Teens can have lots of chances I reckon.

There is the most appalling vid of kids being tortured while in detention in the Northern Territory doing the rounds. I am not gonna show it here, cos I reckon it's disturbing, but suffice to say, I just can't see what the kids have done to deserve that sort of treatment. Oh sure there might be one kid in a gizillion who is a psycho, but I just don't believe these kids are ALL nuts. NAH, what I reckon is that the people in charge are the nutcases, and they think they can get away with anything that rocks their perverted little boats cos they are in some backwater and after all their prey are just kids.

And as soon as this torture and perversion is leaked to the world, instead of apologising profusely and stoning the fuckers responsible for the torture, the government in it's infinite wisdom decides to sue a couple of the kids who banged up the place trying to escape. Well I'll be fucked!

I suppose the kids who ended up in this place probably behaved badly, although given the current nature of the cover-up and the government retaliation I wouldn't bet the house on it, but let's just say they were right little tear aways. I still question shoving them into this cess pit run by perverts and sado masochistic bullies.

Some wise soul told me when I first started teaching that boxing a kid into a corner was a recipe for disaster and that you always have to leave a way out for 'em, and I have tried to do that, and I have 'taught' some real hard cases. I have had furniture chucked at me and been punched and spat on, I've been abused and I've dealt with kids who did their level best to intimidate me and I've had stuff stolen and broken up. Yeh I have sometimes despaired and of course sometimes it has made me angry, I am far from a saint. But I have never thought that a kid was a write off, beyond help, a waste of air. They are just kids and with all the acting out, they are still just kids.

I am not saying that some of the kids in my class have not gone on to do very bad things, I am thinking of a knifing incident in central London, and those kids needed to be punished, cos there is no doubt they knew what they were doing was wrong, I do wonder though if they could see any alternatives. And time in detention for a 15 year old boy, already sliding down the shit slope, well I can't see how that is helpful, and it sure as shit is not helpful if they are tortured and humiliated while there.

I wonder about the staffing in these places. I wonder how well they are paid and if it's a case of peanuts and monkeys, except the it's not monkeys it's arseholes, and I really can't help wondering if once we have put these kids in these shitful places if we haven't just said to 'em that we have given up on 'em so they learn lickerty split, to be mean and defensive and work out just what they can get away with.

What the answer is I am not sure, but it looks nothing like covering a boy's head with a sack and shackling him - legs and arms onto a chair, with a chain around his throat so he can't even slump forward and leaving him there for hours at a time, and it doesn't look like grown men stripping a youngster naked and then beating him. No my solution looks nothing like that.

Why are these men in the footage not in jail themselves.

It's been quite a week.

Talk about no fucking staying power!

I used to be able to rise early, iron shit for the 2 of us, get the girl to school and me to work, work like a dog, get us both home and if a sitter was available and the opportunity given, I could drink and dance all night and then front up to do it all again the next day. Or at least that's my rose tinted memory. The truth might have been more like up, work, marking, bed and do it all again but with less vigour towards Friday, and spend the holidays being sick with whatever lurgy the kids had dragged in and so kindly shared around, cos let's face it the only time a teacher has to be sick is during the hols.

But I certainly was cramming a lot of shit into a day.

Times have changed. Now I don't sleep, and get up earlyish and take the poison and sometimes feel fine and sometimes feel like shit. When things need to be done I can mostly manage to push on with it, but sometimes the fatigue slaps me like an ALI butterfly punch and I fall into a heap. It's like you can taste the tired, and I can tell you it sure doesn't taste like chocolate.

And the crawl to Friday this week has been a bit like that.

Monday seems too far away to even recall what I did, so it can't have been much.

Tuesday was the show down at the Grandie's school. And that sure as shit was no picnic. Seriously we were in that little room - all 4 of us, for an hour and a half, they could have at least put the kettle on. The fill in Principal and the cliche deputy and My Girl and me. It achieved about what I expected - fuck all. They said it was the Grandie's fault his results were rubbish, except that in the next breath they insisted that average was the new fabulous, mediocre the new black I suppose. We were lectured about modern educational philosophy until I could stand it no longer and asked if we could leave the abstract bullshit behind and actually discuss the boy. I have had classes of mad slow stinking year 9 boys who have been more engaged and who listened with greater interest than these 2. But this is what we expected.

What I didn't know and he certainly didn't cop to, was that the old deputy fella, had been in on such meetings with My Girl, about the bullying, before, at least 2 or 3 times before and still he sat there saying that the school knew nothing of the problem. He took more than a full foolscap page of notes in his tiny anal little script, so I imagine that he has done this before. This subterfuge was more than I expected. Yes I expected them to defer blame for a lack of progress, but I was surprised with the bold faced lying. Unfortunately through a lack of confidence My Girl didn't mention this cos I would have gone off like a rocket. Stinking lying toe-rag.

The cherry on the day was returning a pair of ancient crutches she had rented from some shit pharmacy, and being told that even though she had paid for a week less than a day ago, they weren't gonna give the money back - essentially just leave that broken shit there and fuck off.

Then it was off to Martial Arts. Sometimes I wait for it to be finished so I can have a look see at him breaking boards or doing combat or whatever and sometimes if I am weary I come home early, but as I was the taxi cos of the busted up ankle, leaving early was not an option. It was a tired old thing that wandered into the Big House on Tuesday evening.

I fired off a carefully worded email to the fill in Principal just to sumarise the meeting and then fixed myself in the car again and drove up for the Grandie's Grading. This was quite the big deal. It was his first, so no-one knew what to expect. It was exciting in small bursts and otherwise was an excellent time to check on emails etc on my phone. Really can I be the only one not the least bit interested in the progress of other people's kids?

The grading was in places hitherto unknown, we missed the entrance and sailed right passed it, and then had to park up some distance away and do the 'wait a minute I'm on crutches dance', cos there was no way of getting back there fighting across 6 lanes of traffic and a concrete traffic island.

His 'Pattern' was executed well and he broke the boards and the combat seemed to be good, but who the fuck am I to comment on that? We imagine that he will be awarded his yellow Belt but I don't want to count the chickens.

Then we all crutch danced outta there, 2 hours later and found the car and headed back to where we know for some dinner - burgers that were unfortunately cold and a good dollop of ice cream for pudding.

By this time I was rooted and so dropped off the kids and pointed the little car for home. Perhaps the 4 different lots of 'Roadworks' might have helped to keep me awake and yes it was another tired old thing walking in on Wednesday too.

Thursday we were up early to take Dog off for her 'investigation' at the Vets. And then I was flat out on the couch all day.

The tiredness is hard to describe.

I remember when I was newly single and giving child free Saturday nights a real nudge.  Drinking way too much, and dancing and drinking some more and somehow getting home along with the milkman, except that there were no milkmen then they had gone the way of the IGAs and the 7-11s, but you get the idea. I would fall into bed, lucky if I remembered to remove the shoes, and I'd find the makeup smeared on the pillow case in morning or afternoon. The lack of sleep and the booze and no food all mushed up together left me in a dizzy, nauseous, hard to breathe state. Well that's how this is - Hungover without the benefits of the drinking or the dancing or the laughing good times.

Reckon it's gonna be another slow one today cos just when you figure you're so fucking tired you could sleep for Australia, you're awake at 3 am trying to read so you fall back to sleep, except that you are so tired your eyes don't work properly.

Yep it's been a big one, - just not like the 'Big Ones' of my youth.

Oh and Dog is OK. Her hips are good but she has some bone growth on the last disc in her back and the guy reckons that as that calcifies she should be good as gold, but in the mean time she will need a little pain killer anti-inflammatory pill at night - these suckers cost nearly $6 each! I wonder what would happen if we gave her an Advil? She had a couple of cysts sliced off too so she was a soppy old dope last night but today she is bright as a button, bless her.

Do you want a little Zika with that Gold?

The gate buzzer went off like a rocket this morning and I must admit that I was relieved to see that it was not the Australian Olympic selectors fronting to ask me to join the team in Brazil, cos I had just been reading about the accommodation in the athletes' village and shit doesn't that all just sound like more than a little bit yukky - I mean I'd prefer to go camping and it is no secret that I don't go camping. So I am gonna have to disappoint those selectors when they pop in to ask me to represent my country in sloth and laziness cos I just don't fancy going there.

If you can get passed the piss poor third world plumbing and electrics and the fundamental provisions within the shared quarters and the dark hallways and stairwells, that might be an excellent rendezvous spot to use up a handful of the free supply of condoms but which might also prove to a bit of a trip hazard for our elite folk, well if you can get passed all that, the little plug in things to help the fight against the Zika virus, well these might be the final sticking point.

Now I have a couple of these mozzie zappers here at home and I plug 'em in during the summer when I am going to bed and the grandie always asks me if his is turned on, but I am tempted to think they are just a sleep placebo - it's turned on and so now I can sleep, oh bugger it's out of 'stuff' so I'll never get to sleep now. Yeh even thinking this, I still make sure they are plugged and are spewing out some stuff that might or might not kill off the bugs.

But we just have regular mozzies here, and you don't have to lose sleep wondering if the fuckers are gonna kill you or make a mutant baby, and you don't have to get around in long sleeves and long pants, and you don't have to worry about getting some virus in your blood that ordinary mozzies are gonna slurp up and so become super bad fucker Zika Mozzies.

Yep seriously if I was gonna be in the Aussie Team I would be taking some industrial strength mozzie spray and would be wearing it like perfume every waking hour and sleeping hours too, cos I just wouldn't trust the little plug in device to protect me.

So this sort of leads me to wonder what the Olympic big wigs are doing allocating the games to countries which let's face it, really and truly should be spending their money elsewhere. I know there is the argument about the games being good for the  local economy and all that tosh, but I don't buy it. And I do wonder if there is a correlation between the crime there  and the off the scale pissed-off-ed-ness of the locals. I reckon it's possible that if the locals were happy with their lot that they would be far less likely to want to stick their hands into other people's pockets. This of course might well be too simplistic a view, cos maybe the criminals are being bussed in from other disenfranchised areas.

I wonder whether it's time that the Olympics are played in places that can afford to take a bit of a knocking, or that already have facilities in place to cater for everyone. Yeh that means that the poorer places don't get a look in, but then they also don't have to go into further debt and have more of their arses hanging out of their jeans. And it would also mean that the elite athletes of the world could go about coping a feel in the stairwells, without fear of disease or being tripped over.

And this of course is important cos don't we hope that they all share that gene pool to create the supa - dupa bodies of tomorrow?

Government Departments - I do despair

3 times this week I have had an interaction with a public servant, and I am about up to a point where I would happily chew my arm off to escape every having to do so again.

Except the middle encounter. We took Dog off to the Botanical gardens today and she ran like a maniac and come home slowly slowly dragging her hips like they are bags of unwashed laundry. There is a great space at the back of the park where dogs can run free and even though there are tales of nasty dogs from time to time, I have always found it a happy friendly place.

As we were getting close to the car, there are signs to put dogs back on the lead and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Today we did, which was just as well cos as we looked up to the car, we spied the Dog Catcher and his van. He didn't look like that nasty fucker out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but as looks can be deceptive, I was pleased to not have given him any reason to cause us angst. He walked passed us a couple of times, back and forth, back and forth, and I was pretty sure he was looking for something, but in the end, he stopped me while Stevie was watering Dog and asked if I would like a little zip bag for the poo baggies we had tied onto her lead. I asked him how much I would owe him, he laughed and said it was a freebie, and I said yes thank you very much. It is just the ticket! I can't remember the last time I got anything for nothing from the government. Bloody Bonus!

But that's where the good luck starts and finishes.

The Driver's Licence place was all but empty and I was first inline. Yippee!

I had already filled in all the paper work so all I should have had to do was sit down, not smile, and part with cash. Pretty simple huh, especially as I have had no tickets and am not wanted in several states for crimes against the English language. BUT NO. Not simple.

I had written that my natural hair colour was fair. This troubled her as FAIR wasn't an option. So I told her BLONDE.

Her: But your hair is purple.
Me:  It asked for my Natural hair colour.
Her:  But your hair is purple.
Me:  It is dyed. It is asking for my NATURAL colour.
Her: I can't put BLONDE cos it's purple but purple is not an option, I can choose red, brown or            auburn.
Me:  My Natural colour is Blonde
Her: I'll put RED.

So she then takes the photo and for 165 buck you don't even get to have a look see, and whilst I don't reckon I am all that vain, I would rather like NOT to look a hungry yeti stalking my dinner.

Then she takes the money with no comment that there will be a surcharge for the use of a credit card. Ho fucking hum, I just wanted to run screaming from the building.

And then I suppose flying in the face of Identity thievery and shit that goes missing in the mail, there is an insistence that the new Licence is posted to your home address, via the shitfully inefficient postal service during which process there is a very real chance that some fucker will steal it and open up all manner of fake accounts and stuff the likes of which I cannot even imagine, and I could well end up in jail. I fucking hate government bullshit.

And just now, I opened my emails and received 2 emails from my Grandie's school. I thought that finally after all this time, manners might have won out, and that someone might have seen fit to respond to the letter I sent the Head Teacher back in May. Yeh that'd be the letter that apparently it was OK for him to ignore cos I am a nobody, a nothing, a non-existent zippo, who deserved neither, manners or a response. But I was WRONG again, or still or whatever.

Cos what it was, was 2 invoices!

So they can't have basic manners in the form of even a rudimentary reply, but they can keep my email address on file so they can send a nobody, nothing, non-existent zippo, a bloody bill, and not just one but 2.

Did I mention that I fucking hate government departments!

New Licence

Well hasn't time just sped by?

A mere 5 years ago I had short straight white blonde hair, and about the only thing I can say is the same in these 2 pics is that my eyes are still green.

So I am due a new Licence. This old fella expires in about a week.

I am pretty sure that the purple dye I used to celebrate Stevie's return will still be hanging about by then so the new photo should be a bit of a treat for any copper pulling me up for a traffic misdemeanour, but if I am gonna flash it about in some less flamboyant place, anywhere I might be expected to cover my hair for example,  then I guess it might get a less than rapturous reception. Still, it's not like I did this on purpose. It's just a bit of serendipitous timing.

Not a lot has changed in the passed 5 years. It might well be true that the longer you live the quicker the time goes and the less stuff happens. Or maybe that's just me.

Yeh I am more wrinkled and far less tolerant of dickheads and shit service so don't believe that bullshit that says people become more mellow with age. I reckon that I could well be quicker to thoroughly pissed off  now than I used to be, but that might be cos I have less going on so more time to ponder the shit.

I have managed to keep up with some of the latest tech and so yeh, I can still work the tellie and the optus box and have taught myself how to record this old blog, even though there is a great deal more to learn, but I am not sure I either want to learn it or need to learn it. And I am a little embarrassed to admit that I am curious about the Pokemon Go game and if I had unlimited data on my phone I might be tempted to get out there and go hunting.

I have another new knee and a bit less of a boob and mutants in my blood, so I guess that's quite a lot of change, but I sat across the table sharing a cuppa with a couple of women last week and we all had tales of woe so that might just be a sign of the times. So far my fifties have not been a health triumph but at least I haven't been on the mind slide.

Oh I'll admit that sometimes I have a delayed plucking of the correct or wanted word from the brain ether, but that might be what CMLers call the chemo brain, or it could be just that I don't have to be too quick witted anymore cos I am not doing daily battle with rambunctious teens and areshole school personnel. If I wait long enough the right word will pop up and I can grab it, even if that means that the grabbing happens some hours or days later, so not always a timely collection.

I am more sanguine about getting older so the fight to be a young, slim, wrinkle free, mistaken for my daughter gal, has fizzled out like an old sparkler. I just avoid mirrors and am happy when I am vertical and vocal.

Sometimes it feels like I have sunk very quickly into the mire of old age cos I do wonder where the time has gone. I think if there is any regret it is that I just don't know where middle age went. I thought that that should be now, when there are big adventures and endless wonderings and wanderings.

Too often I get to day's end and think I have just slid one day closer to dead.

So here's what I reckon. Staying young has fuck all to do with how you look, it has only to do with how you feel and maybe a little of who you feel or is feeling you.

Never mind hunting for Pokemons, I reckon we all just have to keep searching out the joy and be happily surprised when it jumps out of unexpected places.  

Domestic Goddess Evapourating over Time.

Nah this isn't a post about how quickly the month has flown by with Stevie off on his Boy's jolly, although it has, and it's not about wondering how my lovely girl has gone so quickly from child to woman, although I sure do, especially after watching Mama Mia AGAIN, cos I always cry when they get to bit about 'School Bag in hand' and she sits up on her Mum's lap and they do nails and stuff, what a silly way to spend the afternoon huh? That scene always creeps up on me, and then I am reaching for the tissues. What a dick!

Nope the time I am thinking about is the last 40 years and how it has flown by and how I wonder if I would even recognise THAT girl now.

40 Years ago if I fancied a new outfit, I'd root around in the fabric cupboard and whip something up, or I'd take a dress from my Nanna - well not literally 'take it' you understand, I wouldn't sneak into her cupboard while she was at Bowls and help myself,  she would have given it to me, and I'd make some alterations to it and voila! Or maybe if I was lucky my Lovely Dad would have been out at the shops when the mood grabbed him and he might have picked up some super trendy thing cos that's what he was like. Wanting something new to wear rarely involved trawling the shops.

When I was the child bride I would pop into designer shops and try stuff on and then if I liked it, I'd draw it and then run home and whip it up. For the younger generation, this was before mobile phones had been invented, so there were no quick selfies in the change rooms. The stuff often looked more try hard than designer but still, my clothes were not like everyone else's, and they were pretty cheap. Give me an afternoon and my Nanna's button box and I could be ready to go to the pub before it was dark.

Back in the day, off the rack clothes were really expensive. There was of course no internet and therefore no online shopping from American sites which no doubt use child labour to whip up items by the gazillion and can therefore sell them for a penny per kilo . There was no price matching promise from store to store and it wouldn't matter anyway cos the shops all had different stuff and so it was possible to spend days shopping for that perfect outfit.

And even if you just wanted something cheap and cheerful to slob around home in  or something functional to wear to work, it would cost an arm and a leg. There was no Kmart or Best and Less, or maybe there was but they were just poor quality for too much cash, and so for the money you'd probably have been better going to Sussans or Myers.

But, fabric was at giveaway prices and there were bargain bins and off cuts in all the major department stores as well as in the speciality haberdasheries. I had quite the collection of bits and pieces. There was an old fashioned haberdashery store, 'up the terminus' - where the trams used to stop at Camp Hill and I would walk up there from my Nanna's place. This place was like Willy Wonka's factory for anyone who sewed stuff. I spent hours in there looking at all the lace and the buttons and the fabrics and weird stuff that I couldn't even identify. I loved this shop. As I sit here I can still smell it and could draw the layout and can see the ladies in my mind's eye. It was a very sad day when it closed down.

And so in what seems like a blink we have gone from make your own stuff with fabrics and fixings cheap as chips, because the store bought clothes were just for special, to a time when making your own shit just seems like an enormous waste of time and money.

I have spent more than 2 weeks trying to whip up a dress. I have not finished it yet and whilst I am not prepared to admit defeat, I have lost my fervour for it. It's not for want of 'How to' - I know what I am doing, but I perhaps should have started with something less ambitious. There is detail that I am not happy with that will need to be disguised under a great big fucking button, and I don't want to tally the costs involved cos I might cry, cos for less cash I have ordered in 3 dresses from the States - delivery expected any day now.

So I can see why sewing is a dying art. It just doesn't pay to bother, unless you can get lucky, like when we first moved into the big house and we needed some curtains and we'd been at an auction and bought a bolt of fabric for fuck all. Then being able to whip up some temporary curtains so the neighbours didn't go blind was very useful, but I suppose in truth, a gal and a roll of tape could have produced a similar covering, so even in this, sewing might be overrated.

And I am reminded of the Grandie's foray into pastry making during the hols. Those wee pies he whipped up, were twice the price of similar ones from a designer bakery and we had to make 'em. Bloody hell.

See this is what has happened in the last 3 or 4 decades. Domestic skills have just gone by the board - no longer useful, or financially viable.

Fucking brilliant really, cos I hate all that domestic shit - it's only a shame that ALL the domestic tasks have not evapourated into the ether, just the ones I used to get a kick out of. Ho Hum

Ed Queensland - A Positively Glacial Response

Close enough to a month ago, I wrote to my Grandie's school and the Minister for Education and finally today I received a letter back -  Not from the school you understand but from the Director General of Education and Training - the Minister presumably being too busy covering all the other portfolios she has, to bother answering me herself.

Dr Watterston - well clearly NOT the real Dr W - it would have been one of his minions or maybe a committee of junior clerks, made it clear that he could not discuss specifics about my Grandie's education, cos I am a nobody, and instead fed me the usual bullshit about composite classes - Multi -age classes for you modern folk. What is interesting is that he has made it very clear that kids are thrown into these classes because of student number shortages. Yeh it's just expedient, and he at least doesn't pretend that any fine educational outcomes are expected.

When he stated that the school staff are 'committed to working with all the students to ensure they achieve their best educational outcomes', I snorted so hard that I had a little vomit in my mouth.

The school  didn't even have the common decency or reasonable manners to tell me that they were not gonna address the issues cos I am a nobody, they just stuck their collective heads in the sand and figured I would go away, eventually.

So my Grandie's 'Best educational outcomes' came in the form of the very worst report card ever, for semester 1.

Seriously  it would not  take a detailed forensic analysis to notice that his results were very poor indeed and certainly not a indication of his NAPLAN proven ability.

Do you know what really gives me the shits? It's the pretence that all the kids are getting a quality education. It'd be different if the school just copped to the fact that these kids are getting a piss poor deal and that in a bid to smear the shit evenly, they spread the joy of the composite class around. There are 4 terms so there could have been 4 chorts into the crap class, or if that was too much trouble there are 2 semesters so there could have been at least 2 different lots, and then all the kids would have had at least 6 months of reasonable education. But NO, instead these 9 year 6 kids have a whole year of shit.

My Darling Boy was ashamed to tell me about his report card. In years gone by, he has begged his mum to call me as soon as she opened it, so he can brag and boast and be proud, but not this time. I had to drag info out of him. He admitted that he hadn't done his best. He admitted that he had not done any homework. He admitted that he played the clown. He admitted that he talked too much to his one and only mate.  He admitted that if after asking for help, he still doesn't understand, he just gives it up as a bad joke. He admitted that too often he, 'Just couldn't be bothered'.

I very much doubt his teachers over the last few years would recognise him as the same boy they knew.

The school can not claim to be unaware of all this. I have called and written and his Mother has written.

Oh I know the answer is that you get what you pay for and as it's a State School, it comes free of charge, except that that, like the justification about the composite class, is just more bullshit. Send a bill for this and a bill for that, but let's not for a millisecond think that there is any obligation to provide a decent service.

If this place was a restaurant, it would be a stinking Hungry Jacks but actually not as good, cos at least at Hungry's you can make a complaint and something is done to rectify the problem. Here they don't give credence to the complaint and charge you double.

Drones - WTF

Say Cheese!

Yeh I know that if you ask someone as old as me to explain what a drone is, they would more than likely launch into some long story about Bees and Queens and honey making and all those bloody worker bees which spend time in the clover, waiting to sting the barefooted carefree kids as they climbed trees - those busy old Drones.

I met and killed quite a few of these suckers when I was younger. They really fucking hurt when you kill 'em and in the end I developed such an allergy to 'em that if I ran into one today, I would no doubt be yelling for an Epi Pen as I slumped to the ground. The swelling up, is pretty unattractive.

But not anymore.

Today, the first thing that comes to mind are those fucking annoying, intrusive, noisy, pieces of machinery which are armed with state of the art photographic equipment, which relays video of action as it happens.

On a very quick google it seems that they range in price from about 400 bucks up to how long is a piece of string, so they are not for nothing. And generally you see 'em being operated by geeky looking middle aged blokes. Well I haven't done any research into ownership of the fuckers, but in recent times I have seen 3 such fellas working 'em, so it's a generalisation that I am happy with, feel free to let me know if your experience is different.

There was the lazy fella who sent his up Mt Warning cos of course walking up there was outta the question. The alternative clientele, parked up in their, stinky old combie vans with the tie dyed shirted drivers whipping up veggie burgers on their camp stoves precariously perched on the manky mattress, were all unimpressed with the noise and the invasion of their privacy and then ultimately were loudly pissed off cos Dog went ape shit about the high pitched whizz of the fucking thing. Shit.

Then there was the time Dog was going nutso out the back at home and I went out in time to shake a fist at the low flying fucking thing that, call me paranoid, seemed to be looking into the lounge room and watching the tellie. This drone belonged to the neighbour across the road and I know this cos I ran upstairs in time to watch it land in their backyard.

I might have droned on about these bark inducing moments before, but yesterday was something new.

Dog and I were at the beach - Mermaid or Nobby's never sure what it's called, down the rocky end where there are usually just another couple of dogs and sometimes the odd person lazing around with not much on. But it's holidays and so it was crammed with families and kids were running amok amongst the rocks and splashing about.

Dog and I played the usual 'chuck the sand into the surf' game and she had that joyful look on her face that others might confuse with drug addled gormless stupor. We played hard and she was buggered, so we headed for the concrete pipe thing for a little sit down.

All was good with the world. Dogs, kids, parents, runners about turning, and oddly 3 old fat blokes in various stages of undress.

Then Dog was off. She went from melting into the wet sand and having a little ZZZ off, to barking like a maniac and scaring the shit out of the other punters. This is unusual behaviour.

Sure enough, I looked up and right above us was a fucking drone! Where had that come from? It did not move away. It was like it was enjoying taunting Dog. I spied the bloke -  see, it's always a bloke, operating it and he was but a few metres away. He has watching Dog live and on his screen, but he didn't move that fucking thing away.

We moved well away.

He landed the menace and then on his way off the beach he stopped to chatter to the semi-nude old fat fellas. Yeh I got an awful feeling in my guts.

All I can say is that if I had a child there yesterday and I saw this fucker flying the drone and photographing my kid, I would have at the very least asked him what the fuck he was doing, but more likely I'd have told him to bugger off with his camera away from my family.

Is this the way of the future? Everyone with their perving devices up whizzing around driving dogs mad and gathering up private footage for questionable at best old fat fellas?

It's time that someone invented a device that fucks with the remote controls, so that if the thing is too close - and remember the long lens capability, you can push a button and the fucker does a 360 spin and either goes straight home or more preferably dives hard into the ground or the water and smashes into a million piece.

I'll place the first order.

Please scientists of the world, make me one!

Insomnia and the wee dark quiet hours.

I have been so so lucky these holidays cos I have had the grandie boy all to myself. I was selfish, so there were no invitations to his mate from school, it was just him and me and we pleased ourselves and of course Dog.

So the dark wee hours of usual wakefulness, were filled with anything but quiet. There was no reading and no wondering about the world and no gently shoving Dog back onto her side of the bed.

Instead, the days started with a BANG. There was laughing and singing and giggling and growling to get Dog going. There was leaping onto and off the bed and the merciless teasing of Dog by hiding her chew toy - yeh I know it looks a lot like some novelty slipper, cos that's what it is, thanks to a mother's day parcel from 'the kids' but Dog saw it and declared it her's and then the other one found it's way downstairs, so there's this grubby one downstairs, and a less chewed up one for sucking on at bed time.

Yesterday was the last day of the holiday and so I suppose all rules flew out the window, and my bed became a dawn playground for Dog and Grandie and me. The sheets and doona were covered in dog hair and slobber and all the usual neat corners were messy and crinkley. I know Dog thinks she's a lap dog but the bed was definitely full up to pussy's bow by the time we were all bouncing around.

It was hectic to say the least. And bloody wonderful. And last night I was so pooped I feel asleep in the middle of something on the tellie, after I had already nodded off when I got home from delivering him back to his Mum's place.

So I guess it should be no real surprise that I was awake this morning in the dark, listening to the quiet.

Dog seemed to be missing her mate and had spent the night wandering around the house looking for him, having a good sniff in all the usual places and then tippity tapping her nails back down the hallway and into her bed. She came and went and came and went and she must have figured I had disposed of her playmate and had the shits up with me, cos she didn't even try to climb up onto the bed.

There really and truly is just nothing wonderful about being awake at silly o'clocks, especially when there is nothing pressing to be done.

I reached for my book.

I have been reading 'Not Quite Dating' by Catherine Bybee. It's possible that I bought this trash, but only if I had a moment of utter senile nanniness. It's the greatest load of rather poorly written, predictable bullshit. I finished it this morning and to say I was underwhelmed is monumental understatement. It has quite put me off starting anothery in case I had a day of questionable purchasing.

Stevie is clever. He orders a sample of a book before ordering, but I am too impatient for all that malarky. If it sounds sort of OK then I buy it. I guess that's the only problem I have with the Kindle. I am pretty sure that I would have tossed this crap aside like it was diseased, if I had picked it up in QBD, but instead it's now on my Kindle, so I can't even offer to lend it to someone I am not much fond of. Bugger!

The washer and the drier are humming along as I do the usual after entertaining house guests and apart from that it's very quiet.

Yep I am a lucky old Ma. Lucky that the Grandie boy seems to enjoy his visits and that he is such a good easy boy who brings me such joy, but lucky too cos now I can crawl up onto the couch for a little ZZZZnap, any old time I like without having to wonder about honey sangas and how to get in his 5 a day, and if he is being entertained.

Luck, that's what I am gonna contemplate when I am awake in the wee dark hours tomorrow.





 

What is fidelity?

fidelity

fɪˈdɛlɪti/

noun

1. 1.

   faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support.

   "his fidelity to liberal ideals"

   synonyms:

   loyalty, allegiance, obedience, constancy, fealty, homage;  staunchness, fastness "fidelity to your king"
2. 2.

   the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced.

   "the 1949 recording provides reasonable fidelity"

   synonyms:

   accuracy, exactness, exactitude, precision, preciseness, correctness, scrupulousness; strictness, closeness, faithfulness, correspondence, literalness, conformity;  realism,verisimilitude, veracity, authenticity, naturalism "the fidelity of the reproduction"

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Urban Dictionary: fidelity

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fidelity

Top Definition. fidelity. faithfulness to a person, cause, belief, etc, demonstrated by continued loyalty and support. he had no fidelity so he cheated on his girl.

I have been consumed with sadness, being party to the weak minded sneaky meanness of a fella fooling around while his wife continues to make the dinner.  

The more you go looking for a definition of fidelity, the less appealing it appears to be. It just doesn't sound like fun at all really. I mean they are not easy words are they? Obedience? Who wants to do as they are told? Shit I have spent my whole life questioning the orders of others. Being obedient just doesn't sit well with me. I am far more likely to run if I am told to stop - well in my mind anyway, cos let's face it has been a bloody long time since I ran anywhere, and definitely I will be seen to stop if told to run, yeh that's far easier to believe. I question just about everything, perhaps because I don't have a very high opinion of authority figures. Yep I would say I have spent my life defying the orders and expectations of others.

I didn't play with dolls and always wanted the be in charge of the 'boys'' tools even though that caused an ongoing battle with my lovely but chauvinist dad, who might have made me be in the tough maths class but who could not control my smoking sojourn almost every double lesson on a tuesday. Dad could make me be in the class but not do the class.

I was anything but obedient on either side of the teacher's desk and have been party to some monumental melt downs with Head Teachers and other education administrators. Not for the sake of being irritating, although I certainly have the capacity to be that too, but mostly because I had a fundamental disagreement with 'em and refused to accept that they knew more than me or had more of an interest in the kids than me, or had the authority to tell me what to do. Arrogant - yes I will cop to that, and perhaps that's what it takes to be disobedient, that or just being a willful pain in the arse.

I am not obedient, but I don't reckon that makes me guilty of infidelity.

Loyalty - YES

Constancy - YES

Staunchness - YES

But Obedience - NO.

But perhaps in terms of Fidelity, obedience has more to do with being obedient to promises made, willingly and with full understanding of expectations.

If I was going to approach a weight loss programme with a sense of fidelity I would sort of be promising to weight shit or count shit or buy smaller plates or only eat white stuff or green stuff or spend 2 days a week being miserable, and so every time I snuck around the corner and shoveled a sweetie snack into my gob I would be being promiscuous. The smear of chocolate and the spittle leakage on my chin would be a give away, and the speed of the shoveling would all amount to making me feel guilty. Yeh that's more than any other reason why I don't bother, that and the fact that I have zero will power and a sweet tooth that can chomp up sugar for Australia.

Being faithful to a promise made willingly and knowingly doesn't seem too taxing to me. Being obedient to rules you have made for yourself seems all too achievable.

So what I don't get is INFIDELITY.

I don't get the sneaking around, the trying to fool yourself that your behaviour is acceptable.

I can easily see how circumstances change and that promises need to adjusted, but it's the timing of it all that I just don't get.

It takes courage I suppose to sign off on one thing before you start looking for the next thing. If a woman is bored with her fella then it just seems to be a lack of integrity to go hunting for a new partner, before you have told the old one that promises have run their course. I guess women who do this are just afraid of being on their own. Even after all these years I reckon it must still rankle my ex-hubby that I prefered to be with NOONE rather than with him. He would have found it easier to take if I had left him for someone else, and maybe it's this feeling that drives people to cheat on their husbands or wives.

Except that's just BULLSHIT. Cheating is not a benevolent act of kindness. It's weak and dishonest and disloyal and pathetic.

Relationships fail, but there just doesn't seem to be any excuse to play both ends against the middle. There seems no excuse to go looking for a replacement just cos you are afraid to be on your own.

People don't routinely stumble upon someone who they find so completely intoxicating, if they are fully committed in their relationship.

If you are no longer interested, by all means suck it up and have the courage to bugger off. Just don't guttlessly  try out replacements cos this is mean and nasty and designed to make your partner, with whom you have an agreement, feel like shit.

So what is fidelity?

It's being your partner's most staunch loyal ally - that's the hard part. The easiest part is just simply keeping it in your pants, or your pants on.    

Falling over sucks.

Going arse over tit sure as shit gets harder the older you get.

It seems according to my somewhat dimming memory, that I spent a lot of time on my bum when I was a youngster, no not out of laziness or stubbornness, but because I had been attempting something ridiculous and being merely mortal, was unable to counter gravity, science is a pisser that way.

Some splatterings are still accessible memories, like the time when I was 11 and doing some foolhardy fly through the air thing on the uneven parallel bars and I flew up up up and like in a cartoon, there was that exaggerated moment of stillness before I slammed, back first, down onto the floor. The coach didn't believe in mats and told me to get up and have another go. Yeh No! The bars were never my friends after that. Fucking things! And whilst I can see all this play out in my mind all these years and kilos later, it didn't really stop me doing shit.

And then there was the time we were on a family holiday in the pink place on Chevron Island and the diving into the pool had gotten all a bit tame and ordinary, so I started back flipping into the water. As I practiced and practised, I took off higher and higher and the flip became tighter and tighter, and I can still hear my lovely Dad call out, ' Push out, not so high, you will bang your head on the wall.' Yeh I knew he couldn't be talking to me, what wall? Oh shit bloody head, that wall. In the 80's AIDs craziness they would have had to drain the pool cos of all the blood, but in the 60s they just cleaned me up and told me to get back out there, and so I did.

But as you get older there is a real fear of falling.

Out in the park sometime ago, Dog and Sam were playing and getting rough as they do, and they  ran right into me, taking my legs from under me and I landed inelegantly spread eagled, with 10 bucks worth of coffee all over me. I sat for a while waiting for the youthful 'jump up' factor to kick in, but it didn't. Somewhere in my adulthood, that elastic bounce backability had evapourated and I was now just some fat old gal on her arse on the ground trying to work out the best way to haul myself up. With shit for knees, I need to do a sort of crazy woman roll over and balance myself on my pathetically weak arms and go the push, the bum end leads and I do a bit of the downward facing dog making my face all bloodshot and if I am lucky I can manage to be vertical in one try. Other times I pivot around on my arse with legs and arms flailing, like I am the cup and saucer on the Disney ride. I imagine it's all very amusing to watch, like some anxiety ridden flubber raging from desperation to stillness as I struggle to have another go.

Anyway, yesterday a friend of mine fell in the park.

I saw it in slow motion.

She panicked about being able to get up.

I put my coat under her head and told her to take it easy for a second and then our 2 dogs who have spent day after day happily playing decided that the stress of watching all this was too much so they had a big barking rouse at each other, which was so loud that the builder from across the way heard it and saw us and doned his chivalry superman cape and came to help.

My friend calmed down and Superman and I helped her up.

She said that falling was the thing she was most afraid of. She worried all the time that if she falls she will not be able to get up.

But you know what? I reckon that there is more good than shit in people and that if we fall, more than likely there will be someone around to give us a hand up, and so the fear of falling aught not stop us having a go.

How's that for philosophical Tuesday? yeh I just made that up cos the last bit made me wonder if I had begun to stream live from some evangelical Baptist Sunday service.

Posh new Pacific Fair

The Posh end of the shopping centre has been open for a little while now so I ventured in for a little look see this morning. I figured that with all the 'beautiful' folk here at the Goldie out pounding the pavement and working up a healthy glow doing the Marathon, there'd be hardly anyone there, I was right. It wasn't quite deserted but it was close.

Coffee and a toasted croissant saw me in good form for an explore.

All the swanky labels are either there, or 'coming soon', so if you want the latest in thousand dollar handies or some real sparkles for your ears, then maybe you want to pop in. And if you need to have a little sit down after flashing the black plastic then the relaxing areas are really lovely. I do hope that there is some sort of maintenance contract sorted though cos I wouldn't want to see it all fall into disrepair especially as it seemed most used by youngsters who had more interest in playing and slopping water from the fountain all about, than just taking a load off. I reckon the fountain which is very fine, will prove to be an excellent swimming hole for kids in the summer. Seriously I don't think I will be able to resist dipping a toe in, so there will be no stopping the kids.

The new David Jones is spacious and glittering and new and surprisingly empty of punters. Put it this way, if had planned on a big stealing fest, today would not have been the day, cos sales' folk outnumbered shoppers many times over. Yeh it was early, but still. It was a similar story in Myers and any other store I went into.

Now that might have been because everyone was out running, or it might be simply because locals are driving to Robina, where they can park all day for nothing. Yep there is no checking of the time to see if you are close to overstaying your welcome, you can just have a really good mooch around.

I knew I wasn't gonna be more than 3 hours cos I only wanted a look, but come serious shopping days, time just seems to slip by me and I have been known to be as long as it takes to gather up enough shopping bags as to make it impossible to walk any further, so requiring a trip to the car, and I have done this on a loop. But alas, this won't be happening at Pac Fair. Certainly not while I can drive to Robina and park up without running a hour glass.

I hate having to run to a schedule when I am doing a leisurely hunt for nothing in particular, and so I got a bit cross when I noticed that I kept checking the time just to make sure. I would have gone a bit nuts if I had run a few minutes over so checking happened.

I guess the truth is that parking is a growth industry. A decade or so ago, hospitals worked out that charging to park up was gonna generate huge returns, so they built parking garages in lieu of patient facilities and raked in the cash from visitors and patients alike. When they first brought in paid parking at the Wesley Hospital in Brisvegas, if you were a patient you could get your parking validated, but that has gone by the wayside, so now, if there's a car involved, there's money owing. But at least the car parks are generally well planned and easy to traverse. Not at Pac Fair. The Flyover entry to the car parking 'best for Woolies and the cinema' is all over the place like a mad woman's breakfast. You drive up to go down and then to get out you drive down again but there is no lane to turn off into Hooker Blv, so there is all sorts of argie bargie going on at the lights onto Sunset Blv. The exit signage is poor and don't be surprised to find yourself going the wrong way up a oneway lane cos the signage for that is pretty shit too.

See it's ridiculous isn't it? My morning of sight seeing which was lovely, is so tainted by the parking fiasco. That's the final impression I have of the place.

Robina here I come.