Bec's sunday confessions, on Tuesday as usual

I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was eight, and the Lord of the Rings when I was 12 and have read them both many times since. I'd rather read good fantasy, with a beginning, middle and end, than most other forms of literature -especially now, post-children, when I will happily bin a book like The Sea, or Three Dollars, or absolutely anything by John Updike (except maybe Witches of Eastwick) because they're pretentious and self-absorbed and the writers make out their endings are all thought-provoking and highbrow and shit and actually they just got to the end of their contracted number of pages and couldn't work out how to finish the bloody book in any meaningful way. Inconclusive movies make me want to scream. If I were ever to have dinner with Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, we would get along beautifully until the subject of inconclusive endings appeared, at which time I would upend the table on their laps and storm out, leaving the bill. I wouldn't have classed any of this as a confession until reading Kim's confession this week. But now it seems fair. I hate rugby league more than any other sport on earth. Those of you living in Sydney at this, the start of the winter footy season, will know why this counts as a confession. Even more so when one is married to someone who once played the game professionally. A telling early moment in my relationship with the Prof was when I managed to distract him away from the television DURING the rugby league grand final. He still shakes his head over that one. Big Confession: the last few years, I've been quite relieved when he's blocked out the world to settle in and watch the grand final. It means there's one less person I have to pay attention to, for a couple of hours, once a year. But

on next year's grand final in October, when the two youngest are five and eldest is nine, I'm thinking of sending the three kids to my brother's for the weekend, booking a city hotel for the Prof and I, and seeing how easy it is to distract him again.

I'll pack LOTR, just in case.

mtc

Bec