Would you go back in time?

Because I went through all the photo albums this week I have spent a bit of time in the boondocks of my history and I've been wondering just how much, if anything at all, I'd be prepared to part with to go back to that young skinny feisty brat of a girl, cos sometimes I really miss her.

At the Jumping Pillow with the Grandie today I got a glimpse of many generations all rubbing alongside each other. There were lots and lots, well all right, too bloody many babies, all squeaking and tumbling over, and a good handful of youngsters rough housing on the pillow with the Boy and then there were young mums and young dads and lots of Mas and Pas.

The mums really held my attention. They lugged giant bags - tardis bags which were filled with all manner of magic from food and drinks and baby wipes to changes of clothes and toys and more than likely a spare car and a volume of Romantic Poetry. They threw these weights over their shoulders and scooped up a kid on each hip, slapped on a smile and toted it all off to the next little adventure.

The dads on the other hand wandered with less purpose, often on their phones and randomly calling their kids' names as they popped along carrying a form guide and a packet of fags. The kids were happy regardless of carers, but you know what really fascinated me was that both mums and dads crouched down easily to chat and love their little ones, they stripped off their shoes and jumped on the pillow, like children themselves, and I missed being able to crouch and bend and jump and lift and carry and haul arse up off the ground. Yeh I sure do miss all the flexibility of days gone.

But I remembered the unmitigated shattering tiredness. I remembered the screaming irrits of rearing a willful teenager, and the awful worry that I was doing it all wrong. I remembered that cigar box with all the cash I had in the world and when it was gone it was gone. I remembered working all day and most of the night and sleeping and the  getting up and doing it all again. The life of a single parent - the all consuming banality and wonder of it. I might have been able to do back flips and play back to back games of netball, do some crocked legged splits, and direct 100 kids on stage, and cuddle my girl til my arms were numb and we were both cried out, but even though I am old and wrinkled and too fat and seized up, I am happy that I am wiser and content and sanguine and in less of a hurry.

I am pleased to have the memories like the photos, but I am pretty sure that I just simply do not have the energy to go back to being 30, and besides there is something really liberating about being in charge of a kid but being OK with him having Twisties and a Lemonade for lunch. If I had to go back to being MUM instead of MA, I would have to make a proper lunch and give consideration for the number of sugar units consumed in a day.

I do so love being MA. What a lucky woman I am. What flavour the ice cream is for dinner?

Will and Grace Vs Trump

My friend PINKY POINKER @ponkypoinker popped in today to teach me how to upload a You Tube video onto this little blog, cos I have been lamenting my useless techno status and she's a very clever little miss. And wasn't that just a very timely education cos almost immediately I was fed this wonderful clip of one of my all time favourite shows, 'Will and Grace', which was giving some advice about who to vote for in the American election. It only goes about 10 minutes and if you loved the show it will bring a smile to your face to see these familiar faces and the bitch in me was pleased to see that Jack might have stacked on a couple of kilos.

How fabulous that these actors just slotted back into their roles and the banter was as well written as in the original show. It seemed like they had never been away.

Anyway, I wanted to try putting something up here and this is a fab start. Enjoy.

I am a Winner!

One of my favourite bloggers, Mrs Woog@woogworld was discussing senior formals and the frocks girlies were wearing these days, and I was prompted to remember this outfit I thought appropriate for mine.
sue elliott • a day ago


I had a long brown and white searsucker jobbie that looked more table cloth than formal dress, but I was waffer thin with big tits and it all went with an attitude of 'don't fuck with me' Dress cost me 20 bucks! If only I could look so good today. ah!

Mrs Woog Mod sue elliott • 20 hours ago




Brown and White! Brave and interesting. Throw SEERSUCKER into the mix and we have ourselves a winner! Bravo Sue xx




Well fancy that, after all these years I am winner, and I like it, so I spent the rest of the day tracking down the bloody photo which I knew was somewhere, cos that's how I remembered the dress so clearly.




Because I am of an age, I have lots of photo albums, some of them in excellent order and some that have been picked over and abused, you know as happens with ugly fashions and old flames.




Anyway I was up to the last one and I was very sure that it wouldn't be in there, but bugger me there it was. So I snapped it on my phone and here it is 40 years later. I bloody love technology, even if the reflection of my sad old face in the computer screen is in such stark contrast to the sweet young thing in that photo.




I asked Stevie's permission to post the fella's face, cos I don't know what the protocol is even though I haven't named him nor have I seen him in more than 4 decades - yeh I am shit at keeping in touch. SO I have sort of vicarious permission, and voila here is my brown and white seersucker dress from 1976. We were an eclectic pair, me in my tablecloth and him in his cravat, we were sober amongst the drunks and arrived in his somewhat beaten up old escort which we thought was a damn fine chariot mostly because it didn't come fitted with a parental driver, and we danced til we fell and didn't go to the after party. It was a lovely night. I can't remember what shoes I wore cos no doubt I kicked 'em off early to go barefoot. I remember feeling comfortable and didn't spend even a millisecond worrying about my face or my hair or my dress, I just ate and danced and danced and danced.




It does shock me just what an industry senior formals have become.




At least one whole term of year 12 is now spent discussing dresses and suits and car hire and makeup rehearsals and when to get drunk and how drunk to get, and the money spent is now many times what I spent on my wedding dress and the 4 bridesmaids frocks too.




So things have really changed. That's not a shocker.




But there has been quite the discussion here, about how 'old' kids are today and I think we all reached at least a tacit agreement that an 18 year old today is considerably YOUNGER than in my day, even if this is contradicted by the glamour and sophistication evident at the formals.




Today's lot are more closeted I reckon. They are allowed to run less amok and they fend less for themselves, and that's rightly so due to all the extra dangers and the faster pace of life.




My girl went nowhere on her own, I wouldn't even let her catch the bus into town cos 'people get raped on the bus'. She had every protection device invented and I insisted she wear 'em all when out rollerblading, wrist, hand, elbow, and knee guards as well as the helmet - hmm she didn't go too often - no surprises there. But I used to travel from Wynnum to The Gabba by train and bus and run the gauntlet of dirty old men hanging out of The Gabba pub to get to Gymnastics twice a week. I stopped doing gym when I was 13, not because of the heckling but because the boobs got in the way. I would never have allowed my girl to travel like that, and now she is even more protective of the grandie boy.




I was married and had a mortgage when I was 19. I was balancing budgets in the adult world and planning meals and doing all the domestics and studying and working as well as burning the candle at both ends cos, well I was 19 and had all that fucking fabulous energy.




Your average 19 year old today still lives at home and enjoys the clean clothes and prepared meals that the parent/s provide, and of course if they are a little short on the readies, well Mum might dip into the cookie jar to help 'em out there too. They might leave home but it's very common to see 'em return once and sometimes more than once.




Yeh I know there are exceptions to this and there are kids who go out and do it for themselves but many many don't leave the nest until their middle 20s or later. This is why I reckon kids today seem younger than I was.




If I had my 17 year old body and that tablecloth, I would still happily run wild down the main street of Surfer's Paradise barefoot singing, 'American Pie' cos that was the song of my senior year.

Trust

We have been trooping over to the village for coffee almost every day for many years. There are 2 coffee shops and both are good but Bay Salt has the coffee we prefer. The Ducks' Nuts is the other place and the name makes me smile and we have been there too, if our place is closed. Anyway locals all seem to have their favourite and the 2 shops sort of rub along together pretty well.

The regulars all nod and smile and chat to each other. We take dog so some of the locals don't talk to us cos of DOG and well that's entirely their own problem, but mostly folk stop by and give her a bit of a cuddle and maybe some bacon and go on their way.

Now the thing about village company is that names are a bit light on the ground. There's a family who is there for breakfast every Sunday and we have a real good chinwag but I have no idea of their names. And there is a 'teacher couple' - retired I think that we chat to, and I have asked her advice about sewing machines and stuff and I don't know their names. There is a group of fellas who have breakfast every Tuesday and we stop and chat and have helped to socialise the new Dog who was a rescue girl and a bit nervy skittish, but now happily chats away to DOG, and out of the table of about 10, we know precisely NO NAMES whatsoever. And there is a family who is often there on a sunday and the lady always has treats in her bag for DOG and she gets right down on the floor with her and lets her lick her face and gives just the biggest cuddles, and we don't know their names either.

Until that was, a few weeks ago when, for reasons I am still not sure of, I asked her if she wanted to babysit DOG for us while we went to RIVERFIRE.

Shit that can hardly be considered good parenting can it? 'I don't know your name or anything about you, but can I leave me dog with you over night?'

She said yes and then we introduced ourselves, and swapped phone numbers and all that normal stuff, like we were organising a first date.

We had a few weeks to chat more and confirm the babysitting, and so on Saturday we dropped DOG off on our way to Brisvegas for the crackers.

Their place was pristine! White and new and beautiful and did I say PRISTINE? DOG sheds black hair at every little opportunity, infact she sheds some much fucking hair that if I was at all a greenie, I'd be gathering it up and knitting jumpers for refugees. There was gonna be a less white look after a day of DOG.OH dear.

All night I kept hoping that she wasn't disgracing herself by shitting on the white tiles or worse still the white carpet. I mean she's as good as gold at home, but you just never can tell what kids are gonna get up to when they are out.

The crackers for RIVERFIRE were just bloody brilliant and we had a wonderful time, shit I even put on a bit of lippy and kept my bra on cos I was in public, and it's been a while since I did that.

And on Sunday about lunchtime, Sue and Andrew rang the bell to announce the arrival home of DOG. They had thoroughly enjoyed having her stay. They had played and played and she was out on her feet. She was joyfully rooted.

So I reckon here's the tester for trust. Take your dog with you. If your dog likes 'em, then they are probably good folk. It sure as shit worked out well this time.

International CML Day... well who knew?

This is as close as I can come to the Orange Ribbon for CML Day

Yep I got wind of the CML day via my Facie feed, cos I drop in and out on a variety of CML forums and the DAY was discussed there, otherwise, rightly I would have known nothing about it. I mean there are just soo many of these fucking DAYS these days aren't there?

If we all had a ribbon for every day in every colour, well we'd be able to decorate a huge number of gay wedding arches, except that argument is still stupidly raging...ho hum. Anyway someone in their wisdom decided that CML DAY would be an orange ribbon, and I reckon this is a little misguided, cos no-one looks good in that burnt orange, baby shit colour, and that's why prisoners in movies, all wear orange jumpsuits cos no-one else ever wanted to buy that fabric. But regardless of my disdain for the hue, ORANGE it is.

Not that it has made any difference to me today cos it's been hectic in the Big House.

I have a girlfriend who has been feeding me for more years than either of us probably want to tally up. She's a wonderful cook and can whip up just about anything she sets her heart on and happily accommodates my little peccadilloes, like not eating any chilli even though that's one of the favourite household ingredients and not wanting food to touch on the plate, so stuff is served up separately in different bowls and we all help ourselves. The food is always a big part of the celebration of actually teeing up calendars for long overdue drinks and gossip fests.

Anyway, usually she says not to bring anything and that might be because she's ever so slightly a control freak or maybe it's because she is more than a little aware of my kitchen expertise or lack thereof. But in prep for the 'Crackers' on Saturday night, I gave her not much choice and said I would bring either nibbles or pudding. Pudding was agreed.

And then I just about shit myself, cos I am not a pudding baker/chef/cook. When people come for dinner here I usually just buy something in cos I reckon the other cooking counts. But taking up something 'store bought' seemed like such a cop out, especially given the mountain of food she has made for my tummy over time.

There's one Gluten free person coming along, and so I figured some meringue concoction would be good. I have almost mastered the meringues so I set to it. I thought I'd pipe 'em to make 'em look pretty. And I was just about to slop the stuff into the bag when the House Agent Bloke ( HAB ) rang to say he was bringing someone through in an hour. FARRRRRKKKKK!

Piping and slopping and spilling and shoving in the oven as fast as I could, cos I reckoned the house was gonna take an hour of running and juzzzing and it bloody did. Sweat happened.

I am pleased I remembered to turn the oven off, but if I am honest the little sweeties look pretty shit and I am not sure they are gonna make the cut. Fuck it.

Yeh they look a bit oopsie, but they taste good. 

So then the person came and looked and who knows how that went, and I thought maybe some coconut macaroons might be nice, even though I have never made one in my life. Yeh I have eaten many times my body weight of 'em but as it turns out that's the easy part.

I followed the recipe - which I never do and ended up with a fucking great mess and then the tireds hit me and I wanted to have a little cry.

But it's CML International Day and I am so much better than lots of folk so I sucked it up and had another go. This time intuition played a part and they look pretty good. I reckon I might drip some dark choccie on 'em and call 'em done.

The is the first mess. Stevie reckons they taste ok even if they look a bit mutanty.

Not too bad .

And then after a little sit down, I figured I had some cheesecakes left in me and ran over to the village for the stuff and got cracking. They don't look as lovely as I had hoped, but I think they taste good and I might top 'em with a strawberry, except that I will leave some plain cos fruit and veg are an issue for my friend.

Yeh OK, then,  but now they are all a bit flatter, Do cheesecakes always sort of shrink like poorly laundered wool jumpers?

I have cleaned down the kitchen 4 times today but the last time it was a rudimentary wipe at best, it's certainly not inspection ready.

I am rooted.

And I have resisted, wearing or cooking or eating anything that bilious CML orange.

What's Springing at Your Place?

Let's face it there is not much in the way of seasonal changes here on the Goldie. To quote the wonderful late Robin Williams in 'Good Morning Vietnam', 'It's hot, damn hot.' nearly all of the time except for a couple of nights a year when  you might need a wee blankey. There is no gradual dip into a big freeze or a slide into the sweat. It comes on all of a sudden like a menopausal flush.

In London there was a burst of daffodils in the most unexpected places like on round abouts and in little clumps in footpath gardens and sometimes in the middle of a field, and as these all popped up, people would put away their winter coats and wipe the mould off their summer sandals and make a start on booking a summer break where they can bake 'em selves, or at least find a spot in a public park where they might take off most of their clothes and soak up some rays on the one or 2 days of summer.

The thing about having seasons is the change up in the way you do stuff.

Summer in London meant not much darkness. The days stretch out til maybe 9.30-10pm and I recall very fondly, garden sitting sipping champers and forgetting all about dinner or shitful TV. Of course it might have been a nightmare trying to get the kids into bed, but I guess that is what black-out curtains are for.

And winter afternoons saw me driving home at 4 ish on the rare times I left with the kids, and I'd need the headlights on and the heater cranked up. The days just vanished. I often arrived and left in darkness.

My credit cards got a workout in summer at the pubs by the river and in the winter they were useful for scraping the ice off my windscreen in the mornings.

So yeh I do love a bit of a season.

But today I pottered in the garden and whilst I might not have noticed a change, my plants certainly have. I planted some flowers next to the herbs, cos I couldn't be bother trying for more tomatoes and they have all taken off like topsy and the tarragon bush that I thought almost certainly I had killed when I pruned it - oh fuck it, I didn't prune it I chopped it off at ground level but was too lazy to pull the damn thing out, well it has come back like some maniac triffid, and all of a sudden I am a parsley farmer and if you want some rosemary, well I'm your gal.

I might not be going through the London ritual of washing all my woolens in the pommie equivalent of Martha Gardiners and polishing up my toe nails to be thong ready, but the garden is singing summer's praise.

The Grandie boy is coming next week and there is very little doubt that he will christen the pool for the season, so that is about the most obvious and noisy sign that summer is upon us.

Thankfully Stevie has seen to the chemical formula and all will be ready for the little fella, who I should add, has been growing rampantly like my bloody herbs. There is no doubt that he will be taller than all of us by this summer's end and god only knows what size his feet will be, given that he's sliding those lumps of meat into a size 9 already.

Medical Tune-ups and Priorities

We have spent quite a lot of time in waiting rooms of late, and aren't they just shitful places to be? All that beige and uncomfortable seating and tellies with the sound turned down so that you can still sort of hear it, but you can entertain yourself reading the sub titles which are on a delay and are nearly always grammatically incorrect or filled with spelling errors or are just so bad that they are no longer funny cos you don't know what the fuck it is all supposed to mean.

Today's claustrophobic adventure took us into a windowless cramped space where the tellie news was playing. I know that parochial coverage is permitted, but there surely has to be a limit...There was a bus that clipped a crane and a couple of people were scratched, and then a second story, so banal that I can't even recall what it was and then there was coverage of the bombing in Manhattan NYC. I know it happened yesterday, but I reckon it might still be newsworthy today, ahead of a traffic bingle.

And then we waited. The front of house woman told us that we'd see an 'assistant' first. I asked why and was told that she would take down the history for the doctor, and all I could think was that he must be famous or really fucking lazy. I made it clear that we had hoop-hopped in their place in Southport a year ago and we weren't planning on doing that again. Everyone just wore their Stepford Wives' smiles, and it was like I hadn't spoke.

A year ago we popped into see the eye bloke in Southie and he refused to talk to us... he told the assistant to tell us stuff and when we asked a question he told her to tell us the answer. He was a round obnoxious old little American with perhaps the biggest god complex I have ever seen in a doctor. I told the Stepfords that we were not gonna put up with that shit again. The poor polite Pom did a bit of a crawl up his own bum, cos I verged on rude but sorry I was, that it was only a verge.

But put up with shit we did. We had waited more than a month for the appointment. Stevie wanted to know if what he was using to treat a recurring problem in his 'Shingle Eye' was dangerous and wanted to know what else might be useful, so we waited. Arrived at 10.45 and saw the 'Assistant' - who cares? and then finally got to the doctor a little after 12. They were running so late that the numbing shit that the girlie had slopped into Stevie'e eyes had worn off and the bloke had to shovel in some more.

Now the doctor was fine, he actually spoke to us both and seemed to know his onions, I just don't know why he ran so late, unless there was some sort of con going where by they were billing Medicare for an eye exam whether it was needed or not. It's the only thing that makes any sense to me, and when I asked point blank if Medicare would be bulk billed for the eye exam, no direct answer was forthcoming. Ho fucking hum. Except that this ripping off of the system just makes for a less efficient system for those who are relying on it.

It seems that Medicare will pay for 2 eye exams per year...I thought it was only 1. So it seems that everyone who goes there gets to pop in with the 'Assistant' to read the eye chart and that'll be 40 bucks from the government thank you very much.

Medicine, it's big big business today. And the aging population is just gonna make it even more profitable. But this bloke today could have been working out of a little office with one front of houser. Just the 2 of 'em could have provided the same service, except that perhaps he would have run to time. There were so many staff in this place today that some serious skimming of the system has got to be going on just to make the wages bill.

While we sat there waiting and waiting and waiting some more we chattered about growth industries today. Law, Accounting, IT and Medicine were what we came up with. Of course we have no foundation for our findings, but our qualifications might well be as bankable as those of  the 'Assistants' who's bullshit eye testing is costing the Aussie tax payer a fucking fortune. No wonder the Federal Governments always have so much trouble balancing the budget.