Birthdays YUK

Years ago when it was my birthday a gaggle of us women would head out - near enough was close enough given the need to shuffle childless weekends and stuff, and we'd drink too much and flirt a little, OK maybe more than a little and did I mention drink too much? There was dancing and dare I say more drinking.

But in my 50s since my body has well and truly failed me, think rotting from the inside, now for my birthday I do something daring and OK more than a little strange, yeh I spend the day dying my hair an unlikely colour - Not permanently a strange colour just painted for a few washes, and then it will be it's old blonde, grey brown self again.

So tonight Stevie and I are gonna walk around to the local Thai place for dinner where I hope he's gonna show off all he learned while in that mother country and I'll have a glass or 2 of white wine and then we will toddle home where Dog will no doubt be pleased to see us, and tomorrow my lovely girl is coming for breakfast, and I am gonna feed her some pancakes cos recently they have become her favourite.

Except that this time I am not gonna use the recalled frozen fruit to make the compote. Last time the kids were here, while Stevie was away, I used this diseased stuff which was recalled just a couple of days ago, and then afterwards I was extremely unwell. I just put it down to the meds and when it all went away a few days later, I was pleased.

But yesterday I saw this recall and then I checked the batch number on the stuff I had left over in the freezer, and bugger me it was the self same stuff. Well I'll be fucked. 

I reckon I have got to my current decaying age without ever having something that needed to be recalled.

Stevie's car was recalled for something, I can't remember what, but it can't have been life threatening, but that's as close as it has come.

The warning is that the fruit which was processed in China, was filthy with shit - human, doesn't that just make you feel good? and so there is a threat that folk who have eaten it - that's MY FAMILY! - could have contracted Hepatitis A.

And so maybe for my birthday I could have given myself and the kids Hepatitis A. And so maybe I should google that and see if it is as bad as I think it is. And maybe I should mention it to the Doctors and get an extra test done just to be on the safe side.

Or maybe I can just ignore it, apart from buying real fruit again for the compote and making sure that in the future, I check out all the ingredient details in the small print, and only choose glass and kitchen flat packs made in China and leave the food well enough alone.

There you see there's the silver lining in the aging process, wisdom. Bloody marvelous huh?

Ban the ...What the fuck are we Banning NOW?

This bag has been used twice, how often was that disposable nappy used?

'The Project', a sort of news come variety show on the tellie here every weeknight, has taken up arms against the sad old plastic bag. You know the ones I am talking about, the ones which hold your 300 bucks worth of groceries, yeh the ones into which the checkout person shovels your eggs along with the bottles of stuff, and they're the ones that catch all the spilled milk and scrambled shit so it doesn't all slop about in the back of your car, on your way home.

Yep 'The Project' folk have decided that it's time the government BANS something else.

I am so far fucking over BANNING shit.

I reckon people should get to choose.

You remember CHOOSING, for yourself?

These sanctimonious folk who find the humble plastic bag so offensive, well let them carry around a big old satchel just in case they fancy buying something and they don't want to have to juggle it and possibly drop it into the gutter where quite possibly a filled disposable nappy has floated.

Surely people can choose?

And perhaps we could all be encouraged to consider our 'footprint' when choosing, and you know what? I'd still choose the damn bag.

Unlike 'The Project' people, who (I don't know this for an absolute fact cos I haven't spent time drifting through their rubbish bins,) more than likely have used disposable nappies to collect their offsprings' shit and piss, I used 'wash 'em every fucking day after scraping off the shit nappies.' SO for every nappy I didn't use, surely I am entitled to a bag or 2? My 'Footprint' should allow that.

A disposable nappy takes somewhere between 250 and 500 years to break down - same time as it happens for a grocery plastic bag. So I want to be able to choose the bag, cos unlike the nappy, which unless you are a very strange soul indeed, is definitely single use, I use the bags for all sorts of stuff. They are definitely not SINGLE USE here.

Our inside rubbish bin is designed to use these bags. Sure I could waddle out to the wheelie bin and toss every little bit of rubbish in there, unwrapped and festering and if everybody did this then maybe I could take up a job as the Pied Piper to rid the world of vermin.

I use these bags to wrap my smelly sneakers when packing a bag for holidays cos I don't want all of my clothes to smell of feet, and I am pretty sure that people I meet on my travels thank me for my kindness.

We collect up our lovely dog's shit in em but I guess instead we could just get a shovel and launch big old piles of the stuff straight over the fence onto the footpath, and if I was feeling kindly, perhaps I could make some sort of warning alarm to enable passersby to either run or put up an umbrella.

I even remember a woman making bread wrapper hats when I was a girl. She'd cut up the plastic bag wrappers into long strips and crochet it all into hats. Perhaps that's taking the reusing just a little far. I was pleased that she was not my mother.

But the point is that most of us are aware of the environment and do our bit. So what if I want to use plastic bags for my groceries. I wash in cold water, and have no heating in the house and only turn on the air con maybe twice a year, my dog eats just about every scrap of leftovers, I have even been known to grow my own tomatoes and my car is regularly serviced so it doesn't spew out fumes, and of course I washed all those fucking nappies. It's just a balancing act.

My 'Footprint' like most people my age, I reckon is far smaller than the clodhoppers of today. People calling for BANS should just BAN themselves.

In the UK, a number of stores have decided for themselves to not have bags, except that well of course they have bags, cos how else can their customers part with large lumps of wonga for their groceries if they then haven't got any way of getting the stuff home? Yeh they have bags, but instead of supplying them as a courtesy or a necessity, they are now charging for them. Sounds like Aldi huh? Go there, don't go there, it's your choice. Remember choosing?

I reckon that stores can please 'em selves, but calling for a universal BAN just gives me the shits.

I remember choosing fondly.

Social Media and Politicians

Nah this is NOT gonna be about that Twitter account of the small handed orange man, but please, someone stop him! For fuck sake!

I have been on the arse end of some very unpleasant social media comments because if you put your face out into the public arena and you make a statement, then people are bound to leap at ya and say mean shit from the safety of their study or lounge room or toilet - from where ever it is they spew bile. So I am getting better at firstly NOT reading the shit, and secondly, perhaps more wisely still, not replying to the shit.

I am all very keen to continue with discussions, even feisty heated ones so long as there is no name calling and personal meanness. I think that social media is an excellent tool for sharing opinions and information.

I follow a number of CML forums on Facebook and sometimes the posts are funny or informative or sad and sometimes they are entertaining and sometimes boring, and sometimes they ask for very specific advice and as there are not many of us with this fucking disease, we are mostly happy to share even disgusting details, if it might help alleviate another's concern and we share tips about timing and topical shit for rubbish skin and how to deal with the tireds and disappointing people cos we can't go somewhere or do something. In any case, this part of social media I find helpful.

And I follow an number of other groups and individuals on social media. Some are a bit famous, and some are funny and some I know very well and some I am yet to meet.

I enjoy my local MP John Paul Langbroek's posts and sometimes make a comment. He nearly always replies. I have met him, but we are not FRIENDS. I don't reckon he replies for any reason other than he's interested in the conversation, cos he's my MP and he feels he has an obligation to his constituents  and to fulfill that obligation, he needs to listen to 'em and understand their situation.

Out of utter frustration last week I found MARK BAILEY Minister for Main Roads on Facebook. I have been waiting for a response from him about the appalling secrecy involved in the government contracts with the local contractors, since FEBRUARY.

I 'liked' him on Facebook, even though I had never met him, mostly cos his office refuses to make an appointment for me to see him, and in truth, I very much doubt I would 'like' him, if we did meet up.

And because of that 'like' and the way Facebook works and because his press people pop shit up online presumably to make him seem cool and hip and groovy, I get updates about his gallivanting, and pictures of him with smiling youngsters wearing political slogans all over their chests. When I saw such a photo with a caption about how he loved being out and about listening to the concerns of his people, well my fingers went all a quiver, and not in that lazy morning before the sun comes up, good way.

I wondered about what to say, cos I certainly don't feel like he's given any consideration to my concerns. But you catch more flies with honey than vinegar so I was polite, not pleasant, but not down right rude either, and that's what I wanted to be.

I figured that his handlers would immediately remove my comment. But NO bugger me, I get a reply pretending to be from the man himself saying he'd look into it. So my itchy fingers went at it again.

And I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to hear that I am still waiting.

It will not surprise me if they/he unfriend me, and I will not be upset or wonder about it, cos as I said we were not and are not and will not be friends.

But it makes me wonder. Just like the Orange dick let loose on Twitter, how does anyone in politics make good mileage from social media? JPL seems to manage pretty well, but maybe that's cos his handlers jump onto any meanness with their delete finger at the ready.

But a reasonable rule for 'em might be just to NOT REPLY. Cos once there is something out there in the public domain it's impossible to get it back. Sure the servants of the public, and you know how loosely I use that term, sure they can deny receiving phone calls or emails or letters and pretend they responded but emails and letters have gone missing, they can put the phone down at anytime siting bad language or shouting as their excuse, they can speak in government bullshit speak and take a very long time saying less than nothing at all, cos even though they warn you that calls are recorded( wouldn't that be useful sometimes?) and you get automatic email responses, they just deny deny deny.

But with social media, well there's just no 'take backs'.

There is now a public record of Mark Bailey saying he would get back to me, that he'd look into the delay and there was an apology too. Of course this could be me overstepping what was actually said, cos he did not say he'd look into  the whole sorry mess - just the delay in responding, he didn't say he would ever answer my direct questions, he didn't say that he'd put a stop to the secret silent agreements that give governmental permission for appalling noise and outrageous behaviour, nah he didn't say much of anything at all.

So perhaps his minders are better at all this social media malarkey  than I gave 'em credit for.

FUCK!

Me Fella's home

Here's my souvenir - a smiling Buddha, equipped with sharpened teeth and he's wearing a dress. 

Travelling through time zones is such a difficult concept to me. I just find the idea that somewhere else it's a different time, difficult, well very difficult, virtually fucking impossible. Not because I think the world is flat, or because I think I am the centre of the universe, well mostly I don't, it's just because I find it tricky to imagine.

So this little Stevie sojourn was to Thailand to visit with a mate of his and to go on a little tour around parts unexplored. Thailand is 3 hours behind the Big House, and for those who are similarly handicapped, that means that when it is my 9 o'clock in the morning, it is only 6am in Thailand, and that is much easier to work out than when Stevie is off in his homeland where the difference is 10 or 9 hours and when I have to take off 2 or 3 hours, or maybe I add them on, and then go to the other side of the day. It doesn't matter how often he heads away, I need to work out the formula again cos it doesn't stay in my head. And when I am in London and I am trying to Skype the kids, working in reverse does not come easily to me either.

I am a world time zone fucking idiot.

Anyway, even though he was at the blunt end of the plane and has had a ridiculously interrupted sleep as he ran like a maniac through Singapore's airports to find 2 trains to catch his connection to Brisvegas and then had dinner and avoided breakfast before getting on the train to the Goldie after hare-arsing through customs and immigration, he seems remarkably fresh. (It took him longer to get home by train, on the last leg of the journey than it did to get from Phuket to Singapore, but that's just an aside.)

Me, on the other hand, well I feel less than spritely. You see I waited up to hear if he made the Singapore connection which he obviously did, and then had trouble going to sleep, cos I wanted to be awake in time to send him a welcome home text at silly o'clock this morning, which I did.

And I sort of had a little schedule planned in my head that after I had sent that 'hello', I might snooze for a while and then get on with things, but bugger me if his plane wasn't Elliott Early and he had somehow vapourised himself through all the usual shit and was happily sitting on the train! Fucking hell! My 3 hours had become an hour and half so that meant screaming into action. Cos you know, I had to get sorted for my fella, and that meant I had to wash my hair and draw on some eyebrows, and find something half way decent to wear and down a cup of tea and tell Dog her Dad was coming home and make my way through school hour traffic without getting nicked for another speeding fine.

It was all pretty frantic.

He seems happy to be home, although there is a certain lean to his walk that tells me he needs some sleep, and I rather expect that he will slump in his chair tonight after his welcome home dinner, which unlike anything he's downed in the last 2 weeks, contains no chilli at all. He might be awoken by swearing at the tellie as I watch House Rules, because this was my dirty little secret, but whilst he was away it has been promoted to my dirty little obsession - watching it tomorrow or the next day just won't do.

Scents of slow cooked lamb in red wine and lashings of garlic are filling the house and Dog is a waggy tailed crazy girl cos her Dad is home.

All's good at the Big House.

Old Style Dinner

When I was married - just a girl, we had a house with not much furniture and plenty of room and the thickest 70s shag pile carpet you have ever seen, courtesy of one of Dad's friends as a very flash wedding present. Ahhh. Bloody impractical of course, especially when you add in a naughty dog and a blind cat and 2 people not much fond of housework. It was a social place and a there was a core group of friends who were regular visitors. Lot of drinks and meals were consumed, but nobody had any money so food pickings were slim and the wine came in flagons, which then became planters. Ahh the 80s.

There were a number of recipes that became staples like Tuna Mornay which we all had a go at, deciding that the addition of a little horseradish was the piece de resistence. I think there was a can of tuna and a packet of cheap pasta and some milk and maybe a packet of french onion soup, but I could have just made that up. I think there was cheese on the top and then the whole thing was thrown in the oven while copious amounts of booze was downed and consequently any old shit would have tasted OK. This one pot wonder could be expanded to feed the many, Jesus would have been proud.

Occasionally, though if it was just him and me, and there was any money left in the cigar box at the end of the fortnight, I'd splurge on a can of asparagus and make a deluxe quiche. I don't know why asparagus was so expensive but it was, and still is so it seems, cos I am gonna step back in time today and make a quiche for my supper.

Since then it's been possible to buy fresh asparagus and that's what I have done. When in season, it's about my very favourite vegetable - versatile and tasty and somewhere in the back of my mind, even when it has only cost a few pennies cos it was growing like a grass weed and the farmers are pleased to get rid of it, even then I reckon it is a special treat. But today I didn't even look for a fresh bunch, I went straight for the can.

But now, before I start, I am trying to recall the recipe. I have a sheet of puff pastry, but think it should be short crust - never mind. Oh Well. And I have eggs and cream though maybe not enough. Oh Well and my can of asparagus and some pancetta instead of bacon - should be an OK substitute. and I think that's all there is to it. Blind bake the pastry then fill it up and bake it til it's cooked.

Fingers crossed it's OK, but if it's not then I reckon I can pick out the green stuff and feed it to Dog.

TV Round Up.

Any Aussies watching this show? Am I the only one who is shouting shit at these 2? Yeh I can see the dust too.

My Name is Sue and I am a TV tragic.

I will watch any old sort of shit, and if it is really shit shit shit, I will play channel shuffle and watch 2 or 3 or more lots of shit at once. Yeh I am an addict. I can't imagine a day when I don't have the box on. I speak to the characters and shout abuse at the ones I don't like. I rouse at news reports and reporting and loathe it when shit goes down on the tellie which is just too fantastic to be real, but is presented as absolutely authentic, cos I do hate it when the TV assumes I am some sort of dickhead. How very fucking dare that machine treat me like a fuckwit?

So I am about over the cooking shit shows cos they just make me feel lazy, which I am, and a shit cook which I am not always. I record Masterchef and whip right through it to the end to see the final dish and see who goes home. I am over all the pseudo tension build up of ooopies and mistakes or the fake confidences which are almost always followed by failures of biblical proportions, after all, pride cometh before a fall.

But I am still hooked on Survivor even after all these years and while I watch the recorded programmes so I can skip through the ads, I watch every conversation and spend time trying to work out what is gonna happen, and I like to watch it in a very timely fashion cos I like the tension of wondering, not the knowing cos I saw who was voted out on social media.

And I am embarrassed to admit this, but I have been reeled into HOUSE RULES, this season. Of course it is all bullshit. The people do about fuck all I reckon, oh they might slap around a little paint, and I believe that they do go to shops and buy stuff and then they carry some of it into the house and pop it into place. I don't believe that these people have been living in the houses. I believe that someone in TV land found the houses and made up a story and found some unemployed, or maybe unemployable folk who fancy getting their faces on the tellie for a couple of months. I believe that the directors and writers position the viewers to have sympathy for or love or hate the supposed renovators. Let's face it there has to always be a villain to keep us interested, so lines are written and rehearsed and delivered and edited, and played on the box, and we are encouraged to believe it's all true.

But I don't buy it.

Well except for those dreadful women Fi and Nicole. Yep I have totally bought into their bullshit. And I think it's cos they are old enough to know better. They are old enough to think for themselves. They are old enough to tell the TV people to fuck off when they come up with more and more extreme bullshit, and they are old enough to be able to work out just how they will be coming across on the box. SO as they are presenting as 2 just hateful, bitter, not very bright, bitches, some of it must be pretty close to the mark. I dislike these 2 A LOT, especially the long haired one. Yeh  admit I have been shouting at the tellie. I am wishing them all manner of misadventure. I'd like someone to come along in the dead of night and run a chalk coloured tattoo line right down their faces.

And I wouldn't mind if one of those ridiculous hard hats that they are all wearing was mysteriously filled with cat shit and piss and we could watch it drip down someone's face. There's an idea for the director...just a 'Thank You' will do.

My Name is Sue and yes I am a TV tragic.

Nostalgia.

Grade 1A Morningside SS 1965

Grade 7A Morningside SS 1971

A New Year's idea of mine was to find my old journals and include some of the entries here occasionally, and I reckon it is some sort of result that it has only taken me 5 months to unearth the box. Now I didn't say it was a GOOD result just some sort  and pretty piss poor comes to mind but Ho Hum.

As is often the case I guess, where I thought they were was not where they were, Bugger!, but as I had started I thought I'd have a good rummage around in the 'storage room' - yeh that's where I pop things that have no real home and more than likely should be given away or dumped - 2 big boxes of the grandie's baby toys comes to mind - any takers?

Anyway, I found 'em and I spent a somewhat tortured 6 hours reading a lot of 'em, cos I was quite prolific between 1990 and 2001. 10 years worth of stuff and as it mostly has to do with my girl and me and how we managed her girlhood, it's gonna remain private. I remember when I started writing, I figured that she might like at some point to read it and see if she reconciled the words and her memories and this became very important after I was first diagnosed with cancer in 1992. Any way it is all packed back up again and she can have it when I shuffle off, and read it or not as she sees fit.

But in the same box was some shit from MY childhood.

The school photos just made me smile, and I wonder if people can find me among all those good looking kids. I'll give you a clue - I'm one of the girls.

And as I had a little nostalgic moment I recalled that the old woman used to make our uniforms. For some strange reason in year 5 she decided to make 'em with sleeves. Now puberty must have kicked in early for me, cos that was the year I began an imbalance between front and back and consequently I kept ripping the back of the sleeves. They would rip open if I played sport or danced or even just reached across the desk for a ruler. So the sleeves would rip and she would beat me, so I took to trying to stitch 'em up myself, but in the end there was more cotton stitching thread than fabric, so I wore a hot shitting jumper for most of the year. Ah the things you recall when going through old photos.

And then I found old school report cards.

Precious little shreds of paper, half an A4, folded again, divided into 3 terms. and kept for the whole year. My god I can only imagine the pressure on the teachers to get it right in term 3 cos I guess the 'no cross out' rule was still in play back then.

The comments made me laugh, and some of the maths. They give a percentage score for each subject and then for some strange reason - perhaps to show that the teachers could do some averaging themselves, they'd give an average percentage - but really what would that mean? Averaging Maths and English and Social study scores? Why?

One year I got 94% average and a comment 'Suzanne tends to be careless, and this is what loses her marks.' I mean fucking hell, 94% ain't too bad, how careless could I have been?

In anycase, the comment was probably echoed at home with darling Dad asking why I didn't get 100%

And I found most of my Girl's stuff too. I wondered if her father might have the couple of things that are missing, but if not then they are just gone forever.

And then I wondered why we keep all this shit.

The journals I can sort of justify, but only for my girl, but I bet most of us have old school reports and similar dross. Oh sure it is a pleasant enough way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but apart from that what's the point?

In my journals I was always lamenting the fact that I was too fat and that I was on this diet or going to that gym.

I only wish I was as fat as I thought I was at 40. Ho Hum.