Indeed

From: hazelblackberry@
Sent: 07 October 2009 3:13 PM
To: Jessie Mo@
Subject: RE: XX strikes again

.....I was thinking that if I ever went on RSVP, my profile would start like this: I plan to make some lucky man very unhappy one day. New Girl suggests I add: Don’t squirm so, Little Man, it could be you!

From: Jessie Mo@
Sent: Thursday, 8 October 2009 6:23 AM
To: hazelblackberry@
Subject: RE: XX strikes again

I like your clarity around what the man will get out of a relationship with you.

Words are all I have...

Jessie Mo was in a meeting with a lawyer but anxious to get out and email me. It seems this legal professional kept referring to the problem under discussion as 'a moveable beast'.

----------------------------

Sarah Ulmer sent me a rather torturously worded email she'd received:

"Availability of Minister X for the purposes of signing briefs: May I suggest that due to the volume of work that is currently going through the Minister’s office that if you require a response from the Minister before the end of the year an email from your General Manager to the Minister’s adviser would assist in prioritising your brief."

When she forwarded this little nightmare to me, she added at the top: "Am thinking about having the Minister sign her name alongside Elle McPherson's on my briefs."

We're younger than that now.

Emails have been flying back and forth across the Nullarbor between Jessie Mo and me on various delightful and, at times, rather juvenile subjects. Well, the subjects themselves aren't juvenile, but the approach we like to take to them certainly is. We agree that 40 is not the new 30. It's the new 21. Which is fine by me. I'd like a giant cake in the shape of a key. And lots of presents.

And it was the juvenile approach that QEII and I were taking to our interrupted discussion on the, ahem, congress of the bee. We were thinking about a girl about town, out with a rakish gentleman, enjoying a light and breezy time together, sparkling with conversation. They find themselves retiring to the home of one or the other. How does a young lady, keen to show she's a good sport, keep the mood easy going and carefree? Particularly afterwards, when things can be a bit tricky, perhaps even awkward. After much careful consideration we came up with our top three insouciant lines that a fair young maid might use to kick start the free-flowing banter once more:

- "You must really love me!"
- "I can't wait to tell my mum we're getting married!"
- "You're going to make a great daddy!"

New Girl, when I told her, heartily approved of all of these approaches. (She, too, had had a couple of glasses of wine.) Not only did my stylish and flair-some friend applaud these suggestions, she threw in one brilliant one of her own: "Can I blog that?"

Girls, feel free to use any of these should the situation, and the need, arise. Fellas, if you find yourself in the intimate company of a sweet lass and she murmurs one of these lines to you, try to control the spasm of horror and simply enquire of her, "Perchance, do you read 'A Bex and a Good Lie Down'?"

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas

I left a message for Jessie Mo on her phone the other day. She rang me back a while later to say that I'd missed her because she'd been sitting in her car in the garage listening to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

She assured me it wasn't with the windows up and the engine running and a hose connected from the exhaust pipe to the interior of the car. Because that would just be insulting to The Mac.

Now she's emailed me saying that she always thought the song "Oh Daddy" was "Oh Danny". Since she realised her mistake she's a bit creeped out. I berated her for not being hip to the lingo of the 1970s, man. Daddy merely being a reference to a man, not a father.

I'd better be right. I'd hate to think that all these years I've been crooning along to Christina McVie's Electra complex.

I'm making good friends with you.

So Jessie Mo organised dinner with a few of our friends for the Saturday evening I was in Canberra. There were seven of us there: Nick, Jessie Mo's twin sister Hydro Flo (good name, Nick), The Enigma, LiT* and Sarah Ulmer, who has moved back there after her all-too brief stint in Perth.

We dined at the Mecca Bah and a gay old time was had by all. There was a lot of yelling and screaming but it was all in jest, and also the only way you could be heard above the din. The Enigma neither yelled nor screamed. He preferred to behave more....enigmatically.

Because we're such a bunch of crazy funsters we spent a good part of the evening coming up with words that contain "pan". Hydro Flo and her boyfriend started this game, and they've pretty much unearthed the lot, but we still managed to think of a few: frangipani, sampan, timpani, chimpanzee. Apparently a truce was called but I didn't hear it and after a few minutes of normal conversation I leaned over and said to Hydro Flo, "I don't suppose you've already got pantry?" As it turned out, they hadn't. There was much rejoicing at the table. Except from Nick. He looked wounded and betrayed (as only he can). Then he spent the rest of the evening muttering to himself.

At one point the conversation lagged for a while and we listened to some exceptionally stylish youths next to us vigorously exchanging ideas about the merits of oral love. One courteous gentleman shared with his companions a story about hooking up with a slapper with no teeth. His description of the encounter left his dining fellows hooting with appreciation.

"Well," said Hydro Flo as we sat there digesting the tale ourselves, "at least the geriatrics now have something to be happy about."



*Lost in Translation. For those who know her.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

My friend Jessie Mo knows that I'm not the timeliest of people when it comes to handing over birthday presents. Even with the best preparation, something always trips me up. I bought her birthday present just before Christmas and got a nice box for it and wrapped the whole thing in ribbon. The box is sitting on my desk. Jessie Mo's birthday was on the 8th of January.

We were having an email conversation about my lax ways and I was able to point out that there is someone out there worse than me. (Isn't there always.) I'd been on the phone to Dr Zhivago who apologised for not ringing me for my 36th birthday.

Dr Z: "Look, I've got something to send you and if I haven't sent it by the end of January, give me a call and hassle me about it."
HB: "Oh, what does it matter? Just whenever."
Dr Z: "No, Haze, I have to send it this month. It was supposed to be your present for your 30th."

Watcha got cookin'?

The first day of spring and it's a beautiful, sunny day. Just as it should be.

I had lunch today with Jessie Mo, Livewire and their lovely little girl, the Boop. Honestly, this kid is the cutest little girl you will ever see. She has big blue eyes, a pixie face, long eyelashes and a delightful, cheeky smile. If I was them, I'd get an agent. Make her life a living hell.

[Also, I would be one of those scary parents screaming at the umpire at the Under-9s football match. But, hey, we all have our unique take on parenthood. And I say make those little creeps work for YOU for a change.]

I can't tell you much about lunch because I pretty much ignored the two adults and wooed their sweet daughter. If there'd been a Weber in the vicinity, she'd have gone straight on it.

The Devil's Radio

Over on her blog, Jessie Mo has been discussing the glories of a family gossip session. When I was a kid visiting Don Mary and The Feuhrer I loved it when it was time to pop in on The Aunts - Tilly & Skeets, and sometimes Aroma would be there too - for some afternoon tea and a gossip. Apart from all the delicious Aunt Food, there was plenty of mysterious adult conversation. Most of the meaning and context was lost on my young and small brain, but the occasional drop in voices to hushed tones, and the sheer delight the grown-ups obviously took in discussing others, made it all rather fascinating and compelling.

I am the type of person who is enthralled by speculation on the lives of people I don't even know. Gossip mags were made for me.

Boganism

But unless you're TISM, does anyone say, "I'm a bogan baby."? Boganism is weird like that. Jessie Mo and I have discussed this once or twice in the past. You see, a surfer might say, "Dude, I'm a surfer, dude."* But bogans don't tend to identify themselves as bogans. Indeed, I have been in the presence of bogans taunting others with the bogan tag by, you know, yelling "Bogan!" at them. Usually these scenarios involve cars hooning around and lots of burnt rubber.

So does no one ever self-identify as a bogan because the bogan is always "the other"? There could be a PhD thesis in this. But not by me. Because (a) I'm not enrolled in a higher degree at a tertiary institution, and (b) I don't really think there is a PhD thesis in this.

But if I have any bogan readers out there who would care to contribute, please do!

(*Or they might not. Clearly I know nothing about surfer culture. Or dude usage.)