DNF stands for ‘did not finish’ – the acronym no ultrarunner wants assigned to their race result. For amateurs, DNFing is loaded with emotion – but attrition rates are extremely common

Drenched, freezing, utterly miserable and with a GI catastrophe ready to blow, my internal conflict of quit/don’t quit was in full force. I was at about kilometre 56 of my 100km ultramarathon. After a cascade of bad decisions and worse weather, totally wretched, I shuffled and sobbed my way through the dark to the next checkpoint. By the time I got there at 62km, the resignation of dropping out had settled in. Months and months of training had come to nothing.

Inside the checkpoint, soaked runners and their besieged crew were crowded into what resembled a field hospital triage unit. In the chaotic throng I found my crew, slumped down on to a bench and said: I’m pulling out.

The performances often gave me goose bumps, but I also got to observe the highs and lows of audience behaviour

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I was 24, had just moved into a share house I couldn’t afford, and my job as a nanny was proving less than ideal. I’d graduated from my music degree a few years prior and was floating along, feeling a little lost.

A friend had told me to apply to become a front-of-house staff member at Australia’s busiest performing arts centre, Arts Centre Melbourne. It was a rare opportunity, as people rarely quit. To be surrounded by art again sounded like a dream.

‘Can you help me?’ I asked. ‘I think my car’s been towed away, and my children don’t have any shoes’

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One of the first things we did after moving from the UK to Vancouver was buy a car. Unfortunately, I didn’t acquaint myself with the new road rules quite as quickly.

Which is to say, I didn’t know you aren’t allowed to park on busy streets after 3pm in Vancouver. Unaware and in a carefree summer mood, I parked outside an ice-cream shop and took my barefoot children in for a treat. We emerged a short time later, sticky and splattered in drops of raspberry, mint and chocolate, and found my car wasn’t there.

As a widower and a newly single father of three, Jim Rogers was struggling. Then on a poolside holiday, he sat next to Tyler – and his life changed

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In the mid 90s, I was in the prime of my life. I was in my early 30s, married to my soul mate, Lorna, with three kids under three. We’d emigrated from our small town in Worcestershire in the UK to Perth, and life was wonderful. Then Lorna was diagnosed with melanoma. We returned to England and less than a year later she was gone. It was completely unbelievable, as though someone had just come along and smashed my life into a million pieces.

The following months were a blur: I was a grief-stricken widower and newly single parent struggling to keep the kids’ life on track and my own head above water. As time went on, it was obvious I wasn’t doing well and my parents insisted on treating me to a holiday in the sun. I didn’t want to go.

Stavroula Adameitis, AKA Frida Las Vegas, is an Adelaide-based artist and designer known for her camp, pop art aesthetic. A typical work might feature palm trees, poodles, Greek pillars or bin chickens (Australian white ibises), sometimes all at once. Does it veer into kitsch? ‘I hope so,’ she says. ‘Nostalgia, colour and fun can be very energising, and the feeling we get from these objects in popular culture binds us together.’

The term kitsch comes from the German verkitschen, meaning ‘to cheapen’. In the 19th century it was deployed by elites to look down on the supposedly trashy vulgarity of art for the masses. ‘The idea still carries negative connotations,’ says Adameitis. In her new book, she invites us to stop sneering and start relishing Australia’s unparalleled genius for kitsch: ‘Good kitsch laughs with you not at you. It brings people along for the ride.’