Three Generations of Facebook

Sapphire Lockett
YOLO = You only live once. Add this at the end of a sentence to make everything ok.
 E.g. "I murdered three people. Oh well, YOLO."
...see? It works.

Yasmine Renard
Yeah Yay You are so smart. YOLO 

Grandpa 

I'll try it, Sapphire.

Grandpa 

I went to Adelaide yesterday - in my pants. YOLO. How's that?

Sapphire Lockett

Its great Grandpa. Off to eat junk food. YOLO.

Sapphire Lockett 

And yes, I am aware of my error when I said "its".

Yasmine Renard

Oooooh..... bad brownie points for that one, Sapph.

Sapphire Lockett

OOH BROWNIES 

Kath Lockett

In your pants!

Yasmine Renard

Now i'm hungry.

Sapphire Lockett

For pants?

..... Hey Mum here's a photo I of took of you

Kath Lockett

In your pants!

Sapphire Lockett

M-uuuuu-mmmmmm (eye roll)

FA

I’ve mentioned a long time ago that my very conservative Grandmother used to say ‘fiddle arsing’ in ignorant bliss when she meant to describe someone who was not concentrating on the task. Procrastinating, if you will.

I’m terrific at both. Fiddle arseing (is ‘arseing’ spelled with an ‘e’ or without? ....... see what I’m already doing here – I’m putting off writing this blog entry...) about the house and procrastinating are my usual modes of operation, especially when there’s actually some paid work to do.

Before you all groan and say things like ‘but you were only whingeing a short time ago about how hard it is to find work and now you’re blowing your opportunities by wasting precious mental energy on whether there’s a bloody letter E in ‘arseing’ and if cyberspace was truly elastic I’d reach in and angrily flick that bulb on the end of your nose until your eyes water......’ - let me reassure you of something.

Somehow – despite the rare skill of expertly hanging out THREE ENTIRE LOADS of washing inside a small apartment, cleaning the coffee machine, walking the dog, eating Sunday’s leftovers, going for a run to nowhere, chatting in broken French to the Fratman, taking the wine bottles to the public recycling bins and trying to ignore the disapproving stare of the old lady with just three tins to contribute; sneaking in an old episode of Antiques Roadshow, chasing up an old medical account with an insurer who only answers phones between 9-12 on weekdays and even then has an answering machine that says, ‘Our lines are busy. Please try again later,’ and fishing out 52 retro French magazines from the papier skip before photographing and putting them up for sale on ebay – I do manage to do all of my freelance writing gigs on time.

To be honest, it’s difficult to explain or pinpoint exactly how this is done.

Milly is the self-appointed rest-and-recreation director. Her wet nose is subtlely jabbed into the part of my back where my top has ridden up against the chair revealing 'the computer worker's jean cleavage' of bare skin. The end result is that I jump up in shock and we head downstairs for a quick sniff and wee (her), and a stretch and deep breath (me, but not near where Milly did a wee).

Back upstairs, emails are read, saved to draft, responded to, received. Job boards are scanned, applied to, Skyped and accepted. Online research is done, albeit liberally peppered with side clicks to cute animals, videos of people falling over and shameful Hollywood gossip. The printer jerks into action, whining and blinking; loose leaves floating haphazardly to the floor if my attention is on numbskulls in front of paparazzi instead of the numerical order of pages.

Phone calls are received and made - usually whilst walking through the house sipping coffee, enjoying the view of snow on the Jura mountains and pushing in the dining chairs as I pass.

The screen saver slides into action when the mouse is left idle and my head is drooped down reading something on paper. I look up and instantly get lost in a fog of nostalgia at old holiday snaps, images of a baby Sapphire surrounded by ancient Tupperware lids floating in the bath, Love Chunks holding up a freshly caught fish at Victor Harbor and dinner parties long past. Who stole the rose out of my bridesmaid's bouquet and stuck it in their.... and then photographed it.....??

Hang on, my ears feel blocked. A quick visit to the bathroom for a cotton bud excavation turns into a long one as I then clean my fingernails and examine my face for new wrinkles and – these are new and now obsessively sought – sun spots. Age spots. Liver spots. Two of the evil splodges have recently appeared and my hooded, sagging eyes are on the alert for more. It used to be that adopting a facial expression of suspicion would eradicate any crows’ feet but now all that happens is that they shift to my forehead and turn my mouth into a child’s drawing of the rays of the sun emerging from a puckered up pencil sharpener. The room echoes with a final duck quack fart as I remind myself to get on with the article due by close of business their time which is, well, an hour in our time and one that I oh-so-confidently assured them I had oodles of experience and knowledge on.

Sapphire arrives home from school, unfortunately in one of her eager-to-talk moods. The days when my fiddle arseing has been at prime level are never the days she wants to flop in her room on her own and decompress. We chat and I make her realise that it’s our pets who get the best greetings in life. “Think about it, Sapph. Every time Milly walks into the room, we all go gooey and coo, ‘Helloooooo there, sweetie’ but who does it for us?”

Diet cokes now consumed, she heads towards the study.

“Hey hey HEY, you can’t go on Skype or Minecraft, I have WORK to do!”

“Well, tell me when you’ve finished then, as I have a English essay due,” she huffs half-heartedly. With Milly at her heels and an episode of ‘Take Me Out’ waiting on the telly, she’s not exactly devastated.

And that is when I work. Forty minutes before Milly’s pre-dinner Dog Forest poop-and-patrol and Sapphire’s daily cyber appointment with her Minecraft Mates. I attach, click ‘send’ and lean back in the chair, sighing in fatigue and satisfaction.

Tomorrow, I tell myself, I’ll get it over and done with early. No housework; searching for sun spots, general goofing off or time wasting. Tomorrow it'll be different.

Then again, that’s when the flea market is open; Anita wants to meet up for lunch; an interview request has just been emailed and I might have a re-think about the novel that was started a couple of months ago and set aside......

Dough dodgers

 We might be living in Switzerland, but as Geneva is a tiny pimple that is pretty-well poked into by France, most of the foods, customs and lifestyle here is indisputably French.

Nothing more so than the bread. Long, thin baguettes comprise 99% of all bread sold and consumed in this part of the world. Crusty, fresh and flavoursome, it is designed to be bought and devoured on the same day. No preservatives are added, so twenty fours later your forgotten Pain Genovese would function better as a sturdy fence post than a breakfast option.

For those who prefer their bread in sandwiches, sliced white is usually in miserable, over-priced, over-packed and over-looked bottom floor shelves of the supermarket. It is often labelled 'American Toast,' and apparently lasts longer than a starlet's post-Disney career. We've learned the hard way that this stuff is to be avoided - anything made by the Swiss to cater for a populace they're unfamiliar with tastes like, well, it's been made by a country that hasn't a clue. See peanut butter and anything labelled 'Asiatique' for other sad examples.

Back to bread. If you're not prepared to spend fifteen francs on a filled baguette for lunch, then do what most of the locals do - buy it fresh from the boulangerie and eat it plain and straight out of the bag. Simple but delicious and all the crumbs are left on the pavement behind you.

So what do people do with the bread that's as rigid as Robin Hood's arrow stash the next day? They dispose of it, of course, but not usually in the rubbish.

Because it's winter here, they're more likely to festoon the gardens of their apartment complexes, public parks and green footpaths with their doughy remnants, roughly torn into chunks and scattered at the base of bushes and tree trunks. Birds and squirrels no doubt owe their survival to the bakers' collective aversion to preservatives.

So do domestic dogs. Milly's and my morning walks are often interrupted with many stops. Not just to wee over the signatures of other canines or to sniff for squirrels and the leavings of Crapauds, but to scoff the bread that's spread out like a stale smorgasbord seemingly every step of our journey.

And if it's not baguettes, we've also discovered vol-au-vent cases, Jewish matzo bread, paninis, pain de beurres and croissants. Milly returns home looking like a furry orange barrel with flecks of flour adoring her satisfied whiskery chin.

In our own garden, what we lovingly and gratefully refer to as The Dog Forest has an abundance of trees and very little usage by the other apartment dwellers. It is mostly Milly's private playland to run, parade, sniff and dump in as she desires. 

Recently however, someone has been sneaking into our pet paradise and leaving not just bread, but also apples and nuts for the Dog Forest fauna. Seeing Milly munch on almonds that were intended for the squirrels had me wondering not who the person was who was kind enough to leave them, but how on earth they a) could afford almonds and b) use them merely for fauna food. The apple quarters are usually only left by Milly because they're frozen solid, but on our next visit they've already been nibbled clean, leaving just the translucent peel behind.

The resident fox has also been in action, managing to snaffle a slow moving pigeon every other day. She leaves just the wings behind with feathers still on and a smear of blood in the snow. Yet again, this is frozen solid by the time we get to the scene and I'm relieved again that my furry companion is far too cold to contemplate rolling in these leftovers.

Back upstairs, Milly's coat is unzipped, her lead put away and my various layers are removed. She stares up at me, eyes asking for breakfast. "You've GOT to be kidding me, dog - you've just eaten a bakery display case followed by several nut clusters!"

Wednesday Word Verification Edition Eleven

Oooher, I'd better get cracking on this before Wednesday ends. It's been a day of photography, interviewing, coffee, knocking on a stranger's window to find out a local mystery, research, chocolate reviewing, running and giving away a few GoneChocco-related prizes.

Onto some word verification/captchas I've had to key into blogger and wordpress this past week, all deserving a definition:

Spumer - Unwillingly spitting out a drink in shock, anger or amusement. Recent examples of this include any election parties held on Saturday night; seeing Bob Katter being interviewed since then and reading any of Andrew Bolt's blog posts.

Having a spumer isn't always bad, however. Love Chunks forged a friendship with a workmate of mine after making him laugh so hard he did a spumer across the table and ...... splattered LC with Cab Sav. That was fourteen years ago and we still love him dearly.

Gnoun - Garden gnomes that live anywhere other than gardens. Many Gnouns are forced to become so after being kidnapped and photographed with their new owners who travel around the world. More sedate sightings include those found on desks, on car dashboards, modern ironic art installatios and the scared little guy below who lurks in the darkness of the stairwell that leads its way up to the Victorian Greens office.

Copip - Putting your corporate colleagues on hold during a tele-conference so that you can have a coughing fit or a sneeze. Before committing a copip, the more practised person is usually able to utter, 'Can we please put you on hold for a moment? My Exec Assistant's just come in with some more information...'

In my own case, a dislodged piece of peanut from a silently-gulped Snickers bar was hawked up and the 'hold' switch walloped before any explanations could be uttered. "Geez, I thought you'd rogered a Walrus," Dennis from Darwin said when all lines of communication were restored.

Afnesses - The dread experienced by thirty and forty-something women when attending a formal event that requires them to slap on the war paint, torture their feet in heels and put on a dress, only to see a twenty-something woman in the same outfit. Younger, slimmer, more stylish and better accessorised. Afnesses are painful and humiliating, and sufferers are advised to either lurk in the more poorly lit areas of the function room or get drunk. Combing both options can also be effective.

Tinonsk - The ill-fated (and usually alcohol-related in the case of adults, or red-cordial-induced when related to children) attempts to mimic the traditional Russian Cossack dance whilst wearing ugg boots and MC hammer pants during camping trips, stays in youth hostels or on sleepovers. When done to the tune of the 1980 Olympic song 'Moscow' the effect is rendered even uglier by a factor of ten.

Flespoem - Anything written on the back of a toilet door that is actually amusing.

Recent examples include: 'Beware of lesbian limbo dancers' scrawled on the bottom of the door;

I always used to be disorganised and run out of time but now I;

and this classic:

Don't beam me up yet, Scotty, I'm having a really good SHI-------^

Fiddle-arsing




















My grandmother was a very proper woman.

That didn't mean she refused to get her hands dirty or came from an upper crust background; on the contrary. She grew up in the market gardens of Walkerville with two Scottish parents who were illiterate, helping them cart their vegetables into the Central Market to sell. After marrying my grandfather she helped him run their grocery store, bearing three children and nursing him through an almost-deadly bout of Scarlet Fever. Socks were darned, children's coats were made from worn-out grown ups' clothing and gardens were seriously tended to as the main source of food for the family.

She was a devoted Methodist and firmly against the drink or pretty well anyone who took one.

For me, however, all this was mostly found years later, because I was only a child when she died. Inexplicably, one word she used often, to describe time-wasting and procrastination, was 'fiddle-arseing' which, on reflection years later, sounds decidedly non-Methodist to me.

And thus, in homage to her unintentionally robust description, I find myself becoming a World Champion Fiddle Arser.

Take this morning, for instance. I had three work-related tasks on my scrawled down 'To Do' list:

1) Ring the AMA media person to speak to an emergency doctor for a careers article
2) Contact the owner of Oranges and Lemons for an article on employing asylum seekers
3) Write first draft of education article for The Age and email to interviewee for them to check that facts, tone and quotes are all OK.

Nothing hard, frightening or intimidating to do; all stuff I relish.

And yet......... What did I do?

Complete a run on the treadmill. The thrice-weekly standard, chocolate-flab-defeating 8 km.

Sit outside in the autumn sunshine cooling down. This is fair enough because you can't just rush into a hot shower with sweat dripping from your eyebrows, but I linger a little longer, stroking Milly's ears and pulling up a couple of stray weeds.

Drink some water and eat a left-over muffin, before having a shower. Not my usual four-minute special, but a long and hot one in which all parts of overgrowth are shaved. When dry, my toenail polish is removed, heels scraped and nails trimmed.

A bit of jokey muscle-flexing in front of the mirror occurs (yes fellas, women do it too although I often suck in my gut and do a 'Before' and 'After' imitation of a weight loss advertisement to mix things up a little) before noticing my evil single chin hair has arisen. Plucking, moisturising and hairstyling then occurs. More self-amusement arises when I brush my hair forward and think I look like a 41 year old Justin Beiber.

Take out the buckets of water from the bath/bottom of shower and sloosh onto the pencil pines. Accidentally trudge in some mud and bark chips which need to be cleaned up. Do this, and again try my Justin Beiber hairstyle. Yep, still utterly hilarious.

Walk into Sapphire's room to put her $5 weekly pocket money on her desk. Can't resist adding an extra dot point to her noticeboard.















Put on a load of washing and place the hose in the laundry trough. Bucket the draining load onto the Manchurian pear trees, lavender bushes and scraps of still-living lawn. Notice several fresh dog turds in the grass, which are picked up using two scented nappy bags.

Make a cup of coffee. Pack the dishwasher. Write 'dishwashing powder' on the shopping list.

Photograph two blocks of chocolate at various angles. Flash and no flash, close up and slow shutter. Overhead light and shadow. Backside and front side. Whole and broken.

Eat chocolate. Jot down some notes about it.

Hang out the washing. Pat the rabbit. Kiss the dog. Invite the dog to come and join me in the study for some work.

Drink now-tepid coffee. Download the chocolate photos. Eat the remaining chocolate. Read emails. Laugh at this YouTube video about leadership. Plug in the iPod for re-charging. Read favourite blogs.

Go to the loo and afterwards decide to empty the bathroom bin into the kitchen bin. Then notice that the kitchen bin is overflowing so badly that coffee grounds have mated with squashed orange skins and are starting to ominously fizz up through the swing flap. Take bag out to the garbage bin and sort out the recycling at the same time.

Make my bed.

Sit back at the computer. Pat Milly. Pick my nails.

Get up and eat a pear.















Sit back at my desk and notice that Milly's nose is now touching the floor. Enjoy watching her as she yelps in her sleep (chasing cats? finally catching the rat that runs along the top of the fence? grandstanding at her victory in being allowed to sleep on the leather sofa?). Take a photo.

Drag attention back to the computer screen. See a new email from an acquaintance who works as a photographer but is studying creative writing. He wants me to answer a few questions for his essay on people who work from home.

I choose this question to answer first: 'How do you ensure that you're not distracted by things around you' and start writing. Complete the question in time for lunch.

Living on the edge

Working from home gives me far too many ways to creatively procrastinate.















Nothing says 'overdue article for which you'll actually receive some money' like some freshly pumiced heels, weeded gravel, dusted bookshelves and recycling arranged right down to metal screw caps and plastic bottle tops.

Apart from work stuff, I'm also avoiding:

Completing the Victorian Government 'Working With Children' documents. Yes, the school is always asking for volunteers and no, I'm not some shifty kiddie fiddler with hidden jail time but I've been avoiding getting those unflattering passport photographs done, because..... well...... because this year I want to have a year off from being a member of the Mummy Mafia.

You know the sort; those mothers who are always there to hear kids read, attend excursions, run the sausage sizzle, collect donations for raffles and coordinate the quiz night. Always immaculately dressed with late model SUVs, bendy-pilates/private-trainer-toned bodies and an Osh Kosh baby on one designer-jeaned hip. Even after five years, I was never a contender, just a willing slave. "Oh of course Diane, I'll paint the entire set for the class musical and make a pot of soup to share and keep the string instruments at my place during the weeknights and clean the Axylotl aquarium, make jewellery for the craft stall and write that Public Art Water Saving School Heritage Celebration State grant that you'll be taking to the next committee meeting....."

These days, I waddle up to the school and it's not the dog that causes other folk to avoid me: it's my sticky witchy woman hair, puffy eyes and morning breath that singles me out as a Mummy Mafia Member gone AWOL (or, in reality, me just out of bed and in my running gear). And I kind of like it that way.

My 'editing and proof reading' assignments. I'm particularly proud of my delaying tactics here, seeing as I haven't submitted any work to my tutor since October last year. Stuff such as a trip to New Zealand, my mother-in-law's death, GFC affecting the sale of our house for over three months and our move to Melbourne has meant that I had a few other things to occupy my mind other than what silly symbol means 'shift one space to the right and change to Times New Roman font sized 12' when written in red pen alongside the offending row of text, zzzzzz.......

Making a PAP smear appointment. I'm hardly alone in putting this one off and each time I've eventually gone, it's always with dismay to discover that the female doctor I asked for when booking the timeslot is away sick or at a health conference and I'm stuck with Dr Checks or his curmudgeonly equivalent and wondering just why he's forgotten to shut the blinds when I'm up on the table with my knickers stretched between both ankles staring between my knees at passersby and traffic on the road out front. These old locum war horses are also the types for whom empathy disappeared in around 1967, and think that 'bedside manner' means reminding you of the suffering of other (presumably long dead) medical freaks: "I don't know what you're so uncomfortable about. When I was in the far east during World War II a poor woman had a Durian growing up there and we didn't hear a peep out of her." Thanks, that helps you know, as would a BIT OF DELICACY, SOME LUBE AND WARM GLOVES, OKAY BUDDY?

Emptying the bathroom bin. It's not like the kitchen bin with its orange peels, coffee grounds, glad wrap shreds, pencil sharpenings and pongy old dog food tin lids, it's worse. It's filled with disgusting items that tend to fall out and stick to my top when I'm shaking it into the wheelie bin - fluttering threads of discarded dental floss, mouldy band aids, yellowing cotton buds, leaky toothpaste tubes, toenail clippings... Not to mention the weird grey fluffy hairy stuff that seems to have sprung from our own invisible Mr Snuffalufagus when he secretly shakes himself in our bathroom.

Washing the car. This hasn't been done since 2007 because I'm saving water, see? And now that we don't have a driveway or carport and the station wagon's out in the street, it gets periodically sluiced by the rains. Unfortunately there are times when, if the angle of the sun is right, I can see some rather rude words that passing high school kids have written with their fingers in the murk on the windows, but better that than a spray can on our fence...

Inside the car it is admittedly a bit dusty. The airline sick bags I stole last year are tiredly drooping from the car door pockets and Sapphire's plastic sick bucket is mostly a rubbish bin these days but they might - along with the dog hairs affixed to the seat covers and ancient shopping bags in the back - put off any aspiring thieves (who would clearly be affected by illegal substances) if they had an eye to nicking our 1996-model cassette tape player or Club Lock security system circa 1987.

Picking up Milly's poos. This actually doesn't take very long; maybe a couple of minutes to scan the lawn and the tiny front strip of bark chips to see where madam's butt nuggets have landed this week. No, my biggest fear is that the nappy bags won't be able to hold the weight of the, er, matter inside and a finger nail will carelessly pierce through and be squidged into a nice, ripe and moist, um, nugget. When you hear an anguished, "Oooooooo! Ooooooooo! Ooooooooo!" from where you live, you know it's due to a faulty bag in far-off Flemington.

Cleaning out Skipper's hutch. Bless the silent little fella but he backs out bunny beans like a sub machine gun and sprays the inside of his bedroom with something that, whilst technically called 'urine' is more like a stinking, acidic nasal hair and super glue remover. It is astonishly acrid stuff and even more vile when it soaks into several layers of newspaper and hay and is left to mature for a few days. As for Skipper himself, despite producing such substances he remains blindingly white and super clean, so I'm assuming that his excretions are like his portrait of Dorian Gray hidden up in the attic.

However, all of these tasks will get done eventually. Maybe not before Sapphire starts high school, but some day.

This one, pictured below, will not. I'm being brave, holding my head up, trying not to have a tremulous quaver in my voice when I say that special word, No.

I'm saying no to Mr Seth. Have you seen the size of his ............... novel?

'A Suitable Boy' is thicker than the foundations for this house and about as interesting. It could throw the Starship Enterprise entirely off course if it was flung on their starboard side and after 500 pages (roughly a third), I'm chucking it in. Call me a quitter if you must (I'm looking at you, Dad) but life's too short to waste ploughing through a novel less engrossing than the tinea on my left foot between the piggy that went 'wee wee wee' all the way home and the one that didn't get any roast beef. Besides, I have dog poo to pick up.

Cake-hole Chaos

We've all had 'Dyslexia Days' where whatever we type comes out lal worgn and causes a tol of imstsakes or had embarrassing bouts of 'Erroneous Eyes' when you'll see one person but be thinking of someone else and greet them with, "Hi Tracey - sorry, I meant Neil, honestly I did, but y'see I was just talking to Tracey on the phone and ..."

......Haven't we?

But have you ever had a Mangled Mouth Day?

No? You're probably shaking your head and wondering, 'Kath's a bit odd at the best of times, but this time I have absolutely no idea what she's on about and am going straight to Cute Overload to clear my mind right now.' If so, let me tell you about my morning so far.

I think my lips have gone on strike. No, before my husband Love Chunks interjects and says, "YOU - SILENT? That'll be the day," a bit more explanation is required. By going on strike I mean my actual lips seem to have forgotten how to drink things properly.

Several times this morning whilst expecting - as per every other morning of my lengthy adult life - to absent-mindedly slurp my coffee and remain dry, the exact opposite has happened. Like a root-canal victim still under the influence of dentist chair anaesthesia, the hot brown liquid splashed all over my top like a shower head. And not just once.

Later on, I decided to treat myself to a glorious chunk of almond nougat. It goes down a treat for morning tea when my sugar levels are merely at Diabetes Level 2 Lose-a-Limb stage and not at the Optimum Working Conditions for Kath Lockett range. Chewing away happily, I sang along to the iPod - "I am Milk, I am red hot kitchen; I am cool, Cool as the deep blue ocean" until twinkle time. As I washed my hands, I did my (sadly) usually jokey muscle flex at the mirror, only to discover with horror that partially-masticated almonds and white nougar had inserted their ugly selves into every single gap in my teeth.

Oh Jeez, no wonder the parcel guy was leaning so far away from me as I signed his receipt pad and Stuart next door now thinks that not only am I a terrible singer but also enjoy rinsing my my dentures in oatmeal.

No matter, a quick do-over with the floss and I was sparkly white and socially acceptable again. Now, where was the rest of that nougat.....

Did I tell you that it was rolled in a generous sedimentary layer of Bolivian cocoa? And that when I popped out to the shop to get some milk and had what I thought was an engaging chat to Narelle I got home to discover that the dust had settled on my upper lip, making me look like an Albino Mexican bandit in dire need of electrolysis? ~*Sigh*~

Clearly it was time to stay inside and away from innocent civilians. Besides, I'd discovered an ulcer in my cheek, and whilst tapping away on the laptop I had another touchy-feely festival going on inside my head as my tongue continually flicked at and worried the ulcer. Why oh why couldn't I just leave it alone?

Actually, I did, because it was then I noticed that my tongue had one of those annoying little pimples on the end. I then wasted a fair bit more time, effort and imagination by trying to bite the little bugger off by wedging it between my top and bottom front teeth. This was not successful and just succeeded it making it swell up and hurt a bit more. Now it's impossssssible to ssssssay anything with the letter Ssssss in it without ssssssound like SSsssssir Hisssss from Robin Hood. And it hurts too.

Then the blister on the roof of my mouth started to sting and throb and reminded me of the dangers of inhaling hot coffee straight from the kettle instead of being patient and waiting for it to cool, as I neglected to do so earlier in the day. The crinkly, wet skin that remained protested painfully as my pestering pimple tongue started to explore it.

And thus, here you find me, suffering from a Mangled Mouth day. Stuff It: I'm off to create total mayhem by cleaning my teeth with ultra strong mint and then glug down a glass of unsweetened orange juice..... Living on the edge baby, the Edge!

Mystery Number Three

Time for another one as my natural nosiness knows few boundaries.

We've already found out about the weirdo lift shaft on top of the housing commission building and know who the fabulous Mr P was and now we need to discover more about this particular little dwelling:

As you can see, it was Milly who sniffed it out first on our stroll back from the Racecourse Road shops, which indicates that several other dogs had selected this tiny residence to do a disrespectful tinkle on. In Dog-World, there's nothing like a good old whizz on a tree and the smell of others' to really set your morning off to a good start.

Whilst she sniffed and whizzed, I noticed that they have a huge chimney stack for a fairly small house, so either the inhabitants frequently feel the cold and enjoy their wood-oven pizzas, or they're anxious asthmatics living with a frequent farter. Either way, it's cute and I do like the jewels and gemstones that are tastefully embedded into the tree trunk.

I've tried knocking on the door of the house it is directly in front of, assuming that because it too is painted in a pale green-and-butter colour scheme that they might know a bit more about their fairy friends, but they're never home. Unless the big house is merely a socially-acceptable front for their real lives as Barbie-sized human mutants who really do live in a tree on the Flemington footpath.

Or they're deliberately hiding from me; it's happened before (and you family members KNOW who you are) .....

But fear not dear reader, I will get to the bottom of this, for all our sakes.

Besides, it surely has to be an easier challenge than trying to understand what these two bits of graffiti mean?

Um Oka-a-a-y, let's tick the box for 'Anus Fighting' because....?

And is the phrase "Hate is for Lovers" there on a sign at one of the city's busiest roundabouts because only lovers are able to feel the white hot angry furious heat of hate after their love has blown to smithereens and destroyed everything around them? Or is it because we should all hate lovers because they're so smug and sickening to be around when all you want to do is get a hose and smack them into sobbing submission and misery like the rest of us?

Any thoughts will be welcomed, considered and appreciated or I won't be able to sleep again tonight.

Meet Mr P !!

You regulars out there will know that finding out who Mr P is has occupied my microscopic mind for most of March, and even my frightened foray that ended in defeat a few days ago wasn't enough to deter me. How was I going to solve the mystery whilst still owning most of my face and limbs?

Luckily for me, Mr P's owner, Tam, read my note, decided (wisely or unwisely, depending on who you ask) to email me:

"My name's Tam, I've lived here for eight years and Mr P's final resting place is my design.
So you'd like to hear about the amazing Mr P, aka Perry. Perry was my beautiful, intelligent and almost-human German Shepherd who passed away 3 years ago from cancer. His ashes are in a mahogany box sealed in plastic and buried at the base of the urn. I decided to plant a peppermint geranium above him because the smell would have driven him mad when we read for hours on the front porch together.

Mr P was well-known around Flemington, partly due to the sunglasses he wore on sunny days for an eye condition. He looked pretty spiffy in them, especially when teamed with his rainbow bandanna. Oh yes, Mr P was also gay. Which wasn't a problem with me, except he was attracted to whippets which wouldn't have been my first choice of breed for him. Give me a noble husky or even a doofus labrador any day! He was my best friend for ten years."

Isn't he handsome? And, when I went around to meet Tam and her partner Aleixo today, I found out more. Perry was named after Perry Farrell from the band Jane's Addiction, but I suspect that Mr P might have had a greater propensity to wee on every bush that he passed by than perhaps Mr Farrell did even at the height of his alterna-rock decadence.

However, the mystery of the hulking beast growling behind the door had yet to be solved, because when I first arrived, Aleixo was home alone and Tam had taken Daria for a walk.

Daria, yes, after the TV show featuring the 'nothing can excite me' voice of Janeane Garofalo. That's a far better choice than the names that Mr Farrell has inflicted on his two poor kids - Hezron Wolfgang and Izzadore Bravo!

Daria, bless our Benevolent Sweet Lord of Lindt, is a loveable Rottweiler/German Shepherd cross that Tam adopted from the Lost Dogs home after she'd been treated abominably - and then dumped - by a previous owner. To this day she is terrified of fluttering objects such as curtains, or milk cartons and is the life and soul of Travancore 'off-lead' dog park. Tam is a dedicated fund-raiser for the Lost Dogs' Home in North Melbourne and has made up a calendar that features all of Daria's dog park mates on it, all grinning ecstatically (call the Lost Dogs home and ask for Kate in fundraising if you'd like to buy one).

Tam was at pains to point out the front door mat which so freaked me out the other day (was it a snack for the beast lurking within?) was merely old and not a chew toy for Daria.

By this stage, Daria was leaning up against me, her not-inconsiderable 41 kilogram bulk reminding me of our dog Milly's relative slightness at 13 kg. She was indeed beautiful, and trusting and friendly with a gorgeously shiny coat.

Looking around their living room with its long leather sofa, rubber toys, footies, soccer balls and tennis balls in various states of disrepair showed me who really ruled this particular roost.

Tam too noted that nearly every single framed photograph features dogs: "This is my Dad's dog just before he died, this is new one - isn't he beautiful? Here's my first German Shepherd that we got in Canberra; Mr P as a puppy, Mr P in his bandanna and sunnies; Daria on her first day with us....."

Aleixo is from Brazilian, but it was most definitely a Gallic shrug he gave. "Daria is crazy, but special and big. We love her." I was convinced of that already and I'm sure she'll have just as wonderful life with them as their beloved Mr P had.

Ooooh goody! Dexter's home - can he come over and have a roll with me on the grass?

Fifteen seconds of Fame

Andy Warhol might have said that everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame, but that was back in the sixties when they thought that Nehru jackets, Guru Swamis and The Flying Nun were going to last forever.

These days, it’s fifteen seconds. In a normal situation, fifteen seconds is about what it takes to say to a stranger, “Hi, I’m---“ and they to you as you both have a quick glance at each other and decide if you’re going to enjoy having a conversation with them or not.

For an as-yet un-filmed, unknown pilot game show on Channel Nine, they advertised for people to audition as contestants. Up for any new life experiences and writing material, I sent in an email and was invited to attend a session.

We had our photos taken, queue-style, before filing into the studio. As I squeezed in the last available chair in the very back row of a 400-strong backlot in Richmond (and I was at least ten minutes early) I found out that this was the last of four audition sessions they were holding. Somehow they intended to select half a dozen contestants from roughly 1600 people (or is that 1600 rough people, the jury's still out).

It was hot, we were all sweating and whispering to each other, wondering what we’d have to do to get on. I was the oldest in my row by at least fifteen years and the only one with the hair colour god gave me.

The producer then told us that they were seeking contestants to film the pilot show. “That means you won’t be on TV and you won’t win the prizes that they talk about. You just have to pretend to win them and look excited about it.” At least fifty people then chose that moment to get up and leave and the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief that some competition had gone and thoughtfully stirred up a breeze to cool the overheated space as they departed.

Smiling knowingly at the small interruption, the producer continued to say that if the show did get picked up by the network, the contestants on the pilot would be automatically on the real tv show. Tough luck for the impatient ones who’d skedaddled. We all had clipboards with a number and our names written on in thick black texta and were given about two minutes to fill in a three page questionnaire about ourselves.

My handwriting speed is reasonably fast yet I didn’t manage to complete the form. The blonde 22 year old self-proclaimed ‘surfie chick and nudie-rudie streaker’ next to me merely added smiley faces and exclamation marks on hers, perhaps mistaking it for an SMS screen.

The producer spoke up again. "You have fifteen seconds each to say your name, show us your clipboard so that – --- she turned and said something unintelligible --- can video you. We’ll call out your name and number.”

She held out her hand in front of her, forestalling the next question. “NO. You do not come up to us at the front, you just stand up where you are sitting, use your fifteen seconds when we ask you to and then sit down.” Great. That would work wonders being in the back row of a four hundred strong crowd with black curtains surrounding us and some surly sub-sub-lower-pond-scum intern inexpertly wielding an ageing hand-held video camera….

My number? 659. Producer lady was up again. “While you’re waiting your turn, we want the rest of you to clap and cheer each other on because we’ll be assessing you as enthusiastic audience members as well.” Yeah right, and Santa’s tapping out his Naughty and Nice list right now. That said, most of us decided to play, if only to enjoy whatever nonsense several hundred other strangers were going to come out with.

Stuff like:

"I work in Public Relations so I can talk confidently and knowledgably. Plus (she wrapped a long, lovely leg effortlessly around her neck) – I can run in pink stilettos." Nobody doubted her.

A couple stood up and proudly stated that they’d been married for four years. In the nude, as part of a radio show. Well sure, anyone can be nude on radio; matter of fact I’m wearing my birthday suit whilst typing this out!

A red-haired woman in her late forties stood up and immediately announced, “I’ve won $130,000 on 20-1 and now I want to win more.” Oh bugger off, you greedy sow. The mossies could be heard buzzing overhead as she sat down to annoyed silence.

A plump and spotty young guy two seats alongside me stood up. “I’m Derek Sacco. Yep, that’s my real surname, so my DJing stage name is DJ Sac. Yeah, as in nut sack.” Clearly that was what he considered the most important aspect of his presentation.

A mother of nine stood up and instantly got an awed round of applause. Perhaps it was her children that increased the volume of the crowd.

"Paul? Number 113?" the producer called out.

No response.
"I think he just popped out for a bit," said someone helpfully.
"Ok, we’ll try him again a bit later."

The curly-haired bloke sitting in front of me got his turn. “I work in logistics which is a fancy way of saying I’m a truckie. And yeah, I’m skinny, which makes me unusual in my line of work.”

The love child of Axl Rose and Hulk Hogan said, “I fix up fancy cars but only travel using (he reached down to pick up his skateboard) – THIS.” He wasn’t lying; I saw him happily rolling out of the studio on his board a couple of hours later.

“I rescue koalas because I’m a fireman,” a particularly tall and hunky man said. Wolf whistles from the girls drowned out the clapping.

258 stood up. "I’m bald, I’m fat, I'm forty two years old and I just got engaged on the weekend! The crowd roared their approval. "I mean look at me – I got engaged! Oh and I work for World Vision so you’ll all be sponsoring a kid before you leave tonight."

Spiral-permed Paulini-wannabe sang something. It sounded all nice and warbly in that trilly Mariah-Carey-on-helium over-singing style that Idol judges love, but no-one knew what the hell she was saying about herself.

"Paul? Number 113?"

No response.
"I think he’s in the loo," an auditioner called out.
"Ok, we’ll try him again a bit later."

Bimbo stood up, clearly annoyed at having to wait and sit with the great unwashed. "I’m a promotions model, I’ve been on Neighbours, I’ve appeared in a few scenes from Underbelly and I’m really outgoing." She then got up and left to no applause, whilst the rest of us stayed for the entire evening.

At least a dozen poverty stricken uni students were there for a laugh, a dare, to be crazy, to win some HECS money, to mock each other’s taste in t-shirts. All have faded from memory except for the vague odour of weed and clearasil.

The saddest one was a plump, middle-aged lady who was clearly shaking with nerves and spoke in a monotone, “I’m a public servant but underneath it all, I’m spontaneous, really crazy and always the life of the party.” Oh sweetie…..

"Paul? Number 113?"

No response.
The fireman called out, "He’s obviously doing a really big poo."
Producer pursed her lips and crossed him off her list. "Ok, he’s out then."

I don’t want to tell you what I said…….