G is for going GREY

In lieu of colour last time at the hairdressers, and in a bid to disguise the tumbling out of the tresses, I opted for a perm...I think I have mentioned this before.

I rather thought I'd pop back and get something done with the roots but haven't bothered, cos, well, cos I am quite enjoying seeing what colour my real hair is. It's been a veritable age since I have seen it.

The demise of my marriage introduced me to hair colour! I went from naturally very blonde to fire engine red almost as I left the building and that was more than 2 dozen years ago.

Since then there hasn't been a style or colour I haven't tried, except au natural and certainly at my age and size no-one wants to see that ever again. Except that now I am curious, and if I don't like, then I can fix it, no surgery required.

There was a rumour that blondes don't go grey. Well I am here to tell you that that is just bullshit! There are plenty of greys in that regrowth. And maybe I should be pleased, cos isn't grey hair a sign of wisdom?

So now I am sitting here sifting through what I know and think I know and wonder what wisdom the old grey hairs have dragged along.

Here's 10 bits of grey haired smart-arseness. It's not mantra worthy, and please do not send in the legal fellas if it doesn't work for you. It won't cure cancer or make you a more pleasant person or allow you luck in the lotto, so read on at your own risk.  

Don't argue with the Council you are on a hiding to nowhere.

Wearing cheap synthetic nickie-noos makes your bits itch, go bare arsed in preference.

Doctors are useful but are not gods to be hailed and bowed to, so pick good ones.

You get the education you put up with, so have your say.

Use the whole bottle of Anti-fungal shit on your toe nails, or that mess will never go away.

Carrying weight is exercise.

Please yourself, it's no-one else's job.

Nanna naps are a luxury, one for every grey hair zzzz.

Wear comfortable shoes, happy feet show on your face.

Read shit and enjoy your coffee.

What are your best bits of wisdom?

F is for Fond Farewells

Saying goodbye brings visions of the Von Trapp family escaping the Nazis through the nunnery, and most of us will have waved a teary goodbye or 2 to folk who have wafted in and out of our lives. We waved Our Pom off last night so he can continue his adventure. We hope he calls in on his way back down the coast and we really hope that if he needs anything he'll give us a call, cos he was a lovely house guest and now is sort of the part of the Big House family.

Many folk of my vintage - particularly the girlie variety may have said 'adieu adieu adieu' to some unwanted body bits too, but all too often with less fanfare and ease of waving and laughing and joy.I have gotten rid of some tiresome tonsils, a gruesome gallbladder, a useless uterus, 2 cantankerous  

cancers and 2 nobbled knee caps. That seems to be quite the bucket full huh? But unlike our Pom, I never wanted to see any of this shit again.

I remember waving off my Lovely girl when she was a wee baby of 18. She was away on her big adventure. I don't reckon I quite held it together while she hugged me goodbye but I do know that as soon as she headed off down the plane tunnel, I sank down and sobbed and sobbed sobbed. It was definitely not a joyous fare-thee-well. I was bloody terrified for her and sorry for myself cos we had been the 2 Musketeers for so long and now I was gonna be on my own. Took me a while but I did get into the groove of single gal washing and ironing and cooking and cleaning and shopping and complete control of the remote control and it wasn't too shabby at all.

Criss-crossing the globe for more than a dozen years, has drawn tears and laughter and more drinks than enough at goodbye dinners and hello welcome backs.

I guess the reality is that many people do move in and out of our lives. We live in a busy sometimes frantic world and we can wallow when we lose someone or we can carefully wrap up our best memories and tuck them away with a smile. Easier said than done when the loss is raw. 

Rest in peace brother John Ponsford. 

E is for Equestrian Entertainment

When my Lovely girl was but a wee lass, she went Horse riding,,,,,,,She was a natural, she looked like she was born on the back of one of these great big fellas, Yeh I know what an uncomfortable image that makes! I loved watching her, she had such an ease and confidence and grace. So much so that occasionally I was talked into having a go myself. It might have been that the instructor was a bit keen on getting into a certain single mum's knicky-noos, or that he was just keen to make a family day of it, instead of leaving me sit in the car enjoying an afternoon of peace and quiet.

But whatever the motivation I had my first 'go'. I was a skinny agile youngster of about 32, and even so the mounting was about as ugly and arse presenting encounter as you can imagine. It looks so easy huh? Stick your foot into the stirrup thing and grab the nobbly bit on the saddle and just go the big swing, and voila there's your bum in place and you're looking Olympic dressage ready, but not for me. I was left hanging upside down and calling for help. The cynic would reckon the instructor was only a little too eager to come to the damsel's aide as we tried again and his hands slid to where they should not have been, but it was all very effective cos I moved quickly to get away and I was up and going. The next time I stood on a box and he kept his hands a little more to himself. The riding was calm and serene...yep no galloping for me, just a stroll....ah very nice.

I do love watching a horse run about. Bloody beautiful creatures.

Our Pommie visitor is ready for the off today, and so last night we took him off to 'The Outback Spectacular'. We had taken other poms some years ago and liked it so thought it worth another visit.

There is quite a lot about this place that gives me the shits, the up selling, the pushy vendors, the thwarted promises of free-flowing beer, the time keeping, the irritating contrived competitions and audience participation, but if you can get passed all that, then it's pretty terrific. The food is ok and the set-up is an effective way of serving great swags of folk in lickety-split time.

But the very best part of it is the HORSES and last night they featured a couple of very clever Kelpies as well. I was not disappointed! All the shit sort of gets flushed away as soon as the first gorgeous horses make their first appearance. I could do without the lame attempts at cobbling together a story which allows them to recycle the helicopter and the jeeps and cars and the acrobats, but I was happy to wait out the crap to get to the HORSES and the DOGS.

It's not cheap, $100 a ticket, and if you don't fancy horses this place is not for you, cos they are definitely the silver lining amid some pretty big irrritations.

D is for Dangerous Daggy Hat

Here's me hat except that in the breeze I wear it wedged down and use the chin strap - rather ordinary looking huh?

Some of the first things overseas visitors want to see here in Oz are the weird animals and let's face it we have quite a few. And you could take your visitors on the road to spy Kangas and snakes and emus and stuff, but if that's the kind of adventure they want, The Big House isn't the jumping off point for them. We take our visitors to Currumbin Bird Sanctuary.

In my youth it was just a circle paddock where people stood around holding honey sloppy bread and let birds come and sit and shit all over 'em. It was quite the spectacle and I bloody hated every minute. If it wasn't the parakeets shitting in your hair, it was a scrub turkey wedging it's self firmly in your face. It's possible that this place is single handedly responsible for my fear of birds today.

But the Bird park has been well and truly expanded and is the gentle home to lots of Aussie wildlife and so it's where we go except not at bird feeding time, cos that is still yukky.

We took our Pom and my lovely there yesterday.

We visited the Koalas and the Kangaroos and old man Emu and more bloody lizards than enough, which just roam fee everywhere...perhaps a cage might be useful to save scaring old women? Think I'll put that in a suggestion box except that Bell would go mad.

But the big attraction since the last time I was there is the crocodile feeding so we made sure we were positioned well to see those enormous chompers. The big fella was 4 and a half metres long and more than half a metre across. Pre-historic and completely terrifying.

We were standing waiting for the feeding to begin when I was approached by a blonde, pretty if she smiled American woman. She turned out to be more hostile than the croc.

'Can you take off you hat so the people behind can see?'
'I am wearing it so I don't get sunburned?' ( Clearly it is not a fashion forward piece of kit.)
'Maybe you should consider using sunscreen then.' delivered in an angry retort. Wild guessing tells me she is not used to hearing NO.
'Maybe you should mind your own business.'

It was all very unpleasant.

I should point out that:
The hat sits firmly onto the top of my head and I am shortish so it makes me not even as tall as the average woman so I have blessedly discovered via Facebook this week.
The 'people behind' were on a raised platform more than a metre above me.
I was wearing the hat cos the poison I am taking means that sunscreen is not possible and sun burn is chronic and painful and best avoided.

Where ever we found ourselves after this, there she was was, looking crabby and constipated and maybe that was her problem?

I don't mind that she asked me to take the hat off, but I do mind that when I said no she got all shitty. I was about to explain why, then thought better of it. It wasn't her business.

The Koalas were bloody marvelous - as active as I have ever seen them - all climbing and crawling to mum, and chomping up food and sliding down to the ground for a waddle and and a wee.

And I think Tom enjoyed the weirdness of it all.


Have you been struck silent by rudeness this week?

C is for Clock Watching

This is sometimes a pretty volatile household. We don't need to look too far for an argument and because we are both not backward in coming forward, the neighbours must sometimes wonder if something is gonna get broken - nah not me or him but something.

We mostly agree on the big stuff, like politics and almost on religion, although Stevie's views are not quite as extreme as mine, and generally on people, although we are happy enough to give plenty of lea way for each other's choice in playmates. We like the same sort of foods and fancy going to the same sort of places and care equally little about what other people think. But Time is too often our undoing!

The clock is my favourite piece of household equipment. It has driven me my whole life. From the beautiful marcasite  watch from Nanna that I took off carefully so I could dive up to my armpits into the enormous vats of coleslaw and mix up that hideous mayo when I worked at Coles - yeh the one some fucker took from the kitchen ledge and then laughed behind their hands as I cried at it's loss, to the stopwatch timings at swimming, I have always been aware of time.

I was not one of those fashionably late - read bloody rude, brides, and my classes knew that on the very rare occasions I was late, that there was an excellent reason, probably about them and possibly arguing in their corner with the principal. My classes ran to time and I might not have complained about the lack of air con - but I did, or the sweat stink of the carpet, but I did, or the general lack of equipment, but I did always insisted on an operational government issue clock.

I used to play and teach THEATRE SPORTS. These are Drama Games designed around impromptu story telling in teams of up to 4, a bit like 'Whose Line Is it Anyway' on the tellie, except the games are timed, 1, 2 and 4 minutes. A lot of people would not think it worth even starting on a story in only 1 minute, but you'd be surprised just how much you can cram into it.

If the clock says 9.20 and I'll think 9.30, my car clock is 30 minutes fast, but somehow I have convinced myself that it is only 20 minutes ahead.

I am never late.

If I am running even close to late, that means I am not gonna be 10 minutes early, I get that sick nauseous feeling in my guts and my colour wanes and a nervous sheen appears on my top lip. Now at least, with the advent of mobile talking devices, I can ring or text to give notice that I might be running late. Warnings of my possible lateness have often been received by people still washing the sleep from their eyes, prior to shitting and shaving.

Ok it's all a bit nuts, and pedantic and frantic and often stressful, especially when balanced against Stevie's 'whenever' approach. He was infamous for being late almost all his life. I reckon his pommie mates probably lied to him about departure times so he'd make the rugby tour bus. So now I should be pleased that it's only a few minutes.

He has definitely improved, and that ain't easy as we get older.

Just as well really cos he's running out of time to get it right.

Birthdays

It's Stevie's birthday today! and those are very special days around here.

Cos even if it means that you are adding another year onto an already pretty impressive tally, well god knows it's better than the alternative.

There are beers with his name on 'em and with any luck at all a damn fine round of golf.

We have a tradition of giving cryptic clues so the recipients can guess the pressie. Steve's clues are always very clear and I can nearly always guess the parcel, maybe because I am a good guesser and maybe cos the clues are clear - that'll be the Engineer in him, but mine on the other hand are less clear, a bit murkie perhaps, sometimes even plain bloody obscure cos that's the nature of my mind.

Stevie agonises over the wrapping, and it's pretty clear that I do not, but we both spend time choosing great cards. Oh I know it's a waste of money, but I don't care. My lovely girl was here during the week and she spied my little bag of cards and she just shook her head with dismay when she saw that I had bought them from David Jones. She gets hers from the shit shop and spends time writing her message, but I like the artwork and the humour, so I guess it makes me lazy, but ho hum.

This year I have planned and sorted a big old tour from Adelaide to Melbourne for his birthday, so the parcels are just some silliness cos really you have to be able to 'go the big rip' on your special day. I reckon it should be some sort of a sign. If you are too feeble to go the rip, then maybe it's time to pop yourself into one of those retirement villages, where you slurp your wine through a straw and someone spoon feeds you cake. That does not sound too bad to me actually.

Elizabeth, our across the road neighbour, is getting on a bit and on Christmas day all but swam into her kitchen to make a cuppa - yep she was flooded - bloody pipes burst in the night and the place was buggered. Stevie had been in a couple of times to see how the repairs were going, but in the end it was just all too much. Really the place needed to be gutted - carpets, cupboards, furniture and all her stuff. But she is a tough old bird. She popped the place on the market, it sold in a day and now she is happily sipping an afternoon bevvie looking at her mountain view from the 18th floor in Southport. No garden, no maintenance, just pleasing herself. Sounds bloody marvelous to me.

So when I can't go the Big Rip I am gonna happily join her.

But that isn't today!

Today is parcels and golf and silliness and dinner and beers and wine and maybe if I get him drunk enough, a little dance.

What do you do for your birthday? 

A...Anti-Abortion Arsehole.

Well happy April first and so to starting the A to Z race. How very fucking lucky I feel that that tool Trump has given me my A story. He is such a wanker!

I referred to a kid as a wanker while I was teaching in London. I was not surprised that I was overheard by the kids, it might even have been my intention, cue coy face. Anyway his mother who was a piece of work herself, was not too amused and I managed to slide out of the mire by explaining to her that WANKER in Australia is  a compliment. 

I clearly was stretching the truth only a little, yeh like my belly skin was stretched only a little carrying a near 9 pounder. 

Here's Donald getting out of being labeled a wanker by explaining that his dick is, 'this small', so small in fact that he has to squint to see it. He is looking longingly at the 3/4 inch and in this candid moment we can see him lament the piddling size and also see a hint that he is exaggerating even to himself. Of course he pretends he's got a whopper by wearing a really really long stupid tie.

And so to his abortion tyraid of yesterday. 'I am Pro Life'. 'I am Pro Life' 'I am pro Life' 

He did so much back pedaling about punishing women who had abortions that the chain on his bike would have fallen off. 

He plans to ban abortions.  

He hates women.

'They will have to go back to a time where people will perhaps go to illegal places, but you have to ban them' 

'Women are essentially aesthetically pleasing objects'

'Sexual assault in the military is totally expected'

'Angelina Jolie has dated too many guys to be attractive'

'If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?'

I was literally spoiled for choice when looking for obscene quotes that have either dribbled or been flung out of this fella's mouth. It seems pretty clear that the only people he can tolerate are old white rich blokes and he really doesn't care too much for them either. 

I just bet there are many many people secretly or otherwise wishing this wanker had gone the way of the backyard coathanger. Yeh it's graphic but I hit the point of no return in despising him yesterday with all this right wing authoritarian anti female bullshit.

I used to know a bloke who was equally appalling about everyone just on a smaller scale. He would sit at cafes and loudly lament the ugly fat people around him, or the useless black people who walked on by, or the miserly jews, in fact I don't think I ever heard him say anything good about anyone except himself. I mean this man had clung onto a very ordinary canvas he had painted when he was a boy, and that's ok, except that it precluded him ever hanging any other artwork cos it just wouldn't compare...ho hum. He used to say that he wasn't a racist, or in deed any sort of an IST cos he hated everyone equally. He's the sort of person who most likely is be a Trumpeter. 

I very much like to think this is a photo of this ugly man's face as he demonstrates how tough he is. He's telling that guy with the broom stick to shove it up further. 'Up up up! Go on, don't be a girl!' and in the next frame his teeth fly out. 

It's unlikely that this arsehole is ever gonna keep his mouth closed, but I am gonna do the best I can't to ignore him for the next month and write happy chipper little stories, but I can guarantee it. There is only so much sewerage you can ignore before it's time to start bucketing out.