Accidentalis Pulchritudo

Brilliant writer Elisabeth from Sixth in line has been discussing a professional family portrait that she's been given as part of a recent birthday present.

Despite being apprehensive about it, she explains the concepts of 'punctum' as it relates to photography. I won't pretend to be familiar with Roland Barthe or his 1980 work 'Camera Lucida' but, as my grey matter understands it, 'punctum' describes the unplanned associations one makes with a photograph.

Usually, in my own experience, 'punctum' pops up in photographs that aren't formally posed. Either the subjects depicted are unaware of being snapped or there's been timing flukey or lucky enough to catch a unique situation.

Seeing as it's still Sunday, I'm going to give a nod to River's Sunday Selections tradition and plunk down some photos whose 'punctum' productions particularly grab me.

Firstly, our ex-rabbit, Skipper.  We caught up with him during our recent visit home to Oz and found that he's just gained a new friend, Gus the kitten. Gus likes to regularly leap on top of Skipper's back. Bunny boy is rather tolerant, but, after the sixth ambush, he kicked out his back leg and Gus found himself off the couch and sprawled on the floor.

Eventually, even 13 week-olds get tired, and this is what Sapphire found when she lifted up the blanket.

In Adelaide, a 43C day was made a lot more fun by using Kent's underwater camera.  Regular readers will know that my husband, Love Chunks, is a softly-spoken, quiet achiever kind of bloke, but during the photo session in the pool he did all manner of duck dives, bombs, swim pasts and chop sueys for attention. I'm thinking of having this one enlarged and framed.

Could this be any more Australian? Our mate Kent, mid-jump, on a plastic thong coloured in the national flag directly into the pool.

Earlier times, circa 2007.  Our underwater rain water tanks had been buried, the under-grass drip watering system was about to be laid and then some turf finally rolled over the top.  The chickens - Hermoine, Luna and Ginny - were happily settling in and Sapphire was busy bustin' her moves on the trampoline, unaware that I was nearby.

Even earlier, around 2003.  Our intense young artist was busily painting in her pen drawing of Ursula from 'The Little Mermaid', wearing one of LC's old shirts.  She spent many many hours at the bright yellow table that my father had made for her; specifically on projects involving empty boxes, sticky tape, play dough, paints, chalk and pipe cleaners.

Artists do get tired though. This one had recently been diagnosed with Asthma, and was told that Elmo was too furry to sleep with. To deal with this upsetting news, she was allowed to pick something/someone less hirsute.  Jesse the Cowgirl was a regular night time companion for several years.

A portrait of my god son (Will, in yellow on matching space-hopper), his two older siblings and my child.  Sapphire clearly had a few unrealised romantic feelings for young Mr P and took the opportunity to steal a quick embrace before the word 'cheese' had ended.

Despite being on the far end of Daggy slash Tomboy slash Unkempt, for a couple of years I made a lot of jewellery to help the school fundraising efforts. Sapphire was very keen to show off the bracelet she'd made (which was subsequently sold, a few weeks later, to a rather sophisticated older adult). What turned out was a slightly out of focus piece of jewellery but a lovely portrait of her happy little face.

Not so happy here at the start of 2009 though, despite my urgings to smile.  Leaving the only home she'd ever remembered to go and move to Melbourne was a time of uncertainty for Sapphire. Seeing some of those friends a month ago put a huge smile back on her face.

My mother has a beautiful singing voice, and I've reminisced in the past about her sterling efforts in many a musical production. Why not duet with your granddaughter to ABBA?

Holding a book in a damp bathroom whilst cleaning your teeth might not be the best idea, but who was I to tell her off for reading?  Multi-tasking at its finest.

Tasmania, January 2010. The first stirrings of tweenage angst from Sapphire.  And yet, then as now, my heart surges when I see her and LC together. They're more alike than they realise.

Geneva, 2012. An impromptu greeting from Milly that is received with thanks.


















Martigny, Switzerland, is home to the St Bernard Museum.  Worth a visit because the town also contains some impressive Roman ruins and a museum that regularly snaffles art masterpieces such as Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso to have a look at.  

Back to the dogs. This fella was in the very first steps of slurping me entirely across the face, leaving me covered in a clear-but-thick saliva jelly substance that smelled of St Bernard's bum hole. Still worth it.

When my parents arrived, I insisted that they pose in front of the UN, which has become a tradition for all of our house guests. We discovered that none of the flags were up - something I'd never seen before. Just after taking this photo, a gaggle of kids walked by.

Is your dog friendly? Can we pat him?

"Of course, but 'he' is a 'she.'" Milly was surrounded by admirers....

......who insisted that I take their photo, too.

Eventually, their mother and Auntie persuaded them to keep on walking and I decided to take another photo of my parents, Sapphire and Milly, "just in case the first one doesn't work out."

Before we knew it ....

.....this cheeky little guy dashed in, posed as the extra family member, and dashed out again!

This is the photograph I was referring to when commenting on Elisabeth's blog post: 'When LC and I married a millennia ago, we did the usual thing and hired a professional photographer. I hated the awkward poses, wearing too much make up and having all eyes on me (plus a brain tumour that, undiagnosed at the time, made me feel rather ill) and the photos all reflected that. A wedding guest friend, however, gave me some snaps he took on his old kodak and one immediately grabbed me. We're slightly out of focus, but LC and I are both not looking at the camera, but at something else that has made us laugh. It's the only one I had framed and is still on our bookshelf.' 

And, finally this one.  This is the one that I will get enlarged:

I love you, darling Sapphire.

Beholder. Beauty. Eye of.

When everyone had gone to bed except for my mother and myself, I collapsed into her arms; dribbling a gloopy mixture of tears and mucus over her shoulder.

“Mum, I’m trying my best, I really am. And I’ll continue to do so for as long as I live. It's what she deserves: our love, support and guidance; however tricky it gets.”

“I know, love,” she said quietly, rubbing my back.

We stood like that together for a few moments in silence until I realised that age had shrunk her enough that my breasts now slotted on top of hers like two stacked loaves of bread.  The imp inside of me hadn’t yet disappeared, so I shared the observation.  Mum chuckled.  

“You always had a good rack,” I snuffled, half laughing and half sobbing.  Sobbing won the brief battle between shaking off the Sads or falling deeper into them.

“Whenever I tell her that she’s beautiful, she doesn’t believe me. She thinks that it’s just my job to say that.” An elephant-like bellow into a damp tissue added extra punctuation to my statement.

“She is beautiful. If she’d only smile more...”

Stepping back, I decided to say it. To reveal the tiny sadness that had shadowed me, ever-so-faint but still present, for so many years. “But Mum, you never said it to me.”

It was her turn to step back, eyes widened in surprise. “Of course I did love. You were beautiful as a child, beautiful at your formal, beautiful on your wedding day, beautiful when the baby was born -----"

“But you never told me,” I whispered. “Not once.”

“But you must have known?”

Sinking down into the lounge, I looked up at her, still standing there uncertainly. “No, Mum, I didn’t. I would have killed for a ‘you look nice today’ from you. Even once.”

She sat down beside me.  Several seconds passed.  Would she say, 'Oh but you should have been aware of it anyway’ or become defensive, saying that she’d been busy and tired; or reiterate that she never wanted to produce children too full of their own importance, or ....

“You are beautiful. You have always been beautiful.”

She placed her hands on both sides of my cheeks. “I love your beautiful face.”

I cried again, but it was good this time.

Interpol agents based in France should be on High Alert right now as they have an expert thief in their midst.  The culprit is there, relatively unattended, for a week and anything not nailed down is in danger......



Don't let the kindly face and silver hair of the lady on the far right fool you, dear reader: my mother is an utterly possessed pilfering pensioner with a penchant to purloin pretty much anything her paws can poach and place into her pockets.

My parents have been over here visiting us and we've spent a fair chunk of the summer holiday in Austria, Germany and France.

With rail passes and hotels already booked and paid for, Pauline Florence is a Sneaky Septuagenarian seeking surreptitious stimulation from stealing things.

Usually, she restricts her nimble fingers to airline biscuits, sugar cubes and plastic spoons, but a continental breakfast included in a two star hotel tariff was far too tempting to turn down.

"Look Katherine*," she whispered excitedly. "I've got lunch all organised."

Her right hand proudly waggled a clear plastic ziplock bag, smuggled all the way from Australia for just this purpose. Inside were several slices of Swiss cheese and pale pink ham. "The bread rolls and apples are already in my handbag," she continued, green eyes gleaming with glee.

Bread rolls and apples I could handle, but risking salmonella on a 34C day in Berlin was not on my 'top ten holiday moments' list. Not even in the top hundred, if I'm brutally honest.

I gently pushed her hand down, subduing her joy even further with a patronising pat on her knee. "Mum, you know I love you. You know that your handbag outdoes Dr Who's tardis for all the life saving items it contains but ----- yes Mum, there is a but, and this time it's not me being rude and talking about butts ---- we are not - repeat, NOT --- going to risk our lives by letting you keep some flaccid slices of already rather dodgy-looking dairy foods and meat products in your handbag for five hours on a hot day before you carve open some rock hard rolls with a Howard-era plastic knife on a park bench in order to save a few euros at lunchtime. Okay?"

She had the grace to accept my opinion and then was immediately racked with guilt.

Not at the act of stealing but at the waste. "I don't feel like eating this right now but it's awful to throw good food out." She brightened at an idea. "Why don't I just slip up to the buffet and put them back..."

"No, Mum. No-one in the entire hotel is going to want to see an old woman put some second-hand cheese that's already starting to curl up at the edges and ham with early stages of slime BACK on the cold savoury tray."

She made to interrupt. "------No, not even if placed there by someone as wholesome-looking as you, dear heart."

For the remainder of our trip, she refrained from misappropriating meat but stubbornly stuck to cheese. "You can't have bread without cheese," she said. Failing that, my parents' lunch rolls were filled via sachets of nutella, honey or jam. Hotels that had suffered from pillaging Paulines in the past were getting better at thwarting such manoevres, setting up their confitures and condiments with shared spoons in open bowls. Needless to say, these weren't my mother's favourite places to stay.

One evening, she had her head bent over her (thankfully paid for) evening meal, right hand shaking furiously over the napkin resting in her lap. Closer inspection by Sapphire ("What on earth are you doing, Grandma?") revealed that she was shaking the living shite out of the salt so that she could rinse out her sore tooth cavity with some warm water in her hotel room later on. "How about unscrewing the cap, Grandma? You'll get more salt and it'll be quicker that way," Sapphire suggested.

To be fair, Mum's skills in swiping helped us in other ways. We all caught a bad cold on the trip and she set herself a challenge beyond a free lunch - no tissues to be purchased by any of us. Instead, we blew our noses on green/yellow/monogrammed cafe napkins, hand towelettes from hotel lobbies, dried out wet ones and railway paper hand towels. She bragged at one stage that she could even furnish the paperless ladies' loos at Neuschwanstein castle by passing some spares around to grateful female tourists under their doors.

Our bought coffees were sweetened courtesy of her sugar swindlin' digits, access to public fountains improved with pinched plastic cups, shorts mended with sewing kits and bottles of water looted from cleaners' carts.



On our last day we had a check out time that coincided with the opening time of the hotel breakfast. This posed yet another dare for our Pauline - zip in, zip out as the rest of her party wheeled the cases onto the street. She dashed out with freshly-buttered rolls, sachet after sachet of spread and several apples under her jumper. Seeing my smile, she pinched two fingers together and said, "I was that tempted to buzz off with two hot teas for your Dad and me, but they only had china cups."

Yep, that Wife, Mother, Auntie, Grandmother, CWA and Probus committee member there has a Hedgren handbag heaving with illegal lunch.

I love you, Mum.

* She'll never abbreviate me to 'Kath'

I wanna play too















River has been participating in Sunday Selections. What you're supposed to do is sift through your photos and post up ones that haven't yet been published. So if you want to play too, link back to Kim at Frogpondsrock, add a comment on her blog and join in.

It's probably the ideal thing for me right now because I'm struggling to find time and energy to write anything for 'fun' that isn't related to my paid work. Three part-time jobs is clearly adding up to a bit more than one full-time role and whilst I love all three, the desire to sit down at night in front of the computer in the study and think of something to post is becoming as hard as my desire to ....

well ......

.... eat chocolate and write about it. Or, to be more specific - carefully arrange and photograph chocolate from various angles, take note of the ingredients, website and company history, taste and make notes, download photos, write up an article and post it. It was great to get 56,000 visits last month but the hoped-for advertising revenue stream hasn't eventuated.

Yep, I said it. The GoneChocco blog is starting to feel like a chore instead of the fun it was meant to be. My thighs are starting to feel like flabby flotation devices instead of the firm flanks they were meant to be and my cholesterol level is too frightening for me to face up to Dr Checks again for a follow up test.

As I think about the life of GoneChocco post-Easter, here are some photos that I've taken this year and not used.















Mum and Dad went up to Darwin a couple of months ago to experience tropical storms, hideous humidity and generally reacquaint themselves with the literary genius that is the NT News. Mum made sure that she read her copy word-for-word every day.














Dad was at my brother Rob's house and was goofing off with his neck massage thingy. I think he looks like a cross between a sensibly-dressed ET and Wall-E.















A couple of weeks ago LC won the Individual Staff Excellence Award at the Bureau of Meteorology for his work on a project that has been adopted internationally. It was brilliant to see him being made a (deserved) fuss of, even if he hated it and got more attention from his workmates for wearing a suit and tie than for his brilliant speech. I rather enjoyed being the proud spouse.
















This was taken via zoom off the Lorne Pier as we watched several massive sting rays swim underneath us. This optimistic pet owner was trying to convince his boxer to join him in the water. No amount of 'come on boy, come on' was working; not even having a tennis ball rolled about ten centimetres from his nose.
















The John Wesley statue in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD. Sapphire and I scurry past him every fortnight on our way back from the cruelly-early 7.45am fortnightly appointment for her allergy injection. His prematurely greying hair is mostly attributed to pigeon poop than age.
















Ah Milly. Beautiful smile, but ears set to 'coming in to land' pose as she hears Sapphire singing in the background.

















Seven year old A was not happy with me one day and ran off to her room in protest. I tried to push the door open to talk to her and apparently 'slamed' her leg - on purpose, it was accused. I then decided to leave her in there on her own to cool off, and the solitude clearly wasn't what she was after. A few minutes of slamming the door eventuated in the above note. Thankfully our altercation was cleared up soon afterwards.
















Royal Exhibition building, yesterday. Sapphire was dying to attend the Royal Melbourne Flower and Garden show. It was her week 'off' from tennis and LC gladly stayed home as we enjoyed a few girlie hours together - mostly dodging the zimmer frames and prams.














Hand-sewn felt vegetables! "There'd be a lot of kids that would only like vegetables in this form - inedible and stuffed," observed Sapphire.
















Several pretty dazzling outdoor displays with crowds mostly around the ones featured on the 'Better Homes and Gardens' TV show the night before. "Come here love, this is the one you liked on the telly last night," said one old duck, her 40-a-day-for-forty-years voice cutting through the crowd like catapulted gravel.

'Ned' appealed to me. Maybe one day a craft project of my own..... Hopefully a great deal more successful than my attempt to make three flying fish for the back of the toilet door in paper mache.

















Loads of reds and oranges and I jostled with many other eager SLR squatters to snap this one.



Same goes for the obligatory tulip shot.

















Surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of slow-moving seventy-somethings, wheelchairs and young couples with papooses, Sapphire said, "I'm guessing we won't be seeing the divvy van arrive any time soon." She makes me laugh so hard and it's such an honour when her hand reaches over for mine.

Snappy September - Day Eighteen - Pauline Florence

My Mum turns seventy today.




















I remember throwing gargantuan tantrums before kindergarten every single morning in protest at having to take a banana. Why not an apple, or a mandarin or a pear? You’d ruffle my sticky straw hair and try to explain that the teachers cut up all the fruit and mixed them together in a salad for us all to share, but no, I’d whinge and stubbornly insist that it was she who was conspiring to ruin my four year old life despite her making me a beautiful angel costume for the Christmas play, being one of the original mothers who helped raise funds to build the centre and trying to shoosh me as well as get Robert to school and stop young David from picking dried snail shells off the fence and eating them.

I still picture you walking back to the car in your groovy slacks, sleeveless Nehru vest and curly blonde hair and was convinced that you were the most beautiful woman in the world. You were; but I’d run inside to see my teachers and friends, hand over the hated banana and forget all about my concerns until the next morning.

I remember feeling the cold stone of fear drop down deep into my stomach when Alison’s and my plans to rejuvenate Mr McKenzie’s old bike by painting it in pink undercoat and giving it to her older brother for his birthday went horribly wrong. We’d forgotten to ask Mr McKenzie if he still needed his dusty old bike and our interest in painting the vintage item had not lasted long enough to wash the brushes that had dried and clung to the spokes. You could see that our intentions were good – if stupid – and tucked me into bed that night and stroked my forehead; something I loved.

Flat lemonade and a Balfours frog cake if I was at home on the lounge feeling poorly in front of Fat Cat and Friends and Humphrey B Bear. We'd both watch ‘Day of our lives’ at 1:30 and you’d explain who the characters were and why they wore full make up and sequins during the daytime scenes which were dark; peeling apples in one long continuous strip before handing me the sliced segments. Apples tasted extra delicious done that way.




















How many times did you let me set up a cafe in the back yard, only to see me give away all of your freshly made cakes, shop-bought biscuits, swiss rolls and glasses of cordial to the neighbourhood kids? Or let me have an egg and mix it with some flour and tap water before rushing outside to tip in some sandpit dirt, red berries and grass clippings with the evil aim of enticing sweet Simon from next door to try a mouthful? Or patiently sit in front of the bed-sheet dangling from the Hill’s Hoist as I performed yet another Abba concert?

...and to think, you weren’t a drinker or a smoker. It explains why you’d eagerly snap up blocks of Cadbury or Smalls ten-at-a-time when they were on special at Woolies and hide some underneath your sewing machine. Lord knows you deserved it.

I’m so sorry for sighing melodramatically and saying “Oh Mum, you’re always at that typewriter,” in 1976 as you went to classes at night and studied during the day for your mature-aged matriculation exams. I didn’t miss out on a thing – not your love, your attention or your care and seeing how proud Dad was when he said that you came second in the state when the results came out gave eight year old me a jolt as I realised that you were more than just my mother who sang really well and sometimes cooked a ‘stew’ I didn’t like eating very much.

For someone who kept herself nice until being married you somehow managed to not blush but also keep a straight face when I’d come home from school and ask questions about genitalia, unexplained swear words, bodily excretions and sexual proclivities, answering each with honesty and thought.

Mum, from 1979 to 1984 you provided a great deal of informal education to not only myself but also my friends, who were unable to broach anything greater than a muffled, “Mum can you buy me some more um, you know....” to their own mothers each month when their brothers were out of earshot. Thank you for that.

As a shy sixteen year old, I saw you work hard with Dad to make extra money for the family as an adminstrator as well as working together on the weekends and weeknights to grow cucumbers in rented glasshouses. You and Dad knew that all three of us kids were likely to go to university and it was years later before I realised – or appreciated – how financially strapped you were. You must have wanted to hit me when I’d mock the age of our cars or the daggy furniture. I am so very sorry for that.

I also remember when we had to size, polish and pack the freshly-picked cucumbers. Despite being a virgin, I could not stop smiling at our suggestive repetitive stroking motions as we ‘polished’ them. Your throaty laugh in return was recognition that you considered me an equal in observation and humour, which made me feel very honoured.

You believed in waiting for marriage before moving in, but when I decided to start my life with Love Chunks, I snorted, “Hey Mum, you’d been married for three years at my age. That’s three years of regular sex that I never had,” you were shocked for a milli-second and then amused enough to hug me and help me pack.

With a laugh like the old creaky back door in our Murray Bridge house, as you’ve aged you’ve become more inclined to let it out; less worried about setting an example and more able to let go. Who knew that farts over a game of Rummy would make you laugh so hard you’d cry?

Word has it that Noni-B still want you to do their next fashion parade Mum, despite turning the big Seven Oh. Why wouldn’t they – you’re still the most beautiful woman in my world.

Un-Mothers' Day gift ideas

It's that time of year again when my letterbox is no longer full of Christmas, Back to School, Valentine's Day or Easter bargains, but the inevitable Mothers' Day dreck.














It was almost enough to put me off my chocolate, but not quite: they were handy for catching the cocoa dust as I sliced through the truffles.

Here I present to you, today, some of the gift suggestions on offer by some of the largest purveyors of goods to women who may have borne a child or seven in this country. Be prepared to feel dismayed, depressed and a tad grumpy and hope that, should you fall into the category as 'mother' that you instead end up with a box of service-station Ferreros three months past their due date and some soggy carnations peppered with car fumes due to sitting in a bucket for three hours by the roadside rather than any of these 'gifts'.

















Firstly, Myer. Yes, they say that they're 'our store' but want us to believe that the average mother (aged, say, between 20 and 80) is keen to spray a Bit-O-Brit on their bodies.

The answer, is um, no. NO. I don't care if it's called Curious, Furious or Spurious, most mothers would rather spray on the aroma of someone who is a tad more likely to remember to wear bras during custody hearings and be able to confidently flick the 'on' switch whilst performing. Try selling us a Streep Spritzer, an Eau de Cate Blanchett cologne or a Michelle Obama atomizer and you might be onto something. Hell, even a Mother Teresa Toilette would work.




















K-Mart, too, seemed to have gone for the Britney-mated-with-a-lurex-sleazebag look on their brochure emblazoned with 'Make your Mum's Day!'

Now my Mum would tell those three little tarts to "Stop slouching, brush your hair (in fact, put it up so it's out of your face and looks a bit neater), don't point your toes inwards and we'd all like to know where are you off to; the Blue Light Disco in 1984?" Actually she wouldn't have said the last bit; that was me, and the chick on the right is holding a pose not unlike the way I spent most of last week with my Provider of Pain, or neck if you want to be pedantic.




















Aldi have decided that these sensual slip ons are THE MONEY for Mothers' Day. Oooh yeah, they've got Aegis antibacterial treatment that protects them against odour, staining and deterioration: I'm sold! And any shoe that comes in a 'musk' has gotta be sexy, right?













Angus and Robertson think that we all need a book on how to make really wild tea cosies. Like the one on the front cover; think Noddy on acid or the severed testicles of many an unhappy Kermit and you'd have to start wondering just what the hell is in the tea they're drinking. ......Wouldn't you, or are the musk slippers starting to make perfect sense now?
















My surname might be Lockett with the extra 't' but I don't see the need in wearing one that describes just one of my job titles. Why don't they have other common descriptions that apply to loads of people in modern society such as 'Administrator', 'Dole Bludger', 'Government Lackey' and 'Fatso' ?

If I'm forgetful or in the early undetected stages of Alzheimers I'd personally prefer to wear a dog tag with my name, address and phone number on it.




















Ah, the Reject Shop. Who wouldn't feel loved if their child handed them a gift with the receipt for the Reject Shop stapled to the back of the card?

And who doesn't need a heated fleecy scarf in inflamed-uterus pink with pockets to slip hot plastic heat pouches into? Me, for one.

If you find yourself utterly unable to venture outside without wearing a flattened oesophagus around your neck and clutching sweaty plastic pouches in your hands then feel free to join me in my continuing quest to continue to chat to strangers on public transport. You'd be a hit on the 57 tram because you'd keep the souvlakis warm and easily score a date drinking long necks under the railway bridge after the journey.















Well, who wouldn't feel special if they got a BODY TRIM meal system from their offspring?

"Hey Mum, you're fat. Really FAT. Too fat, even, for an Angus and Robertson book voucher. But hey, have this instead. And keep a distance of at least twenty metres behind me when we're out in public until you're physically able to bend down again and lace your shoes without breaking into a sweat and farting like a trumpet, okay?"




















Another catalogue from Myer. No.

Just no.




















Now this is a book that really speaks to me. Which means there's no way that either Sapphire or Love Chunks will get it.

And that's a good thing. Tonight Sapph shooed me out of her room, saying, "I'm making you something for Mothers' Day, so GET OUT."

Good.