Back Scratch Swirls.

Ah....that gentle swirly scratch...ah

Drama classrooms are very exciting dynamic places, and I always felt like I was doing a good job, if I had managed to get the kids engaged enough to jump into activities where they pushed the limits - physical and imaginative. The noise of productive busy kids is remarkably different to naughty time wasters and even though sometimes neighbour teachers found it difficult to tell the difference, I could sense when the kids needed to be reined in and when they needed to be left to their own devices.

Well mostly that is. The kids, as teenagers too often do, would push their physical limits and even I had to become a member of the 'elf and safety police, by keeping an eye out and suggesting in the strongest possible terms that Jack put that kid down, and Jill should be very careful waving around that sword. Still accidents sometimes happened. First aid training became quite useful, but if I had a dollar for every time I said put a bit of spit on it and keep going, well you know I might have enough to buy a flash pair of shoes.

Occasionally though, serious accidents happened.

I turned a millisecond too late to stop Felicity-fly-through-the-air, from diving off the chair which had become her godly cloud or some such, and she fell in a screaming sobbing heap.

Silence and stillness followed.

I cleared a space, popped her on her side and spent about a second and a half determining that she had in fact broken her arm. Well shit! That was gonna be some paper work, but that would come later. I sent a kid to get someone from the office to call an Ambo and the lunch bell rang and all the kids filed out.

Felicity was crying. It hurts when you break your arm. I know, it happened to me when I was about her age.

I got her to close her eyes and I started to swirl scratch her back. Slow, large rhythmical curves, and slowly she calmed down. I didn't stop. The tears ebbed and when help arrived, she was dry eyed and ready to answer the medical folks' queries. Her mum landed in the room too, on the verge of hysteria, and was amazed to feel the peace in the room.

When my girl was little and laid up with a dreadful ear infection, which was just far too often for any child to have to bare, that swirling circling could sometimes ease the pain and lull her to sleep while the drugs kicked in. It's still useful today, if she has a migraine.

And yesterday I found myself doing those swirls on my Grandie's back. He arrived home a bit discombulated, as has been sadly a pretty regular occurrence this year, and it was clear that he needed a swirling. AH, yep, calm happened and his smile returned, not right away and perhaps not as big or as bright as had he had a great day, but it was a smile.

I knew things were OK when he noticed the swirling and shrugged me off him and he started chattering about some computer game or other.

No I haven't gone all greenie-yoga-coffee enema to cure cancer crazy, I am just saying that the human connection of the swirls is meditative and pleasant, and just can't do any harm huh?

Auctions

We still don't know what this is, but it is so heavy that it would make an excellent murder weapon, assuming some amazon was tossing it about.

 I love an Auction!

When I am in the market for something specific, I will trawl eBay and will happily bid away, yeh I have been known to go over the price I had set myself in the thrill of the moment, but I guess that's what auctions do. People come along in the hope of getting a bargain and sometimes pay too much.

That silly sculpture was 'won' at an art auction.

Stevie and I used to pop along and have a look at stuff and if things grabbed our attention we'd sit in and bid, if the lots were on early, and sometimes we'd just leave cos it all got a bit tedious and other times, like the 'Sculpture Day' we sat down the front, hadn't even sighted the damn thing and when some well muscled fellas walked onto stage with it, we looked at each other and smiled and nodded and then I put up my number and bugger me we bought this thing that has brought us not a millisecond of joy. Ho hum.

I am not pretending that this method is good advice. Far from it in fact, it is exactly what NOT to. Thankfully I have not fallen into this trap too often, although I have been known to buy shit on eBay that was just utter rubbish and had to hit the dump, like the double bed and mattress I found for about a penny and a half, that was seriously unsafe cos it was missing some bits that held it all together and the mattress, well let's just say that the previous sleeper would never have been allowed to check in at an aged care facility if continence was mandatory. Yeh it was fucking hideous. Off to the dump it went.

But eBay had been useful. I have won lots of furniture and a lot of it I really like. It's good and comfy, but you never really know what you have got til it comes home and there certainly is no guarantee. So the couch on the back deck is a winner but the office chair I bought Stevie one year was just a great big pile of shit, which he hated and was put to rest uncomfortably at - yeh you guessed it, the dump. And the upstairs white couch is a winner but the water bed from the 'piss house' - even smellevision wouldn't come close to just how horrid the place was, has had ever bit replaced and I do believe that my girl and I are about ready to see it off finally once and for all.

Upstairs white couch - an eBay winner

Other times we have been smarter. We have done a little research on the old BING and found info about artists and recent sale prices and set a limit we'd happily pay for stuff that we like. This is good advice. And I don't think we have ever bid on any painting that we didn't really really like, I mean I can see the point of art for investment as part of a superannuation thing, but that's not for me. I want to hang stuff that I enjoy looking at and wondering about. I don't want to have to keep an eye on resale prices.

So since the Big House has been on the market, I have been off to lots of house auctions. Sometimes these are exciting and sometimes you just know that the fix is on and some sort of scam is playing out. It could well be that this is because it's at the Goldie where all too often things aren't what they seem. Some of the auctions have been exciting though, usually the ones that end in a sale. I think it might be because the auctioneer is so astonished that something is gonna happen that they throw out their shitful script and ad lib a bit. This gets lively and is the stuff of reality TV.

We are thinking about putting the Big House up for an auction.

If it sells - goodo.

If not - never mind, but we can call it quits at least for the time being, knowing that the next owner just isn't out there yet.

Have you ever auctioned your house?
Would you buy a house at auction?

Snotty, Not Happy Jan.

There is nothing quite like the oooze of green slime shit from your nose to make you feel sorry for yourself huh?

Bugger it all, I am almost never ill. Oh sure I have been laid flat by some kid born lurgy but even that has been blessedly a rarity.

My first Christmas in London was one of those times. I suppose there must be quite a lot of truth in the idea that you get used to your own germs. You know, you sort of become immuned to your students' air born diseases and your partner's bugs and your own kids' grubby ways. But after 3 months in a Pommie classroom with all manner of foreign germies, both my girl and I were completely and absolutely bollocksed.

And our Christmas day was more memorable for it.

It was such a disaster. A mate and his young fella came for a slap up lunch a la the Aussie way - turkey, ham, prawns and all the trimmings, but the cultural exchange and the germs got to me and the poor little fella ate up some prawns and that was it, cos the pommie ham as it turned out needed to be boiled to within an inch of it's life to get rid of the salt, instead I baked it with brown sugar and cloves as I have done for eons. It was utterly inedible! and the turkey was RAW.

Belly and I tried to pull it together to play a bit of a game of footy with the kid but we ended up in lumps on the lounge room floor and we stayed there for three days. Now THAT was unwell!

I have never been so ill!

So when the tap in my nose turns on, I always compare it to that time.

Today my throat is sore and talking is tricky and I am using the tissues to mop up the slime.

The whole problem is in my head, literally, unlike my London lurgy when even blinking made me cry, and I ached from about 2 inched passed the end of my toes to the top of my hat.

It makes me understand why there are different strains of the flu jab. A bug that might snip away at an Aussie at home could well be the cause of a foreigner popping their clogs. So whatever they shove in the flu jab here is more than likely different to other places.

SO here's my cure for the sniffles.

Do NOTHING.
Go NOWHERE.
Take whatever drugs you have in the house, asprin, panadol, antihistamines, nose squirt stuff - not cocaine, although whatever gets you through the night I reckon.
Drink plenty of tea.
Laze around the house like Cleopatra, but give the peeled grapes a miss, cos they are a bit stingy on the throat.
Sleep where and when you can and go to bed with a book, cos it's always the way, that the worst happens at night in the dark - fuck it, I don't know why that's the case. Maybe it's so that the kids don't get all confused and mistake you for Rudolf the Red Nosed twat.

The lurgy's here, but I don't expect it to visit for long, unless of course Stevie gets it and then kindly hands it back to me.

Online shopping.

Yep, bras and glasses are an odd combo, but that's how we rolled today.

The older I get the less exciting I find it to shovel my boobs into a bra, slide my feet into shoes and throw something halfway decent over my body just to make nice with people at the shops. But sometimes it really is a needs must, cos whilst most things can be found online, so long as you know exactly what you want, if you aren't sure, then you need to sort of test drive some stuff to make a choice and the easiest way to do that is to go to a big store.

Thus Myer called us today. I am sorry I answered the fucking phone.

We wanted some new glasses, cos you know how glasses go a bit sort of milky and then look truly disgusting like milk has fermented then settled permanently inside 'em in a thick shitting film, just cos you pop 'em in the disher, well that's what ours were like. Stevie  reminded me of a bloke a couple years ago who whinged about the state of 'em and how he wouldn't drink out of 'em, but he was a bit of a pain and we haven't seen him in a good long while, but I rather doubt they have improved any since then, so I guess it really was time to get some newies.

Now glasses are a very personal thing. I like ones that are a bit weighty, but not too tall for the disher and they need to hold about a pint of stuff, cos that's how much I can drink without the ice melting completely so I don't have to haul arse up to get some more every few minutes. Yeh I am one lazy cow! But I also like a smaller glass to fill with tap water every morning to take the poison. Yeh I know I could use the same big glass, but I like a smaller one, maybe so I can convince myself of the insignificance of it all. Yeh lazy and delusional. And then there is the stemless wine glasses which are all the rage - for a long time - I know, but I am slow, slow lazy and delusional, shit this is getting to be quite the list! Who fancies going shopping with me?

So we about moved into the shop and tried on every glass in the place and eventually settled on what we wanted and at that point we should have photographed the boxes and come home, ripped off the bra and ordered 'em online.

The service person was such in name only. I'll say no more. I had to walk away. I took the escalator to another floor. I immersed myself in Christmas cheer while Stevie persevered. Bless him.

On the way out I thought I'd check to see if they had any of my bras, and bugger me they did and they were HALF PRICE. WHAT A BARGAIN! This is clearly why people go into the shops, just so they can keep up with the sales.

None in my size.

To check to see if they could get some delivered to the store for a cost of a tenner, I had to give all manner of details, including but not limited to age, sex and inside leg measurement. Not to ORDER the bras, you understand,  just to see if they were available! The woman was a moron and so someone else took over and said they needed all my details again but in another screen. I lost it and walked.

2 Store girls laughed at me, and I told 'em off.

On the way outta there the fucking buzzy thing went mental and then we were all but strip searched looking for contraband, all because the glasses woman didn't de-bug the fucking box. Assuming we were thieves and being frog marched back into the store to a 'pay station', and having the bags ramsacked, did not make my day.

Oh yeh, the bra was off and the bucket mouth was overflowing.

Shit, I really should not be let loose.

Home and 3 bras ordered online - no delivery charge - 3 minutes while I chomped on food and downed a bevvie from my new glass.

I fucking hate going to the shops.

Outdoor Eating

This week I saw a funny old photo on Facie. It wasn't pretty or notably composed or emotively lit. Nope it was just a picture of a turd on a very ordinary looking plate with some sugar sprinkled atop just for contrast, and when I saw it I had a lovely little giggle as I recalled that wonderful expression, 'so hungry, I'd eat shit with sugar on it', and I think it might have been a common mothers' response to the eternal, What's for dinner?'

It did make me laugh!

And then friends popped up piccie of the stunning view from their lunch spot and I was able to use that little expression as a silly description.

Yesterday the kids and I grabbed a few sausages and a dod of bread and we sat in the glorious sunny afternoon in the local park and BBQed the snags and chewed up a very tasty meal, as we talked and giggled and entertained ourselves.

And I just wonder why it is that food always tastes so much better out in the yard?

I am pretty sure I have mentioned before that when my girl was a wee one and we didn't have 2 pennies to rub together, which was nearly all the time, we would often just shove whatever leftover stuff there was in the fridge and we'd head off to Southbank in Brisvegas. Yeh back in the day, there was not much there after EXPO 88 so parking was a skate and free to boot. We'd park up and leg it quickly to the water.

More often than not there'd be a car full of kids and I imagine that some of them must have spent a minute or 2 wondering about the strangeness of the dinner fare, but chow down they did and they filled bottles from the bubblers and they swam in the beach / pool and I sat on the grass in the breeze and alternately enjoyed the trill of the kids and zoned out altogether to recharge after all those hours with the rowdy lot at work.

So why does food taste so different when you eat it outdoors?

Buggered if I know. You didn't really think I was gonna give you some sage answer did you? Nope I have no fucking idea.

I reckon perhaps the open space just sucks any stress and tension away and that just leaves the laughter.

And I reckon we must be good for the souls of other folk too as we throw caution to the wind and try to manage to get my old body into places it truly just doesn't belong, not to mention the Marilyn Monroe moment when my Girl's dress flew completely up over her head and she flashed her knicky noos for a peak hour little look see.

The local park is very well appointed with 2 electric BBQs built into large benches. And we figured that in a bid to make sure that people don't move into the rotunda and stay for weeks at a time, there are no seats, plenty of standing room, but no seats. So yesterday we arrived with the food and Zig bolted to the swings and we cleaned the BBQ to within an inch of its life cos that's how we like it. Did you know that a screwed up Twistie packet and a pair of tongs makes for a good rough scraper of a dirty BBQ?  Tip of the day! You're welcome.

But it was a 'belly is feeling very off' day, I fancied a bit of a sit down.

I looked at the concrete but it was pretty grubby and the grass looked OK but ant bites and my inability to haul myself up again put paid to that.

The benches are too high for us short arses to pop onto easily and so we tried to lever our way up with spastic half bent knees, and we tried to clamber up the BBQ part on the other side and then my girl knelt on the ground and suggested that I use her as a ladder. People beeped as they drove by. It could have been because there were 3 lanes of peak hour traffic merging into 2 lanes, just a hair's breath before a bus stop, and so there is always a bit of crossness, but we rather hoped that this farce of old woman arsing up onto a high bench might have helped ease their tension. Sadly I have to admit my failure to bum plant on the bench, but there was some joy for all in the trying.

I really hope that these summer afternoons of fun and food at the park fall into the lovely part of Zig's memory, just like those afternoons at Southbank have been stored away for my girl, oh and for me too.

Disappointment

This is my clock in all it's real glory, smudges and reflections and always open for discussion. It doesn't resemble the "60 Minutes" stop watch any more than my dealing with CML was reflected in the fluff piece presented last night.

Do you remember when you were a kid and there were hidden little treasures in the Wheeties box? I was the middle kid, so if by chance the older brother didn't get in a steal it with a look of, ' If you say anything to Mum, I'll punch you in the face', and as he was bigger than a brick shithouse and pretty violent I believed him, and it actually fell by serendipity into my bowl, then I'd end up giving it to the baby sister, cos otherwise she'd do a bit of a hang-dog face and have a bit of a cry. The unequal distribution of the toy was only marginally less disappointing than the toy itself.

I reckon cereal manufacturers stopped putting plastic shit in the boxes cos you know it's unfashionable to allow kids to be disappointed these days, but people of my vintage are stronger for it. Yep we have been hardened to that empty guts feeling, and so hardly ever cry when we are faced with stuff that we find sad or unfair or just generally disappointing.

I have mentioned my, 'Oh Well' mantra. It helps get over silly little daily disappointments like a smidgen lack of froth on the cappuccino, 'Oh Well, never mind. Tomorrow is another day.' Or the lack of a pricetag on the wine you want at the booze shop, 'Oh well, there's plenty of others to choose from, or you could just find someone to ask for assistance if you have a lassoo and a megaphone.' Good luck with that.

My Basil plant is not thriving and that's disappointing cos I have been very kind to it, 'Oh Well'

My best linen trousers have had a blow out, 'Oh Well'

The novel I am reading ended rather predictably, 'Oh Well'

I forgot to push record on my favourite show, 'Oh Well'

I am sure you get the idea.

But last night's episode of "60 Minutes" has been just much harder to get over.

I watched it this morning online.

The lead story which had been advertised quite a lot on the tellie and in social media was about a pretty young woman who is preggie and has CML.

Silly old me. I thought for a millisecond that this might put CML centre stage and therefore explain stuff about it for the average Joe in the street, and selfishly I was looking forward to all those who viewed it and all those who discussed it, being better informed and aware. I was hoping that the difficulties people with CML face, might have been highlighted. Problems, like not being able to access disability aid because they only rate 5 points out of 20 on the government scale. 5/20 for an incurable cancer that is treated with oral chemo drugs whose side effects are often debilitating! What would count as 20/20 you ask, - well I believe that drug addicts get a perfect score. It seems that media attention is the only thing that makes the bureaucrats sit up and take notice. So I was hoping that 60 Minutes would go hard.

Problems CMLers  have purchasing travel insurance could have been worth a mention, when all too often regardless of how ridiculous it might seem, CMLer's claims for medical help during their holiday are denied cos whatever the problem, it was down to the CML and so not covered. Yep a bicycle accident was due to the CML, not the pothole, and difficulty breathing due to the CML, not the volcanic dust. So actually purchasing the policies is not a problem, but finalising a claim seems to be.

The only difficulty mentioned in the segment was delivered almost under the breath in the final bit where another woman, not the lead, said she was mostly well, except that some days she couldn't get out of bed.

I reckon the average Joe would now be none the wiser.

Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia  C.M.L

They could be forgiven for thinking that sufferers are all good looking girls who are bravely staring down an irritation, and that they go forward everyday full of optimism and good health and a full face of makeup, capable of doing any damn thing they set their minds to.

As that is not my reality, I had a little cry and the disappointment leaked out my eyes.

I don't routinely fall into a self pity hole and I don't think that's what washed my face this morning either.

I was just sorely disappointed with the opportunity lost.

Bugger.



  

My Pond is Stinking!

Yep it's the season to stink!

Mostly when the sun shines, and the days lengthen and people slosh their jumpers through the old Martha Gardener's wool mix and vacuum pack 'em away, smiles widen and all is good in the suburbs.

The bushes burst and in our front yard at least, the poinciana tree shrugs off the death mask of winter and flashes her slutty red blooms and the garden in general just looks pretty self satisfied. Oh sure there's some weeds that pop up which are executed either by hand or poison, but in general the yard and garden are mostly low maintenance and it's just lovely to look at.

All except for the fucking pond that is.

In the winter the sun dances somewhere else and so the pond is mostly shadey and so scum free - scum being a lover of sunshine!

But as soon as the season shifts and the sun hits the pond nearly all day, that shitful stinking scum comes back with a vengeance. It just sticks it's finger up at me and multiplies out of fucking control. I'd like to put in place a one child policy like in China, but the sludge would completely ignore me I am pretty sure.

During the winter, I pop out in the morning and chat to 'The Girls'. I feed 'em up and keep a bit of an eye on 'em. I have enjoyed watching 'em grow from teeny tiny little gals into the walloping mothers they are now. But the trouble with the summer sludge, apart from the dreadful pong, is that the water is all cloudy and so it's harder to see 'em. Bugger! The Girls don't seem to give a shit, in fact the guy at the pet shop reckons they quite like it, well maybe all except for the one that pegged it during the week. Yeh I had to slurp it up in the net and ceremoniously launch it into the bushes. It's good fertilizer isn't it?

I have been trying to get rid of the stink this week.

I emptied the pond by about a third, and then filled it up with lovely clean expensive Gold Coast water and some chemical shit.

I have had the fountain running for more than a dozen hours a day.

I have dug the bottom sludge out 3 times this week and fed it to various bits of the garden and have been kept busy splodging in the anti stink shit.

To very little avail. Fuck it! It still smells bad! And bugger it all, I can't see The Girls.

I am no longer squeamish about getting in there and getting shit all up my legs, or in deed touching the yuk with my hands, although I must say that a nose peg for the stink has crossed my mind.

Any hints for getting the shit gone? Reckon I will try anything.

There can be nothing NOMAD about this adventure.

Alright. take a deep breath and sit yourself down and make sure you are hanging onto something solid, cos this is a story, so far out of my comfort zone that I am staggered that I am writing it and not dreaming it.

Today we went and tested out some ...... CAMPERVANS. Yep I said CAMPERVANS.

Stevie has an important birthday next year, not that they aren't ALL important, but next year's is a biggie. When he was 50 he wanted to go to Havana, so that's where I took him. If you haven't been there, I reckon it is worth a good visit. Anyway he liked it so much that he said that for his 60th he'd like to go back and see what changes have occurred, cos it was certainly in flux when we visited.

But as time has ebbed away, he has decided that Cuba might well be able to get along without him and so he has settled on an Outback Adventure. No that doesn't mean a ticket to the Outback Spectacular show at Coomera, it means, oh fuck! going bush!

Darwin to Adelaide or the other way around - it doesn't matter we are flexible, and if you need proof of that flexibility, I am now doing the research so we can hire a CAMPERVAN and go for a little drive for 15 - 20 days.

We went off today to see if the panic attacks might be kept at bay in these mobile tents.

The first one was so small that I had to enter sideways, and still smashed my boobs on the door jam. There was a ladder thing to climb up to the bed over the car cabin thing, but it looked too frail to take me and Stevie didn't fancy it either. The shower sprayed right over the loo, and it was about the size of a medium box of wheatbix. I figured there would be ridiculous spillage into the kitchen and the bedroom and the camp site and half of the Northern Territory if I was ever to have a shower or a shit, cos I sure wouldn't be able to close the door. Even after all these years, I reckon a little mystery is called for, so a closed loo door is now on my necessity list.

There are walloping daddy bear buggers that look like they need executive drivers and really they are not that much bigger inside, than the mumma bear sized ones, but what was pretty speccie was that some of them had sides that pushed out and that gave quite a nice little bit of breathing space. These 'Sliders' are also now on my necessity list.

So it's possible to hire a camper van and do the drive either north south or south north.

And it's possible to hire one that is not gonna cause me to search for a packet of serepax for appalling loo anxiety and one that Stevie is cool to drive.

I have found a couple of itineraries that sound doable and now I just need to get my head around the idea of going bush.

Of course there are some instant advantages, like NO IRONING and basic sort of cooking and seeing stuff that I am sure will be better viewed from the ground that 5km up in the sky, or on the tellie, and there are vast vast areas of OZ that I have never seen.

But there are a couple of things that are still worrying me, not least of which is being more than 5 minutes from a Myer.

On 2 of the days in the itineraries I have found there is a short drive of only 1000 km! That is clearly pretty far, and does that mean that there is just NOTHING along the road and what happens if you run out of petrol or god forbid beer or bubbles. And I wonder if the van things are snake proof, and how long the aircon runs and will there be enough gas for the cooktop and the fridge. And if you have to stay at a camp site, as presumably you do from time to time for electricity and water, do you have to speak to the other folk there?

The whole adventure is just so far out of my comfort zone, but I suppose that's exactly the point of a big birthday bash.

I'd be grateful for any hints about what to do, where to stay, or vehicle hire especially from people who don't believe luxury is a dirty word.

To ALDI or not to ALDI.....

 

About 25 years ago there was a grocery shop we called Jack the squish squish, cos the ads showed some bloke doing a slicing thing with a a big sword. I think it might have really been named Jack the Slasher - probably wouldn't be allowed today. It was a dreadful shop, more of a barn really with shelves so tall that I was always fearful that shit was gonna fall over and kill me or at the very least make me cornered and stuck in there, with the only way out being to chew through suspect food that 'could well have been passed its best. I went a couple of times, but had to run like the crazy cow I was, in and outta there, cos the smell and the darkness and the giant shelves just left me gasping for air.

Any of those stores where the shelves are stacked taller than 2 basket ballers high just make my heart race - not in a good way.

But that's not why I am not much fond of ALDI.

I actually like to go in and trial the lucky dip of sale items all lined up in the middle. Sometimes I can go in there and find nothing and other times I reckon I could load up a few trolleys except that I don't like to have to put my dollar in. It's often the sort of stuff you didn't know you wanted or needed or liked til you saw it and then you just had to have it. Pretty clever marketing really.

It's the smell of the fruit and veg that I don't like. I am sure that it's fine, I just really really don't like the smell.

But that doesn't stop me doing the occasional centre aisle crawl.

My girl and I went in on Monday and found some useful bits, mostly there were sheets in lovely colours that caught my eye.

I do like a bit of manchester, although it has been more than a decade since I bought anything other than white sheets cos sometime ago I must have gotten it in my head that I could bleach white sheets to buggery, but now of course I am allergic to the bleach too, which can only be a good thing if it means I can get pretty coloured sheets.

Trouble is that the mattresses here in the big house are pretty thick, yeh like me - just getting in ahead of ya, and so I have been buying fitted sheets that are 50cm deep and these ALDI jobbies are only 40cm deep, but the colours and the 100% cotton-ness and the 300 thread count lured me in.

I raced home and washed 'em cos I am fucking allergic to all that stuff that goes into fabric stuff and then popped 'em on the bed. All in a big hurry cos if they were good, I was gonna go and get some more.

Well they are bloody marvellous! They fit well and are comfy to sleep on....Yippee!

So today I went hunting for more of the same. Southport Park - only the European pillow cases left. Bugger.

Q Super Store - nothing, not even an empty packet.

Bugger!

So as I was driving I remembered that Stevie had told me about another place at Carrara, near his golf club. Not quite on my home but not too much of a detour either.

And there they were, a small tower of sheets still available, so I dived right in and found exactly what I was looking for. Bloody brilliant. I felt like all my christmases had come at once.

But what I have discovered is that if you find something you like you'd better grab it right there and then. Don't let the grass grow cos it will more than likely be gone tomorrow. Not the grocery stuff, just the centre aisle stuff. And this might be why people do indeed pop their dollars in for the trolleys.

I got 'em home and have thrown 'em through the hot long wash cycle and tomorrow they will be good to go.

And here's the thing about stuff you get from ALDI, it is nearly always very good quality. I would not hesitate to buy just about anything from there, anything that is, except the European type ginger biscuits that we thought might be good for pudding. They were just not nice.

Perhaps we should have thought to remove the plastic stuff on the back of 'em cos I rather doubt that added to the flavour.

Get what you pay for V get what you put up with.

I reckon if you can't afford it you can't have it. I mean if you only have a fiver and the sweetie is a tenner then you dip out. If you have enough cash for a VW Bug but desire an Alfa, then walk for a good long while and stash your cash away, or drive the Bug. If your rent money runs to a one bed flat, then don't waste your time looking for a mansion.

I mean that's just common sense to me.

When I was newly single and my mortgage had a 17% interest rate and I was raising a child, well all that was sucking up just about every penny I earned. I had a credit card with a $1000 limit. This was OK cos it meant that if emergencies arose like the safety requirement of a gum shield and some shin pads for hockey, then we could go and get 'em, and if as happened, there was no energy left for cooking dinner, a pizza could be ordered on the never never. This was an odd was to live, but I knew that once a year I could pay off the 1000 bucks with my tax return and then the cycle could start over.

But the truth is that compared to many, even though I very often didn't feel it, we were living a life of comparable luxury. If we needed medicine or a specialist or even legal advice, we could scrimp and get by. Cos I reckon it is pretty true, that perhaps especially with medical and legal stuff, you get what you can pay for.

And that troubles me.

Fronting to a GP who bulk bills, yeh I know they are a rarity, who takes a look at your face and goes the big stab with a scalpel and then roughly stitches you up and the tells you to pop back to have the other side done cos you have cancer, some might see as part of the wonder of the modern world.

But not ME.

I'd want a second opinion. I'd want to see a specialist. But if you rely on the system to care for you, and you wait for the referred public hospital specialist doctor to even acknowledge that you are a living human being, let alone consider that you might be worried half out of your brain cos the GP told you, you have cancer, then you could seriously keel over from exhaustion after month-long panic attacks, cos the system is fucked.

But you get what you can pay for.

If you root around in the back of the couch and search through jeans pockets, and are lucky enough to find 240 bucks, you can see a specialist sort of soonish, and what a fucking relief it is when she takes a look and says you have brilliant skin, NO FUCKING CANCER IN SIGHT! and that sun screen at work is a good idea.

Yippee fucking ka yah.

But you know what bothers me is that the slice and dice fucking GP is still out there. He doesn't seem to have a clue, but his nose is firmly wedged in the public money trough, snorting up tax dollars and dishing out very shit advice. I imagine he made quite a motza from the unnecessary surgery, probably recording every little fucking item number he could think of, and then there is also the unnecessary pathology charges, all out of the public purse.  It would have been cheaper all round just to see the specialist in the first case. No surgery, no pathology, and better for the human being - no panic or stress.

There's something wrong with a system that pretends to provide fine medical care for all, when this is the sort of shit that poor folk can access.

Me? Well I am fucking lucky cos I get to choose. I wouldn't put up with that crap.

Years ago and since then, I would make appointments with local GPs and interview them until I found one I liked. I never thought it was enough to be grateful for what was 'given'. Yeh many of the doctors got the shits up with it.

Them: What's wrong today?
Me: Nothing at all, I'm looking for a new GP. Can you tell me a little about yourself.

Ones that looked god-like darkly at me, clearly didn't get my business. Cos it is a case that too often you get the doctor you settle for, unless you haven't a penny cos then you get the one that will bulk bill cos you just don't have a choice. And that means that unlike the medicare system bullshit, that medical care is for everyone, it really is only for the ones that can afford it.

I don't pretend to know what the solution is, only that it might be good if we stopped pretending that the system we have now provides best care for all.

And don't even get me started on wading through the mire of the law.

I am a bit of a believer in the death penalty for murder, an eye for an eye and all that, except that I just do not have enough faith in the legal system to allow that. I am certain that while people get the legal advice they can afford, there is a very real chance that innocents would be BBQed.

Multiples

I am out of practice that's for sure!

Used to be that I could be in charge of 30 little tear-aways and they would mostly do as I asked. I remember one auspicious occasion when I had a migraine and lay on the floor periodically throwing up into a waste basket and still the kids were on task. Or at least they were pretending to be cos they didn't want to have to come and sit by me and my bucket.

Of course it takes time and patience, some skill and often a gentle threat to call in parentals,  to get to this point.

We are babysitting George for a few days while his mum is off getting a tune up.

The 2 dogs have been rubbing along well enough in the park for years and so it was always gonna be ok, but what I hadn't banked on was how much hard work it is having 2 of anything. They have different eating regimes and and Georgie is docile and polite and Dog is just a bloody hoover, so this morning I worked out that I had to feed Georgie in the garage with the door closed and then I had to find a little treat for Dog cos she doesn't usually eat in the mornings but jealousy might well have seen her eat Georgie for a snack if she thought he was getting more than she was. And last night Dog was not happy about Georgie being on my chair cos after all I am HER mum and he can just bugger off. Things settled when Stevie took Georgie onto his chair and I got onto the couch with Dog. It's not too much of a problem, really it's not. It just takes thinking about and that brain activity is out of my norm.

So I have been wondering how people manage multiples; bed partners, children, pets, jobs, appointments. More than one anything really.

There was a story doing the rounds when I was but a girl, that my aunt would disappear regularly and routinely arrive home in time to pop out another cousin. This could of course have been only a rumour. The household was always pretty chaotic with comings and goings and if I am honest I still am not sure just how many cousins I aught to be sending chrissie cards to. But I suppose that would be one way to cope, mix it all up like an Eton Mess and see how things turned out. There must be plenty of space to hide the odd bugger up amid the craziness.

I am lazy and a bad bad liar so an affair has always been out of the question, but I did think about having a second baby when my girl was about 2 or 3. It didn't happen and I was at the time disappointed but then when we made our solo way in the world I was pleased that there was only the 2 of us. I am in awe of folk who manage more than one, cos I reckon one of anything is enough unless it's chocolate or slices of cheesecake.

I can imagine if I had a herd of my own kids I would have learnt some coping mechanisms like giving them all numbers and having them 'sound-off' a la the Von Trapps from The Sound of Music. While at Woolies I can see and hear 'em all chanting away, or the pictures or the beach, or where ever we went. I would have been nuts with fear of losing one or more than one of the little blighters, but maybe when you have a herd it's OK if you lose one or two?

'One is the loneliest number that you ever knew' Yeh I am singing badly and the dogs are looking at me like I am some kind of maniac but how can I think of the John Farnham lyric without bursting into my tuneless refrain. But ONE is often more than enough. One fella, one kid, one dog, one car, one house, one disease, one argument, one thought, one job, one wish. Oh I just remembered that I have a pond full of fish, but really one would be lonely and in truth I have only ever bothered to give one of 'the girls' a name. Go Bertha!

This might be the limit of time away from the dogs.

I had best get out there and see what they are up to.

Hope that Dog has not eaten Georgie for morning tea.

 

Bum Squrit

Years ago I traveled by train from London to Edinburgh. I like going places on the train. It's not closed in, you can get up and walk around, very often there is a little kiosk where you can get a cuppa or something harder if you fancy and if you can go the distance without fronting up to the communal loos then you can avoid any of that sort of unpleasant human stinky interaction. Except that on this trip, the train was pretty crowded, in fact there were no spare seats and unfortunately the bloke in front of us must have had a heavy night on the grog, with a curry chaser, cos what was falling out of his bum was RANCID in the extreme. How it was only air born and not a solid is a testament to the wonder of the human body and perhaps the tightness of his underpants. My sister and I were disgusted, and she utter that immortal line that has stayed with me all these years, 'If you can smell it, it's too late cos it's already on ya.' 

We came home by plane cos she just couldn't face the prospect of another stinky arse. 

There is a production, 'NUDE LIVE' in the Sydney Festival, and the spiel is something about Art and Dance colliding and the image is quite a beautiful shot of naked bodies entwined in front of some Romanesque sort of fountain cave thing, perhaps it is Greek...yeh I am a philistine.

Anyway for at least one of their performances, they are insisting that the whole audience is naked! If you want to go, you need to do it sans outer ware. Be warned that if you book for MONDAY 23 JANUARY, you will need to leave your duds behind.

There was quite a lot of discussion on social media about how people were gonna get there and if they arrived clothed then what were they gonna do with their bits and pieces while they were watching the show. 

My concern was about the bum squirt on the seats.  

Just OOOOHH YUK.

And not only for the cleaners, but what about the poor unsuspecting folk who arrive at the theatre for the next performance. Oooohhhh YUKKITY YUKKITY yuk yuk. Surely there would need to be a health warning placed clearly on all of the seats?

And the cynic in me wondered if the show is shit, so to counter that, it was decided to make the audience concentrate on something else, like making 'em wonder about the dangle of all their bits, instead of the performance, and nut cases like me could spend time considering contagious diseases.

I wonder who decided that adding audience nakidity to the mix, was gonna enhance the appeal of the show. 

I went to a live sex show in Amsterdam once. Blessed be I was permitted to keep my clothes on. You bought a ticket and it entitled you to 2 'free' beers. The live sex was all a bit limp and the scenarios were replayed on a loop, and seriously after about the first 2 minutes I was bored to death and so watched the audience instead. That was not interesting either, but the bloody tickets were so expensive that I was going nowhere til I had finished my 2 beers.

I wonder how much time will be spent audience watching instead of NUDE LIVE watching.

I have pondered all this today in a bid to keep my mind from the actual FUCK KNOWS question about the American election results.

I reckon a bit of bum squirt might well be the least of all our worries come January.

Cunnilingus Couch

My girlie's new couch. 

I was evicted once in London. Not cos I had loud mad parties, which I did, and not cos I had  illegally sub-let the extra bedroom which I did. The owner was an arsehole and so too were the agents and it seemed in retrospect that everyone knew that the owner routinely rented out her house while she went on little holidays and would then tip out the tenant long before the lease agreed date and then charge 'em all sorts of shit for cleaning and other shit. Anyway this happened to me and after I got over the lack of honesty, I searched for a house to live in. .

I found a dodgy place, which was lovely and big but in odd condition and there was no furniture but it had a fridge and a huge conservatory out the back. I grabbed it and went hard finding some stuff to fill it from a charity furniture shop not far away. I bought 2 big beds, a side board, a desk, a dining table, assorted chairs, a clothes rail and a truly daggy old couch and had it all delivered for less than 200 quid. Quite the bargain. I loved this house! Between viewing it and moving in, the owner decided to nail closed the strange bathroom door, but that of course was no barrier for a determined Aussie girl and I pried it open and got in a plumber, put up some miss-matched tiles on the walls and reveled in my shower room. This was just how the strange house and I got along.

The couch was a disaster. It was in reasonable order, except that the pink upholstery was faded and more than a little sad.

I had run out of canvases so I dragged it out into the conservatory and decided to use it as a canvas, painting people in life sized suggestive poses all over it. It became known as the Cunnilingus Couch. Some of my visitors were shocked, but most laughed up a lung and games of musical chairs took on a competitive edge above and beyond the norm at a kid's party, so folk could sit in their positions of choice. It was all just a bit of fun.

I needed to put all this shit into storage, and my darling Ally stepped up and said I could stack all my crap in her back shed. Carol and Matty and I spent a day moving it all in and we were truly pooped when we discovered at the end of the day, that the couch wouldn't fit through the front door. Shit! We turned it, mostly 'rude side' in, and pushed it against the front of her house which was only metres from the footpath, and thought we'd worry about it the following day.

Our surprise the next day to find it gone, can only have been surpassed by the thieves' shock to see the aritistic endeavours when they got the couch into the light!

Perhaps they liked it and kept it,  cos it certainly didn't ever reappear on the streets close by.

But who just walks along a suburban street and sees an unattended couch and just decides to go and collect it and walk it away? I mean who does that? You can't just tuck it into your handie after all.

Well oddly enough it's not as uncommon as you might think, cos this week Stevie and I delivered a new couch to my girlie as an early christmas present. In preparation she had moved her old one downstairs into the open car parking spot. It was a beaten up green fella that was dented and broken and had been held up by bricks and things in her flat.

Last night, someone came in and stole it!

A whole fucking couch! 2 big broken pieces and assorted large cushions! Someone or some people just wandered in in the middle of the night and walked off with all this stuff, and that in itself was ridiculous cos if they had just knocked on her door and asked about it, she would probably have given it away with an offer to help 'em move it.

Who steals a couch?

Shoe horning is for cattle.

 

Even my handie was pushed for space. I don't know anyone small enough to fit in here.

I have fond memories of being a skinny wee thing. Being able to scale a tree and hang upside down from the branches - ah. Being able to go into a store and buy clothes that I like, that have not been made from stretched out polyester and hope -yippee. Yeh I remember.

But time and food and meds and oh well let's just call it what it is, abject fucking laziness, has led to a swelling of the arse and belly. I am not wee anymore, unless I think about sneezing or laughing too loud.

Generally I can fit where I want to go. I don't have to buy 2 economy seats on the plane and I don't need an extender seat belt thing that preggie gals are given. But I am not small.

Yeh a bit nutty perhaps, on a bad day Stevie might bravely mutter under his breath, a bit more than a bit. So when I go about booking tickets anywhere, trains boats planes or theatres, I need to get an aisle seat. I just can't be cornered in. I can't bare to be sardined in with other people and all their breathing and germs and smells and skin and taking up my air. I'd much rather stop at home in my comfy environment rather than risk all that yukkiness.

I am not a hermit and I like to go out into the real world, but I am careful.

Bill Bailey was doing a gig at the Jupiter's Casino and I thought Stevie might enjoy an evening of London accent and sillyness, so I scanned the seating, found 2 that looked good and booked 'em. London is a long way away and we know this very very well, and as Bill was so far from home, he could reasonably expect to be well compensated so the tickets were pretty steep, but ho hum, we could pop into the Casino, grab a beer and a tapas snack, watch the show, and as a final flourish, I thought I'd plonk down a tenner I found in my bag on the Roulette wheel - make a real date night of it.

Except that we had forgotten about the renos. The place from the car park to, well fucking everywhere was bloody heaving with people, all pushing a shoving and getting nowhere. The first bar was not staffed and there was a sign saying service could be found somewhere else, and we looked for the else place and with the guidance from a security bloke we wandered through the whole of the casino and found a Black Jack Table that was closed that had 2 lonely empty stools. I grabbed 'em and Stevie went hunting for beers and snacks. We were happy as 2 little clams drinking our beers and watching the world go by, there was no food, no snacks, but there was beer.

Then it was sort of time to find the theatre. It was remarkable that even though we have lived here for nearly 9 years, we had never been to this theatre.

We walked down 2 full flights of stairs and I suddenly felt like we were going into a dungeon.There was a long long line of people all concertinaed together looking for drinks and I knew that was not going to be for me. Our image of a quiet drink at the theatre bar was well and truly dashed, so we checked in via the code thing on my phone. I had the printed receipt and she of the tallness and big boobs pushed into my arm, scanned the first one, and then her reader had trouble with the second one, so she tried to grab the phone to make some adjustment cos I was clearly too old and stupid to be able to do it myself, and of course there was no logic to the idea that she try the scanner again given that it had worked properly the first time. If what was in my head had fallen out of my mouth I dare say police would have become involved.

Sorted.

Seats found.

Stevie went in cos of course I am gonna have the aisle.

Now he is a skinny arsed bloke with a generous tum. He has the broad shoulders of an ex hooker - rugby, not prossie, but I could see he struggled. He was instantly not happy so things did not bode well for me.

He went for a beer and I stood waiting for the others in the row to arrive cos I didn't fancy all that up and down action out of the chair, even though I am short, there was no way anyone was gonna squeeze on by me.

The row was full so we sat.

Well fuck me that was extremely unpleasant!

My thighs were forced up to my boobs and that might have been a good thing if I needed extra support, but the bra was doing it's job just fine. The timber arm rests dug firmly into my legs and bruising happened.

But the bottom half was not the real problem. The real problem was where to put your arms. There was no fucking room for arms.

We tried everything. We tried hugging and cuddling and I tried falling into the aisle doing an 'oh woe is me' Ophelia. We did the Hocky-Pocky and we turned around, we just didn't fucking fit.

Bill Bailey is a very clever entertaining comedian. He's a talented musician and story teller.

Thank god there was an interval.

We dived through the stinking crowds lined up like cattle while they tried to buy some shit beer on tap and escaped into the night.

It is a dreadful space.

Refugees and our home grown homeless

Daryl in the park.

Seems there was some new drama with the off shore detention of folk who were wanting to bypass the usual immigration requirements into Australia and there has been a bit of a social media storm about it. Now I have long been worried about the lack of humanity in shoving folk into sort of jails instead of either letting 'em into Australia, or drowning in the ocean.

Treating any person badly doesn't sit well with me.

I don't pretend to be an authority on the off shore detention facilities.

I can't imagine what circumstances would push you out of your home to trek thousands of kilometres to get on a leaky boat bound for fuck knows where, but it must have been pretty severe.

But I also know that there is a finite amount of our money that the government has to spend on stuff, and by opening up flood gates to the whole world's refugees just surely is not economically viable.

So I don't know what the solution is.

And I was similarly conflicted this week about helping Daryl, the homeless fellow in the park next door.

Years ago when I was living in London, there were lots of homeless folk and there were often stories about different individuals who were sort of adopted by locals and histories and preferences were sometimes discussed on local forums. Yeh the homeless folk agreed they needed help and when someone gave them cash or a meal they were grateful, but best of all they reckoned was when people stopped by for a chat - some direct eye contact, some human interaction.

It has always seemed like little enough to offer someone down on their luck.

So apart from feeding Daryl this week and making sure he was warm enough - hard to believe in this heat I know, but he said he was cold at night, so an old doona and a jumper made their way to him, we have shared a cuppa in the mornings, along with a bit of banter. I don't know who else stops to chat, but I hope some folk do.

A fella from the local homeless shelter charity place popped out to Daryl and told him about places he could go for food and showers etc, but there was no offer of accommodation. I spoke to the charity worker who made it very clear to me that I was doing a bad thing feeding Daryl, cos while I was helping him, he would not help himself.

Now I thought about this for a good few hours, and could easily see the logic in it. But as I looked over the fence at the skinny little lump of a man who had moved only to walk to the loo and to return my tea mug, I just didn't feel that the worker was right.

Sure, Daryl could have possibly schlepped 3 kms to and from the meal place and he could have filled up on food. But to do that he would have needed either $2 or explain why he didn't have $2. He would have had to stand in line with other fellas who may or may not have been recently friendly with soap and would have had to sit across from fellas who probably were a mirror of himself while they ate. And while he was filling up his worldly possessions would have been left unattended stashed behind a fence in the park.

He told me early last week that he'd be moving on next Tuesday, so perhaps because there is an end game, I have happily fed him up. It doesn't seem like a lot do for 'my new boyfriend' as Stevie calls him.

What I have NOT done is invite him into the house...Early on Stevie put his foot down just in case I was thinking about it, cos he knows I am a bit of a soft touch. Yeh we could afford to accommodate him and we certainly have the room, but we didn't invite him in. Yeh I do feel a little guilty - the disparity and all, but I did not invite him in. His story is his story and even though The System is slow and inefficient and loaded against him, there is permanent help available if he chooses to jump through the hoops. He knows what needs to be done and he needs to choose that path. Until then I guess he moves from one place to another, and I hope that someone else will keep an eye out for him in his next location.

So I didn't offer a new life or a new home or a new start. This has all been a temporary fix, and I guess that's what's going at Nauru and PNG.

Advocaat to Advocate

This is the somewhat sad contents of the drinks cupboard. I remember a time when it was full of tiny remnants of all manner of exotic stuff in flash bottles. Now it's nightcaps and chrissie cakes.

Years ago a skinny, blonde haired, big titted girlie, thought she was quite the drinker. It was an era of dinner parties where the favourite food fare was your own version of Tuna Casserole and people would perch a plateful of the oozey stuff on their knees and fork it in, alternating with gobs full of cheap wine - sauterne was my choice, I know oooh yukky NOW, mostly poured from some big old glass goon flagon. I used to save all those flagons and grow viney shit in them. It was definitely THE thing to do.

There was a herd or us who would knock around together. If there was no money it was the tuna shit and a flagon and some tennis on the tellie and if it was pay week and there were no bills to pay or if it was one of those lovely months in the year when there were 3 pay days instead of only 2, then a pub crawl was in order.

The fellas usually drank beer poured from the tap and downed in gulps. Sometimes the girlies did too. There was a season of Bacardi and cokes and Vodka and Oranges, and then there were the tax return wealthy times of the cocktails.

Two Advocaat and Lemonades please.

Two advcaatsandlemonades pleash

2 advocatesandlemonades or 2 black russians

Singing this out across the bar while money was waved above my head is a very strong memory and I can only imagine that the second time through taste of the advocaat was far less pleasant than the Russian jobbie cos I just could not even think about ordering the SNOWBALL today. Seriously the thought is making me gag, but the black Russian is a fond memory. Perhaps they were more expensive.

Times changed and fashionable drinks did too and in my single 30s Green Chatreuse became the evening finale shot, where tradition held that you downed it in one - of course, and then stomped your feet to make sure you were still alive. One auspicious evening, after the shots, my friend wandered into the loos and some time later she emerged with a broken nose cos some do-gooder had pushed the door open right onto her face. OUCHIE!

Tequila and Cointreau and Bundy Rum and the ubiquitous Creme de Menthe, have all had a field day in my head and belly and later the big white flushing bus, and I am not keen to see 'em again. Truth be told there are far more beverages that I don't fancy drinking anymore than ones that tempt me, but then it  turned out that I am not a big drinker. I tried 'em all but now am happy to settle for a bubbles or a wine or a beer or a voddie and if I have given it a bit of a nudge then I do enjoy a Tia Maria to finish off.

There's been a move from Advocaat to advocate this week.

When I popped out to see Daryl this morning to return his phone and deliver a cuppa, - white with 2 sugars if you are thinking of helping out, he was sitting with all his stuff stowed neatly away. He looked like he was going somewhere.

He thanked me for the phone and the tea and told me that it was good have his phone back in case the Queen rang -he he he, and then said that he fancied going to the IGA, but he didn't dare move from the bench in case the folk coming to help him out, came and he wasn't there. He tried to flatten his hair and he lamented the lack of a comb. I told him I couldn't help him cos I don't comb my hair and we smiled when I said that Stevie didn't need one. He was clearly trying to get himself together for when help arrived.

But the UCC were not definite yesterday. They only said they would do what they could. Daryl was quite fixated on the idea that today would be THE day. Shit, I might have been better off not telling him of the call, except that then if they had arrived unannounced he might not have welcomed them...oh really who the fuck knows what's best?

So I came back in and Stevie said to ring the UCC again to see if they are definitely coming. I told 'em that Daryl seemed like he was preparing for a job interview, he was getting himself spruced up and was ready and waiting for their arrival. The bloke there said he'd see if he could get out to see him himself.

I am not sure if the cavalry is coming. I fucking hope so.

Day 3 Homeless in the Park

This is Daryl's worldly possession and he trusted me with it today as he asked me to charge it up for him. It ain't flash but it's his and I am being careful.

Daryl has been living in the park for 3 days now and he told me today that he will be there until at least Tuesday, when he hopes to get some cash. It doesn't bother me that he's living in the park, except that it makes me feel like a right royal spoiled princess.

He doesn't make any noise about being entitled to anything and when I have popped out to deliver some rudimentary supplies he is grateful without being embarrassingly sycophantic. He was happy for me to give him useless info about a place that might have been able to help, but then later, presumably to save hurting my feelings, he told Stevie that the place I was trying to send him to had already told him they 'had nothing for him' to quote from Jeff on 'Survivor'.

So I tried again on the phones and have, I think got someone calling into the park tomorrow to chat to him to see if they can at least put in motion something better than a park bench. Daryl is OK with someone popping in for a chat, though I got the impression that he doesn't hold out too much hope.

His worldly possessions would not overflow 2 pillow cases - bedding and a jumper.

He's a funny bloke. When I took delivery of his phone to charge and he told me that it was OK to keep it overnight, I made sure that he wasn't expecting any calls.

Me: Are you sure the Queen is not calling tonight?

Daryl: No, she always calls in the morning.

The trouble is that there is so much homelessness on the Goldie, and I guess like anywhere resources are stretched to breaking. The bloke from UCC told me today that they have a priority order which counts down from single mums and their kids and abused women to kids and then finally old single blokes. He said that they just lurch really from one crisis to the next and he was a little affronted when I said that an older bloke living in a park for 3 nights sounds like a man in crisis to me. Truth be told he had probably spent the day dealing with stuff that would make my hair curl, and not in the go to the hairdressers and part with $100 bucks good way.

So who knows what the solution is?

Please don't try and make me feel guilty by reminding me that there is plenty of room here at the Big House. I know that already and yes the guilts are creeping in. But it just wouldn't be normal behaviour for anyone to invite some stranger  into your home, I mean I don't deal well with anyone on a long term basis, except for Stevie cos he's immuned to me telling him to fuck off and giving him the silent treatment and burping like a banshee and whinging about stuff that compared to Daryl's woes are pretty lame and unimportant. Yep, he's used to my crazies and I am used to his. But even ordinary social folk would surely ponder the smarts of inviting every Tom Dick and Harry into their homes. 

I do wonder where Daryl has been and where he will go onto next, but I don't want to be a nosey-parker and so our conversations have all been about the NOW. And I wonder about any family he might have and how they have let him slip away. He seems like a pleasant enough bloke, not at all a cranky pants. And he's got it together 'not to swear around ladies' even after I opened the flood gates.

I am really truly hoping that this is a very short story and that Daryl disappears quickly, not in a shitty get rid of him kinda way, but in a, he's found somewhere lovely to settle fairy tale kinda ending. 

Fingers crossed.

WTF kinda day

I have been walking passed this sheet all day having a giggle cos it looks to me like it's a giant pair of bloomer knickers the old nuns were so keen on always inspecting. Am I the only one who can see it?

The older I get the more sanguine I am becoming in the knowledge that I really just don't have a fucking clue about how the world goes round. It's funny to think that in your youth you are so completely cock sure about every fucking thing in your life, so you marry that man and buy those shoes and open your smart mouth at job interviews and try all those recipes for stinking liver, none of which make that shit even close to edible, and it's not until you hit your 50s that you begin to question stuff.

There's a homeless bloke living in the park next door. Well when I say living I really mean staying for a while, cos whilst it's a pretty park and the locals are mostly friendly I rather doubt anyone wants to get their mail delivered there even though very often the Postie stops to take a dump in the loo. I watched him (our visitor not the Postie cos that'd just be ikky,) this morning smile as I played with Dog and then carefully roll up his doona and stash it where I hope it has stayed safe all day, and then I chatted to him. He was a pleasant smart bloke, who I'll admit looked like he could do with a toothbrush cos his teeth were smoke stained from his rollies. I asked him if he needed anything and he said he just needed directions to Broadie. Well that was a surprise but very easy to accommodate and bless him if he declined the offer of a sanga to get him started.

And so I have spent the day wondering how someone becomes homeless. Surely it's not by choice.

When I was first divorced and trying to make the house payments including the 19% interest, and I had miscalculated holiday pay, I ran into stupid trouble one christmas. So I elected to wash people's houses and scrub their dunnies and do their fucking ironing to make the house payments, but only after I had rung a Call girl place that had advertised in the local paper, to be told that at the ripe old age of 30, yep that's THREE ZERO, I was too fucking old to be a prossie. Anyway I did whatever needed to be done to keep a roof over our heads, because back then I might have been ridiculously opinionated, and feisty, but at least I wasn't mental.

Cos I reckon mental illness is a major cause of people losing their homes. I have known a few folk who without lucky significant help, would be rolling up their doona next to our friend in the park.

I used to think that only poor folk become homeless but now I reckon probably only folk suffering mental illness, probably undiagnosed or at least untreated are forced onto the streets.

I hope out friend is safe out there tonight.

I was stopped for ages as a tram trundled by today. The advertising confused me and that always gives me the shits. How is it that I can now be too stupid to understand tram ads? When the fuck did that happen? Perhaps I have actually lost it and should pull up a corner of the park resident's doona? The tram yelled, ' Look behind you cos of the Rhino on a skate board' well actually it was a tad more poetic than that, it's just that I can't remember the exact wording, ho fucking hum. So I looked it up and the Tram page was banging on about the tram weighing 40 times a Rhino, but why were they on skate boards? and how much does a rhino weight? and surely the old idea of look right left and then right again would still be useful?Why are we looking behind ourselves like we are players in a very English Panto, where the audience yells, 'He's behind you!' ? And if you are in a car and you eye spy a tram in your rear view mirror then YOU MUST BE ON THE FUCKING TRACKS, so get outta there and get back on your meds.

But I am clearly missing something so perhaps I should just smile and gurgle into the mire or madness.

And then there is this new fangled idea at Kmart, where the pay station is sort of in the middle of the store or actually closer to the back of the store and so you pay for your shit and then tuck it all into bags and head on out, only to be stopped by someone who laughs when you get annoyed because they have to go through your shit and actually put a mark on your docket that you have to ferret around in your parcels and handie to find all because Kmart has moved their registers so now they assume that customers are gonna steal shit on their way from the register to the front door. Maybe the whole point is to up the anti for prosecutions for thefts, only that really the police have so much more important stuff to be doing - hopefully hassling our friend in the park, not being one of them.

I don't know how anyone applies for the 'check off the docket job'. I cannot even begin to imagine the interview process where perhaps the prospective ticker offerer is abused and berated mercilessly to make sure that they never take a swipe at the customer. I mean who would want that job? They'd have to be a little bit nuts wouldn't you say? And so maybe the job is the difference between bed and park bench?

Yep my poor old brain had been reeling today, and I am just feeling too thick to work any of it out, but I reckon it might be time to go out and see if my friend wants a bit of fish and chips for dinner.

Night shifts

This is the thus far unused 'party house' for the road workers to use at night for their breaks. It's just across the park from us. Hopefully we won't be the crazies stuck in the middle between party central and the road bangers. 

Night works on the road building across the way started last night, and even though I thought I might have to be on the look out for super-duper ear plugs to drown the shitful noise, I am pleased to report that so far so good. Yeh there was a bit of banging and scraping, but less noise in my head than if I was in the dentist chair, and the party house arrangement that was installed last week in the park, was not filled with beer swilling yobbos or even rowdy blokes making a cuppa. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in the mean time I am pleased.

I do wonder how people manage it though. How do night shift workers manage?

I am definitely a morning person, always have been. Oh sure every other weekend in my thirties I gave being the dancing queen, night owl my best shot only to be found face down flaked out on the couch all of Sunday, until it was collection time. It's possible that this is where my cheese toast for dinner on Sundays originated and quite possibly it was because my girl could manage that herself. Yeh so maybe I could drink and dance all night, but really I was only pretending, cos the sleep required to combat the headache was elusive and the candle being burnt at both ends just left me rooted and haggered and too often a bit light headed and always fuzzy.

I don't do well with not enough sleep, and it seems to me that I haven't routinely had enough sleep since about 1980, what with babies and work and illness and partying like a try hard party animal.

And what with the typical insomnia associated with the poison drugs I was concerned about the compounding impact of the night works. 3 nights a week on average I don't sleep and I will admit that can, and Stevie would say, as he ducks for cover, definitely DOES, make me ever so slightly crochety and sometimes a little irritable and sometimes the rampaging bull puts in an unwelcome appearance and it all gets a bit ugly.

SO I wonder how folk who work all night manage. It's all very well saying that they put up some block out curtains and just pop into bed when they get home, but the curtains wouldn't shut out the day time noise of traffic and children and neighbours arguing and all the usual banging about. And how do they make all those shitful calls to government agencies and telcos and banks and stuff that are only open during the day? And then there is the tappity tappity tap tap of the metre reader for the electricity and the deliveries of stuff bought online cos the shops are closed when they are not working and then there are the sellers of religion and gypsy house cleaners and other door knockers, who are marginally annoying if you are awake and vertical but must make folk murderous if they have just laid their weary heads down to rest.  

And what about things like seeing a doctor or a solicitor for the divorce from the person who works during the day who is sick and tired of coming home to some brothely mess of weird shit cooked and left to coagulate all day in the sink or on the stove top cos the night worker faded after food. And think about the family 'events' that would come and go unattended - well maybe this could be an advantage depending on the family of course.

Well done to the nurses, emergency doctors and ambos and firies and police officers who work all night. I just don't know how they do it, but I am sure glad they do.

The road workers I am less grateful for but at least thus far they are not driving me mad, cos we know that is not a long road.