Bogger Bluddy

My new blogger buddy (oh dear, that's so close to 'bugger buddy' but let's move on) Conor of Hold the Beef has tagged me. It's been a while since I've been tagged so I feel a bit giddy and flattered and said of COURSE I'll do it.




















What is your first memory?

Drawing on my one year old brother's face with fat, permanent-marking texta colours. I was three, he was still in a now-very-unpolitically-correct lunar module walker that I pushed into the corner, wedged in tight and got to work. I can even smell that heady aroma of chemical solvents; something I still love today.

Mum got off the phone and walked into the kitchen to see David's face now resembling a test pattern and told me to get outside. It was a hot January day and I sat by the back door in white puffy pants and little else, awaiting punishment.

....years later Mum said that she and Dad had a bit of a laugh, took a few photos and then put on their angry faces to deal with me. It was a fortnight before the texta fully faded from trusting David's face.

What is the dish that you most often eat?

You're all going to assume that it's chocolate and yes, that features in my diet (ha!) every day but in terms of regularity and volume it is probably oranges. Every morning I squeeze and drink three of them, including every single bit of pulp. Makes for a chunky slurp that I don't dwell on too much, but I feel better for it.














What were you doing this time yesterday?

Flopped on the lounge watching 'Glee' with Sapphire and Love Chunks whilst enduring their disapproving eyes and 'shoosh' motions via putting their fingers to their lips as I chatted on the phone to my buddy Jill.

Are you a runner?

For TEN YEARS yes! That is until two months ago when my achilles - getting dodgier and dodgier, finally hurt itself well and proper, forcing me to stop altogether. The first time I waited patiently for four weeks before getting back onto the treadmill only to have it give me the muscular 'big finger' and the second time I did the right stretching exercises and waited the appropriate musculo-skeletal healing time of six weeks.

On Sunday, I nervously switched on the treaddie. It had been six weeks and two days. What were my legs? Springs, steel springs. How fast was I going to run? As fast as a leopard.

And I did - for three glorious kilometres; for fifteen wonderful minutes. It felt great - strong, easy, painless and then ----

--- TWANG! Pain so intense I tried to jump off the moving belt straight away but sort of slipped and was thrown to into the fake 'mudguard' of the exercise bike behind it, a pedal lodging firmly - and, let's be honest, rather ironically - right in the centre of my arse.

So for the past two months I've been glumly pedalling away to nowhere on the exercise bike and power walking. For the past two and a bit weeks, that power walking only occurs on the way home from work where most of the journey involves inhaling traffic fumes or the cigarette smoke puffed out by obese patients and visitors at the various Accident and Emergency entrances I pass. The Royal Children's Hospital has the added fragrance of old McDonald's grease, poo (today it was a human example, strangely perched on top of a folded t-shirt left beside the Australia Post box!) and BO.

If nothing else, this unedifying route home just makes me walk faster in order to escape it quicker.

What are your thoughts on food at sporting events?

BRING YOUR OWN. Otherwise you'll be ripped off - taste wise and finance wise. Seven bucks for an ancient, half-cold pie and indifferent chips or a hotdog older than Moses when you can have a block of Lindt, a proscuitto and jarlsberg sandwich, a bunch of grapes and home-brewed coffee in a thermos? Make the effort.

Same goes for the cinema. Big handbags finally have a use when you're at the multiplex and don't want to spend a weeks' rent on candy bar fare. Pop in an iced coffee, several chocolate bars and whatever chips you like - purchased on the way to the cinema (at a tenth of the price) at your supermarket.

I did go see a movie with a girlfriend who snuck in a boiled egg sandwich but that did pong slightly. Plus a bit of it splodged out in the darkness and she walked out two hours later in the sunshine with what looked like fresh pelican shit on her crotch...

What was the first, or last, band that you saw live?

'Twas 2003 and we took Sapphire (then four) to see The Wiggles live at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, 10am start. Dorothy the Dinosaur ran through our row of seats and shook Love Chunks' hand - a fair bit more than he got ten years earlier when he and I saw Midnight Oil at the same venue. At 10pm.

Did you ever, or do you still currently, wear bike pants?

Technically no, but I do go for the knee-length or three-quarter legging for running and power walking. Those flappity-flappity-flappity running shorts favoured by marathoners and Bendy Wendies are a wind-dragging distraction. Rest assured that the t-shirt that accompanies my tight 'bike pants-like' shorts are l-o-n-g ones so that no camel toes, exercise-induced wedgies or gut rolls are exposed to the public.

If you could have any drink at all right now (disregarding any possible calorie/money/hangover concerns) what would it be?

Iced coffee - but it'd keep me awake; so
Gin and tonic - off to get one right now; and
Water - always.