The Camera Loves You

At work today I ran into a girl I know whose kids go to the same school I used to.

"I saw a photo of you in The Dove the other day," she said.

I was puzzled, trying to remember being in an establishment called The Dove and the paparazzi being present.

"What the hell is The Dove?"

"The school magazine."

Ugh. I realised it must have been a photo from the 25th school reunion, held late last year. [And let me pause at this point in the compelling narrative to say that I had no intention of going, having had me fill of reunification at our 20th anniversary, but The Burp had insisted on my presence and then the day before bailed out on the grounds that she was moving house. A likely excuse.]

I explained just the first bit of this to the work girl. And added, "I dread to think what that photo was like - I may have had a little more to drink than intended. How embarrassing."

We were in the lift and it stopped to let her off at her floor. "Oh it was a lovely photo," she said, as she stepped out. Then she turned and gave me a look I can only describe as enigmatic. "You looked.....appropriately happy."

Not Smug Marrieds

Having dinner with Inge de Bruin at the Inglewood Hotel tonight. We are going to drink wine and gossip over the latest saga with her on-again off-again boyfriend. It all feels very Bridget Jones. I wish I could look into the future and tell Inge that she and her Vile Richard will end up happily ever after, but neither of us really knows what will happen - though I'd like to trust my sneaking suspicion that it Will All Work Out In The End.

In the meantime, pub meals are a mighty fine substitute for love.

Variations on a Theme Parts I & II

Part I


RobertPlant was admiring my shoes as we walked along.

"Oooh, nice shoes. A sensible flat heel I see.....Mmmm, with just a hint of discipline."


Part II

We were doing boxing at boot camp. The young lad taking the class was giving us some instructions.

"So you stand with your dominant hand back. And then you take your other hand...whaddya call that?...your non-dominant hand?"

"Er, would that be your submissive hand?" I asked.

There were a few snorts of laughter. The light was dim but I believe the poor lad blushed.

Pick Me Up

I was enjoying being in a stinker of a mood yesterday so when I stopped at the shops for yoghurt and rice crackers, I decided to go mental and get a packet of Mint Slices as well. Then, as luck would have it, Quirkie asked if I was receiving visitors and I said, "Yes! Come over! I've got Mint Slices!" She was round in a flash and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours screeching and gossiping. Her four older children were all out living their lives, leaving her with just a baby and an empty house and an encroaching sense of loneliness, and I was cranky so we were the perfect antidote for each other.

But the best part of her whole visit was when she walked in the front door and I said, "Sorry the house is such a pigsty," (as I idly kicked a little pile of dirty - but not soiled - undies out of view), and she looked around and said, "That's cute."

"What's cute?"

"That you think this is a pigsty."

Well, we may only be one human and two cats but we have let our standards slip shockingly. Shockingly.

You might get sick of me saying it, but I never will.

He was tops.

The Manana Effect

Well, I feel affronted! So this piece of paper has gone missing round these here parts and the last person to handle it said that they had put it in my in tray. Dirty dobber. Two people - two! did they think I was going to cause a scene or something? - came into my office to ask if I'd seen it. No, no I hadn't I said, and there may have been something of the hasty, a touch of the imperiousness, in the manner with which I'd waved them away. Had I checked my in tray lately, they quietly persisted. Well, no, I hadn't. My chair and computer are over here, my in tray is over there. And never the twain shall meet!

Perhaps you should, they suggested. Their eyes were flitting nervously from me to the corner of my desk that is home to the tray (in).

It was when I swung round that I saw what that humble receptacle had become under my tender neglect. There was a mountain of paper shooting out of it at odd angles. The mountain looked like the slightest loud noise might cause an avalanche. It seemed to teeter. Perhaps it even tottered. Whatever it was doing, it made me feel a little ill.

I'll just have a quick flick and see if it's in there. My voice took on an aspect of humility. Turns out it was somewhere down near the bottom, this missing, vital piece of paper. Well I do get a lot of paper dumped on me, you know!

So there were a couple of sarky comments made about my filing system and they left. Huh. Well, I sure showed them. My in tray is now neat as a pin; containing only the three documents in it that were put there today. Everything else I've taken and shoved into my cupboard. I'll deal with it, you know, later.

Stockholm and All That

An evening at home with the cats. It's blowy and chilly outside but I've got a hot milo and the music of Mink DeVille to warm me up. Later, I'm going to give the Violent Femmes' Hallowed Ground a spin.

The Burp spent a couple of weeks one school holiday on the Fitzroy River with me and Bloody Ern. We had a small radio we could play and we'd take turns at playing the tapes we liked. The Burp would play Wham!'s Fantastic album and I'd play Hallowed Ground. By the end of the holiday the repeated exposure meant I'd become quite the Wham! fan and The Burp was even more convinced that all the music I liked was crap.

Ern just thought we were both twerps.

Ay?

When I was doing my Dip Ed last year one of the things we were told about classroom management was that we not punish the whole class for one child's transgression - you know the sort of thing: "You're all staying behind until I find out who..." - so as not to crush the young children's fragile eggshell mind and all that. I suppose. I wouldn't know. My mind was never a fragile eggshell. It was always scrambled.

So this morning at the dreaded Boot Camp, the instructor told us that when we weren't doing a specific activity, we had to keep our feet moving at all times. I guess some of us just didn't pay him no mind and not long afterwards he yelled out for us all to get down on the grass and do twenty push ups. After that you could hear a lot of hissing around our little group, "You're standing still! If he sees you we'll all be doing push ups!" and the person (ie, me) who had been mooching, started to do a little jog on the spot.

Here's my point: this is a prime example of peer pressure and mild bullying keeping everyone in line and, quite literally, on their toes. If up and coming teachers don't impart these important lessons to kids, how will they ever become the responsible adults we need to take over from us fine specimens?

Briefly Once

New Girl reckons that lighters held aloft at concerts will soon be replaced by the glow of mobile phones.

She could be right. Brain tumours are waaaaay more glamorous than lung tumours.

But what I really miss is the footy scarf, held up between two outstretched arms, swaying back and forth to Little River Band's latest hit. I always yearned to be in the audience of Countdown. Those kids had it made in the shade.

I'm Back, Baby!

I've shied away from Culley's after a dodgy chicken sandwich or two, but if they're making fairy bread then I'll be buying it.

Awfully Frond of You

Paper straws. I miss them. I wish you could still get them. They'd get all crinkly and they'd squish at the sucking end and you'd have to turn them over. And I liked the scratchy sound they made against the edge of the hole in the can. Of course, they were best hand-in-hand with the old can with the slightly dangerous ring-pull tab; or, better still, with the cans that needed two holes punched in the top. Scratch, scratch back and forward; waxy paper on sharp metal. I couldn't stand it but I couldn't stop.

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

I can see a swimming pool from my office window. The surface is always being blown by a breeze and it's constantly in motion. It looks like it's covered in sequins. There are palms planted along one edge of the pool, the edge facing me. So I always see aqua fringed with bright green. It's a pool behind a hotel. It's for holiday-makers. Holidays should always be bright blue and green.

A Pen For Your Thoughts

When I was seventeen, Bloody Ern tightened his already significantly cinched belt and sent me off to the US for a year. I stayed with DrSeeGud and his family, who showed me a terrific time.

We were camping down in Mexico in the September. DrSeeGud left a can of something cheesy in the fire one night. There we were, feeling cosy and convivial, when the can exploded, covering me in strings of hot, melted cheese. Actually, the flight through the air must have cooled it considerably because it hardly did me any harm.

You may be surprised to learn that I nevertheless dramatised the affair in my diary and read it out for everyone's entertainment. DrSeeGud scoffed at my version of events, demanding that I insert various clarifications, and declared, "Yours is going to be the first diary with a rebuttal section."

And then, look, all these years later - I have a blog.

Creepy Song

Young Girl by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap.

When Ern and I were jolting down some road to camp at some fishing hole - that had to be kept secret from the world lest even one other person stumble across it and it become "stuffed" - I'd dread this song coming up on whatever country collection tape we were listening to. I never had to beg him to fast forward it. I think he thought it was creepy too. Not good daddy-daughter sing-along material.

But at least the video provides some much-needed comic relief.

Old Fashioned Values

"Did I tell you what Bezley told me about her and Ern getting married?"

"Don't think so."

"Apparently she was all for living together, didn't see the need to get married, but he insisted..."

"What - because of Baby Girl?"

"Exactly. [Attempts a deep voice.] 'Oh no, no, no...I couldn't do that to my Baby Girl.'"

[Laughter.] "God, he was nuts, wasn't he?"

"That goes without saying. But I'm spewing - I could have spent all Year 12 wandering around talking about how my dad and his girlfriend were shacked up."

The butterflies for the butterfly ball.

Some people put on a big show of moaning and groaning about the relentless passing of time; the inevitable rolling by of the years. Not me. With each spin round the sun, life just seems to get better. My outlook is sunny and, as Ian Dury would say, here's some reasons to be cheerful:

(1) I thought I was moving to the country. I'm not. I'm staying in Perth.
(2) The beach and the ocean were beautiful this morning, and I was the only person there to witness it.
(3) My friends are all dear and lovely to me. I get to spend different parts of today with four of them. Plus the Small Thing. I only hope she doesn't hide a spider in the picnic basket.

Yes indeedy, life is good and getting gooder. Happy birthday to ME.

The Castle

A friend from uni lives in a flat that her parents own. They tend to pop in while she's out and take care of whatever needs taking care of around the place. She is not the tidiest person on the planet and this drives her parents a bit bonkers. She came home the other day to her bombsite home to find a note on the kitchen bench.

In a big step backwards for the girls, her mother had written: "You're going to make some man very unhappy one day."

I liked what her father wrote much better: "I hope they catch the bastards that did this."

Thend

Uni is over!

All this free time in front of me!

All the things I can do now that I don't have to do stupid things to avoid doing essays.

Never mind the width; feel the quality.

I was just on the phone to New Girl.

"That was quite the long post," she said.

"Well, it sure beats writing an essay."

As does this.

Iron Maiden

I was lolling about at home yesterday evening, reading a book and contemplating a quiet night in. The phone rang. It was a couple of my uni mates.

"Whaddya up to?"

"I'm lolling about reading a book," I was forced to explain seeing as they don't read the blog.

"It's Friday night! Get up here, we're having wine and pizza."

"I was thinking about a quiet night in."

"No, you weren't. We've already had one glass of wine and we're about to order the pizza."

"I'm on my way."

It takes the first five songs from Sinead O'Connor's The Lion & the Cobra to get from Freo to City Beach at that time of the evening. Slightly less on the return trip, after midnight. That's useful information!

But just try telling that to the cats. They were waiting for me on the front porch when I got home, looking slightly resentful. I think I'm going to get the chat about treating the place like a hotel.

Would you care to dance (and then die)?

I was chewing the fat with a young lad at uni who was sharing with me some of his hopes and dreams.

Lord knows why; it wasn't like I'd slipped him a mickey. If I'd drugged someone I'd be using my ill-gotten influence for something other than revelations of hopes and dreams.

He told me that he really - rilly - wants to be a dad some day. Isn't that sweet? Well, I thought so too - at first.

"But here's the thing," he said. "I can see myself with my kids - all daughters - and I'm a widower."

I didn't quite know how to respond. He was looking at me expectantly. Finally I said, "Interesting. But, you know, when I'm chatting to a nice girl? I wouldn't open with that."