Belle Gibson - what a despicable fraud.

There is nothing easy or simple or pretty or wholesome about Cancer treatments. Whether you go down the medical path or the holistic way, none of it is funsy wonsy. I have been there, and whilst I am happy to admit that I have never been the looker that Belle or what - ever - her - name - is, is, there was absolutely nothing I could have done cosmetically to look as she did while she was in the throes of shuffling off.

The first time around I did read a lot of stuff. I read of a bloke who reckoned he had prolonged his life and then beat cancer by using coffee enemas 2 or 3 times a day. Well even as desperate as I was, this didn't sound right to me, but I was happy for him to go his hardest, or sloppiest to be gross. This was back in the day before social media and I had to dive deep into the self help shelves to even find his tale. Nowadays it is so easy to fill people's minds with all sorts of very dubious crap, and desperate people will often grab onto anything. Gibson holding out a make believe hand to desperate sick people and their families was despicable.....I am at a loss for words really. This more than her stacking away cash under fraudulent circumstances is what I find unforgivable.

Unfortunately, I doubt she will ever be made to make amends for this. She seems to believe that she has done nothing amiss. She has an excuse and someone else to blame for every 'error of judgement'.

I reckon the only way to protect ourselves from her and to hopefully prevent her from starting up again is continue to get her face out there along with even the briefest accounts of what she's been up to. She has lied about having cancer, about dying, about the health success of vegies and about giving some of her ill-gotten gains to charities.

I don't care if she is nuts. Get some help girl - you can surely afford it!

I don't care if she is upset about being vilified. Suck it up girl and face up to what you have done.

There seems to be little point in just chatting about what Belle Gibson has done, cos she has already changed her name and DOB 4 times, it's is necessary to get her face out there so that people will know to be wary of that face!

Beware of that pretty face, and if she tells you it's a fine day, take an umbrella, and if she tells you it's night time, turn off the lights and grab your sunnies, and if she tells you she has cancer, a headache, or a broken fingernail, just know that she is telling big fat porkies so don't part with a penny or a moment's sympathy.

Pedantic rant.

The USA has passed legislation that allows anyone to marry anyone of their choosing. So men can marry men and women can marry women and men can marry women and women can marry men. This is a good thing! I have not researched the actual wording of the new law but I imagine that it would be pedantic and perfect, or at least I bloody hope so. Surely a committee or more than a dozen people have debated each and every word and punctuation mark.  This is also a good thing.

What pisses me off is the social media post after bloody post which proclaims that everyone is now EQUAL. What utter twaddle!

It is an excellent thing that people in the USA now have equal access to marriage. This of course does not make them EQUAL! Equal opportunity does not equal, equal.

Shit, equal would be the stuff of some hideous Sci-fi movies with parades of same same people goose stepping along in same same rhythm, or closer to the bone might be a reminder of Nazi parades and the gassing of folk who were different.

I am happy for the celebrations to be loud and long, I just wish people could be a little more careful with their posts, especially as there has been an avalanche of 'em and the nuttiness in me goes to tilt when faced with so much laziness or ignorance or perish the thought, purposeful misuse of language. It might be forgivable if English was their second or third language but that just is not the case.

So let's all wave the rainbow flag, but please have some consideration for old English teachers and be a little more selective of your language, for fuck sake.

Spoilt First World Problems

It is now well known that I do not travel well, so we got sorted well in advance for our little visit to London later in the year. And then I just sat back and daydreamed of all my adventures in Blighty. Well perhaps you can only imagine my reaction yesterday when the travel agent rang to tell me that Malaysian Airlines has pulled out of Brisvegas altogether and that meant we had to reschedule the whole shooting match.

Oddly enough it was lucky she was talking to me, cos I went into instant meltdown and that makes me meek and polite. I told her it was 'rather disappointing' and as she was on speaker and Steve was listening, he fumed and swore and I apologised for his language. She emailed the changes which required flights to and from Sydney and appalling layovers in KL.

I had a little cry.

I looked at the reviews of KL airport and quickly discovered that maybe it wasn't where you would want to spend half a dozen hours especially if you were jetlagged and possibly already suffering the hangover of panic attacks. All first hand accounts of the place sounded less than fab. You certainly wouldn't be putting your hands up to do it twice.

We looked at flying in and out of Melbourne or Perth to get better connections but that wasn't possible.

So then we looked at cashing in the tickets and going with a different airline.

Did you know that it takes 6-8 weeks to get your money back from an airline?? I mean that might be OK if it was YOU who had buggered things up , but in this case they have had our cash for a couple of months and they cancelled our flights and now they want to hang on to our money for up to 2 more months. This I do not get.

Anyway, our Agent is working on it and we have new tickets sorted on Cathay Pacific. Because I have supplied 'nuttso' documentation the airlines has agreed to allocate our seats prior to actually getting their cash. I guess they might be working on good faith that the money is coming from Malaysian Air and perhaps this is their benevolent gesture of the week or month or year.

I think we are set to go again. Of course the tickets cannot be issued until there has been an exchange of wonga, but I am gonna pretend that all is sorted so I can go back to reading about obscure things to do in London.

Yes this is a spoilt little princess whinge. I do not have to go out and dig a hole to shit in and my water comes straight from the indoor taps. I can get my food delivered just by clicking away and splashing around my credit card numbers and the Big House could be home to a whole village of folk in the third world.

I know I am spoilt and that's just the way I like it.

Everything is shrinking except me

 

 

 

Steve has been on a bit of a health kick lately and has been starting his day with a fizzy liver de-tox drink. He is not sure that it makes any difference except that it makes his pee bright yellow and here's me thinking that that is something that one would want to avoid, but maybe it's an excellent sign. If it's a bad thing, please keep it to yourself.

He's been buying little cylinders of fizz tablets - Swisse he thinks, but the last little while has seen us coming up empty. We have tried everywhere to get 'em and the reasons for the lack of 'em have made us laugh and sometimes get a little cross and finally we were dumbfounded at the chemist at Australia Fair on the weekend, when we were told that it was the Chinese, that it was their fault, that they buy 'em all up as soon as they come onto the shelves. Seriously blaming a whole nationality on the lack of a vitamin, and she was straight faced too.

As he's felt better, he figured he wanted to continue as he had begun, but as the fizzers were unavailable he settled for some powder stuff, which tastes less than fab - fucking horrible he said, so  after the first try, he's left it alone.

Not only is that not good value cos he's gonna let it go hard in the tub before finally throwing it away, I discovered that the packaging is appallingly, ridiculously misleading. Why is it necessary to put a teaspoon of stuff into a cement mixer size tub and con buyers into thinking they have a big bunch of the stuff only to be disappointed, in this case twice, once by the tiny bit of goo and secondly by the shit taste. All very ho hum.

 

This is how very full the tub was when we opened it.

And it's a bit like going to the bakery today for a stick of bread. I have been going to this bakery for years and have bought literally hunderds of French sticks, so today when I went and bought one and it was the size of a long bread roll, well yeh I noticed! I asked the bloke - the owner, if they were making the sticks smaller, and of course he denied it. More Ho Hum. Making 'em smaller is stupid! If they want more money for 'em, put the price up, be honest about it. It just gives me the shits when people lie and try and treat their punters like fools. Either the bags are now 4 inches longer than they used to be or the bloody stick is smaller! He carried on about some bollocks that maybe they were rolled differently, seems honesty is beyond him.

Here's my French stick from Horners Bakery.

Parenthood Preparation 101 WOOF!

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Dibley Dog and her mate Sam.

It seems that as a general rule people just pop out babies willy nilly and wonder after the fact how they are gonna manage.

Oh sure some people wait til they can afford children - I don't know what that means really, since the expenditure of nervous energy and wondering must be hard to value and save up for., but mostly I reckon people haven't got a clue what they are in for, and when they front up for number 2 or 3 or 8 well they figure it is all just more of the same and that is just bollocks.

If people were really keen to find out and prepare for the patter of feet they could do worse than get a dog and have a little practice.

It's no secret that our Dibley Dog is one very spoilt miss. She gets just about whatever she wants when she wants it and is the stuff of our great consideration prior to doing just about anything. Can we go away for the weekend? Can we go out for a leisurely meal?  Can we take her on holidays? Is this cafe Dog friendly.

Resting her weary head on her pillow.

She lives a pretty charmed life. So if you are gonna use a dog to test out your readiness to breed people, you'd best treat that dog like a real life child. There would be no point in tying dog up to a post and periodically throwing food out and thinking you have come close to test driving a little person. 

You need to clean up after them and house them and sometimes clothe them. You need to take the time to love 'em even when you are stressed or frantically busy. You need to feed 'em and discipline 'em and teach 'em and play with 'em and again love 'em, even when they have chewed up your favourite shoes or shat in the middle of the carpet. They will be naughty and wilful and disobedient and practice unsafe sex in the back of cars, but you must not stop loving 'em. And if you can manage all that then perhaps you are ready for a child.

We are test driving a 2 child household for a few days and the dynamic change is pretty intense. Our 'only child' has been joined by her very best friend and even though they have known each other almost their whole lives, there is still some sorting out to do when they are together 24 / 7. There are jealousies to overcome and sharing to suck up. And anyone who says that having 2 is as easy as having 1 well either they are delusional or just plain bloody liars.

2 dogs playing in the lounge room. Yep takes up more than twice as much room as 1.

 

Playing rough house or Tickle me Tickle me.

Everything - food, cuddles, ball throws, treaties, chattering, time with toys, every tiny bit of attention, needs to be carefully evenly distributed. People from families with more than 1 kid know too well the ruthless attention to detail required to share out that last bit of cordial or wedge of cake. If I call Dog, Sam comes too and there is some jealousy if one gets more cooing than the other.

Steve would tell you that cleaning up the shit for 2 is far more than 1. Yep that's right, it's twice as much. There were various little piles all over the grass so I reckon if you're considering making a move from 1 to 2 kids then be prepared to put in another loo and double the paper purchases.

I hesitate to suggest that a government legislates more crap to control our lives, god knows they already far outreach their duty in my opinion, but maybe they could make it law that prior to breeding, people have let's say, 2 year's practice on a dog, and if that works out well then child popping out would be ok.

Women's sport's coverage is shitful

It's another weekend where women all over Australia are sitting on their spreading arses doing fuck all except supporting their men folk. Well that is certainly the impression you'd get if you looked at the online sports news. Even when I asked for MORE STORIES, I found only 2 - yep that's right, only TWO stories about women in sport. So now I know that there is a handful of women playing soccer and there is national netball final tomorrow lunchtime.

I just don't know why coverage of women's sport is so sparse.

I wonder if there is any betting on women's sport? Well that was easily checked. Yep there is some betting possible for the netball final, but there is sure not too much other girlie action.

Maybe the people doing the scheduling for the tellie don't want to let us all have a look at girlies doing sweaty sweaty betty stuff. You know maybe they are trying to maintain that ladylike myth that would see us all swoon in our too tight corsettes, and have a little cry when we see cute kittens. Ah yes, we mere females should be thankful for this protection of our delicate sensibilities.

Me? well I am all set to watch the Queensland women fight it out for the big win tomorrow at noon on channel ONE. I am gonna shout and jump about and probably swear like a banshee. Bugger all that lady bullshit.

Come on Firebirds!!

The State of Origin series is a draw? who could have guessed?

I have played a lot of sport in my life. Being competitive by nature, I only ever knew one way to go and that was HARD. Win or loose, I was red in the face and completely buggered by the bell. The idea of match fixing was just a fairy tale.

But today, when the betting sponsors the bloody sports' coverage and a great deal of cash is on the line, as well as the seemingly less important geographical pride, well wouldn't you hope that the games are above board and honestly contested.

Reality TV might well have tainted me forever, cos I expect 'the fix and the fiddle', and I play guess the outcome which will bring about the highest ratings, and rarely am I wrong. But the result of last night's middle round of the "STAGE of ORANGES' as Zig calls it was all too predictable.

Queensland won the first game and the only way to make the ratings big for the third game was to have NSW win the second game. So now all the interest is on the final game as apposed to it being a 'dead rubber' - delightful expression that!

The fellas played hard and there were the usual ref oopsies and there didn't seem to be too much left in the players' tanks, but I still am left with that rather unpalatable taste of 'FIXED'

I would love to believe that I am wrong, that there is still honour in sport, however agnostic leanings are constant. There is too much money and too much sponsorship and too many egos and too much 'ratings drive' for it too be automatically beyond reproach.

It would shock me not at all to wake tomorrow, to proof positive of a fixing scandal. The strange thing is though even considering all this, I am up for the third and final game, and perhaps it has not already been decided.

It's like riding a bike?

You know that old saying, 'It's like riding a bike, you never forget.' well I am not at all sure about that.

My sister and I were never allowed to have a bike, cos my idiot brother wrapped his around a street pole and told the parentals that he had been hit by a car, so even though he got a new bike, they were deemed the work of the devil and way too dangerous for us wee girls.

By all modern standards I started out very late and I can remember clearly not being too confident. I didn't want to go fast and was not at all sure about going around corners, but I persisted and finally in 1989, yes I was 30! I really found my pedal feet and spent a great deal of my 'I left the husband' year hooning around the southern banks of the Brisbane River listening to my Sony Walkman, trying hard to get my shit together and deciding what I was gonna do as a single mother.

Anyway biking became part of our lives, and Bell and I would strap our bikes to the car with the biggest shifting spanner anyone has ever seen and we'd be off, parking up at odd places and taking a breezy view of the world from a different perspective. We did enjoy it.

But my confidence has since seized up like my old knees and now I am not at all sure about slinging a leg over.

However, the old adage definitely applies to putting the pedal to the metal on a sewing machine!!

All my life I have been a sewer - that looks like sewer so I mean one who sews, not a river of shit, though there would be some who would argue that that's true too.

I learnt to sew on the old woman's Singer machine that had a leg pedal thing not a foot pedal and I would just grab a bit of fabric and an idea and cut and sew until it was either fabulous or fucked. I learned a lot and my most memorable outfits were ones I made and designed myself. Yes some were a bit weird perhaps, like the over wide culottes a la Bay City Rollers, that I wore to a school excursion and nearly drowned when I jumped into a lake, cos they were heavy when dry and wet.. well let's just say I was lucky they didn't slip right off and leave me standing there in my knickers.

I have made clothes for me and Bell and made curtains bedspreads and patchwork stuff and for a while I designed and appliqued clothes until I worked out that the woman buying the stuff was just stealing the designs and sticking 'em on her own label. Ho hum.

A sewing machine has always been a part of my life, a very favourite part, until I left it behind and took off to the UK in 2001.

Since then I have chucked stuff out that could have been repaired with a machine and I have paid for trouser hemming or have just rolled em up like a kid. I have always hated hand sewing so there has not been much of that.

Until this birthday just gone. Steve presented me with this bloody ripping machine!! He did the research and ordered it online and got the cover lid thing delivered from the States. He went to a great deal of trouble and I am thrilled to bloody bits with it.

I took it for it's first outing today, read the manual until the long years of automatic pilot kicked in and I was off. It runs like a dream and goes like the clappers. Memory is an amazing thing. When I just stopped thinking too hard everything became automatic. Now I not saying that I could put in an invisible zipper on my first go, or make a fully lined suit, but I reckon I will be ok to knock up almost anything I fancy, and with some practice nothing should be out of the question.

So I may not be jumping on a bike anytime soon, but sitting in front of my new machine is comfortable and familiar and yes, like riding a bike, I have not forgotten.

School Camps - A very big Thank You to the Teachers.

The Hat, the PJs and the new shoes.

In this day of litigation and laying blame and suing for every little broken nail and graze I reckon teachers must be more than a little mad to take off with more than  100 10 year olds who more than likely have never packed a bag or been totally or mostly self reliant. They will no doubt be up until all hours doing kid silly stuff and then be as cranky as all get out the next day cos they are so tired. There will be kids who are fussy eaters and some who might still wet the bed even if it's just under duress. There will be messy ones who fling there shit all over the cabins and are then unable to find anything, so wear the same undies for the whole time they are away and these kids no doubt will be bunking in with the most anal of kids who happily line up their socks and toiletries. And then there will be the more than expected number of kids who suffer from  homesickness or bus sickness or sore feet or migraine and I don't even want to think about the epileptic kids or the kids with diabetes or serious allergies. Yep the teachers must be nuts, and as a veteran of more than 30 years with more camps than I care to recall under my belt, I can safely say they sure are NOT doing it for the cash.

I know no other profession where the staff are expected to be on duty for 24 hours a day for days at a time, let alone doing all this for no financial bonus.

Zig is off on his own - well with all the other year 5s tomorrow. He is packed and ready to go. The 'to bring' list has had a Santa check over and to say he's excited is a bloody understatement. He has chattered about little else for weeks. Me - well I am happy to have helped with the list and have loved watching the joy of preparation but am absolutely thrilled that I am not going along.

Zig said that only 2 kids in the school are not going, one cos his mum is worried about hygiene and the other cos they couldn't afford it...that's the topic for another day.

I might not be living in the real world, but at least at 10 years old I rather hope that the teachers will not be forced to send anyone home for dealing drugs or getting pissed or taking off with some local boys to the make-out spot to look for UFOs and then returning to the fold courtesy of a police escort.....oh the memories are just flooding back and I am not smiling. I am pretty sure that I managed to put a spanner in much of the sex planning but there was plenty of snogging  and I am sure that the kids would have had a long list of the naughtiness that that they did get away with. Yep I sure am glad that this is all behind me.

The 'growing up' lessons for the kids cannot be underestimated. So far this year, Zig has grown up dramatically and beautifully and I am looking forward to hearing all his news next week, but I will be bloody staggered if all his stuff makes it home, cos I reckon he could well be that kid with his shit everywhere.

Good luck Holland Park Year 5s and of course I wish the teachers at least a little sleep and I thank them for putting all these kids ahead of their own families.

Dog's new favourite thing.

While I was away in Sydney, there were a few changes in the Big House, not mind blowing, bone shattering changes but enough to make Dog wonder.

As a spur of the moment purchase a rough cotton rope poof thing stuffed with bean bag balls was perhaps a little ill advised, but it looked about the right height and I liked the idea that it was a bit 'moldable'. Steve has a proper grown up foot poof which matches the couch but I didn't want one like that, so we only ordered ONE. Unfortunately for Steve I had taken a bit of a liking to his and so there was sometimes a bit of a tussle for it. You know the 'I had it first' type of arguments of your childhood. Anyway, we stumbled over this teal coloured thing and grabbed it and Steve was relieved to think that he could have his grown up bit back all to himself.

The trouble was that the beans had been stuffed into a thin plastic bag and so when there was weight put on the bag, it was like popping bubble wrap, except not quite as much fun cos bloody bean balls flew out through the loose weave of the outer fabric. It was making a bloody awful mess.

While I was away Steve took it back and then at a different time stumbled upon anothery and bloody lovely it is - hand made in India from recycled saris and it's stuffed with other old fabric the very nature of which I prefer not to contemplate. It is a thing of considerable prettiness.

It's a very comfy foot poof!

Dog has decided that as I called her onto it ONCE, it is now fair game, and she is now fond of climbing onto it and that means more often than not, my legs are shoved off the side. Dog really believes she is a tiny weeny lap dog and I reckon it comes as a bit of a shock when she finds she doesn't quite fit somewhere she wants to be.

So now, instead of rounding me up and forcing me onto the couch so she can climb up there too, she just bounds onto my poof and makes herself well and truly at home.


She is a much spoilt dog.

 

 

How many people in unnecessary jobs have you dealt with today?

How many ordinary people does it take to change a light bulb?

Well let's see...
1 to notice the bulb was buggered
1 to identify what bulb is required.
1 to research the replacement possibilities.
1 to fill in the order form to requisition the new bulb.
1 to notify the tradesperson that the part is available.
1 to make an appointment to do the work.
1 to do the work.
1 to let the owner know the work is done.
1 to write up the invoice.
1 to grab the cash.
1 to bank the money.
1 to reconcile the accounts.

I have no doubt forgotten someone, but that's cos changing a light bulb is not rocket science and I have done plenty of chair standing and switching myself, but please don't tell the government or the electrical unions or which ever smart arse decided that all this other bollocks is now necessary.

And of course then it's necessary to house all these folk in some flash office, cos naturally they couldn't be working in some standard office like maybe, oh I don't know....a teacher, whose room has paint peeling, asbestos dripping and no aircon. No no no, that would never do! So then there needs to be the cleaner and a window washer and someone to service the fucking coffee machine.

The light bulb might only cost a penny and a half, but by the time it's actually twinkling in the darkness, it has cost an sodding motza.

I suppose we should be pleased that all these 'inbetweeners' actually have a job and they are not scunging on the dole at the largesse of the tax payer, but the reality is that we are all paying for them anyway, and it gives me the screaming irrits.

My little madam had her 20000 km service today - she's only gone 14000 kms but that's a whole other story.

I am pleased that a mechanic had a little tickle and has said she is good to go until June next year. If it was just a mechanic and madam and me, I would be a very happy girl, but there are just so many inbetweeners and it gets right up my nose that they contribute NOTHING to the efficacy of madam's motor but I am paying for them all the same.

I have no clue what sort of hilarious hoax has been perpetrated in the designing of this new workforce, and seriously I use the term work, very loosely.  Someone wondered into a car shop and said that to service these cars you need to have all these inbetweeners...what? so the customers feel special? privileged? stupid? fucking irritated? And what I don't get is that the person or the people who owned the car shop and had been doing good business just plodding along, providing stuff their customers need, all of a sudden buy into this inbetweener bullshit. Wages and super and holiday pay and long service leave for all these people who make nothing and do nothing and know nothing, seems just fucking bad business to me.

I am sooo pleased that I do not have to face it again until next year and when my 5 years is up, I wont have to go back at all!

But by then it will probably be law to have someone special to change your bulbs and disinfect your dishwasher and pull the lint from your drier and change your loo role, so my irritation will just be transferred to these other unnecessary fools.

Vets are wonderful people!!

I wonder how many of us would automatically recognise the crunching, grinding, slurping, chasing it around the floor sound of a lovely dog chewing up a dried up old pig's ear? Really it could very easily be confused with the noise an old bloke with no teeth or falsies makes as he gums his way through a packet of very fresh corn chips, especially if this is made just a little more difficult by chopping off his arms. It is not a pleasant sound, but today I was happy to hear it.

We get lots of bloody 'REMINDERS' every June. Cars need to be serviced, dentists need to be braved and Dog needs to be sorted.

Yesterday I started on the appointment making. I tried to book my car in online, but as I refused to give my email address because I am sooo completely over them sending me shit, it wouldn't take the booking, so then I had to ring 'em anyway which is exactly what I had been hoping to avoid. Yes I could book it in for Friday...online not available til next week, and yes it was gonna cost $301...online I am pretty sure quoted $330, and then I got some git reading a bunch of shit off a page boring me stupid, but I was feeling benevolent so I didn't interrupt until she got to the bit where she asked me if I wanted her to tell me all the details of the service. 'No! ... Please don't. Surprise me on Friday!'

This morning Dog did not run well. Now this happens from time to time and so I didn't pay much attention until we sat for coffee in the village and I looked down at her and noticed one of her nails was hanging by a thread. As the owner of ridiculously hard nails that grow like topsy and which have been known to snap off at about the elbow, with all the blood and pain that you can imagine that might bring, I immediately felt a little queasy and I knew for sure that I was not gonna be able to handle it, so a Vet's appointment was made.

VETCALL at Ashmore is where we go. It's not where we have always gone, but that is a long whingy sick making other story. VETCALL at Ashmore is fantastic. The reception staff are fabulous doggie people and the Vets are all so kind and confident.

Dog weighed in at a kilo heavier than last year and no one roused on her - I was jealous at the lack of rousing and the only 1 kilo advance. The Vet checked her out and gave her a thumbs up for overall fitness and I was jealous again! While he chattered to me he sorted out the needle and stuck it in while Dog paid no attention at all and then she got more treats. Then he explained what was required to fix the broken nail and I listened and concentrated hard on not losing my lunch. I told him pathetically that I would not be able to hold Dog's paw while he did this little operation and I do believe he was relieved that I didn't want to go in.

What seemed like seconds later he delivered dog back to me as good as new. No bandage or blood and she was rewarded with a giant pig's ear which she set to chomping up while I paid the bill. Only $85!

It seems to me that it would be reasonable to swap the annual servicing charges for Dog and Car. I certainly know which bill I prefer to pay.

The Dentist is still waiting. Ho bloody hum.

Here is Dog's latest toy. They sure could do with making 'em a bit tougher I reckon, but she doesn't care how many bits it is in, she still loves it. We can learn a lot about love and life from our dogs 

 

 

Pomp and Ceremony

Every week I enjoy a couple of minutes of looking at the news through wonderful photographs. Sometimes the images are frightening and sometimes I wonder if they are just too perfect not to have been staged, but this week's piccie of the ladies at the Buck House tea party chasing after their hats made me giggle.

You can see the effort everyone has gone to, to look the part. Their hair and shoes and handies and of course the hats. This photo could only have been improved if the woman's skirt had been blown up above her head, exposing her girdle and Marks and Spencers big girl knickers. Now that would have made my arse lose contact with the chair as I choked on my own crying laughter.

I don't mind a bit of pomposity, well I don't mind it for other people. I suppose if I was ever invited to tea and sangas with The Queen, I'd make more of an effort than I do to head off to do combat at Wooolies. And if hats were 'just the thing' then I would no doubt go on out and find a good one. But the idea of all the hairspray and the pantyhose and the heels and conservative frock and a matching handie along with the right coloured lippie and nails, well I might be able to pull it off, but I reckon it's more likely that I would the topic of such a photograph with or without the wind.

I would no doubt sink a heel into the grass - lawn maybe, and the bloody thing would snap off and I would be left hobbling around hanging on to a broken shoe, a handie, a brolly and keeping a good eye out for leaf rustling, in case I had to chase the bloody hat.

How do these women ever tuck into the food?? I reckon it would all have to be put through a blender and distilled into a tetra pac so I could tuck it under my arm and slurp it through a straw.

We are going to a wedding later in the year and Steve is already getting himself satorially suited, but I am ignoring the need to frock up, cos somehow that's probably gonna mean wearing stuff that is uncomfortable and consequently I am likely to become a clumsy liability as I try to keep all this foreign attire in order.

I like watching the pomp, I just don't think I am up for wearing it.

Philosophical saturday - AKA random bullshit.

 

Sydney billboard - profound 

 

Sydney mall. Just liked it.

 

 

Public transport, at the shops, anywhere in public, but oddly not while I am driving.

 

Can't help being pedantic...when there are errors in my posts just decide that they are typos, not ignorance please.

 

Last thing my lovely Dad said to me before he died, 'Do you have to be so loud?' He smiled.

Self explanatory.

 

No 'Glamping' either thanks.

 

Reckon the bench seat must be long and full and yep I don't give a fuck.

 

I reckon it's because art supplies are so expensive.

 

Down sometimes, but not out.

Birthdays.

It's that time of the year again...no it's not time to pay the car rego or the house insurance or get my tits squeezed or make some silly resolution about eating less or exercising more, well some actually, nope it's time to break out the candles and the bubbles and sing badly cos it's my birthday! Yippee!!

Nope I am not being sarcastic. I love birthdays! Mine and other people's. Birthdays are just some much fucking better than the alternative.

Dead Dad Day is Jan 13. I am sure that the main reason I remember this is because it was also my wedding anniversary, even though I was by then single. More than a little ironic I know. So if there is no birthday, then there is a Dead Day and there is not a great deal of joy involved in them.

I reckon my worst birthday was when I turned 25 cos like all youngsters, I thought this was the beginning of the end. I can remember feeling really bloody old - a quarter of a century! I was an old married woman, a mother and a teacher and I figured my best days were behind me. I got all a little miserable and then of course, given that I wasn't dead, I moved on.

Now the number just doesn't matter. Sure it could give me the shits that I am becoming crinkled and round and I can't run a marathon - well never could ho hum. And perhaps I could get grumpy about how the government now finds it necessary to post me little sticks to shit on and bag up and post back, and they pay for tellie advertising to make sure that I am aware that I am becoming a financial liability because of my now propensity of developing every fucking disease or ailment except perhaps pregnancy. Yeh if the government had it's way it would call your 50s the decade of liability, and god only knows what happens in your 60s. If I am lucky I will be around long enough to find out and whinge about that too.

Yeh I could lose sleep over it, but that won't turn the clock back and I wouldn't want to even if I could.

So cut me another good thick slab of carbs and sing heartily. My day can last a day or a week or maybe even a month, if I am truly spoilt, or if older folk forget cos they have stuck their shit stick up their noses and now think June is a tomato. This bit of forgetfulness is a great way to extend a birthday, maybe indefinitely, I just need to work out how to co-ordinate all that remembering or forgetting.

Birthdays - they are so much better than the alternative.