Sticky Cordial

Lord knows my parents did their best to ensure that as a family we got to travel and see as much of Australia and Europe as possible.

As I get older and learn that the average Aussie family has two incomes and is buying a house more than nine times their annual earnings; compared to a generation ago of families living on income in a house worth three times their income, I am even more grateful for the opportunities that Mum and Dad - a high school teacher and stay-at-home Mum respectively - gave us three kids.

Many many hours were spent jostling for a fair third of the back seat in the car with my older brother Robert and younger brother David. Most of our trips were from Murray Bridge to Adelaide for school holiday shopping and visits to Grandparents and all involved at least two-out-of-three of us kids throwing up.

Before getting in the car, Dad would collar us and somehow ensure that we each swallowed a pink motion sickness tablet. Sometimes it was hidden in a spoonful of ice-cream or honey, but the unmistakeably acrid chemical taste was impossible to disguise. In the car itself, Mum's wise organisation skills made it clear that she had little faith in the medications Dad enforced. She kept three clean ice-cream cartons, some paper serviettes and a cordial bottle filled with water for the inevitable stop at the Information Bay just before the toll gate. The winding road through the hills would eventually have claimed all of us kids by then, and she'd sigh wearily and set to emptying and rinsing out the cartons in front of the boomerang-shaped sign welcoming all travellers to the capital of South Australia.

Longer trips were fortunate only in that the possibility of vomiting was unlikely. I'm not sure of the reason why, but a chuck-up would almost have been preferable to the boredom, frustration and violence that always erupted. At least in the back seat.

The long hauls to Barmera for the summer holidays via the least scenic route in the state - Karoonda, Alawoona and limitless vistas of scungy, dusty Mallee scrub - were made even more unbearable by it always being over 40C when we set off. In the late 1970s, car air conditioning was unheard of, and in addition to having a sopping wet t-shirt slicked to your back you also had to lay beach towels on the vinyl seats and steering wheel in order to avoid having your sizzling skin stick to the surface.

These days, if I'm bored - normally when accompanying Love Chunks and Sapphire to a footy game - food is my saviour. Chips, ice-cream, coffee, chocolate, pies etc can all be spaced out enough to ensure that my mouth and stomach are being well entertained. Unfortunately whilst growing up, my parents were not loaded with much spare cash, and the concept of stopping off at a service station for anything other than to fill up the car with petrol was not negotiable. No shop-bought ice-blocks or packets of chips for us.

"Come on now, if you're hungry you can have a YoYo biscuit," Mum would say, brandishing a much-dented, tartan-patterned shortbread tin packed with the least tasty biscuits known to children-kind at that time. They were like eating a bathroom tile and just as interesting. I'd wistfully move my gaze from the rich kids in the next car slurping their Razzes and Sunnyboys to the tin, whining, "I don't feel like a yo-yo. Is there anything else to eat?"
"Yes, I've cut up some apples and there's some bananas if you're hungry."
Great. Sensible fruit as a snack was about as appealing as being given a live squid and asked to fashion it into a wearable balaklava.
"Anything else, Mum?"

This was the time that out would come the sentence that every kid expects - and knows - will emerge from their mother's mouth, but hopes it will not be so in this particular instance: "If you don't want a biscuit or some fruit, you can't be hungry then."
Bugger.
"If you're thirsty, we've got some orange cordial." Warm, sticky and served in the anodised cups in a zip-edged holder that every self-respecting Australian glovebox contained.
"Oh. I'm OK, thanks." No such luck scoring a Farmers Union Iced Coffee either.

Seeing that food was never likely to provide much of a diversion during the drive, we siblings would instead concentrate on seat territory. WHACK went Robert's arm onto my leg if it even dared stray a centimetre into his designated area. I'd very early on accepted that his two year age difference meant that I'd never beat him in a physical contest, so I took out my revenge on David instead. WHACK! "Move over you hog!"

Eventually, the seat space negotiations would degenerate into random acts of violence; namely slaps, dead legs, chinese burns, poking and pushing. Larry, Curly and Moe would have been impressed by our ability to give and receive all sorts of fisticuffs in such a confined space.
"Stop it you kids," Mum would tiredly call from the front.

Dad used to get madder, but he was far less potent because he had to keep at least one hand on the wheel and preferably both eyes on the road. He would try and keep his right hand busy steering and his left would vaguely swing around behind him in the vain hope he'd make contact with at least one of his three fighting children. Again, he'd utter those immortal, fatherly words heard on many a long journey: "If you kids don't stop fighting, I'll give you something to fight about."

Mostly we ignored him, because we were expert at leaning into each other and dodging his 'smack hand.' The squealing, accusations, yelling and slapping sounds would normally wind up a few minutes later anyway. David would be crying, I'd be sulking and Robert would be told to sit in the front and swap seats with Mum.

One particularly searingly hot day however, the fight continued, even when Dad threatened to "Stop the car and you'll all be WALKING to Barmera!" Yeah right, we three clearly communicated to each other via rolled eyes - it's only 200km away and it's 43C, so, like, we can really see that you'll be doing that to us, old man. So, we continued our stress-release strategy of pinching, punching and squabbling away, getting louder and louder by the second when all of a sudden -- WHOOSH -- Mum hurled three cups of warm orange cordial over her right shoulder into our faces.

She got the result she wanted immediately: total silence. We sat the remaining two hours in the backseat, all speechless, indignant and getting uncomfortably stickier by the second. I can't, with any honesty, write that her technique cured us off backseat argy-bargying forever, but it sure as hell meant that the stint along the Hay Plain was a very relaxing one from the vantage point of the front seats.






In sunny Scotland, 1981

Legs Like Fluoro Tubes

A few weeks ago, we three had ten very glorious, sun-drenched days in tropical Queensland. All three of us enjoyed the steamy heat, the warm and inviting swimming pools, the gorgeous white sandy beaches, rainforest-like gardens and - perhaps most of all - no housework or cleaning to do.

There were some great restaurants and cafes on Hamilton island and if we weren't eating out we were enjoying some rather delicious meals cooked by Love Chunks. And yet, despite being on a hard-earned holiday, we didn't gorge ourselves as much as we'd normally do.

The reason for this uncharacteristic culinary control was mostly due to seeing some of the other guests who shared the resort and pools with us – mostly parents our age or younger. It was with mild horror we witnessed a rather huge percentage of beginner beer guts, fat backs and love handles of the men and the multiple chins, life-preserver waists and ice cream cone thighs of the women. We were also shocked though by some of the garb worn by these brave folk – tiny bikinis and miniscule speedos – all with confidence and ease in such a public area. We then realised that we looked rather fit and slim in comparison to most of them.

Don’t get me wrong; everyone deserves to be relaxed and have fun on holiday regardless of their size and I admit to being pretty harsh when making comment on the appearances of others (mostly to deflect attention from my own). And, even though I’m a tallish size 12/14 gal who’s fairly fit, I’m white. Whiter than white. Legs like fluoro tubes. Arms like chunks of new chalk. Face so pale that people always think I’m recovering from a viral infection.

This unwanted whiteness is never more apparent than around the pool wearing bathers. Although we have all known for years that a tan is risking sun damage and skin cancer, I defy anyone to line up two women of the same body size and appearance - with the only difference being that one is tanned and one is not - and not admit that the tanned one looks thinner, fitter and healthier.

Carrying a little extra weight is easier to hide if you’re a golden brown – cellulite is no friend of the pallid colourless sufferers amongst us. So, I was naughty. I decided to do my utmost to get a tan. For the entire ten days I slathered every visible part of my body with factor 30+ sunscreen, rotisserating myself half-hourly like a take-away chicken. I swam 40 laps every late afternoon with the sun beating down on my arms, back, shoulder and legs and moisturized every evening with a fevour that Mrs Nivea would be proud of. Sunburn did not dare venture my way once – surely I was attaining a tiny, tiny bit of pigment? Surely I was no longer the whitest one in the pool?

All too soon, our lovely holiday was at its end. Strolling back to reception to hand over the key, the porter remarked to me, “Welcome to our resort Mrs Moo, we hope you enjoy your holiday with us. Have you just arrived from Antarctica?” Well, Antarctica might be exaggerating the exchange a tad, but you get my drift.

It was therefore time for some chemical assistance. The promise of a Sunless, Golden Glow For An Ultra Natural Tanning Result was impossible to turn down. The morning after we arrived back in cloudy South Australia, the fake tanner came out. Or, as cosmetics companies prefer, ‘Moisturising Bronzer.’ The instructions, well, instructed me to get in the shower, shave everything worth shaving, exfoliate everything worth exfoliating, get out, dry off and moisturise everything worth moisturising.

All OK so far------KNOCK KNOCK – “Mum! Can I come in to the bathroom to wash my hands?”
“Um, can you drag a chair into the laundry and use the tap in the trough?”

(uncertainly) “Oh, OK.” I'm sure she won't fall over on the tiles, crack her head on the edge of the basin and be lying there slowly bleeding to death whilst I wait for the lotion to work it's magic.....

The bronzer was applied in smooth, even strokes with very little applied to the dry areas of heels and knees. As I sparingly rubbed it into my elbows, it reminded me of what Billy Connolly once said: ‘Elbows are where God put his left over testicle skin. He thought it was a sin to waste it.’

Next step read ‘Let set for 30 mins before wearing any clothing.’ Thirty minutes! That's a aeon when standing in a freezing bathroom. Then I realised that I'd forgotten to bring in my watch. One elephant, two elephants, three elephants, four….. My fingers were turning blue. I thought that perhaps a jog on the spot would make things a bit warmer. A few seconds later I decided that perhaps not. The lack of elasticated underwire support made things in the chest area rather painful. I didn’t dare fold my arms under my acheing rack in case it led to unsightly sweat lines. Bugger it, I eventually thought: it would be far easier just to streak into the bedroom where at least the heating was on-----"BRRRRRING!" went the front door bell.

This was not exactly well-timed: our anti-feng shui nightmare of a bathroom is directly in line with the front door, and I had no intention of providing any sort of visual comic relief to the hapless visitor. In the meantime all I could do to keep warm was a sort of crippled side-to-side shuffle like a teenage boy at his first disco, and hope that the visitor would leave soon---

“Mum, there’s a guy from the post office here for you. He’s got a package that he says you’ve gotta sign for.”

Poo Bum Bugger Shit Fart.

“Where’s your Daddy? Can you get him to sign it?”

“Daddy’s in the toilet.”

And not likely to emerge until the first buds of Spring.

“TELL HIM I’LL BE THERE IN FIVE MINUTES,” I yelled to her through the keyhole.

My lovely little one relayed the message.

“Mum, he said he can’t wait around, he’s got other deliveries to do he says.”

My sigh echoed around the tiled walls – “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

“Sign here please.” He didn’t even look up. It felt nice and warm in my dressing gown and I no longer cared if the thirty minutes were up. ‘Your true golden tan will be achieved in three hours,’ it said on the tube. Whatever, it was nearly my bedtime anyway.

“Whew, what on earth is wrong with you?” said Love Chunks, sniffing at me curiouslyas we settled into bed.

“Bronzing lotion,” I muttered.

“FAKE TAN? Why? You’re a whitey and you can’t change that, it’ll look strange. It smells strange….”

“Yeah well, it’s OK for you, brown boy. You just have to think about wearing shorts and you’re nice and tanned. I hate being mistaken for the first full moon.”

The bed was shaking slightly in the darkness. We weren’t doing any horizontal folk dancing: LC was laughing. The next morning found me in the shower, frantically trying to exfoliate off the orange streaks. Clearly my application technique was not as smooth or even as I’d hoped. There were distinct finger print marks at the back of my neck and a generous amount of lotion run-off had decided to settle within my cleavage, forming a fetching fault-line of orange zig zags. My legs were golden but my feet looked as though they’d been varnished in a hailstorm. As for my arms, well, on their own they appeared sun-kissed, but I’d been too stringent in ensuring that my palms didn’t turn orange, so my hands were still pallid. It gave the impression of the gloves worn by Mickey Mouse.

It was the only time in my life that I was glad it was 20C, raining and cold. Thank the lord for black polo neck jumpers, jeans and gloves.

Female Phlegm Bag


There, amongst the post-nightclub puke, squashed chewing gum wrappers and a selection of other greasy, unmentionable attractions at a city bus stop was this lone, blue, peanut M&M.

It represents how I feel at the moment: once a object of glory, now infested by crap and disease of every kind.

Is it just me or have coughs and colds become more virulent, lengthy and painful in the past few years?

Sure sure, we get given antibiotics if a cold lingers on for too long and it's clear that a throat or chest infection has kicked in or there is too much chunky, lime-green snot on tap, but I honestly don't remember colds being this harsh when I was growing up.

If dealing with hayfever isn't already hard enough.....! A couple of nights ago as I was power walking my way home, I was attacked with a fit of sneezes so powerful I was in danger of peeing myself. Then, a gust of dry northern wind (as only Adelaide can do so well) blasted a fistful of dirt into my face, so I ended up staggering around blindly down the footpath wildly gouging at my eyes, sneezing like a stuck Acid House CD and doing my best to cross my legs and hope that no wee was coming out. One old lady who was bravely thumbing her nose up at the water restrictions stopped watering her roses and called out nervously, "Are you alright over there, love?"

The continual itchiness of hay-fever is made worse when a cold is thrown into the mix as well. We all know about the old saying 'We can send a man to the moon but we can't cure the common cold', and it rang true this week as I sat in a meeting with some academics who simply couldn't understand why they now had 'prove' how their research has made a difference outside of their institutional walls.

The pesky government bureaucrats (called 'clerks' by a guy who clearly started uni when Noah was in woodworking class 101) are now insisting that the brainiacs clearly show how their egg-head exertions have had a positive impact on society, community, government policy or merely improved life for even just one individual. Yes, these old bookish brainiacs have all been cited in other respected journals many times, but a lot were struggling with the concept that Joe Average needed to be convinced that their unique field of expertise and continued study was of some merit.

Shouldn't these Super Synapses be focussing their energies on curing colds, or eliminating them right from the outset? Apart from rage-excused-by-religion and Celine Dion's entire musical output, what has annoyed the human race more?

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

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

I was convinced that I was about to hawk up a lung on my desk today. I felt like the Marlboro Man's Mistress in her retirement years with a puffy red and sweaty face from the effort of it all. And there's been no rest for me, or my loving family at night either. Once the sweats and shakes had subsided, my throat was revving up for its turn in the spotlight. Or should I say soundscape. With my snot-filled noggin, stuffed-up chest and wheezy breaths, I spent the night sitting propped up on even our fancy little 'just for show' pillows that normally adorn our bed, looking for all the world like a nocturnal nanna about to 'receive' visitors.

Apparently, when I did fall asleep, my snot-logged snores sounded like an outboard motor that had been stuck in a swamp. It was so loud I woke myself up, only to find Love Chunks staring down at me and wondering aloud, "Geez no wonder you were about to divorce me until I got my punching bag thingy in my throat surgically removed."

It's so easy when you're not the one with the cold to think "Ah, it's just a cold, stop being a wimp," but when it is you with the cold, all you want to do is shove two test-tubes into your nostrils to let them drip freely and save you the bother of wearing away your face with continued tissue wipes.

So to all you university Egg Heads - sweetie darling honey suckle piggy wiggy poo poos - would you please please PLEASE consider putting aside your ground-breaking examination of Pam Ayre's early poems for subliminal, pro-terrorism propaganda and instead find a way to eliminate this dreadful affliction for good. I'll even attend your lectures and buy the textbook....

Running the gamut of emotions from A to B

Apparently David Sozzlehoff is to star in 'Anaconda 3'. Like me, you probably idly wondered, 'Oh, I didn't even know they'd been optimistic enough to make Anaconda 2' but there you go: The Hoff was big enough news to feature in the Age and on channel nine's Today Show.

When Richard Wilkins sarcastically commented, "Well that's got 'Oscar' written all over it," it got me thinking about how stressed out copy writers try to wring out glowing reviews from absolutely negative ones.

I can see the poster for 'Anaconda 3: Return from Rehab' on the window of the video store now, emblazoned on the top with "This has OSCAR written all over it!" - Richard Wilkins, Today Show. With all evidence of scorn removed it may actually encourage a few mental midgets to plonk a couple of two dollar coins on the counter to see for themselves how Sozzlehoff may have merited such an accolade.

When a movie is rip-snortingly, trouser-fillingly, over-priced popcorn-inhalingly good, then the copy writer can sit back, slurp their mocha latte and rub their hands with glee. Actually, that's still quite a feat because it would be hard to sit back from the desk whilst trying to slurp your coffee hands-free (unless you have lips like Mick Jagger) because they're already occupied with rubbing themselves in glee.... but I digress.

Katharine Hepburn once received the review, "...runs the gamut of emotions from A to B," and Fred Astaire copped the now infamous note from a casting director, "Can't act. Can't sing. Can dance a little," but the movies they eventually starred in went on to become (mostly) huge hits. Not so for Pia Zadora (there's an obscure one for youse) who starred as Anne Frank in a play funded by her billionaire husband. "She's in the attic, for f***k's sake", yelled out an exasperated audience member several minutes into the debacle.

What of clunkers such as 'Howard the Duck', 'Ishtar', 'Bonfire of the Vanities', 'Gigli' and 'Glitter'? How on earth would you be able to find a positive review to slap on the poster? In actual fact if you have a go, you'll find that it's surprisingly simple, which, if given a bit of thought, is pretty well why the movie ended up being so ordinary in the first place.

For instance. Fred Nurke justifiably writes: "This movie could have been brilliant if star power was ignored in favour of genuine talent."
Desperate movie publicist writes: "......Brilliant......Star Power....Genuine Talent...."

Here's another one. Flo Blow opines: "I never thought, in my entire writing career, that such an execrable movie would end up provoking a bout of nausea, compelling me to exit the cinema after only viewing the opening credits."
Easy. Try: ".....Thought provoking.....Compelling Viewing......"

Exhibit number three: "The cast's feeble efforts to work with a complete absence of realistic storyline or intelligent comedy is made only even more by their total disregard for anything remotely resembling the staggering special effects' budget. I laughed til I cried at the sight of Sharon Stone passing herself off as the pre-drug/post-Mickey Mouse Club Britney Spears."
Ta Da: ".....Realistic storyline.....Intelligent Comedy......Staggering Special Effects....I laughed til I cried....."

I remember once seeing "....solid performances...." as the only headline featured at the top of a billboard and knew that it must have stunk worse than Pamela Anderson's dance pole after date night.

According to my Dad, writing such 'reviews' was also pretty difficult in his career as a high school teacher. He reckons that there were many times when he was reduced to writing something like:

• "Derek's presence in the classroom provides a refreshing contribution to the lessons......" - as in he would interrupt the chemistry experiment by farting, setting fire to the papers under his desk and getting the maths nerd into a painful headlock before being subdued with a well-aimed blackboard duster;


• "she always makes an effort..." - ......to spray her entire body with 'Impulse' in a poor attempt to hide the tobacco smells and to wear her dress at vagina-level in order to attract the fellas with visible Adams' apples;


• "Academically speaking, young Nathan is showing a real talent for conflagration, wood work and geometry...." - meaning that he is a mindless vandal with a compass and cigarette lighter always in hand and the intelligence of an anvil;


• "Narelle is always prepared to help others...." - .....disguise their love bites by applying toothpaste, wearing skivvies under their summer dresses and applying cheap make up;


• "Warren has coped admirably in settling into the set curriculum...." - because he wins the prize for being the only student in my remedial class who needs a reminder to breathe...
  
  

  Finally, here we have a contender for the Best Special Effects in a South Australian Country Town, aka The Murray Bridge Bunyip.

We may be tempted to think (or write, in my case) that: "This creature is about as realistic and horrifying as an excess of playdoh in a sheltered workshop. A real class act that is perhaps only eclipsed by Berri's 'Big Orange' which is ironically now pink in colour due to sun damage. An embarrassment that even a liquored-up mandrill must see as befitting a retarded council worker with a booger fetish."

But the town's tourism board could say: "......Realistic and horrifying......A real class act.....a must see........"

Follow your dreams?

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s rarely exciting to read a blog that starts off with the sentence: “I had a really weird dream last night.” But tough luck; I really did have a weirdo dream last night.

It was one of those dreams that your brain sends you to let you know that your bladder is full and it’s high time you woke up, staggered down the hall in the darkness and emptied it; all the while praying to yourself that, because your eyes are still closed, you are still asleep and NOT going to lie awake scratching yourself for the rest of the night.

In this particular dream I was wearing one of those pointless Nascar race-goers’ hats that had a siphon running around the brim and a tube that fed beer directly into my mouth.In all honestly, there’d certainly be a fair few Aussie car watchers (Grand Prix, Clipsal 500) that would regard such a device as being the best thing since getting a sun-browned butt-crack whilst still fully clothed. Anyhow, I was sipping away on the tube happily, feeling mightily pleased with myself and life in general.

A quick glance around me revealed the location to be my old university: lots of tall, gracious old buildings, green grass and climbing stairways. ‘What was I doing here wearing this hat’, I wondered idly, noticing that no-one else walking by had one. ‘Perhaps it’s a concert or an all-day family event’, I guessed.

However then I looked down towards the blurry thin outline that was the drinking tube. That cloudy plastic python stealthily wound itself down around my waist, further down around my hips and disappeared into – well, gulp – an area that no-one would wish to drink some yellowish liquid from…..

As I sat up in bed and brushed my sticky fringe out of my eyes, it made me realise that it put a new spin on the phrase: “I tip my hat off to you.” It also explained why I've never ever liked the taste of beer in my waking/sane hours.

Unlike the other bloggers, I very rarely have dreams that I can remember. If I do remember them, they’re normally recurring ones that are mundane: many’s the time I’ve been dream-running for my life/bus/partner/Frisbee/nearby toilet and woken up to find the sheets all twisted into a fabric plait and my legs still kicking along.

The other regular nocturnal nightmare is one where I am prevented from getting to where I desperately need to go. People call me, intercept me, accidents happen, I fall over, get caught in a traffic jam or asked to do more work before I can leave. This normally finds me clenching the sheets and quilt so tightly that I’m covered in sweat and still feeling unaccountably angry long after I’ve woken and skipped to the loo and back. Love Chunks once had inadvertently woken me up during this nominal nightmare so that he could have his share of the sheets and I yelled at him to “LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU HOLLOW-HEADED MOOSE MUNCHER!” No, I don’t know what it means either, but he seemed content to lie on his side of the bed without any covers.

Love Chunks has thumped me in the face on more than one occasion. Put the phone down, we don’t need the Domestic Violence unit; he was asleep at the time. He tends to nod off on his side, with both arms raised to his chin, ala Rusty ‘Cinderella Man’ Crowe. Unfortunately for me, when his muscles go into their psychotic spasmic dance, one of the fists shoots out and pops me a sharp one on the nose. Needless to say, we don’t tend to sleep face-to-face much any more. Also the thought of waking up to each other’s Morning Butt-Breath isn’t convincing us we’re missing out on anything either.

Love Chunks, like me, doesn’t have much to report inside his noggin’ at night-time. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh, because he also has a recurring dream. In it, he’s sitting on the toilet, feeling OK, feeling comfortable, doing what a bloke has to do. Laying a cable; Dropping John Howard off at the pool; Posting Osama a letter...... All is well and good until he realises that he’s not in a stall or at home, but is instead plonked right in the middle of Rundle Mall, right by the Silver Balls sculpture. No-one is noticing him, but his embarrassment is enormous. Does he finish what he’s doing and walk away with confidence? Stay seated so that nothing pops out and scares the old gals on their way to Harris Scarfes? Ah, if only we had the foresight and lateral thinking we (mostly) possess in our waking hours – he should have put his cap on the ground in front of him and convinced some shoppers that he’s a living art busker. Might be more money in it than meteorology….

Perhaps I should try what my buddy Jillaroo recommends - Dilmah decaffeinated tea. Both she, hubby Kent and their friend Ingrid have all sworn that they’ve had the most psychedelic and off-the-planet dreams the night of slurping one of the Dilmah decaff bags. I’ve forgotten all of the details, but I know that in one part of Jill’s jolly nocturnal journey she “did something to anger a nearby ferret, who rode his bike over and…..”

I'm not yet convinced though. Couldn't I sniff a few whiteboard markers at the office and then go home to inhale a full family-sized block of Nestle Dark Cappuccino chocolate and get drunk on Bailey's irish creme instead?

Entertainment with eggs


A couple of days ago, Love Chunks and Sapphire went on an early morning kayaking trip which allowed me to saunter down to the hotel lobby and enjoy a resort-style buffet breakfast on my own.

I must be one of those unusual types that is rarely bothered by eating alone. Attempts early on in my adult life to look busy with a paper or book have long since been discarded: watching people is far more entertaining. Besides it's a more viable pastime for me, Miss Nigella-No-Friends, than for couples or families who shouldn't be staring at me but should be staring at each other.

During my frequent observations of human beings at feeding time, it becomes increasingly apparent that cliches are worth more than they're credited for. A cliche immediately brings a character, situation or feeling to mind and is readily identified with and understood. Having breakfast on my own presented me with a passing parade of clichés - albeit over a coffee that was doing its best to strip off my pesky tooth enamel.

Mr Love-Me-Do Lawyer. This Adrian Brody look-a-like determinedly walked past the long line of holidaymakers waiting for a breakfast table and waved away the waitress with an imperious, "I'm fine, I see a table over there that's free----" We, the great unwashed, mindless sheep, patiently queueing, were clearly beneath his attention. God bless the Nazi waitress who loudly called him back: "EXCUSE ME SIR, but the line is back here. You have to present your key; state your room number and let Angela mark you off the guest list before we can get you a table." Love-Me-Do sighed in that St Peters' College Old Boy 'the-things-I-have-to-endure-to-survive-amongst-the-plebs' manner and strode to the end of the line. He passed the time by making several loud mobile phone calls to someone named Harry in Melbourne. "Harry - it's me. I'm on Hamilton. Yeh, it's breakfast time, but I'd like an update from you on the financials...."

Munching Mother and SMS-ing Son - Fifty-something Mum waddled back from the buffet, her plate full of hash browns, bacon and toast and her plate-free hand gripping and squishing two large texan muffins. Having long since given up trying to hold a conversation with her son, she contents herself with eating instead. Fifteen year old son slumps in his chair with huge Nike feet sticking out beyond the table like an unanticipated gangplank, threatening to trip up other breakfasters. He only lifts up his head from SMSing to inhale Mum's hash browns and to search for as many midget packets of Coco Pops as his text-crippled mitts will pick up. I want to walk over to him and let him know that his current stage of growth – bum fluff, zits, large nose and Adam’s apple – will eventually pass and the females will look his way again when he’s eighteen. I don’t, of course – he would immediately put his ‘screen saver’ face on and categorise me as something as uncool as his Mum (which is sadly true).

Horny Honeymooners - As an Old Married myself, observing young couples holding hands and nuzzling each other in the breakfast line is curiously entertaining instead of sickening. (They were indeed considered vulgar and sickening when I was single and bitter, but now they’re amusing and bemusing). This young hubby strokes her neck and she leans in to him, no doubt whispering sweet nothings like, "I want a breakfast like our lovemaking - hot, salty and slides down easily", or maybe, "I take my coffee like your love truncheon - long, hot and strong."

Persistent Poms - "Ere Reg, do us a favour and fling our towels over the sun loungers over there and bring us another cup of tea on your way back love," a Pensioner Pub Tart calls in a voice created by a 40 year, 2-pack-a-day habit. Her ample bosom is barely kept in check by a lobby shop sarong and her lobes drag with the weight of three large gold hoops in each. Reg dutifully returns, his old navy tattoos a green blur on his beefy arms and his belly straining against his soccer team away strip. They are soon joined by their daughter, her husband and two toddlers who are passed around like stale danishes in an effort to soften their whines to less ear-bleeding levels. The daughter is fatter than Pensioner Pub Tart, but more willing to reveal her Michelen-Man flesh, namely a bikini top and denim shorts. Blubber Hubby is of a similar size and his tit-hanger singlet reveals some tattoos stretched beyond all recognition. All chatter flies over his head - he's there to inhale as much egg and bacon possible before testing out the weight loading of the sun loungers.

Desperate Dads, Miserable Mums – Dad number one was trying to persuade the waitress (yes, she who rightfully snuffed Love-Me-Do lawyer) to allow them to move three tables so that four adults and six children, equaling two families, could breakfast together. Nadine Nazi wasn’t having it, repeating over and over, “Yes, I understand, but our floor plan is structured to talk to the computer which takes down guest details—“
“But please, we’ll shift the tables back afterwards and---“
“I understand sir, but the tables must stay the way they currently are.”
Considering that I'd seen these same two families have the same debate with the same waitress for the past week, I rather admired the fathers for trying. As per all of the other mornings, the parents stand in a quick huddle and verbally draw straws for who is going to supervise the children (currently walking around the edge of the pool trailing muffin crumbs behind them) at the two far tables, and which lucky three adults would breakfast together child-free further away. Father number two lost the draw, and is seen trying to get the youngest child to stop throwing toast on the floor, dry the tears of a sobbing seven year old and persuade them all to select something a bit worthier to eat than coco-pops and hash browns.

Mutton dressed as Slutton – Resorts invariably host a (regrettably) visible and populous group of women for whom Dyan Cannon, Courtney Love and Priscilla Presley are role models for natural and graceful ageing. These old girls clearly feel that a red raw, muddy tan – or freckles so numerous they join together to form a cohesive brown appearance – allow them to wear plunging strappy dresses best suited to teenagers or shorty shorts that reveal their roadmapped varicose veins and knees of papyrus. They also tend to go by the rule ‘Greasepaint is good’ when it comes to make-up, appearing at breakfast in clumpy mascara, undercoat foundation and red lippie. Add armfuls of gold charm bracelets, bangles, numerous stone-filled rings and wrist fat bulging above and below their tiny watches. To be fair, these Slutton varieties are usually accompanied by attentive partners who are often a head shorter than them and have legs whiter and spindlier than their gals’ bra straps.

As I sip my second cup of gut-grinding coffee, Sapphire bursts in, hair still wet and a smudge of sunscreen and sand around her nose. “Hey Mum! Mum! It was great! Dad and I had a canoe with two seats in it and we paddled to that island over there and back!” I notice out of the corner of my eye that an old couple at a nearby table is smiling at her enthusiasm.

Sapphire dramatically groans when I tell her to get a glass of orange juice “to keep your fluids up”, and does her best walk of reluctance to the serving table: slumped shoulders, shuffling feet and her bottom lip sticking comically out. She can only keep up this pose for a few seconds before meeting my eyes and laughing.

After nearly a week in the sun, her skin is lightly tanned, her hair almost white blonde and her eyes bluer, larger, brighter. I sit and listen to her happy chatter, smiling and nodding and asking questions at the right moments to keep her talking.

All the while I keep thinking to myself, “How did we make this beautiful creature? How come I’m lucky enough to be her mother? Will there ever be a day that I’m not utterly dazzled at my first sight of her?”

Probably not.

Time for a holiday

It's been one hell of a creaking, wooden and condemned roller-coaster ride (hello Mad Mouse) health-wise for me this past week.

I blame it on the Adelaide Show (see previous post). I dared to criticise the standard of food (and the human preparers and servers of the food) in that blog and was immediately struck down with some kind of Revenge gastro or food poisoning the day after.

Barfing into a bucket and blasting from my butt is a pretty miserable existence at the best of times, but when my house is full of builders and tradesmen it is a nightmare that only being forced to sexually service John Howard on live television would be eclipsed by. Picture the scene with me, dear reader:

• Three dinky-di South Aussie carpenters - Kym, Paul and Brendan being forced to 'find something else to do on the other side of the house' whilst I completely assaulted their aural, visual and olfactory senses while using the only toilet in the house
• Poor Kym was trying to replace our old toilet door with our new one that ironically was designed to more fully fit the top of the frame and bottom of the floor and thus give the 'user' more privacy - in the aural, visual and olfactory senses -and had to repeatedly step outside to let me desecrate the area.
• Anthony the floating floor guy inadvertently roused me from a loo visit and was trying to show me his briefcase full of sample woods and to initiate a discussion on the pros and cons of each one whilst I was bent double, waving him away with, "Yeah yeah, pale beech whatnot wood-chop sounds OK, it's an executive decision. Just measure up as you need to and I'll-----------Bwarrrrfph ugh ugh bwarrrrffph!" I was the easiest sale and he did the quickest measuring up in South Aussie history.
• Murray the builder/project manager turned up three times during the day. Normally he's used to my general state of writer-at-home dagginess: grey marle trakkie daks, crocs, sloppy t-shirt and polar fleece, but it was clear from the ill-disguised revulsion on his face that my appearance had slipped even further. Sticky hair, a white bathrobe rapidly browning due to the endless travels along the dust and wood shaving-strewn floor between my bed and our one only doorless (at that stage) toilet and a face like a busted sandshoe.

It was only 11am but it was time to call Love Chunks and beg him to come home from work. He did, unhesitatingly, and spent his time oscillating between emptying my sick bucket, chatting to the various tradies on site and working on his laptop between the whines of the buzz saw and the whines of his wife.

Saturday saw me walking and wincing like an over-worked cowboy and grasping anything within reach to keep my balance steady. My stomach felt like a hung jury: everything I tried to eat was very ferociously debated, discussed and argued over. Should they fling it back up where it came from, or let it go through and cannon-ball it out in an even more dramatic exit at the other end? Whatever their decision, it seemed to take them hours, with my belly developing a queasy, uneasy heartbeat of its own.

By that night, I was feeling a tad better. Food (salty potato chips) had stayed down and Sunday dawned as the only day without various carpenters, tilers, renderers, plasterers, sparkies and plumbers dusting up the place. However on Sunday, I awoke to a migraine.

*Sigh*. Mr Migraine is an evil, destructively satanic little sadist who visits me far too regularly. Kind of like a Foxtel door-to-door salesman but with a lot more pain and harder to get rid of. Again, the blue bucket was out in full force and through the hazy distance of head pounding agony I could hear the birdlike voice of Sapphire and the low hum of Love Chunks getting on with life, enjoying themselves, being active. Lucky buggers.

No matter, Mr Migraine's visits tend to range from 8 to 12 hours and by evening I felt weak but triumphant. He'd vacated my head and gone in search of another poor sucker's. And then - atchoo! Atchoo! ATCHOO!! - what the------?? It felt as though every single particle of cement, wood, plaster and ceiling dust had invaded my - admittedly very laccommodating - nostrils. That evening I had to prop my noggin up on four pillows to try and breathe a little quieter than a bogged rhinoceros.

A sleepless night was spent trying to honk into tissues without disturbing Love Chunks who, I feared, would be fed up to the back teeth with hearing me moan about ailment number three in as many days. At least the bucket was back under the laundry trough where it belonged.

Monday did eventually dawn however, and Love Chunks reminded me that today was officially the first day of our family holiday. The skin around my nose may have been rougher than a laundry lady's knuckles and eating a bowl of muesli with a permanently open mouth wasn't an option if I wished to enjoy the company of my family but the news cheered me up a lot. Sapphire had the day off from school, Love Chunks didn't have to walk to the Nerd Centre in Kent Town.

We welcomed Reno and Tony the plasterers into our bathroom, greeted Murray who had arrived with the tapware and left details for Peter the glass door guy and then got the hell out of there. Browsing in Freedom and IKEA on a Monday is remarkably enjoyable - no weekend worker crowds trying to elbow each other out of the way for a Bjornfartsen recliner or Notsencracker coffee table. I become a human percussionist by honking into a tissue every couple of minutes or so, punctuated by a couple of juicy sneezes and a long, drawn out sigh of self pity.

When we returned in the afternoon, the bathroom was looking much more like a room instead of an archaelogical dig; the French doors had glass in them and a skylight was on its way. Packing my bags was not a drag but a pleasant respite between the sneezes.

It's hard to believe but tomorrow we three will be flying on the big silver bird to Hamilton Island. Warmth. No dust; No builders a foot away from my puking and pooing; No outdoor shower; and some accommodation where a dining, bathroom and living room will be available. Yee hah!

A Right Royal Rogering

..... of the wallet and stomach ache kind.

Here in Adders it's Royal Show time. In my day (pre-Boer War, when there were only three terms, holidays were in September and Fat Cat was the authority of when it was time to go to bed) the show was something we did the long car-sick drive to in our own good time, but nowadays the kiddies get a designated day off from school to attend.

Sapphire is now eight and we've been lucky enough to divert her from going to the show for the past two years. When she was six I just took her to the movies and maccas and last year Love Chunks took her to the Beach House in Glenelg.* He's not sure that the Beach House was any cheaper than the Show but it was much easier to find a car park.

My older bruvva, Rob, once had a temp job as a show car-parking attendant. He had to charge each car five bucks to park in the grasslands opposite the Russian Church. It was mindless work but paid his rent and his uni fees. One morning a twin-exhaust Valiant full of bogans drove straight through, ignoring the commanding authority of his orange fluoro vest and requests to stop. Bogan One shoved his beard out of the passenger window, yelling, "Up yer arse, Uni Fag - try and find us for your money!"

Rob seethed and took note of their licence plate and where they parked. A few minutes later they strolled past, lumberjack shirts flapping about their waists, littering brain cells here and there along with their cigarette ends, jeering at the lone car parking attendant. Rob stood there patiently, reminding himself that Karma wins in the end. And it did. In a free moment he simply walked over to their vehicle, let down all four tyres and used a stick to squish a fresh dog turd into the grille of the bonnet near the windscreen. By the time the boneheads returned, he'd long finished up and gone home.

Back to now. Yesterday dawned sunny and bright and Sapphire was revved up and ready to go by 7am. After a bit of stalling ("Look sweetie, it might help things to get out of your PJs, have a shower and some breakfast first love, so put your $39 of savings in twenty cent pieces down and remember that the gates don't open until 9am....") we took the bus (still exciting for Sapph) to Wayville.

Lordy me, the smells of already over-Baine-Marie'd donuts and dimmies assailed my nostrils. As did the wino who sat in the seats next to us and the over-flowing skip, full of last night's trodden on burger patties and Sling Shot vomits. At precisely 9:03am, a seemingly responsible-looking father bought himself and his daughter a Dagwood dog (see picture) for - I don't know what - breakfast? brunch? A guaranteed technicolour yawn on the Gravitron?? All it took was my raised right hand and a firm shake of the head for Sapphire to stop her "Aw Mum they look nice can we please get...." request and instead focus on her biggest agenda item - BEANIE KIDS.

"M-u-u-u-u-um, Selene went to the show on Saturday and she said if you buy two you get one free and---"
"I know Sapph, we'll visit the showbag hall after we check out the animals---"
"But Mum they might run out and apparently you get to choose a hand puppet or a drink bottle and Niamh said that she----"
"Yes love but it's only Wednesday and they'll make sure that they have enough for everyone. How about we line up for the ferris wheel before the line get too--"
"Awww M-u-u-u-u-u-m-m-m-m-m, but what if we can't find the Beanie Kids stall or you lose my pocket money or we go on a ride and I get sick and have to go home before we get to visit--"

(Counting to three, taking deep breaths): "O-k-a-y. How about we find the bloody beanie kid coven now and get it over with....". It was the first stall we saw in the Jubilee pavilion and full of very child in Sapph's class who hadn't been on the weekend. Sixty bucks and a 'cuddly kid', three Beanie Kids and a so-called freebie hand puppet and the butt-ugliest 'Adelaide Show Kid 2007' later, Sapphire relaxed. Her mission was complete: everything else now was just icing on her kiddie cake.

Yoghurt, cheese and choccy samples at the Dairy Hall, a ride on the Ferris Wheel, making a DVD reading the weather in the ABC caravan and one piss-poor fishing game in the Sideshow area swallowed up our morning. I tried my best to skirt around the scarier rides and even scarier owner-operators of the rides.

Sideshow areas are like clowns to me - they both give me the heebie geebies. Sideshow operators always look as though they're on parole or on the witness protection program and, if my Grandma were still alive, she'd as likely chime in with, "And they could also use a good scrub with a flannel and some good old velvet soap if you ask me." Throw in some thudding techno music at each ride in direct competition with their neighbours and it all got a bit much for Sapphire. Thank god.
"I HATE this Mum! It's too loud, it's for teenagers!" Bless her sweet heart, she'd been listening to me after all.

Oooh-eerrrk, it was eventually time for lunch. The choices at the show had not changed in the three decades I'd been attending, despite the recent steps towards addressing obesity, embracing fresh produce and healthy eating. My backpack contained a small, ice-brick lined cold pack full of fresh strawberries, blue berries, water and Farmers Union Feel Good, but the main course was yet to be bought. The lingering odour of old cooking oil, fairy floss and Sideshow BO wasn't making any of the selections any more appealing. Gee, do we approach the guy with the tattoos above his eyebrows for his finest Y2K-era Yiros; visit the Video Ho Reject Chick for her luke-warm 'hot' dogs or the chicken-n-chips vendor who was so fat even his forehead had stomach rolls?

Sapphire of course, saw none of the grit and only the glamour. Two cups of chips and chicken strips later, we sat in front of an empty stage and people-watched. It was not unlike being at the Tea Tree Plaza Food Court but times eleven. More examples of boob-shelves** over patterned leggings, fat boys with rat tails and 'If it's got tits or wheels, it's trouble' t-shirts and toddlers swilling coke - don't good looking people go to the show - can't they stop shopping in Unley or sipping chai at Cibo for one day at least?

We eventually left for home, stomachs hurting from being forced to eat stuff referred to as 'food' but not officially recognised by our own intenal organs as such. We were $200 poorer and lugging armfuls of bags full of stuff we didn't need, wouldn't use and will never see again. Our fellow passengers on the Currie Street bus were similarly laden. Mega Bargain Bags, Yellow Brick Road goodies, bright yellow Bart Simpsons and 'life-like' sleeping puppies and kittens that breathed with the aid of 2 double A batteries..... What the 'lucky winners' of 5 foot tall boogie-green styrofoam-filled frogs were going to do with the buggers was just too much for my exhausted brain to contemplate.

* The Beach House has replaced Magic Mountain, a poo-brown homage to fibreglass and polypropelene that was built in 1983 and bashed down about twenty years later. Sadly, the Beach House looks just as appealing as the Mountain of Manure and blocks the seascape just as boldly.
** Boob Shelves - when a woman is so overweight that her breasts become almost horizontal, as in pretty much being able to rest a cup of tea on the top of them. Said women then try to counter-balance this by wearing huge tshirts that drape over their chests, down past their stomachs towards their thighs, creating a generous 'tent' space between their boobs and the ground. It is surely a criminal waste of space that could be best used as bus shelters during Adelaide's increasingly rare rainy days.

Spinning Around....
....with my arse cheeks catching up thirty seconds later....

A few mornings ago, I realised that 'Book Fat' had really, truly taken hold. Let's face it, if you're in a little room at home for three months working 12+ hours per day on a book, it's not going to be done on stomach crunches and carrot sticks.

Instead, my old faithful friend-to-the-end, non-judgmental, undemanding, reliable and affordable soul mate, CHOCOLATE, kept me busy, motivated and productive. You see, I'm not made of stone. Starting the working day on time and alert, taking regular breaks and keeping the brain active requires serious cocoa solids and strict adherence to the Family Block Rule.

You do know what the Family Block Rule is, don't you? It is sacred law in MillyMoo Land. Flouting this law results in immediate Death-By-Sugarless-Carob or severe shaming*. If you reach to break off a row of, say, Nestle Cappuccino dark or Cadbury anything and three rows come off instead, you must never, ever put the additional rows back in the foil and eat only the first row. No, instead you must eat whatever amount is snapped off with that delightful 'thok' sound that only snapped-off chocolate makes.

Fast forward three months and a couple of days ago I decided it was a definite 'Book Fat Day' and therefore OK to dig out out and wear my 1999 maternity undies with the forgiving elastic, generous butt covering and tummy-flattening panel. As I did so, feeling rather uncomfortable at how comfortable they felt, Kylie Minogue's song 'Spinning Around' had just finished on 'Fogey FM' or whatever Sapphire's clock radio had devilishly set itself to.

"That was our very own Kylie Minogue from a few years ago - remember her gold hotpants? She's turned 39 this year and is rumoured to be about to launch her new album and is back with Olivier Martinez......"

Jeepers - 39? Well slap my face with Pamela Anderson's lip-liner ration and throttle me with a G-string - That's the same age as me: we're both babies of 1968! (Pammie's a year older - 1967).

You can imagine just how completely and utterly frumpy I felt standing there, dear Reader, thinking about Kyles in her Shag Me Shorts whilst at the same time, I was either heavily pregnant or recovering from the 29 hour ordeal by gingerly walking about the streets like a confused cowboy with a beer gut..... And now, seven years later, I was still choosing to wear nanna pants and she was STILL raking in the dough, STILL a skinny little kewpie doll with dinghy lips and STILL 'up' there on the pop culture radar.

The comparison was rather depressing, so I tried to ease it by googling what other females were born in 1968. It didn't help much. Halle Berry - she couldn't look ugly if she tried - oh, except for the stupid Cat Woman costume she had to wear. Lucy Liu - hmmm, still gorgeous even though they're trying to fug-ify her for 'Cashmere Mafia' (the least compelling TV show title since 'The Scarecrow and Mrs King'). What about Naomi Watts - Poo-bum-bugger-shit-fart - no luck there either. She's still dewy and adorable, glowing and frighteningly svelte after backing out a baby just days ago......

Who else was there - Debra Messing? Perhaps the only one to seriously challenge me for the whitest legs competition. Gillian Anderson? Certainly not exactly setting the celluloid world alight since giving X-files the elbow, but hardly hard on the eye as far as I could see.

Realising that it was time to stop wondering about how my celebrity 68-er sisters were pulling up and start thinking about putting on a load of whites and feeding Dogadoo Sapphire's leftover Weetbix, I struck gold:

Perhaps grey marle trakkie daks, turquoise Crocs and K-Mart polar fleece wasn't so bad after all! The labra-doodle perm, the suspiciously pointy face, eyebrows in an expression of perpetual surprise and a dress that made me want to visit Darrel Lea's for their liquorice all-sorts meant that any sort of envy I may have previously harboured for Ms Minogue instantly disappeared.

I am quite convinced that she stole the gold handbag from the one I bought at the Aberdeen markets in 1981 to match the gold-piping on my rust coloured corduroy knickerbockers and whatever restaurant she was exiting from either has spectacularly inedible food or specialise in air de cuisine.

Not only that, but instead of her own showbiz version of my adored Love Chunks she has, in internet terms, a 'dial up' relationship. That is, an on-again-off-again arrangement with a French bloke who is to monogamy what Paris Hilton is to rocket science.

Comforted, I decided to research what blokes were born in 1968 that I could very easily mock on the most shallow of levels and thus feel even better about myself. Hugh Jackman - humina humina, can't knock that one, plus he's one of us (Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi).

Eric Bana. Jury is still out - he's not classically hunky despite being served up as such in recent years and still has those ears that make me want to shout "Shut the car doors, will ya?".

Will Smith - he's a cutie, but I'm sure I'd want to throttle him after oh, about three minutes and lord help me if I had to listen to any of his erm, 'music'.

Owen Wilson? Pretty sad actually. For a guy known as the 'Butterscotch Stallion' and earning a very, very profitable living from playing very undemanding 'comedic' roles, he seemed to have what the average guy dreams of. Something went wrong, and I wish him well, weird middle-finger nose or not.

Gary Coleman. Pretty sad and tragic. Cute for about half an hour in 1978 and now appears to be the only surviving kid from 'Diff'rent Strokes' (why oh why did they have to mis-spell 'different' - does anybody know?) not yet - yet - in jail. Being an adult who is conveniently small enough to rest your beers on wouldn't help pay the rent in the 21st Century and is unlikely that "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis" will have the ladeez forming a long or orderly queue for his attentions.

Guy Ritchie. I was going to write 'Poor Bastard' but he's never been either. He reminds me of berber carpet - bland, inoffensive and blends into the background. Still he does have to wake up Madonna every day and maybe even listen to whatever 'music' she's been working on.

Perhaps wearing sensible undies, being temporarily unable to see my belly button from an upright position and having the electronic scales grunt out, "Whoah, one at a time buddy" whenever I stand upon it isn't so bad after all.

* Severe Shaming is, as the name suggests, very severe. The reprobate may be forced to streak down Rundle Mall during peak Harris Scarfe knitwear sales; send suggestive emails and pictures to Alexander Downer; be investigated by 'Today/Tonight' or appear on 'Bert's Family Feud.' These are merely examples - MillyMoo Land has capacity for much greater evil (such as providing parenting tips to Britney, holding a conversation with Courtney Love or taking Elton John seriously).

Blunk Blogging
It's been three long months of hiding out in my spare room hunched over the laptop like a Victorian-era factory slave frantically bashing out 150,000 words for a 'self help' style of book due out in Jan-Feb next year.


The irony of it all hasn't been lost on me. Writing up successful case studies, the secrets behind happy people, life-changing decisions and statistics that backed up my claims were all typed up whilst I was clad in ever-expanding elasticated tracksuit pants and ugg boots. Sections on healthy living, eating well and exercising properly emerged from yours truly, who was inhaling chocolate like Ventolin at a Star Trek party.

Despite this, my tight three month deadline was achieved and I have the arse of a SUV and the complexion of a decidedly chunky Goth to prove it. What I don't have is anything 'real' to hold or show for my gorilla-at-the-keyboard efforts. Every time a chapter was completed, I'd print out a single - and only - copy of it via my bubble jet, using up black ink that seemed to be expensive than a fistful of saffron threads. My blood, sweat and words were then emailed to the editor and all communication done via phone or cyberspace. It is hard to believe that what I've written in my coffee and choccy stained third bedroom with Dogadoo at my feet is going to equate to a published book in a few months....

Anyhow, Love Chunks could obviously sense this feeling of relief/anti-climax/impending exhaustion/disappointment/exhilaration swirling around me more maniacally than a fart in karate class. He hugged me and said, "I've put some champagne in the fridge - the good stuff. Until we get to take a holiday later in September, let's have a drink to celebrate your achievement."


I was all for it. He made us a hearty dinner of rosemary baked potato wedges (with generous dollops of extra virgin olive oil and sea salt), pan fried scotch filled steak with a peppercorn crust, steamed fresh sweetcorn and greens. Heaven on a plate; especially when eaten wearing pyjamas in the kitchen and not dolled up in a noisy glass/chrome/cement/wooden ponce cafe where the waiters are too cool to serve and it is always too loud to speak.

The champagne slid down like fresh mountain air, my body greedily clamouring for more. It was only 7pm but I was singing, floating, laughing..... Sapphire cocked her head at me sideways in puzzlement, noting, "Hey Mum, you're really red in the face."


More more more, my taste buds and fizzed-out brain chanted. Soon, after indulging myself further, I found that packing the dishwasher was a hilarious experience: as was burping out entire phrases from 'Black Adder' and dancing around the bench with Dogadoo up on her hind legs. Sapphire decided to retreat to her room for further Harry Potter reading and respite from an increasingly erratic mother.

Suddenly I remembed my promise to Sapphire to invite her friend Ellie over the following night for a sleepover. I was humming along the alchohol highway quite nicely, wondering just why I no longer hit the sauce as hard any more these days. I felt younger, funnier, stronger, cleverer and up for a B-I-G night. It seemed the perfect time to phone Ellie's father before my brain cells called it a night.

Ring-Ring, Ring-Ring: "Yooge! Yooge, baby! YOOGE! How the hell are you? .........No, it'shh me, Sapphire'sh mum. Sapph wantsh to know if Ellie wantsh to come and shtay at our plashe tomorrow night....... What? Oh yeah, Love Chunkshs and I are reshponshible parentsh..... - whoopshy, hang on, the dogsh's jusht barfed up a bonio in the pantry - where wassh I? Oh yeah, we'll be able to handle anything ashoshiated with her shpeshial needsh...."

Eugene seemed surprisingly cautious, but then his need for a child-free night obviously got the better of him so he agreed to let Ellie join us.

Clang! Clash!! For some reason, I couldn't hold two dinner plates together without them bashing together like ceramic cymbals. The sound appealed to me, so I did it several more times on purpose and decided that the effort of bending down to load the dishwasher was more than I was prepared to make. Why not fling them in from several feet away instead? The drawer was eventually kicked shut with a clatter and my champagne-soaked synapses turned to other housework duties...... I found out later that the dirty paper napkins were shoved unceremoniously into the spice rack and the pot holder was put in the rubbish bin. It was all very funny. I bent down to pat Dogadoo and scratch her ears and found myself poking the holes of my turquoise Crocs instead.

Love Chunks was watching a football game in the bedroom, and as I put Sapphire to bed (or should I say 'as I found her cowering in her bedroom and her head wedged under the doona'), I kissed her good night to hear, "Geez Mum, your breath smells like Fin MacCool's pub when the door's open."

It was at that moment that the euphoria of the previous couple of hours began to sour. Sapphire's blue and purple-coloured room started to spin and the clanging of the dishes was now transferred to the inside of my head. Staggering to Love Chunks - whilst wearing loose-fitting Crocs - only served to remind me that my body was not functioning as gracefully as I'd like. Peter Garrett had more coordination than I did. The clothes racks in our hallway were at least a metre away from me and yet I fell into them all (they're out there because of our renovations which I'll post about later). I managed to make it to the bedroom before falling onto the bed. Luckily my nose is roughly the size of a U-storage facility and it reached the edge of the quilt long enough to keep me suspended like a sozzled hammock until my knees cracked the floor.

In the far distance, Love Chunks was saying something like, "One sniff of the barmaid's apron..... need to go slower ....... stop snoring ......... didn't you see the doctor about your farting problem....." before patting my face and leaving me to it. Out like a light by 9pm. My last thought was, "Getting pissshed washn't like it usshed to be...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Bloody Beanie Kids

My eight year old daughter Sapphire has been avidly collecting beanie kids which are smallish-sized stuffed bears that are growing like mushroom clumps in 'selected' newsagents and specialty toy stores everywhere.

At $9.95 per bear and each in a specific-themed costume now in their hundreds, they are an affordable bribe thanks to outworkers in China forced to fuss over tiny tu-tus, whips and spangly eyelashes.

I'm ashamed to say that, like back-fat and age spots, they're growing on me. Their little black-beaded eyes, tiny noses and cute little teddy cheeks have won me over. The Beanie bosses must be laughing in their non-leased Lamborghinis, having created a sure-fire retail winner. These designers of the Devil release and then 'retire' beanies to increase their collectability; refuse to let big chain stores sell them and have an adorable website and collector's book that lists their birthdates, interests and competitions.

It's all Sapphire's fault. She discovered that she owned a couple of BKs by accident one day - ancient birthday gifts from her daycare years: "I had no idea they were the real thing - thank God I'm now eight instead of four," she said, ruefully. She pointed them out to me whenever we were together: "Look Mum! There's Chardy the Socialite Bear, she's got the same birthday as you, and Giddyup over there has my birthday but she's retired now and is really rare.... didn't you say that Sue from the shop would save the forgotten monthly beanie kid badges for me..... oh hey, they've got the white mutation koala bears which are now retired and Celeste is still the one in the silver packets and....."

One dollar bought Sapphire the autumn/winter BK catalogue which she has read with more focus than Paris Hilton with a tube of tanning cream, and I too have been forced to flick through the slender tome with her more than once. We may be in the midst of a rather hectic home renovation right now, but I can still tell you which Beanies have featured as the monthly badge holders since 2001 compared to trying to comprehend how in the hell our new underground water tank electro-switcheroo-thingy-gadget-box works.

It's not just the bloody book that has taken up too much of my rare brain real estate. Somehow, most of Sapphire's excited chatter about themes, names, beanie birth dates, email messages from the 'Beanie Master' (more influential than Barbie for the tweenie set right now) and other collectors'-only hysteria has managed to hook on to at least half of my still-firing synapses because I am now considered rather knowledgeable on the subject. No, I'm not proud of this fact - I can quickly spot the new releases versus the retired and yet can't remember a damn thing about the Labor Party's unveiled WorkChoices rein-in.

Each time I pop into the newsagent to survey the womens' magazines and imperiously reject them (after all, marieclaire and instyle get delivered to me at home), I venture towards the home decorating ones and my eyes eventually land on the Beanie Kids boxes nearby. Unless I've lost control in the chocolate aisle (note to chocoholics: in any given week, at least one well-known brand of family-sized chocolate blocks are on sale. Hot tip: buy in bulk), there is usually at least a ten or twenty buck note lurking in my wallet; enough for one or two BKs to hide somewhere in Sapph's room for an after-school surprise.

My repressed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder emerges as my eyes automatically scan each box for new releases, checks out 'Beanie Kid of the Month' and any that have since been 'retired' and may now be worth a whopping $12 instead of $9.95. I now know everyone at the Firle Newsagent by name, and they in turn refer to me as MillyMoo, the Beanie Kid Kollector, despite me correcting them many times that I'm doing it on behalf of my daughter. They smile condescendingly and I make a mental note to bring in Sapphire one day to assure them that she's not a figment of my feverish RainMan imagination. My second mental note is to pull my pants down from under my armpits and to stop muttering 'Beanie Zara, got it; Beanie Celeste, got it; Beanie Shannon, got it; Beanie Heinrik, got it..." whilst rocking myself back and forth over the footy card display.

I'm the worst type of parent. You know the type: being a 'good mum' by buying up big instead of wanting to listen to my child play 'Speed Bonny boat' on the recorder for the hundredth time, painfully pluck out the Simpsons' theme tune on her guitar or risk showing her how to make scones from scratch. Dammit, I've even got 'The Beanie Master' on order!

Maybe it's all to do with my childhood. I'm still saddened by the fact that the 1968-version of Pauline Hanson hiding deep within me chose a golliwog over a furry golden teddy bear when my parents presented it to me in my bassinet.

Mum and Dad tended to see my initial actions and choices as being carved in stone for the rest of my days and so no other teddy bears were ever offered to me after that. (This 'You always said you hated...' approach still continues to this day. In year three - 1976 for godssakes - my teacher wrote, 'MillyMoo can tend to get a little careless with her written work' and I *still* get told, "Remember MillyMoo, Miss Ruys told you to be more neat and accurate......" What I'd *like* to retort in return is 'Remember Dad, you spent all of the 1970s wearing brown v-necks and long socks, so you'd better stick with that look,' and 'Mum, how come we're not eating mornay out of ramekins any more?')

Am I - as I did when I bought Sapph the trampoline - guilty of buying her the toys I wanted as a child but didn't get? I don't know...... still, as soon as I can find those retro buckets of 'slime', extenda-roller-skates, a Six-Million Dollar Man thermos and hobby-tex t-shirt design kit I'll let you know.

Montages below have been set up and photograped by eight year old Sapphire. Underneath this blurb we have her Australian marsupials panorama. Please note the possum did not suffer any injuries having his tail slammed into the drawer and Priscilla the gender-challenged Frill-necked lizard is not dead, just posing.
Further below we have a rainbow theme up against the bookshelf, with all three gay rights' activists reclining in comfort on Sapph's cane chair cushion. Cherub (the red one) has fallen asleep - that's what all-night techno and eccies will do for you.

Wise beyond her years

We were having dinner at My Auntie Wendy's place on Saturday night (superbly roasted beef, fresh veges from her garden, gravy, vintage red wine and home-made pavlova topped with fresh cream, kiwi-fruit and strawberries, if you want to know) and somehow the story of how my little brother Dave made a break for freedom from the Murray Bridge Town Hall was mentioned.

In the 1970s, the standard child innoculations seemed to be regularly undertaken in huge numbers in the town halls. To this day, some of my fellow Generation Xers avoid going into such places in case those fearful memories of needles, inescapable queues and no free lollipops are relived again.

For someone as pathologically afraid of spiders as I am, having an injection was never been a big deal as a child or as an adult. I was a regular 'guinea pig' at the Adelaide University School of medicine and had all sorts of injections, catheters, up nose/down stomach pipes and leads in the name of tax-free beer money and in furthering health science discoveries. By 1989, after three years of volunteering for the cause of medical history, my veins became recalcitrant. More than once I had to flex both fists, jog up and down a flight or two of stairs and have my arms slapped with hot towels before my blood was prepared to exit for a worthy cause.

In fact, since being diagnosed with a pituitary prolactinoma (a non-cancerous, pesky little brain tumour that lives behind my eyeballs at the base of my brain) in 1995, I've had more than my share of jabs. I can tell you which arm is the best to use and what vein is not worth a cracker. I can even watch as the doctor or nurse plunges the needle into my skin and be fascinated watching the glorious, black-red elixir of life reluctantly and slowly seep into the tiny test tube.

Not so for young David Andrew in 1976. One second he was entering the slightly dusty-smelling wooden auditorium with Mum and me before clapping his anxious little brown eyes on Dr Haines emerging from behind a portable divider with an empty syringe in his hand. In the next second he was up the street, running towards the Flour Mills as fast as his skinny, stick-like legs and asthmatic pair of lungs would take him. Despite his physical frailties, he was nearly half way home before he was caught, pinioned down, injected, pinioned down again, comforted, bribed with all manner of jelly beans, free medical samples and coca cola yo-yos and taken home, screaming.

All of the above led to a story by Wendy, who recalled her younger sister Jill, pointing to the Norwood Town Hall in about 1950 or so and saying, "There's the prick house." I'm pretty sure that some of the pavlova I snorted is still in my nose somewhere.