Married at First Sight and Women's Day

Rosie Batty - such a courageous dignified person.

My guilty little secret is that I have been recording Married at First Sight and then sneaking a speedy look through while Stevie is busy doing some other stuff, sometimes 'blokey' shit and sometimes just playing cards on his computer.

I think apart from the scripting and the audience positioning and the careful editing and the usual reality bullshit, well I think it's an interesting proposition. Can psych studies match up folk? And I figure that they are probably as effective as the old tried and true method of getting pissed in the pub and falling over each other then wanting to chew off your arm to escape in the morning.

But last night's episode which I watched this afternoon, made me sad. All the tired old, 'Boys will be boys' excuses to explain away just plain meanness to women, well one woman in particular, was like I had been teleported back to the 50s or maybe even long before that. Maybe the cave men dragging their chattels around by the hair had similar conversations on thier boys' nights out. Surely modern fellas don't carry on like this any more? And even though a couple of the blokes did in private think that the chatter was demeaning they didn't jump in to shut it down and I wondered why that was.

Blokes don't lack courage. Oh sure some of 'em are not keen to go to the doctor for fear of bad news and not all of  'em are rushing in to rid the world of snakes or spiders, but generally men don't lack courage.

Or do they?

Courage might be as rare as hens' teeth.

It's Women's day and I have long wondered what actually is the benefit to women to having this day. I mean really  what change occurs because middle class women get decked out in green and purple and chat about women's rights in third world countries? It seems like it is all just noise.

Blokey banter and girlie gossip.

When even one person shows courage, change is possible. When Sean from MAFS said the banter was bullshit, it allowed other fellas to join the conversation. It's a shame that they didn't speak up straight away but that is the nature of courage. One person's courage can snowball into something impressive. When Rosie Batty speaks about domestic violence I feel inspired and chilled to bone in equal measure.

Women of substance, women of spectacular courage, don't need A DAY. They are hard at it, EVERY DAY.

Rosie Batty and her ilk  never stop talking and I reckon if they had watched that dickhead Andrew be so appalling they would have had serious words to say to him. In fact I would pay very good money to see that, unscripted, unrehearsed. I'd like to think that he'd crawl up his own bum, but I fear that more than likely he would make some hormone / whore moan, remark and consider himself all very funny and man of the world.

I reckon women and men have courage in equal doses. It just is sad to me that the percentage of folk tucking into the medicine cup of courage is so small.

BBQs

We are up to BBQ number 3.

Our first was a baby weber. It sat on the balcony at the wee flat in Main Beach and then we brought it over to the big house and it stayed on the back deck until one day, while I was at work and Steve was on a UK jolly, some fucker legged it over the fence and walked out with it. Bloody thing was that I wasn't sure when it happened cos I don't EVER use it and it wasn't until a gaggle of girlies came for a drinkie-poo that I even noticed that it was gone. BUGGER!

It was a good'un.

Then for Chrissie that year I pushed the boat and bought Stevie a BEEFEATER. It was bloody enormous. It came with all the bells and whistles and was very pretty. And NO I didn't used it either.

We rented out the Big House to some dero drop kicks while we flitted back to Blighty and when we returned the house was a disaster and the BBQ was fucked. It had not been even casually cleaned, and parts of it were rusted through and rings were burnt out. We replaced just about the whole fucking thing in bits, had some parts made cos they weren't replaceable and cracked on with using it.

But it died a death and last chrissie we bought ourselves anothery. Well as I don't use it, Santa delivered it to Stevie. What a jolly little fat fella that bloke is.

And Stevie has taught himself to cook his Sunday roast in the BBQ and all is good with the world.

My darling girl got a BBQ for chrissie too.

And so here's the dilemma.

To wash or not to wash your BBQ

Stevie is more than a little anal about the scrub up. In just a couple of months he has worn out 2 of the specially designed weber scrubber metal things and the grill plates do look brand new.

But my darling girl is using the Aussie method of leaving all the fat and grease on the grill to save it rusting up and falling to bits.

Of course both methods have merit, and just as an aside, if you are using one of those communal BBQs in a park then for god's sake give it a wash down with a bit of water or a splash of beer when you are finished cos otherwise, oooooh yikky.

So do you clean or do you rust protect?

ARRESTED AGAIN - this could get old.

Police cars bred like rabbits except they are illegal in Queensland

Industrial noise all day.

Night fell and the rain came and there was blessed silence outside.

Celebrations were premature.

At about 8.30pm the 2 dollar sucky sucky started up.

We went out.

They were at it again, digging a hole on the footpath with the sucky truck actually parked off the road so it could clearly have been done during the day.

All the sucky sucky behind the barrier = day work.

What do you call a group of people standing around earning top dollar doing fuck all? 

Yeh I don't know either, but it probably isn't complementary.

Another couple joined us.

A bloke in his 4WD, clearly with the shits up about the noise rammed a number of the bollards and parked his truck up to stop the work.

The noise stopped.

More local people were driven out of their homes and joined us on the street.

The supervisor rang the police and gave them my name.

I got a call from Policeman Paul telling me to get off the Refuge Island or he'd send a wagon and arrest me / us.

The Police came and then they called for backup, because a dozen or so 40-60 year olds were gonna be so dangerous, what with their bellies and sagging boobs - me not them, most of the others are fine figures of folk.

We were standing on the central reservation, the refuge island, a traffic island, so to get the best look at the progress without going into the WORK ZONE.

And then there it was the old MOVE ON ORDER.

Another local and I stood our ground.

We were arrested and had our phones taken and were frisk searched - not as sexy as it sounds, and put in the paddy wagon.

Stevie leapt in with us. Coppers didn't know what to do about that cos they hadn't arrested him. He finally had to get out cos he wasn't allowed to be in the wagon cos did you know wagons are single sex only.

Seriously one could not make this shit up.

Did you know that there are no seat belts in the back of a paddy wagon?  So I wedged myself between the 2 low seats with one leg and used my left hand as a brace on the ceiling and my right hand was shoved hard onto the front barrier thing. My partner in crime, taped up bad back and all, hung on for dear life.

It's interesting that we were arrested under the guise of police protecting us from ourselves but there we were rolling around in the wagon. Just saying.

We were driven to the police station.

I couldn't make it out of the paddy because of limited knee bend so I had to piggy back onto the copper and slide down. Yeh the irony was not lost on me either.

We all trooped into the station house.

The coppers waxed on about now NOT ARRESTING us anymore and instead issued us both an INFRINGEMENT NOTICE, code 2185 - taking too long to cross the road or maybe it's bullshit, I can't find it, but I've only had 2 hours sleep so my research skills are not up to par.

This is the same sort of INFRINGEMENT NOTICE one might be given for speeding or some other traffic offence, but I haven't ever heard of someone being chucked in a police car and taken off to the station house to get a speeding ticket have you?

We were put out on the street at around midnight.

2 women, no wallets, no lazy fifty tucked into my knickers, one dead phone, one operational, in the pissing rain, and told to make our own way home.

Yep we walked to the cab rank and it cost us 20 bucks to get our tickets.

Appalling noise went on until passed 4am.

Then even though no such sign was necessary in the dark pissing rain, some fucker gleefully threw a metal sign up right under my bedroom window at 6.30am,

Ta very much.

Am I the only one who thinks this 6.30am sign is superfluous?

Autumn is coming, isn't it? Sometime soon, PLEASE.

Tomorrow is my darling grandie boy's 12th birthday. Yep 28th of FEB! We are pretty sorted for parcels after we finished off today with a bike chain lock thing and a wall fixing which will see his bike locked up outside and so release a bit of space in the lounge room. That can only be a good thing. Yeh we got him some fun bits and pieces too, cos everything practical would just be a bore.

It's supposed to be the end of summer and March 1 heralds the start of the cooler weather. Yippee!

And it has certainly been a bit cooler today. There was a sprinkle of rain overnight and just a bit of damp during the day, not even really enough to wash the windscreen, but the cloud cover has been pleasant.

Now don't get me wrong, I do very much love the loud, bright, vivid colours of OZ. Whenever I travel I'm pleased to be greeted by the COLOUR when I come home. The ads are louder and faster and colloquial and the primary colours do lively combat. But sometimes enough is more than too much and a day or 2 of London grey is a very pleasant change.

We watched the rugby replay this afternoon. The poms were playing the Italians at Twickenham. The day was overcast and misty and eventually the clouds opened, and it was lovely to be sitting under a similar sky.

And so I slumped into my chair for a little nanna snooze, when the scratchies snuck up on me. Yep unusually, the house was full of midges. Bugger.

It might be hard to believe, but we rarely get the biting little buggers IN the house. Yeh if you go out into the park, unprotected at dusk, then you are a bloody idiot, cos the midgies will just about pick you up and carry you off, and sometimes if we sit out on the deck in the evening there might be a little meal made of our feet. But somehow the little buggers usually know not to pop on passed the doorways.

Not today. Damn

So another lovely thing about the coming of winter is that these little fuckers hibernate somewhere far away from us, so there is a great deal to enjoy. Yep no biting turds and no sweating. Bring it on!

Happy birthday to my Darling Boy.

Notification to Threat in a single bound.

Three notices individually folded dropped on Friday.

My Darling Grandie Boy was thoroughly bemused this week as I told him a story about how a boy serenaded me at my house when I was only 12. He could have been laughing at the idea that his fat old greying wrinkled grandma was ever young enough or cute enough to attract such attention, or he might have been laughing at the whole idea of serenading - how embarrassment! or perhaps it was the image of a man his Mum remembers so fondly, just walking on out and then closing the door on the young man, I mean How RUDE! Yeh my darling Dad took no prisoners. Oh Well.

In any case laugh he did. And I have since spent time thinking that's as close to a stalker as I have blessedly ever come. Stories of women forced into hiding from their exs have filled the news this week, so I am definitely NOT lamenting the lack of attention, and I fear for these women when I hear their stories. It is high time the justice system worked in favour of the victims not the violent dangerous turds.

I got notices in the postbox yesterday and I was given to wondering about when good intentions turn sour and when lines are crossed, and if I can be wondering that then surely to shit the legal system in this country can too.

Yeh it's a shit segue but my mind is a bit all over the place, and I am definitely not comparing my lack of sleep due to noisy roadworks to the violence endured by so many women. This is just the flinging around of my mind caused by the fucking notices.

If you get a detailed text message inviting you to a party which doesn't sound like fun to you, from a person you don't like, then you can ignore it or politely send back a refusal, cos, 'you have to wash your hair or take your cat to the vet, or scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush'. Done and dealt with!

But then you get the exact same invitation. Now that's a little odd, but maybe the person hit re-send by mistake or they had forgotten that they had already sent the first one. Surely they haven't got the shits up because you didn't immediately go Yippee!

And then the exact same invitation is sent AGAIN.

Did the sender think that the third time would be the charm?

Did they send it 3 times by mistake?

Did they put some whacko in charge of the invitations?

Are things getting nasty and should you lock the front door?

The Department Of Transport and Main Roads sent THREE notices of the impending doom - next week's NIGHTWORKS.

One would have been plenty. It would have been fair warning that their sanctioned contractor was again going to be breaking the law and that sleep would once again be impossible. Yeh, ONE would have been plenty.

Two would have been more than enough. Two could possibly have been a mistake made by 2 people delivering the notices and double dipping into our letterbox. Or it could have been designed to up the ante from warning to threat.

Three notices however - well that can only be inflammatory.

That's a, 'Ha fucking ha ha to you, we are gonna be getting our penalty night rates and you can just go suck the big one.'

I am not sure where their hatred and hostility comes from. They have their noses in the public purse trough and are getting excellent cash to do little more than fuck all and they know full well that the noise they are making is excessive, unreasonable and illegal, but still they think they can take the moral high ground and hate ME. Perhaps there is an intelligence test which must be failed before being rewarded with a job on this site, certainly their emotional intelligence is piss poor.

So now I can spend the weekend anticipating more shit next week. More noise - 24 hours a day. More rudeness and being ignored. More silence in lieu of requested information. More feeling nauseous and unwell. More hostility and hatred spewing forth from workers on the ponce. More visits by our local coppers. More of a whole lot of shit and nothing pleasant.

Spite can be the only reason why these notices dropped on Friday. Bastards!

Yeh there might be another explanation, but I doubt it. A gormless joyful little jig no doubt accompanied the notice.

Once more into the fray.

And if you think the woman next door needs your help please call the police and then give her a hand. So much better to be safe than sorry.

Laughing up a Lung

Go on, think about it, when was the last time you laughed so hard you cried, or maybe your knickers became a little damp?

I laugh easily and often.

Today we took off to the beach, Currumbin, to see the Elephant Rock. Dog went predictably nuts as she took a sniff of the salt and so she needed to be sorted before any coffee could be got.

It was a spectacular morning at the beach. She played like a maniac and after a brief wait for a table in the shade, we enjoyed our coffee and sweetie and then we were back to the beach.

Chuck the sand game is still a Dog favourite and then I sank into the sand and surf and the buffeting of the waves began. From this vantage point I could still chuck a bit of sand, even though Dog thought it was a bit odd. My arse wedged into a sand hole and I was rocked all around. As the water slapped my face and whipped me around, cork screwing my bum deeper into the pit, I just roared laughing.

Just a bloody marvelous way to spend the morning. Ah.

Home via Bernies Pet Barn Upton Street, to see if they could help us put some oxygen into the pond so the girls can hang in there until our new pump is delivered. And you know why I love going to the family run place not the  big shit franchise place across the street? It's that the Fish Guy, who has been giving me advice for years, thought it was best to lend us a pump until our new one arrives. Yep just a loaner, no charge, no signing our life away, just an understanding that we'll bring it back when we are done and he's happy that the girls are going to be able to breath through our pump disaster. That's real customer service huh?

It really is important to support the local folk whenever you can, and these people are definitely worth our loyalty.

And then to the loo as first priority when we walked in at home. Yeh I quietly lament the loss of a youthful bladder.

Well to say that a child would have been happy with their pop up sand box, would be an understatement. The black tiles turned white, and I laughed again. It's remarkable just how much sand can wedge its way up your goonoo inside your togs, without so much as a howdy-do.

And then I got the broom and dust pan, cos the clean up was not a laughing matter. Bugger.

Oh Well.

Debates

TMR Mantra I think. It's pretty simple huh?

It seems I have always been able to listen and pick holes in a bullshit statement. Of course this made me a gobby pain in the arse as a youngster. Passive resistance was not something I was any good at, so if I was told NO and I thought that was more than a little bit rubbish, I'd argue and pout and end with an affirmative action statement of what I was going to do. I didn't just smile and nod and then sneak around. I know lots of kids and adults too, use this method, but it was not for me.

Except for the knicker issue 1970.

The old woman just simply refused to consider anything other than huge old granny pants, just cos they were her bum covering of choice. Her bum sloppy cotton tales were good enough for her so she figured they were good enough for her girls too.

But in 1970, bikini knickers were all the rage. She refused to consider 'em so on my 11th or 12th birthday, all my girlfriends gave me a pair and still the old girl said NO. So I'd wear the old grannies to school and get changed and then I'd change back and then wash the little whisps in the shower and dry 'em under my pillow. So I guess that was a bit passive aggressive but it wasn't what was normal , for me.

When she wouldn't let me wear what I wanted to wear I'd argue and debate and compromise, and it was this desire to be self directed that led me to work from the time I was 12. I did enjoy having my own cash so I could choose for myself.

And then there was the time she refused permission for me to get a fringe. Yeh I just grabbed the scissors and did it myself, my hair my choice, I figured. She did not grow to like it. Ho Hum. Eyebrows and leg hair went the same way.

It seemed I was pretty good at making an argument and this saw me in the debating team all the way through high school.

I was always Second Speaker, so I could have some of the speech written but there was plenty of room to go hard in the unplanned rebuttal. The fella who went First, liked to have his speech mostly sorted, and my friend who went Third was excellent at flying by the seat of her pants. I liked just a bit security with my adrenaline rush..

The thing about debating is that there are very clear and concise rules, covering timing and stuff like introducing new information, and then there were strategies that were helpful within the rules.

Our French teacher in years 11 and 12, Mr Whitmore, a Canadian import, was also our Debating coach. In the midst of reading Le Comte de Monte Cristo he'd call a time out and we'd plan the next debate strategy. How lucky was that ? The Senior School Debate team all in his little class. He was a wonderful fella with a mad mop of red curly hair and he taught us well, not just French and debating but life in general.

I went on to use his debate strategy when I was coaching teams later as a teacher, cos it made sense, it was reasoned and rational and more often than not it proved successful.

Unfortunately dealing with a Government department comes with no handbook. Bugger!

If ever a public servant gets over the belly laughed induced hernia resulting from laughing up a lung at some dumb punter stupid enough to try to wade through the  complaint process, and they take a few civic minded moments, they could pen a 'How To' for fools like me.

Anything that would help slog through the mire  would be a best seller.