper is not above ending a piece with a small joke or wry comment, making it not only informative but a delight to read. The Diversions pages include the famous Notes and Queries, where readers pose and answer pressing questions such as 'Why does one scratch the side of one's head when one is confused?' and 'Why do men's and women's clothing button on opposite sides?', as well as a set of dastardly puzzles and word games. The cryptic crossword is always a killer.

I am one of those people who think I ought to run the country; at least, I have a jolly good idea of what the government should be doing, and isn't. Funnily enough, many years ago in Yes, Prime Minister, Jim Hacker observed that The Guardian is read by exactly those people; and it, or at least its international weekly digest, is certainly the paper for me. And best of all, apart from a few of the more publicity-seeking artists and their shows, celebrities don't get a look in.

***

From Yes, Prime Minister

Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it already is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

Life in Abundance

I am an Australian wandering the world for a couple of months, chivvied out of my house by my travel-loving husband. A few weeks ago, in Glasgow, I found a tiny second hand bookshop in an alleyway off a nondescript side street. While my six- and three-year-olds chatted to the owner and played with the resident cats, I negotiated the poky aisles. It was one of those stores with books shelved to the ceiling, books stacked 30 high in front of the shelves, and books stacked 20 high in front of the stacks in front of the shelves. I spent most of the time saying 'excuse me' to the other customers as we squeezed past each other, arching over stacks and bending our bodies around one another like a literary form of twister.

The shop was intriguing. And in one teetering pile, a slim purple book caught my eye. I slid it out, opened it up, began to read, and immediately experienced that electrical jolt you get when you pick up the exact book you need, the book you know you will read time and again until you die.

Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives), by Ted Kooser, is an account of daily life in rural Nebraska. It is not a linear telling, nor a story as such, but instead a collection of observations and memories grouped by season. I mean no disrespect when I say that it reads like an unusually beautiful blog, the posts lovingly crafted. Individually, each piece stands alone, whether a paragraph or three pages, and provides much to reflect on. Together, the pieces create an intimate portrait of place, person and community.

The notes are suffused with gentle humour and tinged with sadness. This is the writing of a man aware of his mortality and our frailty, who yet sees that life is good. He uses the stories of fields and families, small towns and tools, to create something strong and good. The writing drew me in so that I, too, smelled the wild plums in the hedgerow and saw the beer cans nestled in the undergrowth; lay in his son's tree house and listened to the breeze rustle the branches; sat on his outdoor toilet in the early morning watching the sunrise; experienced the theatre of a garage sale; sniffed the cloves from his mother's ancient can; and longed to see a fox. And I too felt frustration at the louts spraying herbicide, the school board which closes the schools and busses the kids for miles, the farmer who dumps insecticide into the water in his irrigation well. Kooser takes the reader on a ramble through his observations and memories such that, by the benediction – the only way to describe the final piece – I felt I had come to know him.

Local Wonders has taken its place on my mental shelf of all time favourites, along with works by Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Marilynne Robinson and Robert Farrar Capon – all writers who cherish the mundane. Like these authors, Kooser has written a book about the everyday, to read slowly and savour, to dip into again and again, to draw nourishment from.

My life's thesis is this: if we could learn to see and cherish the gifts of the daily – the sight of a spider web as we walk down the street, the thread of song that comes to mind as we wash dishes, a baby's smile – then we would have a means to counter the gnawing insatiable appetite for more which dominates our culture: more clothes, more food, more sex, more experience, more power, more money, more thrills. This book invites the reader to step back, take a breath, and look around. By reading such a book, and learning to paying attention to our own lives, we might discover a deep and joyful truth: that all of us have not only enough, but riches and life in abundance.

> Ted Kooser Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives) (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

AJGAOG

I always find it slightly irritating to read a book written by someone who's a whole lot smarter than me. That is to say, while many writers are a whole lot smarter but write in a way that their brilliance isn't shoved in my face, this week I read a book where the writer's brilliance and lit crit skills are pointed out with big arrows and neon lights. I was warned by the title, so reminiscent of a certain high school mentality: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I have avoided the book time and again because this title annoyed me so. But at last I am sufficiently relaxed to be up for a bit of a joke. And now that I have read more than the title - each and every word, in fact, and some of them twice over - I am pleased to report that while it may not be a AHWOSG, it's certainly AJGAOG.*

AHWOSG is Eggers's account of the death of his parents, 32 days apart, and the years which follow. He was 21 when they died. His younger brother, Toph (pronounced 'Tofe' ie Christopher) was only 7 and, although Eggers has two older siblings, Eggers became his brother's guardian. He writes about the experience, a true story, but structures it as a fictional account. After all, as he points out in the preface, it's not as if he can remember every word of every significant conversation.

The book is full of similar tricks. The most pervasive is Eggers's regular reminder to the reader that he is self-aware. Near the beginning of the book is a lengthy preface which outlines many aspects of the book, including "C) The painfully, endlessly self-conscious book aspect" and "C.2) The knowingness about the book's self-consciousness aspect." In the body of the text, from time to time a character breaks out and becomes the voice of the author arguing with himself; elsewhere, Eggers leaps into self-critical monologues. This self-awareness could be grating, yet it comes across as a relatively honest account. This is, after all, how our minds and hearts work: assessing, judging, analyzing even as we think and act and play and breathe.

It works in part because Eggers so precisely evokes the experience of having a parent die, which, at least for me, was coloured by endless mindgames and painful self-awareness. He recalls not so much the grief, but instead the extreme mundanity of hanging around while someone is very ill. Early on in the book, he is at the hospital with his older sister Beth, and Toph. They have been given a room for the dying; it contains both a hospital bed and a pull-out couch. As his mother fights for breath, her children try to sleep. Eggers writes about the sheer tedium of waiting in the night for the next breath, or the next, so shockingly far apart, each one a powerful act of will, and wondering, even hoping, that this breath or that might be the last and the waiting might be over. Yet even as he thinks about her death and makes fruitless plans and fantasizes about the end, he finds himself annoyed by the metal bar across the centre of the couch which digs into his back and prevents him from getting anywhere close to sleep.

At home, as his mother coughs up bile, Eggers shifts around on the couch, lying along its back, trying to find a comfortable position so he can both hold the kidney shaped dish into which she spat, and see the television. He writes about small things done badly at a time when everything feels important: slopping bile all over his trousers and forgetting to change them before taking his mother to the hospital - and en route, carrying her and whacking her head against the doorframe. So stupid, so mundane. This is exactly how it was for us, too, and I am grateful to him for giving a voice to it.

As the book develops, the reader is struck by his towering rage. Eggers writes honestly about his burning sense of entitlement - my life has been shit, I am OWED - and the outflow of rage/entitlement. It leads to frenetic activity: running a business, founding a magazine, going out whenever possible to be with people his own age - and always there, always needing rides and cooking and horseplay and care, is his passionately loved brother, Toph.

Eggers suggests in the preface that the first three or four chapters are the best, and I'd have to agree with his odd comment. They are the most immediate, the most gripping. But in its entirety, the book well describes ongoing grief. It may not always be dramatic, but it colours every experience for years, whether it's responding to a friend in crisis or filling out school forms.

Like Eggers, I experienced the death of a parent in my early twenties. Unlike him, however, my grief and rage turned inwards. I felt like I fractured, and thus began a great passivity, years of undemanding work and odd part time studies with no sense of purpose, direction or ambition. Almost a decade later, I find myself married with three children, and feel oddly jealous of the way he turned his grief and rage outwards, developing a magazine, devouring the world, and writing this book. This is the sort of book I would have liked to have written, had my rage turned incandescent, had I been willing and able to express how I felt. Instead, for the most part, I remained polite. Fuckit. I admire his courage and openness in this book, and love his evident playfulness. The hilarious and the painful and the awful are jumbled together, just as they are in all of our lives. This is a terrific book, a real ride that takes you and thrills you and makes you glad to be alive and with voice. May it be a catalyst.

> Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (London: Picador, 2000, 2001).

*A Jolly Good Account of Grief.

Squeak, Piggy, Squeak

Some cultures are better than others at playing. Here in Berlin, where I am staying this week, people seem pretty good at it. The footpaths are covered in snow and ice, and you can't get to the corner without sliding around. Perhaps this constant loss of dignity encourages play; perhaps it's another aspect of the personality trait which makes Berlin a party city; perhaps it's just the anarchy of Kreuzberg, our temporary suburb, coming out.

Whatever it is, it's infectious. Yesterday we went sledding at the local park. Around us, children and adults careened down the hill on sleds, toboggans, bits of cardboard and squares of linoleum. On the other side of the field, a large handmade sign stood reading 'It starts at 2.30'. There, people were setting up sound equipment, and strains of electronica drifted across. A mixed crowd of punks, students, kids and parents slowly gathered into two straggly lines, chatting, dancing and laughing. And at 2.30 sharp, the inter-suburb snowball fight - Kreuzberg v Neukoelln - began. By the time we left, well over a hundred people were throwing snow across the divide, and dozens of snowballs were flying through the air. It was hilarious.

I find it hard to imagine anything so anarchic in Australia, where public events are usually organised by local councils and sponsored by corporations, and we are cast into the role of spectator or consumer rather than participant. It's like we need someone's permission to have fun, to play in public spaces. Is this a remnant of the convict era, I wonder, or just a deep Protestantism which forbids anyone from enjoying themselves too much?

I am beginning to suspect that many adults don't even play in the privacy of their own homes. One of our daughters had a birthday party recently. The other children were absolutely flabbergasted (and delighted) when I played sardines with them. It's as if they had never seen a parent hiding under a bed before (and it was a good hiding spot, too - I pulled the blanket over from the unmade bed so that it formed a curtain and no-one found me for ages!).

I've always enjoyed a good game, whether it's a snowball fight, a spot of hide and seek, or something more sedate. So I was thrilled this Christmas when we were given a charming book, Parlour Games for Modern Families. It features games old and new; the sort of games that filled many a rainy day on my holidays (hangman, gin rummy, beetle, categories, dictionary, charades, yahtzee, eat poop you cat) and many others. Interspersed with the games are discussions on subjects such as forfeits, the history of a game, or how to shuffle cards.

The games all require very little or no equipment; at most, blank paper and pencils, a pack of cards, or a few die. Most take no time to set up, and can be played in less than half an hour. The authors provide clear instructions, and also a good estimate of earliest age someone might be able to participate in each game.

Parlour games may not offer the thrill of a mass snowfight set to dance music. But they do reveal character, and invite a cheerful sort of derring-do and spontaneous behaviour that is most cathartic. And they are incredibly versatile. They can fill in a rainy afternoon or a long train ride; they can provide struture to an evening with friends; they can be played by children or adults separately or together.

I have many very happy memories, and family stories, which arose out of parlour games. My sister and I recall charades from twenty years ago that caused us to roll around on the floor holding our sides with laughter, which recounting even now still makes us smile. Thanks to this book, I'm slowly introducing my own children to such old favourites, and learning new ones. We've already had some very funny moments. Even reading out the rules of Squeak, Piggy, Squeak to various friends made me laugh until I cried.

> Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras Parlour Games for Modern Families (Melbourne: Scribe, 2009).