Droopy

Love Chunks and Sapphire have gone camping. Because it was booked a while back when it was assumed that I'd be well into my full-time job and not have any leave, I wasn't part of the holiday package.

When I quit, I decided to remain a non-camper because the thought of spending six nights in a tent in a crowded caravan park at the height of summer and having to queue for a shower and make sure I didn't drop my knickers on a wet floor festooned with pubes and tissues wasn't going to convince me otherwise. Plus, it'd give me a few luxuriously-empty days to do a bit more work on The Novel.

And I have done some work, the emphasis on some rather than heaps. None of it is particularly literary or engrossing but the effort right now is just getting it down; sometimes an entire chapter and other times a mere idea or line destined for another section of the story entirely. I'll then sit outside with a coffee and Skipper the rabbit in my lap and wonder if it's interesting, realistic, funny, heartfelt, compelling, page-turning enough.... The trouble is I honestly haven't a clue. Like everyone else, I know a good book when I read one but am finding it impossible to distance myself from the words that are flying out of my fingertips. All previous knowledge of structure and character and plot have escaped me.

Vomit it out, get it down and only think about logging off when you're happy with the word count for the day has been the modus operandi.

But all this free time has made me a bit droopy for my two favourite humans when the computer is turned off and my mind has to focus on what to cook for dinner. No, I'm not pining for Love Chunks because of his cooking skills but am sadly aware that, on my own I degenerate straight back to the carelessly slapdash meal preparer that used to live in a one-roomed bedsit off Baker Street in London twenty years ago.

How does home made potato wedges and tomato sauce sound? Okay but a bit plain? Well I then followed it up with a 'salad' that consisted of half a cucumber and a small head of cos, both eaten separately and whole. Dessert was half a bowl of orange-flavoured jelly and a blackberry yoghurt with a use-by date of December 29th.

Dinner the previous night was a pasta disaster that consisted only of a tin of chopped tomatoes, four mushrooms, half a green capsicum and an ancient tin of mussels in barbecue sauce. It tasted as bad as it deserved to taste, the crunch of each poorly-cooked capsicum a direct contrast to the rubber of the oversized sultanas that were masquerading as seafood.

Monday was the highlight - pea and prawn risotto with a fresh salad (in a bowl and everything) with balsamic and smoked garlic salt. But that was only because my friend Amanda was over for dinner; the following morning it was back to saladas for breakfast, Cadbury creme eggs and coffee for lunch. While she was there we each had a glass of good and earthy McLaren Vale cab sav and, three nights later, the bottle beckoned to me.

Hell, I needed it to wash away all lingering tastes of the mussel mess. Tennis was boring, the computer was off and my shoulders hurt from being hunched over it for too long and 'Are you being served?' was not an option. It was time to bring Skipper in to play on the rug.

Milly licked his ears and let him sniff her in turn, an impressive display of self restraint and generosity for a dog who chases birds and cats with automatic vengeance and no willingness to be called to heel. The wine was flowing a treat and, the merrier I got, the funnier I found it.

The evening was warm and it was time to get up and refill my glass. Skipper was stretched out on the floor, his legs behind him which meant that he was feeling comfy and not worried about predators. Milly's nails clicked as she trotted into the kitchen with me. Wine, boredom and loneliness meant that it was time for a song.

Grabbing her front paws so that she'd dance with me, I began:

Her name was Milly she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
Milly merengues and does the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star, Skipper always tended bar
At the Copa - Co! - Copacabana
The hottest spot north of Havana
At the Copa - Co! - Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the Copa....they fell in lo-o-o-o-o-ve......

"Er, Barry Manilow? Um are you there, Kath?"

Oh staple my butt to an anthill and smear my cheeks with chocolate: I'd left the bloody front door wide open to allow the non-existent cool breeze to flow through the screen and Kerry from next door was on the front step having just been treated to my loud and rather enthusiastic performance. Sheepishly, I walked up the passage. "Er, hi. Yep, it's me. What can I do for you?"

A couple of minutes later I shut both doors and went into the bathroom. Spots of red wine were all over my white Che Guevara t-shirt and my teeth and gums were black from the tannins. Several fine rabbit hairs were wavering from the tip of my nose, catching the light just so.

It was the only time in my life that I hoped someone could tell that I was drunk.

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-------^

No Franzy, Noooooo!

One of my favourite bloggers-with-brawn-and-brains, the inimitable Franzy, said the words that no ex-banker ever wants to hear from anyone they admire. ~Shudder~ Franzy said.... he said....he..... OK. I can do this! I'll be brave and just do a copy and paste. He said: I wish I had bank job.

Sure, we've all been discussing the profanity of an article describing how some South Yarra wankers only getting a million for their five bedroom houses are doing it tough in this current economic downturn and maybe even have to sell their Mornington Peninsula hobby farms or the iconic post-modern beach house at Portsea, and how insultingly offensive it is to a Gen Y professional student who has both a HECS debt and rent that's too high to save for a deposit, let alone a reasonably-manageable mortgage.

I feel Franzy's pain. And fear. And envy. I've felt all of them too. Still do in fact. But now, I want to address the most horrific sentence I've had the misfortune to see him write: I wish I had bank job and share my own experience of having such arse-puckeringly awful employment with you all. It is a tale of heartache, terror, rubber bands, endless signatures and hopefully one of caution for you all.

Way, waaaay back into the deep mists of time at the end of 1988 when 1927 were going to dominate the airwaves forever, spiral perms ruled and raging was a social past-time and not a personality affliction I was in my third and final year of uni, fully aware that I belonged to a group of students who were the last to receive a HECS-free tertiary education.*** From term two onwards I dutifully borrowed my Mum's sensible black power suit and scrunched my perm into a sleek French braid and sat through lots of group interviews held on campus, to be informed just before Christmas that the ANZ Bank wanted to employ me in 1989 as a Graduate Trainee.

I was thrilled - as a lowly Arts Graduate who endured seeing 'Arts Degrees - please take one' scrawled oh-so-wittily underneath the loo sheet dispenser in the Uni Bar loos, the thought of either doing honours or teaching were not happy ones and thus to land a real job outside of those areas was a big feat. Twenty two thousand dollars per year seemed like a fortune to someone who received $9 Austudy a fortnight, $20 per week from Mum and Dad and worked all holidays doing truly craptastic stuff like apricot cutting, garlic picking, waitressing, babysitting, cucumber polishing, capsicum weeding and leaflet folding to pay my rent, food and cider bills.

Despite being told by the recruiting bloke that they wanted to place me in Human Resources, when the January starting day arrived, I was lumped with a dozen other newbies - aloofish maths graduates and nervous school leavers, all ready to do a week's induction training and, in my case, become a Lending Officer, not an HR henchwoman. Oh, was my first little twinge; so somehow my Roman Art & Archaelogy and Major English Texts studies were deemed to be more suited to mortgages than staff issues.

Sadly, my twinge became a fully-fledged thorn in my side about a month later when I was stationed to their North Adelaide branch, helping out their Commercial Lending side hand out money to the already wealthy and already snobby customers. My day entailed smiling at the sleazy male lending managers pretending I was interested in what they had to say instead of loathing them and finding little else to occupy me amongst the reams of paper work, numbered dockets and certificates of title that were still typed via a manual typewriter. Freezing cold air conditioning, paper cuts and viewing too many yellow sweat stains under the Gordon Gecko-style striped shirt worn by the young yuppie jerk alongside of me. Yep, five o'clock couldn't come soon enough.

Later that year, I was posted to my permanent position as Assistant Bank Manager, Gawler Place (corner North Terrace, when Henry Buck's now is). Most of my day was spent running credit checks, processing card applications, approving mortgages, personal loans and high yielding term deposits. I was very firmly 'encouraged' to sign up to study Accounting in the evenings but lasted only three lectures: I had barely scraped through year eleven maths, so surely they could have seen that I would have studied economics and spreadsheets at uni if I was remotely inclined? My boss shook his head in disappointment and told me he'd ordered the Financial Review for us every day, and it was my job to read, note anything relevant and report it to him. My first thoughts were, 'Oh bugger, there aren't any pictures in here.'

This first foray into real paid professional work was boring, dispiriting and energy sapping. My Manager disliked me because I was a jumped-up young lady who went to uni and didn't join the bank at fifteen years of age in 1950 and move up, step by step whenever somebody older than him died or was found slumped over some carbon paper. Plus, I towered over him by seven inches (he was five feet tall with conspicious lifts inserted in the back heels of his brogues) and he insisted I call him "Mr" every time we spoke.

The general staff - the tellers - also resented me because I didn't have to serve customers all day every day except at lunchtimes and was on at least eight grand a year more than they were. This was in spite of the fact that I had to arrive before they did to unlock the strong room and office, go to evening classes (paid only by the bank if I passed them), take my four weeks' annual leave all in one go ('What do you mean you don't know anyone else who has the entire month of June off?') and not be permitted to have a cup of tea on my desk 'because the customers can see over the counter and your desk is visible.'

However it was the two hour lunch rush I dreaded even more than the boring old 'War with Westpac' stories from Mr C or the 'she-thinks-her-shit-doesn't-stink-just-because-she-went-to-uni-but-look-at-her-she-still-has-to-wear-navy-blue-and-grey-uniforms-like-we-do' glares of the tellers because I had to open up a booth, get the cash out and serve customers for two hours so that the tellers could take their lunch breaks.

I had to take my 45 minute break at either 11:15am or 2pm - no less and no more. The other tellers used to make sure they'd take their time serving someone, drop their pens or have a phone call to answer every single bloody time a drunken, piss-soaked wino would stagger in with his coffee jar full of coins, the doddery pensioners would rush in on every second Thursday with their outdated bank books and endless questions or the insane, 1000 year-old biddy who had several millions dollars with us but thought she could fling off her fox fur and flick spittle in my eyes for half an hour during her passionate rant about how much she hated us each time she came in to collect her statements.

Some of the staff I worked with were great, but some were questionable and borderline retarded, not to be too delicate about things. One woman - let's just call her Deb for reasons of me not wanting to be sued - could barely put the letters A, N and Z together in the same order, but had a relative higher up in personnel who ensured that she was a 'relief' staff (the irony of that word doesn't escape me) member who could stuff up and leave before any ramifications were felt. Anyhoo, she was one of many such blocks of dead wood who were hanging around because they had mortgages at a reduced rate that would automatically increase to 17.5% if they left. Not me, unfortunately. The days of cheap staff rates ended about a month before I got there, as did the Christmas cash bonus - I got a mini-Christmas pudding and a cinema ticket instead.

At the end of the day, we'd all have to balance our cash and it was very rare that I ever did on the first try. I ain't a fine details gal; never was, never will be. Counting and recounting fives, tens, twenties, fifties and wrapping them in groups of ten in rubber bands, bagging the gold, silver and bronze coins and entering and re-entering the figures was humiliating and mindless. I'd eventually manage it and have to hang around for Mr C to climb back into his stacked heels, find his key and lock up with him - he and I had the only sets that would lock up the pitiful little branch 100% securely every night. I'd walk dejectedly home through the beautiful old grounds of Adelaide uni, through the Botanic gardens to my Hackney sharehouse, feeling like a right twit in my daggy bank uniform when Jo was having a wonderful time searching for rocks and jocks via her geology PhD, and Charlotte was still studying piano at the Elder conservatorium and moonlighting in a techno jazz band.

Worse still was the recession that Paul Keating said "we had to have." Interest rates for mortgages climbed to 17.5% and in my second year at the bank ('Don't leave before two years or it will look really bad on your CV, I was told over and over again by my concerned parents, my friends and myself), I was doing more collecting work than loan approvals. It is hard to describe just how horrible it was to be given an armful of files and be told, at the ripe old age of 22 with a personal credit card with a $500 limit and a 1971 Renault bought for $1600, that I had to ring up working couples and parents and hassle them about missed payments, bounced cheques or negative bank balances. I did it coolly, professionally and efficiently and got results. Mr C and head office loved me for it, but I'd go home and wonder just why I felt like hiding and crying. Meeting anyone at a party at that time wasn't fun either - I'd invariably end up in a corner, cowering, listening to someone rant about the Bastard Banks and pointing angrily at me. "Nice talking with you, er, Dennis, isn't it, but I'd like to go and get drunk now....."

On the other hand, those who had already paid off their mortgages (Baby Boomers, I'm looking at you), could invest their considerable savings in term deposits with interest rates that hit 15.5%. "Yeehah" one particularly obnoxious customer yelled when I opened up such an account for him. "This'll pay for our Europe trip and hopefully allow me to lease a newer Beamer at the end of the year." How nice for you, I remember thinking, and noticed that the person behind him in the queue was coming in every week - with cash earned from a second labouring job - to pay off some arrears that had accrued when he'd got sick and had his overtime cut.

You'll be relieved to read, if you're still here, that I did a nannying course in the evenings and on the 730th day, handed in my notice, bought a plane ticket to London and left the country the week after. I felt as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and still, to this day, haven't been able to wear anything navy or grey ever again.

So Franzy? Dear, sweet Franzy. Make coffee, make books, make blogs, make wild monkey love to M, but don't DON'T ever make a bank job your wish. I beg you!

*** I paid HECS later when I returned to Adelaide Uni to do my Grad Dip Ed. I lasted a year, but the repayments took me four!

I'll pick Magic Johnson's face, thanks

Gosh golly darnit, it's been at least three months since my last meme.

This time, the tenacious Terence McDanger has tagged me, and seeing as I'm an unabashed fan of his blog, I'll accept his challenge.

What are your nicknames?

Used to be ‘Ready’ as a kid, or ‘reeds by the river’ because we lived in a river town, in a street named ‘River’ street even though it was actually nowhere near the river or even afforded any views of said river.

When gifted assassin and earless bad-boy Mark ‘Chopper’ Read became slightly more well known than feared, I was called ‘Chopper’ by the brave few. Of course, after I married Love Chunks and got ‘Lockett’ as part of the package deal the nickname changed to ‘Plugger’.


What TV gameshow/reality show would you like to be on?


I always say I’d like to be on Survivor, but I know full well that I’d be lying under a tree with a migraine sobbing uncontrollably within an hour of setting foot on an island with nothing but a dodgy swimsuit, even dodgier fellow contestants and only soggy bamboo with which to rub together for a fire.

In my own reality I’ve actually been on two game shows:

1988, Wheel of Fortune. Channel ten was then located in Walkerville and we poor students lived in Hackney so I could walk there, and hoped to win a colour TV, stereo, heater and some clothing to replace that which was stolen from us a few months earlier. My eighties spiral perm was blowdried out so hilariously hugely I looked like Bonnie Tyler in a wind tunnel and my request for ‘very little make up’ was translated to ‘I want to BE a peacock, I mean really BE one.’ Won the show, but realised that the room of prizes they show on TV is just a video for the home viewer while the contestant is being given the ‘hurry up you dick’ sign by the Floor Manager and being forced to pick from only ten items (such as cast iron cookware, mag wheels, skin care and diary sets and a poxy mat you place in your normal bath and pretend that it’s a spa) scrawled on a clapperboard.

Sale of the Century, 1997. My vanity – and love of useless trivia – allowed me to pass the audition and, seeing as we were living in Melbourne where the show was being filmed and I was a sheila, they were gagging for me to go on. Best moment of the show (a very long day in which up to seven episodes were filmed back to back, months in advance, so Glenn and whatsherface would whitter on about the Melbourne Cup even though it was June), was seeing a big headed contestant who’d annoyed the rest of us in the Green Room be led out by a hunky male model to the hot seat only to have her heel catch in the carpet and go arse over rack. Cracked us and the audience up and ruined her concentration so that she started on 20 points and left on twenty points; a comatose deer-in-the-headlights who might – I hope – have then gone home and taken a good hard look at herself.

As I did, but for different reasons. Won a few ‘Who am I’ segments (with those ‘pick a face’ prizes that are beyond tragic) and knew most of the other answers but just wasn’t as lightning fast as the two dudes on either side. Still have the Italian leather briefcase and the diamond set stickpin. Didn’t breathe a word to anyone at work that I’d been on the show (as if EPA greenies would watch it) during my flex day, and when it finally screened I was ribbed mercilessly by everyone there who’d somehow seen it.

What was the first movie you bought in VHS or DVD?

This is Spinal Tap. Then got it on DVD in 2000. “We were called the Originals until we found out that there was another band called the Originals and we didn’t want to be known as the Original Originals….”

First video watched at home, on a top-loading BETA video player at a friend’s house in Murray Bridge, 1982. Porky’s. Of course. It was only one of three choices at that stage – Porky’s, Stir Crazy and Emanuelle.

What is your favourite scent?

Can I have more than one? As a low maintenance gal who rejects make up, I do like perfume – Chloe by Karl Lagerfeld to be precise; worn it regularly since 1990, and occasionally veer to Joop, CKOne and even good old refreshing 4711.

Non perfume scents include Sapphire’s hair, vanilla, bacon frying, melted chocolate, freshly ground good quality coffee and clean dog fur.

If you had one million dollars to spend only on yourself, what would you spend it on?

Just me, eh? So no guiltily-obligated sharing or being good….

A really good car. Not a Ferrari because such an ostentatious set of wheels is only going to earn you sneers and catcalls, but a gleaming, high performance machine that, like Rexona, won't ever let me down.

A stonkingly fabulous, first-class-all-the-way world trip. Shopping spree with a personal stylist who actually cares. A self published book that looks good enough to convince all bookstores to stock, earns me more millions that I then could spend on family, friends and charity.

One place you've visited, can't forget and want to go back to?

London. Lived and worked there for two years and still hadn’t discovered it all. Damp, grotty and expensive but I loved the place. Cutting my toe nails out of my bedsit window one minute and down Churchill’s underground war rooms the next.

Do you trust easily?

Yes, bugger it. I have a heart bigger than my cynical rants on this 'ere blog would lead you to believe. It gets shocked, hurt, squeezed and disappointed often, despite me telling myself to harden up, be colder, feel colder, eat or be eaten.

Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think?

When I have the time, I think. And plan. And worry. And get anxious and all guts-churny and hate myself for and wish I was a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-trousers kind of person.

Other times, I can seize the moment and act in a kind of ‘fight instead of flight’ way. I’ve punched a cabbie in the face who pretended he was lost in Finchley and decided to reach over and try his luck with me; I’ve thrown a drunk bloke’s shopping bags off a bus so that he’d get off and stop bothering other passengers and bawled out people for littering in public. If only I could bottle that kind of attitude for stuff like public presentations or for dealing with the ‘Mummy Mafia’ who lurk at the school gates…..

Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?

My previous boss. HR departments that support the management regardless of truth, fairness or abuse of power. The fact that Ryan Shelton is on TV. Dove removing their dark chocolate from their block range and KitKat for continuing to release shiteous versions of a classic that should be left in dignified peace. Any jerk who thinks that abortion – under any circumstances – should not be granted. Saying yes to public speaking opportunities even though I crap my body weight out for weeks beforehand. Oh and enormous boxy houses without eaves or adequate environmental provisions that accommodate fat kids and need as much artificial heating and cooling as a city office block. Is that enough?

Do you have a good body image?

It’s getting there. I won’t pretend that I don’t wallow in the ‘I’m not good enough’ kinds of whingeing that most women are prone to but I’m proud of the fact that I keep pretty damn fit by running, walking and pummelling the punching bags in our garage gym.

What is your favorite fruit?

Darren Hayes. Oh, sorry, passionfruit. Ridiculously expensive, so it’s important to know someone who actually grows them, like my Grandpa did. Nothing nicer than to hollow a few out on a hot day and suck down those ridiculously sweetly sour seeds.

What websites do you visit daily?

Blogs (see my sidebar), The Age, Perez and D-listed (I know, I know), E!, Tom’s Trivia Challenge and a host of news and writing-related sites. Was a regular on Facebook but now just go to read what other friends are up to: 'Darryl is sitting at his desk in silence with a Cadbury Creme Egg wedged in each cheek when he should be on the phone talking to his boss about their next ministerial briefing'

What have you been seriously addicted to lately?

Flight of the Conchords and Seinfeld DVDs. Chocolate. Great coffee from beans roasted at Simply Coffee in Kent Town. Sapphire's soft cheeks. Milly’s soft, velvety ears. Skipper nibbling my fingers. Red Rock chips.

What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

Terence McDanger is hilarious, intelligent and a bloke I’d love to meet should I ever wind up in Ireland. With a wit and attitude to life sharper than a stick insect on a razor blade, he clearly is wasting his skills in whatever day job he has and should try doing some comedic writing for a living. With Franzy, Radgery, Myninjacockle and Miles McClagan.

What's the last song that got stuck in your head?

Sapphire was singing that old Rolf Harris classic about the powder on the noses of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus….who were just passing by and the pharkin’ thing is now firmly wedged in my grey matter. Trying to explain who Rolf was to my nine year old (who only knows him from the rather pleasantly enjoyable ABC portrait painting program) was impossible: "What do you mean there were lots of Rolfs that the Goodies had to track down?" "Why did he have a third leg - was he being naughty and rude?"

Favourite clothing

Brooks running shoes. My first pair beyond $150. Make me feel like wearing a firm pair of Crocs - but are socially acceptable - and make my running seem effortless: What are your legs? Springs, steel springs. And how fast can they run? As fast as a leopard! In Kathland anyway.

Do you think Rice Krispies are yummy?

No. They possess about as much mastication-fascination as a wood dust and interest my early morning taste buds about as much as powdered chipboard. I hate eating any kind of cereal for breakfast, especially meusli. I can force a bowl down a couple of times a week but it takes so bloody LONG to chew all the nuts, bolts and widgets and it’s so unfun to taste.

When Sapphire is around, I’ll do fruit and coffee. When she’s not, I’ll do leftover cake, chocolate, reheated spaghetti bolognese or a Farmers Union Feel Good Iced Coffee and a custard tart from the corner shop.

What would you do if you saw $100 lying on the ground?

Have a quick squizz around to see if anyone’s patting their arse in dismay, and if not, shove it in my own arse pocket. Knowing me, then head off to the nearest bookshop, newsagent or chocolatier and blow it all. Found a ten quid note on the Tube three days before payday in London which was a lifesaver, as I was in the habit of walking into my local McDonalds and yanking out a handful of their paper napkins to see me through a few days of toilet paper – monthly paydays were a horror.

Items you couldn't go without during the day?

My shoulder bag. Sunnies, wallet, little notebook and pen (for writing ideas), tic-tacs, keys, bus tickets and wet ones. Wet ones because the mother in me had found, too many times, that stingy café napkins placed directly UNDER sticky cakes aren’t helpful, especially if you have a child with caramel and cream smeared all over their face or your hands are covered in orange juice because the Fruitbox exploded like a grenade when you inserted the straw….. And some chocolate – couldn’t go without some every single day.

What should you be doing right now?

Writing a proper blog post that I thought of myself, preparing for my workshop, helping Love Chunks tizzy up our house plus discover the cure for zits in mature-aged women.

Day Twenty Five - Appreciative August

Needing Knots

Marriage is outdated these days. That's something that has been said by older generations for decades, so I'll rip off my numbered paper slip and wait patiently in the ever-increasing queue.

I've been married to Love Chunks for over thirteen years now, but have been 'with' him for nearly sixteen. Perhaps the opening sentence needs to be more clearly explained: the need for marriage and the way we traditionally go about preparing for it is out of date and unnecessary but having a loving and binding relationship certainly isn't. Most of us want that one person with whom we can be our complete selves without ridicule, fear or anxiety.

Love Chunks didn't ask me to marry him and nor was I waiting for the moment to ask him either. Instead it happened as a round-about conversation together when we were both poor teaching students. Somehow we wound up by a jewellery store in Rundle mall. There was a small sapphire ring in the window that we both really liked, so we bought it. End of story. No staged 'romantic' scenes and no exciting story when people ask, "So how did Love Chunks ask to marry you" - just a really wonderful sense of it all being right and that this bloke was 'it' as far as I was concerned.

In February 1995 we married in my folks' back garden in Murray Bridge. My 'dress' (a skirt and jacket) cost $12 in materials and the hat and shoes were $100 apiece. LC and I were based in Darwin at that stage, so we had about as much interest in planning an costly catastrophe that focussed on the colours of napkins, flowers and attendants as Bryce Courteney has in writing decent novels.

Mum and Dad were supportive of our low key plans too, for what I can only guess are the following reasons:

* They wanted to pay and we insisted on having a small celebration in their garden;

* Dad didn't have to wear a suit, write a speech or do anything other than ensure that there was enough shade and his back lawn was green and lush;

* Mum could finally flex her green muscled thumbs and show newcomers just what a sixty-something superstar can do with milo-brown Murray water, ingenuity and hard work;

* None of us had to endure prickly and pointless conversations about hired cars, who was going to be the best man, maid of honour, bridesmaid, flowergirl or the social perils of signing up for a gift registry.

At 2pm on Sunday 5th February, Love Chunks had more to endure than I, standing there on his own, facing the 60-strong crowd trying not to appear too nervous as Dad walked me out of the front door, down the drive and through our back garden. The summer day was windy and not hot at all, so my hat blew off halfway during the ceremony. Dad caught it and plonked it on his own much larger noggin, ensuring a snug fit and a decent photo opp. Mum and my sister-in-law sobbed throughout, as did RB, Love Chunks' father. Love Chunks and I nervously grabbed for and kissed each other as soon as the minister said, "I now pronounce you...." and endured a few rounds of happy laughter when he pointed out that there were a few other bits and pieces to say yet.

Two lovely CWA ladies from Coomandook did the catering - we wanted genuinely yummy finger foods and lots of it. The 22C weather and strong Murray gusts meant that the tea and coffee was more eagerly sought than the champers, beer and wine, so we had a nice head-start to establishing our now pretty substantial wine collection. We wanted no speeches and no gifts and the only cake was a nice mud jobby passed around in generous slices with clotted cream and forks. Total cost for the day including booze, food, catering staff and clothing was $2,ooo.

The rest of the day was a blur of talking, saying nothing of value, laughing, posing for photos, trying to spend at least two minutes with every person who was there before leaving around 8pm for Adelaide. It was only in our car tootling past Callington that LC and I realised that neither of us had been to the toilet in over eight hours, nor eaten or drunk anything; it was like our physical needs were in freeze-mode during a momentous event, yet, neither of us could remember a damn thing that was said to us the entire time. We arrived at the decadence that still is the Flag Inn on Anzac Highway, being conveniently-ish close to the airport where we were leaving on a red-arsed flight to Perth the next morning.

Our first meal as Mr and Mrs was in Glenelg, eating the oilest, gluggiest and most satisfying bowls of spaghetti carbonara from Fasta Pasta, laughing as we did so at the sheer lack of luxury of it all.

Yes, I'll go as far as to say we 'consummated' the day later on that evening, but again, much more laughter and snorting ensued as we tried to imagine what kind of horrors and disappointment faced nervous and exhausted couples in stricter and more innocent times.

The honeymoon was in Perth for the first week. It was the only city in Australia that neither of us had visited before and it was a pretty damn nice spot to recuperate from everything, plus see Australia destroy the Poms for the season at the WACA. Then we flew up to Darwin to meet up with our English mates John, Rebs, Richard and Tracey who had specifically timed their big trip Down Under to attend our wedding. Love Chunks had never met them before, but heard enough about them to suggest, "If they've made the effort to get down here, let's not just speak to them for a few minutes during THE BIG DAY, but do some travelling with them as well."

So we did. A week or so in a six-berth rented campervan doing Kakadu, Litchfield and the wilds of the Northern Territory. In February, the heart of the wet and stormy season. Best decision ever.

Since then, we've been part of, or attended, weddings that have cost more than a house deposit and wondered just why they thought that the money was well spent. We've caught drunk uncles falling off balconies; politely eaten partly boiled chicken that was raw on the inside; seen bridesmaid's dresses so bad that I thought my friend the bride was having a joke at first; seen a couple marry each other for the third time (!); two women at a posh Yarra do deciding to have a smack-down cat fight on the dance floor; chased stingy waiters in order to get a mouthful of food and wondered just why a bridal march done by a loopy cousin on a 1980s Casio keyboard was considered a good idea.

But......... But the couple at each event were sublimely happy and oblivious to problems relating to back fat rolling over strapless bodices, the noisy whirring of video recorders, the table full of bored 'odd' folk that are shoved together merely because they're single and the younger fourteen year old brother of the groom who sneakily sculls a jug of coke-and-bundy and throws up in the ladies toilets. At every one of them, we applauded each best man's speech, willingly got up to do the Chicken Dance after the cake was cut and told the bride she was the most beautiful example of love and light we'd even seen in our lives.

..... yes, marriage is outdated and getting married is tacky, wasteful and often very silly. Maybe that's because it's too tiring trying to work out how to tie that sublime Knot in a slightly more personal or creative way.

It doesn't really matter though, as long as you've found the person you want to get knotted with. And I have.

Day Fourteen - Appreciative August

Mates*

Jill and I were born in the same hospital two days apart and have been friends pretty well ever since.

Mum was recuperating from my arrival ("Ooh she's a nine pounder, Mrs Read, and with those long fingers she'll be good at fielding in the slips"), and was aware of the Kuchel commotion - two babies had arrived instead of one, so an extra set of everything was needed. Yep, in 1968 having twins was still an utter surprise.

Jill's been there with me through school, slumber parties, 18ths, 21sts, weddings, holidays, babies, renovations, work hassles and blokes.

She's made me ride on the back of the motorbike wearing thongs, only to take me through paddocks of Freisian cows where she'd lean over and I'd instinctively put my foot down - right into sludgy green manure. She sat through our very first ladies' night strip tease show with me ("God, how many dicks do we have to see? They're so ugly"), blushed profusely as she was shoved atop a mechanical bull when the Old Lion was a barn of a pub ("Hey, look at her GO - she's the winner tonight!") and gallantly offered me a jumper to wrap around my waist when I innocently emerged from the cinema with a crotch full of melted choc top chocolate.

She outdrank my Lincoln College mates and wooed a houseful of partygoing blokes with her expert Ashes commentary at 3am. A boxer she met on a wild holiday in Scotland followed her out to Australia and she recently crashed her German penpal's 40th birthday - they'd started writing to each other when they were nine years old. She and I have sung our lungs out to mix tapes in her little brown Chrysler as we'd hoon up the Princess highway from Murray Bridge to Adelaide on the weekends and she let me hide out in her Lockley's flat for a week to lick my wounds from a broken and humiliated heart.


I could go on - but there are mates for different stages of our lives. They don't always start out that way, or end that way or even last the distance, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Work mates can be the very key to surviving a day, yet fade away when jobs are taken elsewhere and there's no longer a boss in common to imitate or moan about.

My lovely friend Catherine started life as my boss before going on maternity leave and returning to find me the boss. Our friendship remains, for more reasons than merely because it was impossible for us to moan about our managers. I've seen her become a parent, a respected expert in her career field, a gifted decorator and a single mother with more dignity, strength and success than a truckload of millionaire supermodels. She's seen a lot of sorrow and disappointment in her life, yet handles it all with honesty and elegance.

Jo and I met on the very first night at Lincoln College. We were two nervous country kids about to start uni, so we did what came naturally - drank ourselves silly with cheap port in the President's room before staggering back to our own tiny dogboxes and swearing friendship forever. Bad instant coffee, eating Milo straight from the tin and holding each other up during pub crawls meant that we were destined to share a house for a few years after uni had finished. Our lives then went their separate ways - different states, countries, careers, hobbies and love, of course. Never our friendship though. Funny to think after over twenty years that we now only live 2 kilometres away from each other. She may have conquered Everest and me merely chocolate, but she still has to wrangle her nearly-two year old away from our chook house and I'll serve her cake using the same plates we had back in our Hackney house in 1988.

Mum's a mate too. We didn't see eye-to-eye in my teenage years and not because I was on drugs, in a cult or off the rails. She was beautiful, feminine and into singing, sewing and netball and I was sturdy, intellectual, obsessed with tennis and about as musical as a mud crab.

As the years have progressed it seems as though we have both bent a little, slowly, towards each other. It was Mum, a mostly stay-at-home mother of three, who saw me struggling to work 60+ hours a week and fight the guilt by devoting the remainder of my time to Sapphire, who said, "You don't have to be a martyr, Kath. You can say 'no' to Sapphire and not feel like you're a bad mother." We can go shopping and enjoy the experience. I can tease her about 'Twilight Trousers' and she can laugh at my favourite fabric colour: "Oh there's a surprise, you're reaching for the black one, aren't you?" We can play Rummy-O and she'll end up laughing so hard she'll fart, which makes me laugh and her laugh even harder until we're both in tears. Any generational gap is filled in with respect, humour, help and love.

85 year old Jack, who slopes off to Koster Park for a sly cigarette away from his wife and to have a yarn with Milly and me;
Betty, who made me a pot of soup after I'd returned home from wisdom teeth butchery;
Doctor Ian, who hugged me when I had only been in the job for a week and was crying over the death of our dog Tess;
Karate sensei Naomi, a combination of arse-kicker and kind heart;
Auntie Wendy, a struggling survivor who brings half a garden with her when she arrives for dinner;
Richard, my mate ever since we debt-collected and drank together in Herts;
John and Rebecca, enduring over eighteen years, two jobs and three kids between us;
Kirstie, who I didn't give the job to, but respected my decision anyway with maturity and continuing humour.......

And other mates, who have seen me through living in London - Tracey, Amanda, Siobhan, Steve, Amber; Darwin - Karen, Kym, Alex, Jenny and Mimi; Melbourne - Bill, Ian, Taka, Justine, Richard, Sophie, Philip, Nancy, Dave; and back to Adelaide - Jill, Kent, Catherine, Jo, Sam, David, Wendy, school families, blasts from the pasts, neighbours, suburb sharers, workmates......


I hope I've made youse as happy as youse have all made me.







* 'Mates' is meant in the Australian sense, as in good friends, top buddies. NOT as in the sexual act, present tense: "He mates with the female, who then bites off his head and eats it."

Hard Rubbish Hatin'



















In most councils in Adelaide, you're given one or two days a year to leave out any unwanted 'hard rubbish' on the kerb for their truck to come and take it away for you. Every September, my neighbourhood is festooned with ancient dryers, dead VCRs, dodgy gas stoves, busted rattan chairs, mattresses, Commodore 64 computer monitors and broken card tables.

This annual event is closely followed with the nocturnal visits by the trash-n-treasure trolls, who apprise themselves of the 'nicer' council districts' hard rubbish weeks and have an opportunitist sift through the debris. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - if things can be used by another person/household/shed and not end up in landfill, but it was a bit awkward a couple of years ago seeing two beanie-clad bogans nearly end up in a fist fight over who was the first to clap their occy-straps on an ancient sideboard. (I had to offer them each a handful of mandarins from the tree in the front yard to distract them).

As such, most of us are happy enough to see the streets looking shabby for a couple of weeks a year, but not when slackos dump their useless crap out every weekend hoping that someone will find it attractive enough to remove for them.

Every street has such a neighbour, and our amiable avenue is no different. He is, though. A very odd little chap. He lives with his rarely-seen wife and two tiny daughters in a corner house with a backyard just big enough for a clothesline and his kids' swing set out in the front garden, along with a dozen water-filled coke bottles strewn on the lawn to deter dogs or cats from excreting there. Not that he'd catch them in the act as each window has those oh-so-gorgeous shutters with the wind-up handles and they are always closed. Like Nicole Kidman's character in 'The Others', no daylight is to touch them or they instantly turn into dust, or become sane or attain the ability to visit the rubbish dump or something.

Anyhoo, it is he who believes that he can place four broken chipboard drawers from a 1970's dressing table out on the footpath in May and hope that someone takes a fancy to them. Or as the above photo attests, his clapped out air-conditioner with a dud DVD player placed on top of it as an added bonus.

Perhaps I should not have particularly high expectations of someone who drives a lime green Gemini that he leaves out in the street in the evenings with each door locked up but with all the windows open. Sure it's a vehicle that doesn't appeal to the average auto thief (or functioning human being), but it sure as hell encourages the average drunken derro on his way back home from the pub - via a pit-stop at our nearby Maccas - to sling his half-slurped thickshake and McChicken wrappers into what appears to be an electric-booger-coloured rubbish bin.

He never says hello to me, so I now make an even greater point of cheerily calling out 'Hello there' every morning as he walks his daughters and I walk my daughter to school: we're only two houses away from each other for Lindt's sake! This gregarious Gonad frowns at my dog and pulls his kids closer to him if Sapphire so much as glances in their direction. Despite this and his hard rubbish 24/7/365 tendencies, he certainly doesn't arouse anything remotely as interesting as dislike or anger within me. No, I reserve that for folk like David Koch, Brian Harradine or that funny-as-death git called Ryan on the 'Rove' telly show.

However Gonad Guy had clearly got right up the nose, firmly into the sinus cavity and was tapping on the back of the eyeballs of the man on the next corner block. From what I know, this man is extremely well off - his primary-school aged kids attend the poshest establishment in Adelaide even though their home - a brand new, sickly cream brick, boxy monstrosity known all over as 'The Mausoleum,' looks directly out on to Sapphire's beautiful school oval. He owns a famous continental gourmet store that frequently gets media attention and raves from famous chefs, and seems to have more than his fair share of childcare, gardening and cleaning help.

One day, Gonad Guy left a cheap plastic outdoor chair out on the footpath with the lazy hope that some poly-cretinous, mono-synaptic half-wit would take it. Said chair languished there for weeks, getting gradually covered in a fetching coat of Magpie droppings, bottle-brush strands and street dust. Not surprisingly, one of the Maccas-munching drunkards picked up the chair one night and, eventually discovering that it only had three legs, staggered onwards a few paces and discarded it in front of Mr Mausoleum's property.

Surely Mr Mausoleum's 'help' would dispose of the chair, or find room for it within their expansive garage/indoor pool/outdoor gym/entertainment/mini-skip storage area? But no - Mr M flung the chair back to Gonad's house, with a hand-written message on the back of it:

Closer inspection reveals the extent of his annoyance:

Crikey! I'm bloody glad he didn't see the sneaky crap that Milly did in his agapanthus plants....!

Some facts about me

This meme is courtesy of Ariel, author of the excellent blog Jabberwocky. These always give me ideas for longer blogs, articles or other such piffery.

Apparently, there are rules to adhere to:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Married to Love Chunks for three years and found out I was pregnant. This was a real shock to us, as I'd been diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumour a couple of years earlier (thanks to weird vision and increasingly painful and recurring migraines). The tumour was located at the base of the brain, right behind the eyes, rapidly growing a prolactinoma that convinced my body that I was:
a) already pregnant;
b) needed to breastfeed; and
c) didn't need to have any periods.

Tumour got under control, but reproductive system too fried to work. No babies for us, so we decided that we were happy anyway and could have decent holidays instead. And we did - a fab time in Malaysia where I found out that it wasn't the trots that was making me feel so ill, it was a baby. Even my endocrinologist was stunned and I formed the basis of a discussion paper from the Royal Melbourne Hospital Endocrinology Department!

Living in Heidelberg Heights, trying my damnedest to stop from throwing up on the train, at the train station toilets, on the escalator, in a taxi, at Love Chunks, in church on Christmas Day, whenever I smelt laksa....

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world (also known as 'Kath Land'):
1. Lindt Lindor Balls (especially the black, 60% ones)
2. Haigh's dark chocolate frogs, almonds, sultanas, violet cremes, cappuccino bars, lemon myrtle centres, speckles, bilbies, shiraz truffles....
3. Cadbury 70% Old Gold
4. Whittakers dark chocolate orange
5. Gelati from Cibo, Norwood. Their baci, lemon cheesecake, orange-n-pinenut, coconut, lemon, orange zest, pistacchio, rich chocolate, white chocolate, strawberry, apple, mint are the best I've ever tasted. We'll often walk in there after karate class and endure the curious stares (three weirdos in white religious pyjamas) to get ourselves three medium coppas.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world: (or really my favorite snacks 6-10)

6. Um ... all of the above when I'm being bad.
7. Oranges. I have one every morning and feel terrible when I don't.
8. Farmers Union Feel Good Iced Coffee
9. Wasabi peas mixed in a container with Salted Broad Beans
10. Raw carrots.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Let Love Chunks do the study he'd really like to do and buy the business he'd really like to buy if money had never been an issue for him
2. Pay off all the mortgages of my family and my best friends. When shelter (either rent or mortgage) is removed, it gives people a lot more spare cash to do things with.
3. Go on a world trip. Then select one country at a time and travel it really well.
4. Donate to all of my worthy causes
5. Work with dogs, even if it was just to help them out with admin work, because I don't think I'd have the strength to deal with the evil results of cruelty first hand.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Cucumber polisher (see http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2008/05/joyless-jobs-growing-up-if-we-ever.html)
2. Apricot cutter (see http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2005/09/she-works-hard-for-money.html)
3. Debt collector. Not fun, but funded my travels.
4. Public Servant (Dept Employment, Education and Training; Environment Protection Authority, WorkCover). Ministerials, reports, speech writing.
5. Assistant Bank Manager, ANZ. This suited me about as much as a mortar board and lab coat does Paris Hilton.
Now: a writer. Poor, but happy.

Three of my habits:
1. Worrying about things before they happen, thus wasting energy and sleep.
2. Picking at the skin around my fingernails until they bleed (I know I know, it's terrible and somehow I. Must. Make. Myself. Stop.)
3. Judging other people and then feeling guilty about it.

Five places I have lived:

1. Murray Bridge, South Australia. Yes, it was a highly imaginative name, wasn't it? We were by the Murray River and there was a ....... bridge. Here's me in my gorgeous costume in 1979 that I wore to celebrate the bridge's 100th birthday. Heady stuff. I won the prize which was the most un-fun thing ever - a massive box of toothpicks and a bottle of glue. Called something like 'Imaginopicks' or some such.














2. Aberdeen, Scotland. Dad was an exchange teacher for a year, and we swapped houses and jobs. The first six months were hell for me - starting highschool where I could barely understand their accents, let alone what Mods or Skinheads were and why they disinfected the asphalt every afternoon.... All our free time was spent travelling and I'm sure Dad wanted to throttle me when we were standing in York Minster and my 12-and-a-half year old self said, "Seen one cathedral, seen 'em all...."

3. Hackney, Adelaide. First place where I was required to (learn how to) cook, clean and budget after enduring two years of Lincoln College. Finished uni there and got my first job as a Graduate Trainee Bank Manager for the ANZ bank. Used to smell the Weetbix made by Sanitarium on the next block or the poo from the zoo when the wind changed. We three gals had our 21sts there as this photo will prove.














4. London - in 1991 and 1992 during my two year visa. Got jobs as a live-in nanny in Hampstead (only lasted three weeks), a live-in housekeeper in Finchley (6 months), bartender and kitchen hand at the Savoy Hotel (moved to a bedsit off Baker Street), kitchen hand at a mental hospital (2 months in Surrey), debt and home repossession officer for a large bank (rest of the time). Made some great friends, had many great holidays, enjoyed much great cider and rolled off the plane two stone heavier two years later.

5. Beulah Park - Adelaide. A share house with other uni students and my two brothers. This is where I met Love Chunks and getting ready for our first date (after circling each other for six weeks) was an interesting experience as I had to wait for him to get out of the bathroom. And he knew that his date was most certainly going to invite him in to her home afterwards!

Since finding Love Chunks, we've lived in:

Flemington, Melbourne - in a tiny 2 bedroom flat in a concrete 1960s block. Close to everything and allowed me to walk to Wormworld in North Melbourne to do more thrilling debt collecting. The highlight of the day was to look out the window and see who was 'shopping' at the brothel next door or the sex toy distribution factory across the road.

Fannie Bay, Darwin - in a townhouse partly paid for by Love Chunks' employer the Weather Bureau. Got eaten alive by mozzies in the outdoor spa and had some green tree frogs take residence in LC's gym equipment.

Wulagi, Darwin - Got ourselves a weather bureau house and bought an above ground pool. Spent every spare minute in the pool because even going to the letter box during the build-up and summer was the height of endurance.

Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne - No darling, not Heidelberg WEST, but HEIGHTS. An old fifties clinker brick and our first mortage of, *gasp* $105,000. Not close to anything decent to walk to unless seeing drug deals down at the Bogan Mall or buying Sara Lee seconds is considered high level entertainment. Wished we could afford Heidelberg proper or Ivanhoe but..... as compensation we had a lovely family next to us where, if I was sitting in our laundry toilet, I could hear the mother call out to her sons (Damien appropriately enough, and Dion) - "Come inside for dinner ya f**ken little arseholes."

Dad (of one of the sons) got well and truly shickered one night and wifey locked him out. He smashed a window, fell inside and kicked the living daylights out of his own furniture. We and several other neighbours called the police, who rocked up with a divvy van and loads of capsicum spray. Meanwhile Father-of-the-year had thrown up on himself and taken all of his clothes off and chucked up again. The police kicked the door in and threw around enough capsicum spray to deforest the Botanic gardens.

Dad was led out, completely starkers, handcuffed and thrown onto his front lawn in sub-zero, mid-winter, 3am Melbourne temperatures. Wifey called out, "Just wash 'im down with the fricken' hose!". His eyes were obviously killing him and he was coated in enough vomit and damp grass to resemble a homosapien Chiko roll and whined to the cops, "Lay off guys, you're embarrassin' me." Love Chunks and I witnessed the scene by kneeling on top of our kitchen sink, peering through the blinds with the lights off. Baby Sapphire slept through the entire performance. Wifey took him back two days later.

Murray Bridge, South Oz - for three months whilst we both worked full-time jobs in Adelaide and house hunted every weekend. We were grateful to my parents for letting us stay, but there's a photo of me at the time (that I prefer to keep hidden) that shows how truly exhausted I was. Quit EPA Melbourne on Friday; drove to Murray Bridge on Saturday and started work in Adelaide on Monday. I resembled Rumplestiltskin's secret half-sister.

Trinity Gardens, Adelaide - Since Christmas 2000. A 1924 bungalow, solid, full of character and pretty well perfect for us. We've found our home.

Groovy folk I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG and because I'm interested in their answers)

Tom - http://tomshideaway.blogspot.com/
Baino - http://bainosbanter.blogspot.com/
Davey - http://stumblor.blogspot.com/
Myninjacockle - http://theloadedblog.blogspot.com/
Ashleigh - http://ashleigh.id.au/
Deep Kick Girl - http://deepkickgirldownunder.blogspot.com/