"Eat your veges - they'll make your teeth grow curly."

The above sentence was one that my Dad uttered regularly to us three kids at the dinner table. It was his silly way of using humour to keep us entertained and willing to listen to his warm-hearted health lectures.

Of course, any authority he might have had was always immediately dispelled by his own behaviour. He'd lean over to Dave and yell out, "Hey, look at that spider in the corner!" and swipe his potatoes, cramming them all at once into his mouth, grinning gleefully. Or he'd create a helluva mess on the tablecloth as he tried to throw peas and pumpkin pieces up into the air and catch them in his mouth. Mum would watch tiredly-but-indulgently on as we kids tried the same trick but much less successfully; beans and carrot rounds bouncing off our noses and onto the carpet. No wonder she chose such luridly-patterned tablecloths.

Our family fitted the country, 1970s traditional mold - mother, father, three children. Mother mostly staying at home, kids at school (two years apart in age) and father the monetary provider and 'real' disciplinarian. In theory at least. Looking back, I realise now that coming home from work to "Smack a few bums and give my wife a few minutes' rest" would have killed him. He tried every tactic before resorting to a sharp slap on the thigh before bath time - it never hurt, but left a bright red mark that served as a powerful visual reminder of my wrong doings that I would sob over whilst slumped in the tepid bubbles.

Instead, he would put on his huge, scary, booming Monster Voice to scare us into learning our lessons. "I'm coming to get you....I'm coming to give you a great, big RUFFFGHHH!" Dave'd nearly wet his jocks with the weird combination of fear and thrill. I, on the other hand, was more terrified of him lurching toward me like a modern day Igor, roaring loudly with his huge bear like hands semi-curled over my head. It was a pretty successful method and one that he really didn't have to use on us very often.

Dad was a high school teacher and often commented to me that he enjoyed his job, especially the friends he made there amongst the staff. He compared it to being back at university surrounded by mates with the same sense of humour and contempt for the office-bound bureaucrats that set the rules without setting foot in the classroom. Many times I accompanied him into the staff room on a Sunday for him to put in place some silly trick or other. Dyeing one jug of milk blue and one red after Norwood won the premiership; writing 'Always Plan Ahea' on one line and the 'd' on the second; spray painting his mate Ken's green tomatoes red; and rigging the communal billiard table.

He also showed me how to view the eclipse in 1974. The day was eerily dark and he opened up the school's lab in order to put together a device that showed us kids how to get a look directly at the phenomenon. He brought me a 50 kilogram bag of wet clay home one night in order to encourage me to continue with my pottery genius as he saw it. I waffled on and on about the wooden stilts that the Wilden kids next door had to play with and he welded me up some metal ones. They worked - sort of - by wedging themselves firmly into the grass and allowing me to stand up on them without holding the bars - even at the age of ten I loved and appreciated his efforts.

Netball was something I had a love-hate relationship with, and he recognised that. As the tall one, I was always goal-keeper, and rather good at it. However no girl likes to be the ever-reaching guard dog all of the time, so he made me my own goal ring to practise on at home. With portability in mind, he set it in an empty wheel filled in with cement. Every time I scored a goal the ball would bounce right off the cement and boing over the garden fence into the orange tree: I would have made a good soccer goalie.

Despite being a father of three, teaching high school kids, coaching basketball and cricket teams, playing golf, volleyball, tennis, cricket, basketball, fishing, windsurfing and bowls, he still had an active interest in pursuing all kinds of things. He studied Arts (English) and dabbled in some Park Ranger courses; got into bird-watching (the feathered kind, he couldn't have been a lecher if he tried) and went to 'Remedial Art' classes run by a friend after school.

By her own admission, Mum wasn't the keenest of cooks and certainly not willing to spend too much time on preparing anything beyond the solid goal of ensuring we were all fed. Therefore, if my father wished to eat squid, crumbed brains, home-pickled onions, salted fish or pureed dried plum, he had to do it himself. Which he did, with a noticeably larger amount of enthusiam to expertise. His quick-fried squid was a triumph but the brains, soggy onions and saliva-sucking fish were not. The plum slice languished on top of the fridge for several years until we contemplated using it to replace the back door mat. Still, at least he gave it a go.

Love of food was nearly the death of him, and I don't mean his penchant for spreading butter as thick as bread on his bread, or cheese as thick as three of his chunky fingers. He was highly allergic to Vegemite which was unknown to me when I was trialling a Chinese/Aussie nightmare One Pot concoction that substituted soy sauce for this spread. His throat closed quicker than a pub door after happy hour yet he wheezed out, "This is really delicious, love" in order to keep my pathetic culinary explorations alive.

He made his own bee hives and set them amongst the gorgeous purple Salvation Jane weeds in local farmers' paddocks and brought home chunks of fresh honeycomb for us to chew endlessly on, the honey long gone from the wax. The honey was the best I've ever tasted, especially smeared on a slice of fresh bread with cream drizzled on top. His landrover smelled permanently of smoke from his bee-hive smoker, and dead bee carcasses decorated his dashboard like sad little sequins. I used to tease him whenever his 'Australasian BeeKeeper' magazine would arrive, "Wow Dad, it's here, it's finally here - why oh why is it only out every two months?"

Only on one occasion did his bee-keeping become a problem. Not for my family necessarily, but for my first boyfriend, Sean. He was nervous enough to be invited over to dinner for the first time to meet his girlfriend's parents - one of whom was his chemistry teacher. That afternoon Dad had been rather savagely set upon by a few dozen worker bees, and his face resembled Elephant Man's after Vegemite inhalation. His left eye was fully closed; the right one had a boiled egg hidden under the lid and his top lip resembled a blow-up mattress. All of us found that our appetites had deserted us, especially Sean. "Sssho, Sshhean," Dad drooled, trying to make him feel welcome. "What univershitty courshe are you shtudying nesxht year?"

By the mid eighties, my folks realised that all three of us were likely to go the the Big Bad City of Adelaide to live and study and a teacher and part-time secretary's salary wasn't likely to stretch that far. Renting some disused glass houses, he partnered with another teacher to grow cucumbers for extra income. All hands were required on deck - mine and Dave's for weeding, Rob's for planting, Dad's and Mum's for whatever - I was too busy whining about my muddy knees and missing out on watching 'Music Express'. It was hard not to get the giggles when I had to polish the cucumbers before packing them. I may have still been an innocent (physically at least), but the motions were spectacularly x-rated. Market gardening also gave Dad an opportunity to educate his teenaged kids about marijuana. Sadly we didn't get to sample any, but sure got to witness a few visits from the police when our neighbouring growers couldn't resist slotting in a few "Electric Spinaches" (Dad's words) amongst their tomato plants. Dad insisted that the police threw old car tyres on the fires when they destroyed the crop to prevent any local Bong-dongs from standing downwind and inhaling the fumes.

When Dad decided to take his long service leave, he really took it. We spent the entire winter in Queensland, caravanning our little hearts out. A year was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, freezing our butts off and delighting in their indecipherable accents, summer fashion choices and love of offal. Our holiday to Ayers Rock and the Northern Territory wasn't quite as successful: he made me complete my year twelve biology assignment on a card table in the tent and made me pose under a sign out in the middle of nowhere that had been painted over with 'Lesbians Are Everywhere.'

Now he's retired, and is 'only' involved in Probus (I'm too afraid to ask for more details), golf, bowls, various social groups, wood turning, computing, photography, travelling to the Flinders whenever he can, caravanning and being a good grandpa. So, is it surprising that, a man who regularly chooses to wake up before 6am for a round of golf, is likely to be found snoozing before 6pm? And yet, if I dared sneak in and change the channel from cricket to something - anything - more interesting, he'd stir and say, "Hey! I was watching that!"
"How were you watching that if you were asleep?"
"I wasn't asleep, just resting my eyelids."

Can't argue with that. I love you Dad.

My sincerest apologies to Love Chunks

I owe my beloved partner of 13 years, Love Chunks, a huge, heartfelt apology. Truly.

He has recently been through a great deal of lingering pain, discomfort and bloody agony for me. Not for himself, but for me. His sacrifice has made me inordinately grateful and already raises him way up there in my esteem and admiration.

And what do I do to thank him for it? Snore so damned loudly I kick him out of our bed!

LC has been a snorer for most of his life. His nocturnal 'talents' in this regard made him famous throughout his college days and he was even taped by a housemate during his beer-and-pizza flat-sharing stage. On a trip to the snowfields, he was apparently hated by all of them during the wee hours as his sonorous sounds cut through the gyprock walls and into their skulls.

When he and I were an item, it wasn't apparent to me for the first couple of years. Perhaps this blissful ignorance can be explained away by blind/deaf love, total post-horizontal-folk-dancing exhaustion and being a less-stressed and much better sleeper than I am today. Even after a few glasses of wine, his snoring was only intolerable when he slept on his back, tonsils-a-flappin', and this always ceased as soon as he rolled over.

Things got gradually worse on the snoring front when a gentle poke in the back to get him to lie on his side began to be a dozen pokes on the back, getting progressively less gentle as the night wore on. At times I would lie there, wondering just how the hell such a quiet and self-contained man could actually produce such ear-shattering sounds during his peaceful repose.

Wonder soon turned to hate, at least after midnight, as I continued to lie there, crazily contemplating whether sleep deprivation and chronic PMT would be a legitimate excuse for impromptu throat surgery by a spouse with a potato peeler. Unfairly perhaps, I made his 'deficiency' rather public, using it as a convenient conversational stop-gap during stilted dinner parties: "Hey did you know that my Love Chunks can snore like an elephant stuck in a swamp?", or, "LC! Give them your aural impression of a dodgy outboard motor!" Not surprisingly, LC wasn't quite so concerned as I was by the volume and quality of his PM performances.

Soon enough though and he too was concerned about what his snoring was doing to my health and humour. My once michievously twinkling snot-green eyes were now hidden by the shelf of puffy skin hanging down over them in a passable Frankenstein impersonation and unflatteringly purplish bags were lingering like onlookers at a car crash underneath. I had taken to putting the dirty socks in the toilet and sitting on the laundry hamper, and thinking that Sharley Boogers instead of 'barley sugars' and 'Lend me the Pole Hunch, Brase Pole' was acceptable behaviour.

We were living like Queen Liz and Prince Philip in separate bedrooms. Our guestroom was now the sole sleeping environment for LC, who could snuffle and snore away to his hearts' content, safe in the knowledge that a solid brick wall was between us and divorce. Despite his generosity, it didn't feel right, not being together. Sure, we tried to tell ourselves that what difference did it make lying next to each other when we were unconscious, but I missed the sense and warmth of his body with mine, not the least knowing I could suddenly lurch up and hiss "Hey! Did you hear that? That's either a mutant possum or an axe-wielding maniac in our kitchen!" and then sink back down into the warm doona.

Finally it was time for LC to go to an overnight sleep clinic, which he willingly did. The report later described the volume of his sleep songs as 'equating to the sound of a whipper snipper at close range.' The surgery was booked for the next month - removal of the tonsils, insertion of a camera up the schnozz to determine if anything was worth clearing out up there and a closer inspection of the palate to also see if it needed to be sand-blasted.

Unluckily for Love Chunks, but luckily for me, his entire throat got the coat-hanger treatment. Not just his tonsils but - for lack of a medical education - the fleshy curtains at the side of the stage as well. He left hospital the following day, still drugged up, puffy and surprisingly able to talk without any hassle. Swallowing was another matter entirely. The only fluids he could take were those with panadeine dissolved in them, and soup was seen as the culinary equivalent of being forced to traverse a terrain not unlike dragging his butt cheeks along the gibber plains of the Great Stony Desert.

Bless him though, he did not once give me a reproachful, 'I Did This For You, You Mean Old Cow' look, but he came close when I attempted to feed him some steamed rice and veges that were (unintentionally) about as soft as aquarium pebbles. As long as I kept the painkillers up, everything was fine.

Despite his total agony, he still cooked dinner for the three of us every night. I should be ashamed of myself - instead of rushing in and saying "No, Love Chunks sweety-darling-sweety, you must sit down and rest," I thought to myself, Thank God for that or Sapphire'd be eating my three versions of One Pot Meals on regular rotation until the school holidays. Love Chunks' effort sent me a clear message: any pain was worth avoiding the Moronic MillyMoo Menu....

Sadly, this was not the only thing regarding his operation that I'm ashamed of. The end of his throat was scarred white, resembling a fleshy Tunnel of Love yet this moist environment produced an odour that could only be described as Morning Breath Times One Hundred. I know it was not his fault, but that did not help things when he turned to ask me for something selfish (you know, like water, or painkillers or to be led to the toilet), blasting me with breath that could only have brewed in Satan's butt. "Geez LC, you STINK! I am banning you from leaving the house until it goes away - you'll end up killing someone with that!" Need I point out that tact never seems to be listed as one of my key personal qualities, not the ability to stop visibly flinching in repulsion.

This morning, two weeks after his operation, he flew interstate for work. Breath now sweet and socially acceptable; throat able to take solid foods (but sometimes requiring a restorative lie down afterwards) and voice able to withstand a seminar presentation in front of his colleagues.

As for the snoring? Nothing, not one snort or oink. Just the quiet whistling of air rushing through the expressway tunnel of his oesphagus, working like a spasming bike pump at inflating his stomach to a full term pregnancy size.

Last night we cuddled, said 'good night' to each other and rolled over to our opposite sides of the bed to sleep and dream. Eight hours later when the alarm went off to take Dogadoo for a run, I stretched, yawned and clambered out, feeling genuinely refreshed. I looked over, but Love Chunks wasn't there. Seconds later, he staggered into our room, rubbing his eyes, muttering "Was that your alarm? I'd better get into the shower before the taxi arrives."

He didn't look his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Morning Person best. "What's wrong with ---?"
"You. Your SNORING, in fact. You were out like a light, on your back, fog-horning away as though the entire North Sea Oil Fleet depended on you for their safe harbour!" He stomped off into the bathroom, not caring to hear my response of "Oh dear, errr, that's a bit ironic, isn't it?"

What a load of crumbs, fudge buckets and bunnies

When I was blissfully growing up in a small country town in the 1970s and mid 1980s, I never once heard my mother swear.

Lord knows she had many reasons to, mostly due to us three kids. Our hobbies tended to be whining, teasing and fighting each other. If it wasn't for my brothers, I would not have known how to defend myself from school-yard bullies with well-placed and timely henpecks, dead legs and chinese burns. At home, we regularly flung ourselves furiously at each other: so often that Mum would continue chopping at the vegetables, saying vaguely into the ether, "You should stop that, or somebody might get hurt...." Her strict methodist upbringing continued to work its magic on her and she avoided the easy temptation to let us know just what dreadful little sh**s we really were.

It is only now, being a mother of just one child myself, that I can truly admire her self control. On one fine Saturday after the end of the movie matinee on the telly, David decided that hammering the brick and cement water tank-stand wasn't fulfilling enough and proceeded to smash through the glass in our front door. He may have been small for his age and prone to regular asthma attacks that rendered him allergic to housework and chores, but boy did he run fast when Mum flew out of the house armed with a wooden spoon. Round and round the silver birch tree they went, Dave's eyes nearly popping out of their little sockets with terror and Mum getting angrier and angrier and struggling to keep yelling and hold her breath.

What expletives was she uttering during this burst of free exercise? "Come here you....B-L-E-S-S-E-D LITTLE CHILD" over and over. For many years, I thought 'blessed' was akin to Bloody F***ing Satan Spawn until I finally paid attention in Sunday School and realised it was something that Jesus - and our Minister - used in a nice way.

Like farting in the car on long trips and blaming them on whichever one of us kids was sleeping at the time, my mother had ways of saying very naughty things without ever uttering anything that was officially a curse word. "Ooooh Bunnies" was another frequently used word, normally when she had to unpick some sewing or her little cakes didn't turn out. Following her example, I adopted the word, "Bucko", from Richie Cunningham in 'Happy Days', saying stuff to Robert like, "If you don't stop bragging, Bucko, I'm going to hit you over the head with the Monopoly bank." For some reason, Mum took exception to this, and rushed over to scold me. The act of thwacking Rob over the scone with a hard plastic container that left him crying and paper money fluttering all around the room didn't seem to bother her.

Even our toilet training and subsequent referrals to the subject of ablutions were kept pristine, language wise, if also rather peculiar. My folks swear that these were the words invented by Robert when he was not quite two, and were then used by the family from then on to avoid the very disgusting Wee and Poo words. Are you ready for them - Wettings for wees and Dirties for poos. There are times when I regress and have accidentally said them out loud to my own daughter.

If any of us children ever swore, we showed no loyalty to each other at all, instead rushing to dob to Mum. Until the age of six, the worst swear word in the world that my sheltered little mind could summon up was Stink Pot. I used to lie under my stripey bedsheets and utter it out loud to myself like a mantra, feeling thrillingly sinful.

In desperation, we often resorted to giggling over the potential sounds of innocent words as curses. Orange pith was the source of a great deal of cheap merriment for me. "Hey Dave, can you take the pith off," knowing that he had no real reason to get me into trouble. "Why don't you go jump off the poop deck," another favourite. The delicious word, 'buttocks' was a delight - it was very early abbreviated to "Shift your tocks, turkey."

Mum was still easy to run a few not-so-polite phrases over due to her own ignorance. It was only when she announced that "These broad peans taste poxy" in front of Dad that she realised it was not particularly wise to incorporate her children's words as her own. You see Dad was a high school teacher and there was no buzzword or disrespectful saying that he wasn't already aware of. There were no Shut Ups, Hells, Damns or even a Rack Off. I guess he'd heard enough of that crap (see what I did there?) all day at school and didn't need the 'aural pollution' (his words) at home.

There was one phrase that, in hindsight, was pretty rude, but was allowed to used with gay abandon in our home. My grandmother, a very strict Methodist, non-drinking, church stalwart and always-refined lady, used to say, "Stop fiddle arseing around and get back to work..." Fiddle Arseing? How can that be better than Bugger Off, Bum or Stink Pot?

It remains a mystery to this day. I'm relieved to advise you that my folks have relaxed their language standards a great deal. Sometimes disturbingly so. It still takes quite some getting used to when I hear my mum say indignantly, "That driver is right up my bloody arse," when she's behind the wheel of her commodore, battling the huge 3 car traffic jam down the main street of Victor Harbor. The profanity just doesn't go with the coral red lippy, matching string of beads, silk shirt and rockport loafers. Perhaps that's a good thing: that at the age of 65 she's capable of shocking her daughter instead of the other way 'round.

Fartin' Fridays....

No, this is not a blog 'theme' day, but something I have to endure on a week-in, week-out basis.

Normally, bottom humor is reserved for the males of our species, but not in my house. Love Chunks, a proud male who enjoys burping, the footy and food, is most definitely not a public or proud farter. He uses the modus operandi of the tooth fairy - we're pretty sure it happens, but have never actually seen or experienced it directly ourselves.

My butt-exhaust habits are slightly less pristine, but most likely are more normal (good gracious me: I'm writing about my flatulence!). My method is less Tooth Fairy and more the Tasmanian Tiger - we know that it exists, but anyone who was around to witness it is now crazy, dead or both. Pregnancy was the exception in my case. I merely had to bend over without giving my ever-increasing body five minutes notice and a quick-but-loud 'Parrp!' would erupt. My poor work mates got sick and tired of my weak, "Oh dear, was it worth the two minutes of fun in Malaysia" line after it's seventh uttering during the same meeting. When I was sitting still. If I was ever in the photocopying room loading the second tray with paper they'd stick an 'ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK' sign on the door frame.

Sapphire, unfortunately, has the farting habits of a bogan's 1985 commodore - in your face, frequently loud and very proud. All she's missing is the backwards baseball cap, pounding Doof Doof music and the 'I'm Naked From the Waist Down' bumper sticker on her back.

Despite being raised by two extremely intelligent, kindly, supportive and well-mannered parents, the hidden Benny Hill gene seems to have established itself with about as much delicacy as a moose on a music stand. She may be the brightest in her class and have the ability to read a novel in one sitting but give her the opportunity to blurt out a good butt blast and she's laughing so hard I can't tell where the joyous tears end and the snot trails begin.

I blame my brothers. They clearly had the Benny Hill Fart Gene and it's carried through to their usually adorable seven year old niece. I've mentioned before that younger brother/pest/turkey David would derive endless amusement from letting a ripsnorter off right in my face whilst I was smothered in our huge velvet beanbag watching 'Mork and Mindy'. He and his easily-satisfied cackling laughter were long gone by the time I angrily struggled out of the bag and onto my feet.

He shared a room with me until I was ten, because older - and much stronger - brother Rob wasn't a good sleeper and didn't tolerate Dave's regular nighttime asthma attacks with much sympathy. I merely slept through them, unless he'd still be coming down from the Ventolin high and decide to treat himself - and me, only two metres away - to a few doona lifters and giggles. At that stage of my life, I learned early that farting and boys naturally go together like Ape and S**t.

When these sad scenes of childhood suffering are relayed back to Carly, she laughs in genuine merriment. Or should it be described as wicked delight, because she has a laugh that only emerges when Farts, Fluffs, Pop-offs, Bums, Butts, Snot, Boogers, Poos, Willies and Wees are mentioned, preferably in the same story. It doesn't help when Love Chunks, working on the computer, overhears and adds, "Don't worry Sapphire your Mum isn't innocent. She regularly gives me the pleasure of her Dutch Ovens at night...." Thanks, love.

All very tasteful to discuss, but let's get back to Friday nights. Sapphire's had a busy and eventful week at school and LC and I have had our big weeks at work. If we don't have plans, we tend to flop out on the lounge and feel the lethargy and tiredness attack us from all fronts. This increased state of relaxation clearly tempts Sapphire's sphincter region to let more than a few dozen go. Some of them silent, some noisy but all are decidely deadly to endure.

"For gods' sake Sapphire, stop doing that or you can go and sit in your room!" Even Dogadoo is roused from her sleep at our feet, and stares at Sapphire reproachfully. "See? You know you're being revolting when even the dog is annoyed!"

Sapphire laughs so hard that LC looks at her with concern, wondering if her chocolate milk or even a lung is going to come out of her nose and flop like a caught fish on the coffee table in front of us. "Sapphire," I say quietly, trying another angle, "Do you do these at school?"

"Of course not Mum," she snorts, as if I'm a complete idiot.

"Then why do you do them here at home?"

Again, the 'Mum, You're A Total Mental Pgymy' look in response. "Because I'm at HOME. I can do what I like at home. I spend all day squashing 'em and pushing 'em back up and at home I can let 'em out. It's funny! Plus, I can't help it.....' she trailed off, looking at me with her huge, innocent blue eyes that I forever feel as though I could jump into.

"OK, but do Dad and I ever do it to you?"

"No, but Dad NEVER does them. YOU do them to Dad at nighttime, 'cos he told me," she said, her giggles starting up again. Then a new thought enters her head, and she snaps her head back to me, looking worried. "Mum, you're not going to tell anyone at school, are you?"

Hah, now I've got her! "Well that all depends...... wouldn't the boys in your class think you're really cool and want to see your butt in action?"

Sapphire's face wrestles with the humour of the idea and the sheer horror of its reality. "NO! It would be embarrassing! Josh and Kain do them all the time and us girls just roll our eyes and say how unsophisticated they are."

I pause, remembering that this is what I told her to say when said boys continued to thump her in the arm and run away, hoping she'll chase after them. She'd come home feeling frustrated, asking me why they did it to her all the time. "Oh boys are very unsophisticated creatures," I said. After explaining to her what unsophisticated meant, she took the explanation to heart, and has used it ever since to account for any bit of silly boy behaviour she's endured.

"OK, it would be embarrassing for you, but is it fair for poor Dad and I to have to put up your pop-offs and their terrible stench---"

"Hey Mum, I can't help how they smell. If I could make them smell like our rose toilet spray, I would you know."

It was my turn to laugh. "Fair enough, but you've got to stop playing it up, and you should only do them when you're on your own because it's a bad habit that will soon make you very unpopular. Besides," I added, in what I thought was an added 'load her down with the weight of fairness and dignity' flourish, "When have I ever shoved any of my bad habits in front of you?"

Oh dear, it was too late to retract that last, pompous utternance. "Well," she shot back, with the beginnings of another wicked giggle session, "What about when I hear you blow your nose in the shower; or when you farted as you emptied the bins outside and then it followed you in? No, Mum don't interrupt me - what about when you kiss the dog and then try and kiss me straight after, or those times when Dad can't believe that you still use the big drawer to frisbee the tupperware lids into instead of stacking them; or when you get dressed into your tracksuit and ugg boots after work and don't put your bra back on and when you always------"

"Er, OK Sapphire, you've made your point. Perhaps I'll just move over to the other sofa where I'm closer to the open door...."

This lovely story brought a tear to my normally dry, cynical little eye

In 1986, Melee Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from university. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air.

The elephant seemed distressed so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot, and found a large thorn deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked the thorn out with his hunting knife, after whichthe elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face theman and with a rather stern look on its face, stared at him. For several tense moments Mbembe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned and walked away. Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later he was walking through a zoo with his teenage son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe and lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. Suddenly the elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of the man's legs and swung him wildly back and forth like a rag doll along the railing, killing him.......................




Probably wasn't the same elephant.

News, just out: Tampons are Undignified

Some of you lurkers may have read that I'm sick to death of having a cold that's gone on longer than media attention on a Paris-Hilton ex-shag. The skin directly around my schnozz has worn away to a red callous roughly the shape (and size) of Australia and every eye blink is punctuated with a now-habitual, loud, juicy sniff.

This may all sound like an incredible whinge, but I did feel a bit justified about my self-absorption when a colleague across the campus commented on my continual cold. "MillyMoo, you've been dribbly, snotty and blocked since you started here," and, "I can hear you blowing your elephantine nasal trumpet when I'm out in the carpark!" I may have spiced up her descriptors slightly in the name of artistic license but she made me realise that the sight/sound/produce of my nose was making all of my efforts to appear professional, polite and polished doomed to failure.

Characteristically, I then decided to embrace and celebrate my unavoidable, in-built dagginess and make the most of the Phlegm Factory living in my head.

Shoving two mini test tubes up my nostrils to catch the drips has always seemed like a practical idea, if a little off-putting to my companions or innocent passersby. Letting it run unhampered down my face in a proud-but-putrid display is another option, but it would require far too much social change and acceptance to achieve in a few weeks.

Then Vicki suggested tampons as a replacement for glass tubes. And why not - they're made for absorption and could, if inserted correctly, be quite a decent fit for the 'ol snot pipes. She warmed to her theme when she noticed my interest. "You could hook the strings up to your glasses so that you don't lose them," she suggested.
"Or maybe you could hang tiny hoops and sequins off them as decoration," I replied, crazily pondering a future business winner.

I farewelled Vicki and tried to keep my mind back on my work, but that word TAMPON, kept butting in and out of my already foggy 'It's Late Afternoon and I'm Too Tired To Care' thoughts. Surely, if oversized glasses, bum crack jeans and orange tans have taught us anything, they've taught us that all you need is a wealthy, anorexic, spoilt, cocaine-sniffing Mother of the Year contender to use your product and everyone will want it.

Could Burberry print their trademark tartain plaid on white cotton and get Kate Moss to wear them in her snot slits at their next product launch? Or maybe get a staged 'paparazzo' shot of Sienna Miller lunching with Nicole Richie and Skinny Spice all wearing them with the strings hooked up to their Dolce and Gabbana bug shields?

More importantly, was I prepared to spruik this idea, starting firstly with a photograph of myself wearing them? Oh why not, it was a cheap laugh and a blog idea. I went home, full of beans and asked Love Chunks to take a photo.

I've done lots of things in my thirteen years with him that I thought would shock him but haven't - bungy jumped; dobbed in a bloke right in front of us with oversized luggage attempting to board our plane; thrown a drunk man's shopping bags off at the next bus stop so he'd leave and stop bugging the passengers; got pregnant; got depressed; got well; run lots; got a tattoo.
But this request really shocked him. "No. No. Way. You do NOT need to do that. You just DON'T."
"Oh, it's just for a laugh. I'll crop it so you can't see it's me."
He was adamant. "NO. You don't NEED to do it. Not now, not for this, not for humour, not for your writing, you don't need to."

Maybe that's one of the reasons I love him so much. I may not have the depth, wisdom or creativity to write an article about him that would truly do him justice, but I loved him passionately right at that moment. He was right - he didn't want to do anything that would demean me, and didn't want me to either. Like a L'Oreal shampoo, I was worth more.

It's Time, it really is.



Mariah's latest Pepsi commercial. Tired, bored sigh.....

Obviously a shy girl who hides behind her voice and only ventures out into the public arena when there's an extremely worthy social issue to highlight...







Tara Reid, one time 'star' of that ground-breaking social-commentary on contemporary youth life, 'American Pie', now looking as though she's got two soggy ones shoved in her bikini.

If she doesn't pack 'em into a full-support underwire soon she'll be able to stand and surf on 'em.














Kimberley Stewart has achieved a great deal in this photo. Yes, you read it right: she has made Target - the cheapest, tattiest, rag-bag clothes chain, purveyer of clothes not likely to last beyond the first wash - look positively elegant beside her.

Also, whatever bra she's using deserves a mention for making so much out of so little; from concave to convex.

Sadly, she's forgotten that Flashdance's Jennifer Beals quite conservatively chose to wear TROUSERS with her baggy grey top, and those boots only make me suspect that there's two cranes out there in the local bird sanctuary that no longer have beaks.








This has been splashed everywhere, but Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock's official wedding were of course entirely predictable but also hilarious

One of my favourite Mothers Of The Year has chosen her usual tasteful clothing option, whilst Kid is glad that his minder is close by. That means he only has to concentrate on drinking his beer, and his paid help has the responsibility of slapping him every thirty seconds or so and hissing, "BREATHE, Kid, don't forget to breathe.'

Meanwhile, Pammy's wondering if her chest is horizontally-inflated enough to rest her glass on without spilling.



Mary-Kate and Ashley (or the other way around, who cares) have several hundred million dollars to spend between them but seem to prefer the 'Unemployed Alcoholic
Actress At Age Eighty' look for 2006.

They are also adopting the Nicole Richie technique of hiding behind 'big' things - hats, glasses, beverages. If they get any thinner those arm bangles will be able to circle their waists. Twice.











When LaLa's not being told off by her movie producer, instantly recovering from 'exhaustion' or changing into her eleventh bikini for the day, she's out on the town at night, busily giving her own physical fireplace (come on, think about it) a good old work-out.

Which leads me to assume that 'ol Firecrotch must have some skills other than acting, er singing and shopping because up close she's scaring me. I've never liked those circus clowns....












OK Janet, OK. We know that you've lost a heap of weight, but have you ever heard of dressing in a casual, relaxed or even elegant style?

The 'I Dream of Jeannie' hair, tranvestite makeup, butter yellow shoulder pads (eek!!), unnaturally sucked-in stomach and slutty slit skirt just makes you look like you're ready for your turn to lip-synch 'I will survive' at the local Tranny Club's Open Mike night and doing a few five dollar favours in the bus shelter on the way home.

By the way, Mariah Carey's wondering when you'll be giving her dress back.








Here's a gal that makes the afore-mentioned Janet Jackson look an earth mother.

Could this women look any more like a cartoon? White hair, buggles sunnies, red texta mouth, minnie-mouse clothes and a rack only $10,000 could get.

Or maybe she's out to find Popeye and give him a good shagging....?

And finally, just to give some hope to us great unwashed ordinary folk, I present to you the bloke that George Michael thought was worth trawling the local park for.

GM may go for designer threads, carefully coiffeured stubble and perma-tan, but he likes his fellas to wear socks with their shorts and possess a paunch you could hide your wallet in.

This is all very cheering news to me. I'll just slip into my baggy-bum trackie daks, stained polar fleece jumper and ugg boots and linger suggestively outside Jude Law's house.....

'Snot Funny

My head is a miniature Phlegm Factory. This current head cold has been running at full steam (or should that be 'snot') for over four weeks now and I'm SICK of it!

At around this time last year I wittered on about the news of 'our'(i.e. South Australian born) Andy Thomas floating about in the shuttle doing some sort of mechanical work; which reminded me of that old chestnut 'We can send Man to the moon, but can't cure the common cold.' Handy Andy's participating in a huge NASA program that supposedly costs more than the entire African continent's overseas debt to tootle back over to the moon and around the earth a few times. Why, I have no idea. What on earth are they going to see, feel or discover that hasn't already been done during so many visits before? It's hardly going to be a future competitor against places like the Bahamas as a fun holiday spot is it? I want Andy and his boffins to put their not inconsiderable energies, time and wallets towards eliminating the common bloody cold!

In the past five years or so, I've seen strong, fit and healthy people deteriorate into stooped and exhausted shells who can barely be understood behind the head full of mucus they're having to lug around from place to place. This snotty and coughy state is no longer able to shaken off with a hot honey and lemon drink and a day off, but carries on for weeks and weeks and weeks.

The suffering person has, by this stage, completely given up on common social courtesies and will simply trumpet their nose into a tissue with a noise not unlike that of a distressed elephant lost from its herd in a vain effort to rid themselves of a mugful of mucus. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has seen these poor bastards blow holes in their tissues due to the volume of phlegm that's been flung out of their facial flutes.And the coughing....!

On a far too regular basis, poor old Love Chunks has been in real danger of nearly hawking up a lung every night. He sometimes resembles the 'Anti Cancer' Man on the new cigarette packets as he strains to cough from a puffy red and sweaty face. And there'sno rest for him - or us, his loving family - when the lights go out either. Once his sweats and shakes have subsided, his throat iss revving up for its turn in the spotlight. Or should I say soundscape. With his snot-filled noggin, stuffed-up chest, regular puffs from his inhaler and wheezy struggles to breathe, that fleshy little punching bag at the back of his throat is in fine fettle. (What is a 'fettle' anyway?).

The resultant snores sound like an outboard motor that had been stuck in a swamp. No amount of loving jabs in his back with my elbow would stop the noise - even when he rolls on to his side - so he is kicked out of the marital bed and exiled into the spare room. (Only out of concern for his own welfare, you understand). With eighty year old double brick walls and two solid-wooden doors between us, his snores are then muffled to the mere level of a leaf blower at my bedside table.

It's so easy when you're not the one with the cold to think "Ah, it's just a cold, stop being a wimp," but when it's you with the cold, all you want to do is shove two test-tubes into your nostrils to let them drip freely and save you the bother of wearing away your face with continued tissue wipes. So Andy, lovey puss, sweetie darling honey boo - would you please consider parking that shuttle indefinitely and instead find a way to eliminate this dreadful affliction. You'll get more gratitude and news coverage than if you farted in the capsule.

Electric Trousers

As some of you may know, I have now finally moved from the Orrible Orifice(http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-orrible-orifice-i-hate-my-office.html) into a very swanky, brand-spanking new office on the other side of the university campus.

Being brand new, we are currently into that heavenly state of no-one yet knowing that we exist. This gives us ample opportunity to invent our own way of doing things before the cardigans dwelling in the bowels of bureaucracy insist on forms, policies and permission signatures for things we've already gone and done.

It also means that we're still letting in slightly grotty men all day. Any bloke wearing steel caps and holding a clipboard is pretty likely to be allowed to wander through our academic haven at will, especially if he's going to clear out the moving boxes or finally fix the stupid heating system. There's one chap, however, I'd like to have up here (apart from Love Chunks of course), but he doesn't exist.

The Static Carpet Cling Man. Our brand new carpet, apart from reeking of glue the Ramones could only dream of, is a very fertile static cling environment. My black trousers are particularly affected; so much so that by mid-morning I've collected every loose grey fibre, white cotton threads, assorted stryofoam crumbs and dust bunnies around the bottom hems. From a distance they look like something Elvis would have been proud to wear in his Las Vegas period, but not if he was required to shake anyone's hand.

Ping-zap-pop! "Oops, sorry about that Bernie," I said earlier this morning as I watched his eyebrows melt. For some reason I seem to get a fair old electrofield going just walking across the floor.
"Queen B you're a great boss you really are, but it's best if I just leave the papers here on your desk rather than risk actually touching you - that moonstone and silver necklace might be too good a conducter of electricity."

It also affects me when I'm on my own. Ping-zap-pop! 'Stupid bloody brushed aluminium "Oh I'm So Trendy I Wish I was Stainless Steel" poxy stinking door handle!'
Ping-zap-pop! 'Well how am I meant to fill up the kettle if I can't touch the damn taps?'
Ping-zap-pop! 'That's it - I'm off to the Whore Amore shop down the road at lunchtime for some sturdy rubber trousers!'

Not surprisingly, I didn't go there in the end. Wearing kitchen gloves whilst typing and stretching two extra-large condoms over my shoes has worked a treat instead and is obviously much cheaper. Gives the visitors a bit of a thrill as well.

That Awkward Age

Boys tend to be rather clumsy and clueless from about thirteen to seventeen years of age.

It is a time of cruel contradiction: puberty starts and so does an interest in (mostly) girls yet they themselves are physically and emotionally at their most unattractive.


Their butt-ugly faces are spotty which only serves to highlight their big noses, they have chin hairs that can only seen against bright sunlight and overly-pointy Adam's apples that work overtime to produce embarassing yelps and squeaks in the middle of sentences.

My friend Di, a battle-weary mother of two grown up sons once rearranged her pearls and said bluntly, "At fifteen they're tripping over their feet and using their hands to grab every bit of food they can see. Their willies grow far larger than their brain power or common sense can ever hope to catch up with." Yes, she adores her sons and would do anything for them, but even she can see that they were about as graceful as a sackful of plucked emus and about as pretty.

Teenage boys, like teenage girls, tend to congregate in packs, albeit ganglier and uglier ones. There's lots of self conscious, hooting laughter, pushing, shoving and slouching. Armpit farts, spitballs out of bic pens and ear lobe flicking are their most natural habits when socialising together. They somehow manage to effectively communicate with each other, yet I've never seen a boy this age sit up straight or raise his eyes further than crotch-level when he's speaking, mumbling or grunting a response.

Posh Spice has a lot in common with these fellas, believe it or not. Both breeds have skinny little pencil necks with huge soccer ball heads and concave (real) chests. Both tend to have legs the width of pipe cleaners and the fashion sense of retarded blind men. It is obvious that neither listens to the wise fashion advice of their mothers, nor pays attention to what other more sensible people around them are wearing.

Shamefully, at the ages of 12, 13 and 14, I had yearned for men such as these. Young, idiotic males who could barely open their lunch boxes, let alone pick up the vibe that MillyMoo, two rows behind them, was desperately in love with their intelligent, sporty, funny, hunky side. Plus their ability to expertly throw chunks of chalk down Daniel Panizzi's unenviable bum cleavage during geography. 'Oh if only Anthony would notice me, he's the only guy in the class taller than my shoulder....'

The luxury of reminiscing about these painful crushes over two decades later has shown that I should be grateful that they were clueless. My husband tells me that, at that age, a girl would have to strip naked and write 'Take me, Stud' on her breasts in liquid paper for a bloke to get the general idea that she might be interested in snogging him behind the bike sheds after cricket practice. A shy prude like me would have died: my - admittedly unsuccessful - method of courtship was to ignore the object of my affection entirely.

Despite this, I now see these Pubescent Doofuses on the bus, in the university cafe and outside 'Game Zone' and want to reassure them. I want to clunk their shaggy heads together (to get their attention: otherwise they think I'm someone's mother about to embarrass them or lecture them) and say: "Look love, you're butt ugly now, but wait until you're eighteen. The girls (or boys) will be falling over you. In the meantime, eat well, don't pick your zits and PULL YOUR DAMN PANTS UP!"

Has there been a more ridiculous male fashion than to have your jeans so low that your frontal pubes are blowin' freely in the wind, and the bum pockets reside just above the knee? All this does is make the wearer look completely arseless, and not in a good way.

Their hands, too, seem to be huge, way out of proportion to even their noses, heads, willies and feet. My theory is that God designed it so that they had the best gathering tools for food. Having two brothers, I can vouch for this - Mum had barely put the groceries away and they had already smelled it, scooped it, eaten it. She got so desperate that she ended up storing the TimTams in the vegetable crisper, but even that didn't work: they ate their way through the meat tray, dairy case, plastic trays and cabbage in order to find the rewarding chocolate biscuit base.

Their massive mitts had amazing dexterity in terms of delicately buttering and spreading a dozen SAO biscuits without them so much as shedding a grain of salt, let alone cracking; plus they could make up a cup of Milo Mud (half milk, half milo) without spilling a drop on the counter. They could both reach the magical top 999 score on my palm-sized Donkey Kong II game, yet seemed to be physically incapable of being able to aim their jocks within a 50m radius of the dirty-clothes hamper or ascertain that the 5ml in the bottom of the orange juice carton might not be worth putting back in the fridge.

And the farting....! The pride they took in farting......! And, even in 2006, this still seems to be in the top ten favourite pastimes of pubescent boys. The introduction of beanbags as legitimate pieces of furniture was hell for me. No sooner was I settled in, ready to watch 'The A Team' than Dave would cheekily saunter pass, puff out a ripe one directly in my face and then spring off faster than the roadrunner. It would take me lots of angry writhing and swearing, "I'll get you, you little turkey/creep/pain/geek!" before I stagger out of the brown velvet prison and stop him from laughing.

All is not doom and gloom for this teenage testosterone tribe however. Somehow, their bodies stretch up and they cease hunching up their shoulders self-consciously, their skin clears and their faces reassemble themselves into something worth gazing at. It's a mysterious process but nonetheless an amazing one. If they'd only outgrow the farting.... but that's a completely different story.

2006 Melbourne International Film Festival - goody goody gumdrops!

The above event is only a few days away, and while I was eating my lunch the other day in the uni cafe, I flicked through a copy of the event program. After nearly choking from inhaling a cucumber slice and trickling tandoori sauce out of my nose, I decided it would be better for my fellow diners if I left the area and had a good cackle elsewhere.

I'm an apologetic dag, so if there's some pretentious piece of art, literature or film out there that looks, sounds and is crap, I'll be able to spot it, mock it and sock it. Here's a few pearlers found in the program today, no fibbing:

Taxidermia (Hungary/Austria/France) - The story starts with Vendel, a hair-lipped Hungarian orderly working in an isolated outpost who deals with loneliness and the constant browbeating from his superior by indulging in voyeurism.
Bless him, a man's got to have a hobby. And to think, he's single, yes single!

Avida (France) - When a deaf-mute dog handler's employer falls victim to his own paranoia, the dog handler is drawn into a scheme to kidnap an obese millionaire's canine.
Whoah, time to drag out the sleeping bag and be first in the queue for these tickets! Seriously, this 'work' sounds like a piece of dog handler's doo-doo if you ask me.

The Descent (UK) - A team of adrenaline-seeking women are trapped deep within an other-worldly cave where they face not only their own fears but a colony of flesh-eating sub-humans.
As you do.

C.R.A.Z.Y. (Canada) - Zac's mother believes that, like baby Jesus, he possesses the gift of healing - or so says the Tupperware lady anyway.
Wow, that sounds so kooky and hilarious, doesn't it, with about as much wit as Adam Sandler dropping a banana peel in a laminate factory.

McDull, the Alumni (Hong Kong) - The story of an under-achieving cartoon pig attending Flower of the Spring Field Kindergarten.
I'm not sure if this is aimed at drug-dependent adults or TV-deprived children. Or David Hasselhoff. Lord knows I don't want to be in a cinema with any of them.

Rampo Noir (Japan) - Details the relationship between a sexually sadistic woman and her husband, a deformed and limbless war veteran.
It's about time Mum and I had a lunch and movie date together - I'll get us a couple of tickets for this thigh-slapper.

And Lucky Last -

Last Supper (Austria) - Abendmhal is a beautiful, photochemical/materialist mediation on transubstantiation and corporeal transmogrification.
Who was the poonce who wrote this description? I want to bang their head between two bin lids - that's after I surgically remove it from their arse with a pair of BBQ tongs.

Where am I?

Sydney, of course!

Love Chunks and I decided it was long past time for us to explore our country's capital city (we don't count Canberra) as genuine tourists.

We could easily excuse our open-hearted dagginess by telling our family and friends that "Oh, now that Sapphire's seven, she needs to see Sydney." And so did us oldies. LC and I had only ever been there for a couple of days on work trips and never together. As far as I knew, the place could have been full of rugby playing men with necks fatter than their heads and lost tourists still looking for the Olympic stadium, designed entirely by that taste-challenged artist Ken Done. By the way, his name is pronounced with a long 'Oh' as is stone. Not as in run - although it amuses a mind as simple as mine to think that he might have been teased at school with, "Ken's done a poo in his pants!"

But I digress slightly. We did all the sights - the bridge, the opera house, the AMP tower, Taronga zoo, ferry to Manly, Chinatown, Paddy's markets, aquarium, maritime museum, the rocks, the monorail, Hyde Park barracks and walked many, many kilometres. We were amazed at Sapphire's stamina which only flagged if an icecream/hot chocolate/opportunity to buy souvenirs wasn't dangled in front of her.

Other slightly less tourist-oriented sights included a pub punch-up on our way back from the ferry (no, Russell was home in Woolloomoolloo with his new baby); a woman being hauled by the shoulder through a crowded food-hall for shoplifting and Craig Reucassel from 'The Chaser' trying to harpoon Japanese tourists whilst wearing a dingy around his waist.

What was the highlight? Two, really. The first was catching up with my old mate, Deep Kick Girl (check out her blog: http://deepkickgirldownunder.blogspot.com/) and her fantastic family. She threw us into their people mover and showed us Bondi beach, lunch at Doyles, a sticky beak into the posh side of the harbour that shelters Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, dream homes in the docks and frequent playground stops for passengers seven years and under. We also had some Yum Cha in Paddington on our last day there where we tasted the new delights of a fresh mango and cream spring roll before dodging swan shit in Centennial park. (I mean the birds, not the footy players, although you never know.....)

The second highlight was perhaps a more spiritual one. The Lindt cafe. The only Lindt cafe in the world, and it happened to be in Sydney; a stone's throw away from that Boofhead David Kosh's studio at channel seven. It took us nearly 4km of walking to find it (we first headed towards their Australian offices), but I was determined - nay, driven - towards my own personal chocolate experience.

On the surface it may have seemed like an overpriced coffee shop selling tiny cakes at monthly mortgage payment prices but to me, it was a tiny, warm room full of beautifully wrapped chocolate balls of bliss. Naturally it was imperative that I sample all the balls not available in other stores - raspberry, cookies'n'cream, orange, mocha and peanut butter. Oh and have a slice of the Lindt mud cake of course.

My disappointment? Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I had heard so much about them and noticed how people would buy a box of 24 at the airport to take home to the uninitiated in Adelaide. We had a KK store around the corner from our hotel and I was at that counter quicker than you could say, 'This holiday is going to be about eating sensibly.'
"Two please - a choc whatnot and a glazed", I said, trying not to let my drool drip on the napkins. Blueegh - they were like eating a stale, fried bun with watery icing sugar spilt all over them. Give me a six pack of lurid pink-iced ones from Coles any day. Kacky Kreme was more like it.

Despite this setback, I bravely fought on and lived to eat another day. For Sapphire the highlight was seeing Deep Kick Girl's son, Will, whom she immediately held hands with and skipped off with on both days whilst simultaneously looking for something to spend her pocket money on. "Oh look Mum - how about this?" she asked many times, showing me a plastic model of the opera house spray painted in reflective gold. "Or this" - a koala bear improbably straddling a snowdome of the harbour bridge. "Aw please Mum, I've gotta get something," she pleaded. Sapphire's depiction of the harbour. Poo Bum Bugger Off, Ken Done! I relented, forcing myself to remember what a pleasure it had been for me to find and buy my own treasured souvenirs on family holidays. The collapsible cup from 'The Big Banana', a pink flag with 'Gilltrap's Yesteryear World' emblazoned in yellow; and, it's shameful to admit, a snowdome of Mt Gambier's Blue Lake. Sapphire ended up with a pink t-shirt (OK), a glittery blue plastic 'Sydney aquarium' mug (non-dishwasher, non-microwave, non-scourer safe and not guaranteed to hold liquids safely - not OK) and the boxed shower cap from our hotel (oh well, at least it's practical). As for Love Chunks and myself, it was about just seeing things. Walking around, not trying to pretend that we belonged, but instead not giving a hoot if we looked stupid as we stopped in the middle of the streets and looked up at the architecture or out to the sea. Blithely forgetting about the high prices of transport, food and drink and just feeling relaxed and entertained. Sharing a two-double bed hotel room with Sapphire and being able to watch her sleep and study her beautiful, little face. Without knowing it at the time, it was Sapphire herself who was the most amazing sight of all - when will I ever wake up in the morning and not be dazzled by her?