I am so dumb. I ordered a whole bunch of volleyball stickers to share with granddaughter Lacie and then wrote her a letter yesterday including a bunch of them. I woke up this morning realizing that she plays soccer, not volleyball. she must think I"m nuts. (I am!)
I've been watching Miriam and Alan Lost in Scotland, which is such a fun show of the two performers, Alan Cumming and Miriam Margolyes, driving around Scotland.
Last night when I couldn't sleep, I checked out Netflix and saw Almost Australian, with Miriam Margolyes driving east to west in Australia. I watched two episodes. She hasn't reached Western Australia yet, but I have one more episode to go.
I had not heard of Miriam Margolyes before the Scotland show but she is an absolute delight. I guess people know her from Harry Potter, but I don't. She has such a big personality and wants to learn about everybody. I love that she is old (80+), lesbian, and fat and makes no apologies for anything.
I particularly enjoyed her discussions with Aboriginal people. The only thing I ever heard about Aboriginals was from Peggy, who hated them. She worked in a hospital where she had encounters with a lot of not very good people and I remember being in downtown Perth where there was an Aboriginal man sleeping in a park area, probably drunk, and she pointed him out to me as why she hates Aboriginals.
But of course the people with whom Margolyes talks are wonderful and I learned a lot about their history. They are like our country's native Americans who get angry when we celebrate Columbus Day because of what the arrival of Columbus did to their culture. Aboriginals feel the same way about Australia Day, since that was the day that their culture began to be destroyed. She met with some wonderful women who spend a day each week with children teaching them their native language and the customs of the Aboriginal tribes.
There is a lot of discussion about "mateship" and what it means. Apparently in the book she received when she was studying to get her Australian citizenship, there is a bit about mateship and the importance of it to Australians. It's a term I don't remember hearing when I was there.
The show hasn't discovered any kangaroos yet, which is why I will be interested to see what she sees in Western Australia (the country's largest state). One thing I remember very clearly about Western Australia is that when you are driving, if you come across road kill -- like we would see rabbits of skunks or other such animals here -- it is usually kangaroos. I also loved finding them in the cemetery, eating flowers on the graves, and on a soccer field, forcing a game to be postponed, and wandering around the grounds of a motel where we spent the night.
I am looking forward to watching the rest of this documentary.
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