History of June 1-7

My classmate sent me an email with three links about jellyfish as part of the research she did in response to one of my poems

My friend Caris writes really cool stuff and people know its cool and are publishing it and I get to read more of her writing soon and I’m excited

The government keeps changing how my boss has to pay me and it’s confusing and money makes me very anxious

Someone said there were options for cheap accommodation in London but I think we have very different ideas about what’s cheap

I’m in a Facebook group that has lots of Bee content and it makes me happy

There are gonna be some really cool events in Melbourne soon

I am anxious about money and apparently I can make more by answering questions so I guess I do surveys now

Hacks for maintaining control

Those hacks you see on Facebook and Instagram have nothing on me. Everyone has a hack they swear by, a story of ingenuity they like to share. Some people have more than one, usually people with more stories are those who’ve been forced to make do without all the comforts of home and access to conventional tools. When we travel or move out of home we become veritable mavericks and even if we return home we use the new tricks we’ve learnt, even if only to demonstrate how smart we became.

Without a washing machine I quickly figured out ways to do my laundry without forking out cash at a laundromat. I started by washing my socks in the sink. They take the longest to dry so I rinse them with cold water, fill the sink with warm soapy water and let them soak, drain the sink and take the socks out, put the plug back in, grab some soap (any soap cause soap is soap) and scrub one sock at a time inside and out, drop the soak covered sock into the sink, and repeat until every sock has been scrubbed, then run hot water into the sink until all of the socks are submerged, let them soak, remove the plug, run some cold water over all the socks, squeeze excess water out as I remove them from the sink, then rinse each sock until there is no soap suds left, find a place for them to dry and rinse the sink. After socks I’d do t-shirts and underwear. You’d be amazed how many things you can hang off a bunk bed and locker door. In a hostel I’m vigilant and my paranoia spikes but knowing that I am in control of the cleanliness of my things helps somewhat.

I figured out lots of ways to keep control and do things without spending any money. I can turn a scarf into a bag because I refuse to pay for one. I learnt how to open a can with a spoon from some Russian guy on YouTube, he’d made the video for people preparing for the apocalypse, I watched it because there was no way I was buying a can opener for a hostel in Berlin. That hostel was so shoddy that I cooked an egg on a plate over a candle (much like they did in chitty chitty bang bang) because there was one hot plate for a ten-story building where seven school groups and five soccer teams were staying and I was impatient.

When I moved from hostels to uni accommodation I joined a team of students on shoe string budgets and we started to learn more hacks than I can remember (I actually asked them to send me hacks we used and there were things I’d forgotten). I turned corks into doorstops and they were taken by maintenance because you’re not allowed to keep fire doors open in the UK. Because I’m not healthy and strong enough to open the heavy fire doors I then used an actual doorstop, when maintenance took that I used a plastic spoon and a bottle opener as a door stop, when the plastic broke I started to use my walking stick. At that point I think maintenance recognised I needed the door open and they stopped removing my doorstop.

I watched Caris make coffee in a bowl and then filter it through a tea towel because the French Press wasn’t available. Lauren, Mie and I used freezer bags as piping bags when making mini meringues. We used a water bottle as a rolling pin to make a pumpkin pie and blueberry turnovers. I used a whisk to mash some potatoes because our potato masher was stuck behind the broken oven. Lauren used hand soap to do her dishes, soap is soap. For our Christmas dinner we ate in the corridor off the top of our food boxes because 15 people wouldn’t fit around the eight-person table.

Lauren and I went through the glass recycling bin and found three shot glasses, one cup, a mason jar and two glass dishes that were the perfect size for mini crumbles. When I ran out of jars for the jam and pasta sauce and marmalade I made I returned to the glass recycling bin. I wanted all my flatmates to learn the value of taking all the free things they can because free stuff will always be useful at some point. Everyone knows the value of tote bags, I now know they can replace draws and be used as a delicate bag in the wash. A tube that had lollies in it was rescued from recycling so I could put my knitting in it. One of the cups I got at the welcome tent in o-week was a pen cup then a place for spare change before it held all of my magnets so they wouldn’t be crushed in my bag.

On the way home Caris, Ethie and I had too much stuff and not enough space in our bags so we all got a shit tonne of vacuum bags and hoped and prayed and sat on each others suitcases till they shut. I had two bags and one had to be posted back, instead of paying to get it shrink wrapped I bought a roll of glad wrap and used a pub table to turn the bag around on while I wrapped it myself. I was a bit worried a custom dog might smell the beer from the table top on my bag but I posted it anyway.

I’m home now (and so’s my bag) but I still make up ways to do things unconventionally, maybe because it lets me pretend I’m still travelling, maybe because I need to make things accessible, maybe because it reminds me of the weird things my friends and I did and maybe because it lets me feel like I’m in control of something cool, something other people might marvel at. 


Marmalade was different. It was made on a Saturday after I’d said farewell to nine people and while I waited for others to finish packing so we could watch tv together for the last time.

The citrus fruit had been sitting in a plastic bag for a few days waiting to be used. I was meant to cook the maramalade with friends but that didn’t work out because packing up to leave takes longer than expected.

So I worked on it by myself as my flatmates came in and out of the kitchen to distract me. And I guess that’s alright. These friends will in my life even when they can’t be there in person.

I suppose marmalade is a pretty transparent metaphor. A jam but not quite, given a different name because it’s a slightly different thing. The people who I called flatmates I now call my friends. Because there’ll be just a slight difference.


When you don’t want to say good bye you say farewell, hug, wave one last time and then make jam at 4am with all the people who also can’t process the emotions caused by someone’s absence.

We started with strawberry jam, and then started to make a mixed berry jam. We were in for the long haul. Not ready to go back to bed. While waiting for the fruit to simmer I noticed the baileys sitting a top the fridge with a bow around its neck. As if it was a gift saying ‘drink me’. And what was the harm, I was drowning in sorrow anyway, why not add a drink?

I added three. Baileys, Prosecco and Limoncello make an interesting combination. Not enough to get me drunk but enough to make me warm and soft. Less hard edges to cut other people with.

And the alcohol made one friend more confident. Sharing what she usually only says to one person with the whole room. I love looking after my friends and looking after drunk friends is no exception.

There a certain honesty in the kind of drunk someone gets when they’re melancholy. A certain way people reveal what is truly important and valuable to them.

And at 6am with a few drinks, some preserves and some good friends who were also trying to say goodbye a few hours after our friend had gone I knew that what I value is their presence in my life.

Unconditionally and with no limit of if they’re there in person or simply through messages and postcards. Because we’re never saying goodbye. We’re always going to be saying farewell over jam.


There are orbs everywhere, holding peoples spirits and releasing them when it’s been too long or too much.

The orbs are fragile, not like glass is fragile, but fragile like metal. Strong to a point, get it hit enough or try and bend it when it’s too cold and it’ll change.

And the orb isn’t meant to change, only the things inside the orb are meant to change. If the orb and the spirit both change there’s too much. The mechanics of it are hard to explain but throw in some words like ‘overload’ or ‘critical mass’ and it sounds logical.

The spirit has to find a new orb but there’s no logic in how that happens, just hope and magic.


I got a very cheap box of 100 postcards so I can keep in touch with my friends all over the world for less than 10pence per card. I’ve now got homes all over the world and people I need to stay in touch with. I have lots of post cards and the design on the front of the card always influences what I write.

When I picked out a card with a merry go round of shoes with mirrors and lights I thought about my sisters old walk in wardrobe. So I wrote to Sarah.

I told her about how my room here feels like home. It’s my space, decorated with as many knick knacks as I could get for free. My pin board has some lovely cards on it, the fairy lights give off a lovely soft yellow light and I have craft supplies on the shelf.

I told her I’m looking forward to decorating a new room when I get back to Australia because I get to make a new space my own and thats something I’ve become very good at.

Our family has moved house so many times that I’ve lost track of where we’ve lived and when. I can pack up my bedroom in an hour but I always put more time and effort into setting up a new room. I enjoy the ritual of going through memories and deciding where they belong.

I don’t let go of things easily, I have artwork I did when I was three, class work from year five, the first history report I ever wrote, every swimming certificate I have ever earned, netball trophies spanning seven years, birthday and christmas cards from my whole life, my first pair of shoes, art I did in year seven, a harmonica that doesn’t work. And all because they hold memories.

Sarah remembers everything, almost down to the hour that it happened. She describes things in vivid detail and is always ready with a joke or reference to something we did years ago. My brain isn’t good at memories, I have blank spots spanning entire weeks and months. I didn’t tell Sarah that because I didn’t know how to explain it to her when I’m so jealous of her ability to remember things.

The only time my memory works well is when it’s connected to a place. I make a space my own so I can remember what happens in it. I have photographs of my old rooms that I can look at when I want to remember something that happened there. Home is in those photos and in my year six maths book and the 70 paper cranes I folded during a literature class in year 11 and these things are memories I cart from house to house in boxes so I can put a part of home into every new house. Because Home to me is just a familiar memory, and I have so few of those.


I am a student. I have a student budget. I live in student accomodation. Our student kitchen has two stoves and of the two stoves there is always one out of order. Our student kitchen has two traffic cones, one of which we named Albert, the other still doesn’t have a name. In our student kitchen we have red tubs, one red tub for each student. We keep our groceries in our tubs until we have time to cook a student meal. Our student groceries are usually from Aldi, Iceland or Home Bargains. Bulk ingredients for a bulk amount of students. Bulk ingredients to make a bulk meal that can be split into multiple tuperware containers (read ‘cheap take-away containers’) to go into the freezer so the student can eat it later when they forget that cooking a meal takes time.

Students aren’t great at looking afterourselves. We’re all learning too much and learning to care for themselves is just another thing students have to add to the list of things to revise. Caring for themselves is the first class students drop out of when they get too busy with chemistry, or music theory, or translation classes, or sports science, or teaching, or clubs. Students need someone to teach us to be better students because these student budgets and student kitchens and student meals and student exhaustions are not healthy.