From my op shop stories

Remember the days when the air was crisp and clean, when the view of the mountains was breathtakingly spectacular and mundanely familiar all at the same time. Remember when Bayswater was a bright, bustling little place where you stopped and talked to someone you knew every few minutes. Templer community life in the 1950s was not rushed. There was time to talk, time to shop and time to enjoy the quaint local atmosphere of a sleepy outlying suburb nestled into the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. Long gone and but not yet lost.

Magic still happens. Time stood still for me recently in Bayswater. It was the second Saturday of the month. I was in a hurry. Kids had to be chauffeured, appointments kept. All of a sudden, there it was. The Bayswater Market, a magnet of nostalgia pulling back to a place I hadn’t visited in years. The railway station looked prettier than ever. It hadn’t lost its charm of the 50s and 60s, still curtained by the lacework of autumn trees, staged against the backdrop of the bluest mountains. The theatre of my childhood drew me into the car park of umbrella’d stalls.

I met other Templers, council representatives, the local MP in a warm brown jumper. Conversations came with comfort and ease. How are you today? Wie geht’s? Nice to see you. Mach’s gut. A vendor weighed my produce and threw an extra handful onto the scales just like Mr Pegler had half a century ago. The tomatoes looked real, not plastic. The stall holders had time to chat with customers. The laughter and friendly banter predated the robotic formula I was accustomed to from the salesperson connected to the cash register in the supermarket. A gift-wrapping paper vendor spoke in poetry. How about hail on grass, grandma’s roses or rainbow silly string? I took a roll of each one for less than a dollar. The prices were more like they used to be before we knew about inflation and productivity. Strawberries tasted like my childhood. Then I found the best treasure of all. A gold rimmed soup terrine with a full set of deep soup platters like the ones Oma had brought from another world across the oceans. Too much to carry, but trust grew like the healthy flowering pot plants I was loaded up with. It seemed natural to pay the money and leave behind half my wares with smiling strangers. I could come back for them later.

On leaving the car park timewarp, panic struck me. I had lost myself in the past, forgotten the tight schedule of mum’s taxi. I looked at my watch. Time had almost stood still. No hurry, only fifteen minutes had passed. I could still enjoy a cuppa in the café around the corner in Station Street with another Templer. I’ll be back next month to take in a bit more of the forgotten fifties at the Bayswater Market.

Motto: Sometimes it's good to bring the fifties back into the noughties.

Bad dream good dream

Scary dream: I had a dream that my computer was taken away from me forever. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of devastation that I would never be able to finish my thesis. The function of dreams is not about premonitions. Only prophets and gods can do that. It is to give the self some so-real-that-it’s-more-than-real practice at feeling certain emotions. Then we know what to do next in waking life. I’ve been slavishly working on my thesis ever since.

Today's motto:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Tips to keep the researcher in line

How I keep my story readable: I imagine reading my chapter to the people I interviewed. If I can say those things with comfort and ease to them, then it’s O.K.

Keeping the right tone: I do some member-checking. I keep showing the people I interviewed samples of my work and listen to their reactions. I ask How does that sit with you? Their responses make me change what I’ve written every time.

Keeping it credible: I use lots of triangulation. That means I use different points of view to show the same results like what they said, what I saw, what I read, what they wrote, what they did.

Keeping it plausible: I describe what just one person said, then what a sub-group said, then what most of the people said. That makes the trends I find sound more real.

Latest aha experience: I worked out how to use the ‘memo function’ in my Ethnograph software. It really speeds up the process of noting regular insights for my chapter draft whilst I‘m still coding data. I tried so hard to learn that function before from the manual but there’s something about IT that prevents the brain from learning to do something on the computer until you really need it.

What I’m listening to right now: Butterfly Lovers, a violin concerto that tells an amazing story of two people, a bit like the Romeo and Juliet tale. The story-telling music coordinates well with my current research activity.
all about The Butterfly Lovers

What I’m drinking: Ahmad tea brewed in my favourite stoneware teapot with real tea leaves. There's nothing better than a bit of authenticity to keep me in the right mood.

My deepest regret: My daughter wants me to help her with her Maths Project on probabilities. I haven’t had time all week and it’s due soon. I wonder what’s the probability of finding time to do it with her?

Special thank you

A special thank you: to my daughter for the new banner at the top of my blog. I love it.

What I’m reading with her: How to say NO and keep your friends – peer pressure reversal for teens and preteens by Sharon Scott.
Check it out

Three best kept secrets about writing the Analysis Chapter:
1.Make it transparent - that means every time I use a quote from my interviews I should reference it eg Case 004, lines 72-88, theme 2, code 202.1. I wasn’t doing this correctly because I kept changing my codes. This is important because it gives the reader the chance to make validity checks of my interpretations against the data itself.

2. Make it persuasive - that means give plenty excerpts, quotes and phrases from my data source. I’m good at this one because I like telling other people’s stories from their point of view.

3. Make the persuasive argument sound plausible – that means be careful not to move the interpretation too far from the data. Sometimes the interviews just show up ordinary mundane things that everyone already knows and the researcher is tempted to find in them something a bit more way out.

Motto for the day: There is never only one right story, but your story has to be believable.