Looking cool in a penguin costume does not make you a literary giant …

If there isn’t already, there should be a law which states clearly and firmly that fit, healthy 21-year-old lads are not allowed to always be first on the WiiFit leaderboard. This is particularly pertinent when the WiiFit actually belongs to Rocco’s mother. She should be allowed to be best at something. 

The Hunter Gatherer gave Rocco’s mother the WiiFit for Christmas. The frightening part was that it wanted to weigh her. Naturellement, she thought NOT. Who in their right mind wants technology to tell them they are obese?  You could argue that machines don’t know everything – and Rocco’s mother did. Therefore, she closed her eyes while the machine did its worst, and didn’t ever click on the WEIGHT button. A little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing – and Rocco’s mother wanted to venture forth into 2009 without much knowledge at all. Especially the kind which might impede her prior knowledge regarding how excellent chocolate and sea-salt potato crisps taste. And icy cold iced coffee by the gallon. And we’re not talking the low-fat kind. Why would we?

Rocco’s mother made herself a nice little avatar person and had a few happy hours trying out the games and exercises. Her nice little person happily zipped into a fetching penguin suit to compete in Penguin Slide – and was doing very well at that, and several other things. Rocco’s mother found she had surprisingly good balance. Because of this, she stupidly bragged to Rocco. A bad mistake, because Rocco has a competitive nature – and being a surfer, scoffed at the fact his aging mater might consider she could out-balance him at anything. He was sure he could do better. In a penguin suit, even.

Rocco set about making himself an avatar. A very cool one indeed – with spiky hair, sunglasses and a lime green outfit. Rocco’s mother *sigh* had to admit it was the height of coolness. Surreptitiously, in edit mode, she removed the spectacles she’d given herself. After all, she only wears them for reading and there are no reading activities to compete in. The fact she could whup Rocco’s arse in a spelling bee is her own personal and heavily guarded secret.

Rocco’s avatar zipped itself into the penguin suit – and even looked cool thus attired. He flashed backwards and forwards on the iceberg with gay abandon – not falling off once. Rocco’s mother, on the other hand, spent a fair bit of time flailing in the water. And was too obese tired to leap elegantly to catch the prized red fish (10 points each).  At the end of his turn, Rocco’s penguin leaped and cheered and punched the air. He then took his place at the top of the leaderboard. By this time, Rocco’s mother had broken out a packet of biscuits and settled down to watch whilst he took away, one by one, her records for Table Tilt, Ski Slalom and Tightrope Walking. In fact, he had so many turns at Ski Slalom that Rocco’s mother dropped off the leaderboard completely and will possibly forever remain unranked.

‘Look at it this way,’ Rocco smugly assured her, ‘It will give you something to aim for!’ There actually was something his mother would have liked to have aimed for. But one doesn’t do that to one’s only son. No matter how great the provocation. It also rankles slightly that Rocco’s body fitness test placed him right in the middle of IDEAL. In fact, it then proceeded to tell him he should aim to gain three kilos. There was no facility for file sharing – or Rocco’s mother would have happily downloaded some of hers into his fatbox.

On a happier note, Rocco’s mother is top of the leaderboard in Jogging. This is because Rocco can’t be bothered doing that. It would be beyond his dignity to run on the spot for 10 minutes in the middle of the living room when he could reap greater rewards in far shorter time at other activities. Nor will he try the yoga poses. To be perfectly honest, Rocco’s mother hasn’t attempted these either. She will wait until the holidays are over and she has the house completely to herself in order to pose in private.

There is some light on the horizon, however, Flygirl and Roo will both be visiting towards the end of the month. Flygirl has her own WiiFit and a very active, sporty partner to compete with at home. Roo is a gym junkie and jogs for miles and miles. Rocco’s mother hopes these two will prove formidable foe. Watch out, Rocco – your time may almost be up.

And bear in mind, your mother will always be able to whup your arse in a spelling bee. No amount of looking dashing in a penguin suit will ever change that …

.oOo.

This time, Rocco’s mother doesn’t have any idea what to call it …

Lately, on just about every level, Rocco’s mother feels old age is creeping up on her. And it’s not Rocco’s father. Things in general are going downhill, dropping off and seizing up in an alarming fashion. And that’s before she gets out of bed, even.

The most worrying thing seems to be the problem with RM’s memory. What? Her MEMORY. Ah, yes. And it’s not just a matter of trying to figure out where the frozen peas are – or even whether she’d remembered to buy them in the first place – but finding the right word to describe something. Where the word should be – and indeed, once was – a blank space mockingly waits. But Rocco’s mother finds she is increasingly unable to fill it.

A few weeks ago while visiting one of Rocco’s sisters in Darwin, RM and Flygirl were wandering around a shopping mall and came upon one of RM’s favourite things. And no, it wasn’t a chocolate-covered Alan Rickman wrapped in gold foil. She would have remembered that. It was a book sale. Rocco’s mother, as was only to be expected, fell on it with rapture and frenzied excitement, calling out to Flygirl – ‘Oh look – they’ve got those … those … calendar books.’

Flygirl raised an eyebrow. ‘Diaries,’ she suggested. It hit Rocco’s mother that she hadn’t been able to retrieve that word. It hadn’t been there. A programming glitch had occurred at the vital moment. Diaries? Surely she used to know that? Even yesterday, it had been part of her everyday vocabulary – flung into conversations in a random and cavalier manner whenever the occasion called for it. Which happened to be often. Which happened to be often, because as sure as bears mess themselves in the woods, Rocco’s mother is going to make sure she doesn’t go starting conversations where she needs to use the word … the word … that word any time soon.

It is alarming to suppose there are other words in there, silently becoming fainter and fainter until they slip forever out of the memory bank. Tomorrow, will Rocco’s mother tentatively request ‘filled bread’ when asking for a sandwich? Will she come down for breakfast and not recognise anybody, like Rocco’s father on the day he first wore his new spectacles? It scares Rocco’s mother to know she’d be utterly useless if called upon to witness anything. After being served in a shop and walking outside again, she is aware she would not be able to describe the shop assistant – or recognise her in the police line-up. When the police officer demands, ‘Where were you on the night of September 23?’ in an accusatory manner, Rocco’s mother would not have a clue. She would not recall shoplifting from Food-o-rama or whether she’d eaten the legs of the chocolate-covered Alan Rickman. She would possibly not remember what September was.

Some people are blessed with extraordinary memories. Do they purposely focus on every minute detail before they file it away – or is it entirely accidental? Where is the fairness in that? The first time Rocco’s parents visited Flygirl in Darwin, they ambled downtown one morning to enjoy an alfresco breakfast under shady trees in the early morning warmth of the city. The menu was written on a huge blackboard outside the cafe, so Rocco’s father made his selection. At the counter, he said, ‘I’ll have the Full Monty, please – without mushrooms.’ The lad behind the counter - who happened to be bald and British – frowned.

‘Does it say it comes with mushrooms?’

‘Er … I don’t know,’ Rocco’s father admitted. There had been so many menu options and permutations of breakfasty ingredients.

‘Well if it doesn’t say it comes with mushrooms, it doesn’t come with mushrooms,’ the lad said patiently. Which was fair enough. The breakfast, sans mushrooms, was very good indeed and enjoyed enormously by Rocco’s father, who only eats breakfast when he’s on holidays anyway and then makes an absolute pig of himself. 

A whole year or more later, Rocco’s parents returned to Darwin – by which time Rocco’s father was dying to reacquaint himself with the excellent breakfast - so he and Rocco’s mother headed downtown on their first morning and were happy to discover the alfresco cafe was still there in all its glory, blackboards cheerfully chalked in anticipation.

‘I’ll have the Full Monty, please,’ Rocco’s father told the lad behind the counter. And the lad eyed him up over the top of the coffee machine and baskets of freshly baked muffins, and said,  ’… it still doesn’t come with mushrooms …’

.oOo.

Considering the pixilation of the species …

 

By the time you read this they will probably have fired up the Large Hadron Collider and who knows what hell might have broken loose? Some people believe there will be loud hallelujahs – and there may well be – but whether they find the God Particle or not, I dare say I’ll still have floors to clean, a particularly bad hair day and still won’t have any nice cake in the house, either. (In a shameless and brazen fit of self promotion, please refer to Archives, January 16 – Apocalypse soon.)

Technology has indeed come a long, long way – so I found it both quirky and hilarious to see a story on the news tonight about another story the news channel wasn’t actually allowed to show us yet (legal reasons and defamation being what they are) – regarding some terrorists. There followed a picture of the group of alleged terrorists in court with pixilated faces. Nothing too alarming about pixilated faces, I hear you say – and no, there isn’t. Except that the pixilated faces were on sketches of the alleged terrorists – not actual photographic terrorists at all. And even more hilarious was the fact that, poking jauntily out from below the pixilated bits, highly telltale bushy black Osama beards had been bravely rendered with a trusty Derwent No.66 – leaving not an awful lot to the imagination anyway. In this technological age I find it amazing there are still people with pencil pots sitting in courtrooms doodling frantically away – but to then use pixilation over the top of their efforts seems bizarre. Why couldn’t the court artists merely have done a big fat scribble right over the eyes and noses? Or covered them with an elephant stamp, even.

 

The very thought of anyone managing to build the Hadron Collider is mindboggling when you consider trains don’t run on time and I don’t run at all. And there are days it would be a very nice thing altogether to be able to have a pixilated face as one lurched from the safety of one’s home to face a world of beautiful people in order to collect the electricity bill and dodgy pizza voucher from the mailbox. It would be comforting (nay, only fair) to have a pixilated face when your knicker elastic fails miserably halfway down Aisle 3 of Food-o-rama – and again, when your cashcard doesn’t work as they swipe it in the machine and you are not allowed to take your carefully chosen groceries home with you. Especially when the stash contained a six-pack of chocolate eclairs and two-for-the-price-of-one toilet rolls.

 

A pixilated face would have gone down a treat in my wedding photo, too. And on every occasion Rocco’s hapless mother had to front up to a parent/teacher interview. And what about one’s driving licence? If there was ever a case for pixilation, those miniature horror portraits are surely it.

 

These days, graphic artists can work miracles on facial blemishes and cellulite with a mere sweep of the mouse. Models are smooth and glamorous and even-textured. How many hours does this take – and would it not be easier to just go, ‘ah, bugger it!’ and apply the pixilation tool? Sorry, Elle, Naomi and Heidi … we’re all sisters under the pixels! You, too, can have funny little fuzzy squares just like mine plastered all over your perfect countenances! No more zits or spots or nasty bits – or even unwanted facial hair.

 

In actual fact, I wouldn’t mind some pixilation over pretty much the whole of the past week or two. Possibly because my face did not have the benefit of a paper bag over it, my computer decided it could no longer bear to look, and blew itself up. I am doing this on Frankenputer – a machine the Hunter-Gatherer has kindly cobbled together for me out of random bits and pieces, and for which I am exceedingly grateful. Frankenputer, however, does not have my novel, my huge collection of photographs of abandoned buildings and images from ghostcams – and most definitely does not have Vista with widgets. If the data on the hard drive of my deceased machine turns out to be non-recoverable, I will need very strong pixilation indeed so the rest of the world is spared the sight of madness descending – and then rising up again – and then descending for the final time with a deafening and earth-shattering thud.

 

In fact, the Hadron Collider can then feel free to do its best work. I’ve heard those God Particles will pretty much pixilate the entire universe in a very unrecoverable way altogether  – and daft, petulant people with busted computers won’t even be worthy of a mention anymore. Which, when you think about it, is pretty much as things ought to be …

.oOo.

 

Let sleeping dogs have really nice sheets …

I bought some new sheets yesterday, and they are very delicious indeed. Egyptian cotton with 400 thread count in a dark coffee colour.  Lying in them, I feel like Lady Muck. The Hunter Gatherer feels like Lord Muck. This is the point at which violins should play and we should run amok – but two Mucks don’t a mickle make. Or something of that ilk. The point is, there are not many things nicer than getting into deliciously fresh sheets.

The first deliciously fresh sheets we ever owned  ($10 from Big W with a matching quilt cover and two pillowcases … bargain!) – were installed on a mattress on the floor of a little rented cottage. In those days, that was what you did. None of this credit card stuff, where you furnish your first home with all the latest crap and scorn offers of cast-off furniture from eager friends and relatives who want to offload some junk. If you were lucky enough to own more than one set of sheets, the other ones were hung in the windows while you saved up for curtains. Nobody has sheets hanging in their windows anymore because it’s trendy to be in debt to Curtains-R-Us, Tellies-R-Huge and Chairs-R-4-Sitting-On.  Where’s the fun in that?

After a few weeks of hauling ourselves from the floor in the mornings, someone offered us a bed. It was marvellously ancient and past it, and the spring base had sprung, so our trusty mattress was sucked into trenchy goodness in the middle. This was very cosy for the most part and in the depths of winter, but not so ha-ha when you happened to be pissed off with the other party. You cannot lower your guard and fall asleep because you are hanging on to the edge of the mattress like grim death in order to not roll backwards and actually bump into the offending somebody and inadvertently give the impression you are, in fact, pleased with them. In the morning, your fingers are frozen into claws and you have to explain to puzzled colleagues why you have turned up for work resembling an exhausted, and not very benevolent, bird of prey.

There followed the waterbed age of the 80s, where nobody told you it was a bad idea unless both parties had identical metabolisms. Being a cold blooded reptilian person, I’d turn my side up to Hello Sailor, while the HG preferred Mr Whippy. When I had my way, you could just about smell the barbequing flesh as we dropped into a casserolesque coma there was possibly no coming out of – and on nights when the HG triumphed, I’d wake feeling as if I’d spent a night naked on the concrete car park of Food-o-rama. Except at least they have trees and not polar bears.

Beds have come and gone through the revolving door of our boudoir since then, and dozens of sheets have ended up in the garage rag pile. We’ve gone through florals, stripes, patterned and flannelette (much hated by the HG and banned forever) – and are now in the non-frivolous and predictable Age of Plain. Hopefully there won’t be too many more beds – but if the current model should fail, there are now more choices on offer than the wonders of the breakfast menu at Mickey D’s.

Yep, they’ve thought of everything these days and you can now purchase an ensemble which should just about suit everybody. The ideal bed zippers up the middle, which means you and your partner can choose the side that suits you – hard/soft/with-or-without gangnails – and the two sides are zippered together like so – resulting in two incredibly contented people who know exactly which side their bed is buttered on. Or zippered to, as the case may be.

Clinging desperately to the side with your ageing talons is now a thing of the past. When wishing to remain incommunicado, you merely unzip the beds, haul your half to another room/house/ suburb/continent – and the other half of the equation will immediately realise there is a possibility he has done something to trouble you and he had better be very, very sorry or else. All this, without you even having to raise your voice.

Bear in mind, however, this works both ways. You might just come home one night to find he’s zippered his half to someone else’s entirely. You can only hope she has talons much, much more spiteful than yours …

.oOo.

The necessary gigabytes for a lifetime memory stick …

I can’t remember much these days. Sometimes I can’t even remember what I was thinking five minutes ago. So it would be really innovative if we could download the contents of our brains into a computer in order to rewind and replay.

It’s a constant annoyance to the Rt Hons that I (allegedly) tell them things ‘a million times’. It’s partly (I try to convince myself) because there are four of them, and I can never remember which one I told a particular story to in the first place. According to them, it’s because I’ve lost it. There is much sighing, eye rolling and gnashing of teeth. Also according to them, I don’t remember things they (also allegedly) told me five minutes ago. Sometimes I don’t remember which one of them told me something but I do remember what it was. And if it’s any consolation whatsoever to them, I do remember bringing them into the world. Most very definitely indeed and with loud hallelujahs.

The first thing I remember ever (I think) was being at Filey in England on a caravan holiday when I was about three or four. And the part I remember in particular was my Dad taking me into a milk bar and buying me a milkshake.  The milkshake was pink, and was in one of those tall, fluted glasses with a paper straw. The top was frothy, with huge bubbles. It smelt pink, and I can still smell it even now. It was lovely. I don’t remember whether my Dad had a drink, or the pattern of the formica on top of the table we were sitting at, but I remember Ketty Lester was singing Love Letters on a jukebox. You don’t hear that anymore, and I wish we did. It would be nice to do a rewind and watch it happening and see whether I’d got it right; but we can’t do that, of course, and I’m wondering whether it will ever be possible.

What gets remembered and what gets rejected? I don’t remember the furnishings of the house I was brought up in – but a few months ago while crossing the street in town I had an overpowering memory of the smell of the dinner hall at a school I went to 45 years ago. It came wafting over the road and knocked me for six. Horrible stew and spotted dick? Wherefore art thou, banana junket, in the middle of the day in an Australian country town? Which brain signals conjured it forth when I was thinking about purchasing toilet roll, posting the Telstra bill and goodness me, how could I have possibly left the house still wearing my slippers?

It probably says a lot about me that most of my memories are food related. It has, after all, always been about the food. I remember little glass bottles of orange juice arriving with the milkman before school, and having to drink it even though it was covered in frost. I remember taking Peek Freans tick tock biscuits (the square ones with nursery rhymes iced on them, not the crappy pretender ones you get today) to school and having them nicked every day by a bigger kid. I remember the smell of the cardboard cover on my primer. (No, I realise the cover of a primer isn’t food and I couldn’t have eaten it … but hasn’t sniffing a book  always been as good as jamming your nose into an open bag of Maltesers?)

 I have no idea, however, what the Hunter Gatherer wore to work this morning, or indeed, whether he wore anything at all. Seeing as I don’t remember washing or ironing it, this is a distinct possibility. If he has spent the day in blissful nakedness, I doubt he’d either roll his eyes or gnash his teeth at me, considering he was the one who came to breakfast wearing new glasses 20 years ago, gazed at his offspring who were artfully arranged around the table, saying, ‘Who are these people and where did they come from?’

I wonder whether your life really does fast-forward before your eyes as you are departing … and where do all the memories go after that? And if it’s ever possible for us to download the contents of our minds and watch them on our computer screens, I hope there’s a delete function for the strange and evil stench of every school dinner anyone’s ever had the misfortune to remember …

.oOo.

Honk if you’re a proper wally …

Contrary to popular belief, road rage is not caused merely because people are psychotic. It’s because of those little stickers they put on their cars.

Ordinary people who have a life – the kind who look upon their vehicles as useful for getting to work and home again – have a dealer sticker on the back. It tells where they bought the car. If you get stuck behind them in traffic, you merely think (with a vaguely interested air about you), ‘Oh … they bought that in Danglewillee …’ And that’s about all you think. The lights change and off you go – everybody’s happy in lala land.

But there are other drivers who cause feelings of considerable angst. In these instances, it does not help one bit that my morning got off to a hideous start when my porridge exploded in the microwave. Nor does it help that the gene responsible for finding the funny side of bumper sticker humour seems to have bypassed me. Several times since I woke up.

For instance … Mum’s Taxi. Sorry? Did the brains trust who thought of this little gem really think it was funny? When you come across it (and you most certainly will), have a close look at the Mum in situ. Now do you get it? Imagine the excitement this woman felt, sticking that cute yellow diamond proudly to the back window of the Tarago? The pleasure derived in finding meaning in her meagre existence. ‘I am the driver of Mum’s Taxi! I am the proud  purveyor of Shane to his footy practice and Breeeearne to physical culture. Therefore, I am!’ After analysing this sad fact, I almost wish I knew where to buy one. Not.

Then there’s that perennial shocker – Baby on Board. Please. It makes you want to ram straight up the back of it. What else is in the car? Why doesn’t the woman also advertise she’s carrying a snot-encrusted four-year-old, an aged pensioner sucking on a Mintie and has a deceased gerbil in a shoebox in the glove compartment? Somebody once tried to explain the reason for Baby on Board. Very patiently too, because I’m obviously a few seats short of a carload and unable to grasp the logic behind the innovation. Apparently, in case of accident, the rescue lads will know to look for a baby. Hey … clever! But what if the baby was left at home that day? What if the ambos are so busy looking for a non-existent baby they fail to notice the pensioner squeezed up under the back seat, having choked to death on the Mintie? What if the sticker is 12 years out of date and the baby in question is now at high school, having a quick smoke behind the bike shed – oblivious to the fact searchers are looking for him in vain, expecting him to be wearing Huggies?

For the cool dudes in their souped up Toranas, there are stickers of a far more intellectual bent. Such as, If it’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’. Why not? I can’t imagine anything more entertaining! It’s like an open invitation, even. Anyway, they’re kidding themselves. If it’s rockin’, it’s most likely to be because it only has three wheels and there are half a dozen likely lads mooning out of the rear passenger window. Similarly, Don’t laugh mate – your daughter’s inside. I think not. These days, your daughter is far more likely to be driving it. She probably modified it herself, has hairy armpits and spiders tattooed up her back.

But if you’re not a Dumb Mum or a Hot Young Thang, there are the environmental stickers such as Save the ozone layer, and Have mercy on the ecosystem. If you are serious, the only place these have any business being are on the back of a bicycle. Sticking them on anything with an exhaust pipe is making yourself look like a moron. An oxymoron. Driving around pumping fumes into the atmosphere ain’t saving anything, bucko. Especially not the sanity of the people behind you, who have Danglewillee Prestige Motors stuck on the back window of the family Commodore.

The sticker I really like simply says, Magic Happens. It’s a hologram, and the colours change as the sun hits it so you really feel anything’s possible and there’s something to be optimistic about after all. Everybody may well think you are a wanker, but you don’t care because you also have a penchant for purple socks and the happy feeling maybe tomorrow’s porridge is going to be perfect.

 And of course, there’s a moral to this story. You don’t let pensioners eat Minties in the back of your car …

.oOo.

Why Enid Blyton wouldn’t recognise children anymore …

            What are we doing to the minds of our young ones? Consider for a moment the toys available in our advanced and intelligent world – educational, realistic – giving valuable life skills which will carry our sons and daughters through their days armed with an ability to cope with just about anything. Believe it!

            And how better to introduce them to the obnoxious and disgusting habits of the human race than to supply them with the latest advertised craze – a miniature lavatory which emits noises of flatulence when the lid is opened and the contents (which appear to consist of oozing blobs of brown slime) are pressed. Charming. Sure, farty jokes have always been a hoot for the under 10 brigade – remember the good ol’ whoopee cushion? We’re all well aware flatulence is a fact of life and screamingly funny. Nevertheless, it’s only screamingly funny when it happens to someone else. You don’t let one rip in front of Aunty Fanny, and you do your darndest to keep it out of the office. It boggles the mind why you’d  want to encourage your son (who probably has enough foul habits already without making much effort), to spend his valuable time making totally inappropriate noises with a device costing considerably more than the original wind-breaking equipment he was endowed with at birth – his own highly effective backside.

            Far more disturbing is another recent innovation, no doubt formulated to encourage early animal cruelty and set the kiddies on the road to being able to annihilate REAL creatures – that cute-as-darn plaything imaginatively named the Squirt Bug. This fun-for-all-ages toy consists of a rubber cockroach/beetley thingie – whichever is the critter de jour on which to vent your spleen – which can be filled with either a blood solution or a neat little concoction of slime’n’guts. Having diligently stuffed your preferred bug with the chosen intestinal cocktail, you then proceed to stomp on it. Delightful and educational, both. Don’t do this inside, kiddies – or you’ll stain momma’s carpet. Do it on the driveway so we can hose it down afterwards and pretend we were only pretending … and when you’ve run out of slime’n’guts, feel free to pull some cicadas apart or lob a few snails at the Rolladoor. Who was the perverted moron who came up with this little gem – and furthermore, what type of parent buys it? What happened to teaching kids to love all God’s creatures, great and small?

            It bodes ill for the future, while we wait with bated breath for the release of the exploding battery operated koala (with napalm), the microwaveable plush aardvark (see it splatter as you nuke!) – not to mention Baby Dope Fiend, which lies there on the floor and does sod-all after you’ve inserted the authentic-looking hypodermic needle into its realistic-feeling vein – though there’s more, kiddies! Yessiree Bob, it comes with its very own dole application form and full set of housebreaking implements!

            All very lovely and sure to put the kiddies on the path to a fulfilling life in the new millennium, where it’s dog eat dog (and the neighbour’s dog, too!)

            The good old Meccano set doesn’t seem to have much credence anymore. Why spend time creating something when you can sit mindlessly in front of American sitcoms in which smartarse kids show appalling disrespect for their elders and the elders guffaw indulgently at how cute they are?  Why curl up in front of the fire with Famous Five Go To Camp when you can download enough information from the internet to blow half of Year 5 to bits with a length of hosepipe and a frozen orange? Nah – Enid Blyton’s old hat. These days, the Famous Five wouldn’t get a look in – even if the paedophiles hadn’t got to them first. The most popular computer games are those in which the death toll far exceeds the IQ of the person playing them, and you couldn’t interest your kid in making fairy bread if Tinkerbell herself sat up and begged.

            Kids are encouraged to live in the fast lane, grow up too quickly, dress beyond their age, annihilate Squirt Bugs on the driveway and understand things they have no damn business knowing.

            Then we have the audacity to wonder why …

.oOo.

A little bit of froth and optimism …

            The difference between optimism and pessimism is merely the way you look at things. Whether you see the glass as half empty or half full. Naturally, my glass  is always half empty and there seems to be a desperate struggle going on most days to top it up a bit.

            There is, however, an area of one’s life which brings such inexplicable optimism you feel it simply oozing out of your pores. That magical and hope-inspiring moment in which you buy a new shampoo. Those few moments when you actually feel … ethereal.

            There is a horrible truth which we highly intelligent and educated women just can’t seem to get a grip of. A gruesome but nevertheless honest fact – hair is dead. It’s clinically dead the moment it emerges from your scalp. Fact number two – you can’t DO anything with dead. Except for washing the grease out. Why then, do we imagine a shampoo we have taken out a mortgage to afford, will make it thicker, bouncier, healthier, whatever? It’s because, where matters of vanity are concerned, we are terminally stupid. Because we think, in our addled little brains and if we don’t look in mirrors too often, we too can resemble the woman on the telly with the thick, bouncing, healthy, whatever. Rubbish. She has a wind machine and a wig. She has a soundtrack. She also has a team of people who have just spent 12 hours under hot lights doing the impossible with dead. She’s filmed in slow motion. I don’t need to be filmed in slow motion – it’s my natural state. While I’m doing it however, my hair is just hanging there. What it is NOT doing, is gently caressing the tips of tree branches as I go wafting through Central Park in a kaftan. You do not get waft out of a bottle. Just soap.

            Sure, hair feels better when it’s clean. That goes without saying. It’s just debatable whether $1 or $20 will do a better embalming job. Whether it will make you feel, psychologically, as if you waft and don’t have cellulite anymore.

            Then there are the products endorsed by superstars. If a 200kg truckie uses it, he’ll step out of his rig looking like Elle MacPherson. I’d like to endorse one called ‘Bushpig’ which makes you look and feel like a middle-aged woman with a serious chocolate addiction, whose bum is too close to the ground.

            Personally, I just buy the stuff for the packaging. I really like those ones where the shampoo is transparent and there are those little botanical plants and things printed on the inside of the bottle. It’s extremely aesthetically pleasing – while it’s in the bottle. It’s the closes thing to sucking me in enough to feel remotely as if I might waft. And as I’ve mentioned before, I won’t buy anything packaged in orange.

            There isn’t much hype around men’s shampoo. They don’t have KRudd coming on telly to entice men into washing their hair with something that will make them feel jumped up and important and capable of running the country. He doesn’t need to – men feel like that anyway. They have enough confidence to just reach for whatever the little woman has put on the bathroom shelf – and it’s a sad fact of life they generally come out looking full of bounce and waft anyway, without even caring. Their mates don’t ask them what product they use, or titter behind their backs about their roots showing through. For men, hair is effortless. As is should be, bearing in mind it’s dead.

            The rest of us ought to wake up to ourselves. The only soundtrack real life has is the sound of advertisements nagging at you. The only wind machine you’re likely to come into contact with is probably your husband. And let’s face it, you’re never going to waft again.

            Just keep hanging’ in there for next week’s telly commercial when that brand new product will promise you’ll look like you’ve been filmed through a soft focus lens.

            It won’t happen overnight. Nah, face it – it just won’t happen.

.oOo.

On the road with the tourists from hell …

A while ago I took one of the girls to Sydney and we ended up at Darling Harbour, ducking a frenzy of Japanese tourists taking photographs. It immediately struck me how seriously they took their tourism. Constipated little family groups were arranged with origami-like precision. If they were enjoying themselves, it was a secret.

            There’s nothing remotely secret about Aussies on holiday. Thirty-odd years ago, being far too gutless and unmotivated to do the solo backpacking thang, I booked myself on a coach trip around Europe. It was basically me, and a couple of dozen retired couples in either beige safari suits or lavender twinsets with matching hair, who allegedly drove BMWs and had put their children through private schools. It begged the question – what were they doing on an economy tour with moi, and why was their behaviour akin to that of petty criminals on day release from a minimum security detention facility? For these people were absolutely without shame.

            Throughout Europe, lavish smorgasbord breakfasts were part of the deal. We’d come down each morning to a vast array of food which boggled the senses. More varieties of bread, fruit and cold cuts than you could imagine in your wildest breakfast porn fantasies – and gollygosh – invited to partake of all we could eat!

            But evidently, that wasn’t enough. The Rampaging Wrinklies stuffed bread rolls furtively up sleeves and trouserlegs, poked individual jam portions into every available orifice with gay abandon and, still dissatisfied with their booty, lined their socks and pantyhose with slices of cold meat. Terrified they might die of starvation during the afternoon, they lurched from the dining room with handfuls of baked beans and melon slices, having stripped the table back to a barren white cloth and a few odd empty plates. ‘It’ll save us having to buy lunch tomorrow,’ they assured eachother, nodding sagely. ‘Everything’s so DEAR.’

            Nor did they have the decency to be embarrassed. It was a matter of pride to compare notes in the bus – and not just regarding food. Each morning, they regaled eachother with rollicking tales of pilfered pillowcases and Gideon’s Bibles – their suitcases would have chimed with a symphony of looted ashtrays had they not been well padded by contraband towels. As we drove off I would keep a nervous eye out behind for signs of gendarme, polizzi, The Bill - or whoever the local constabulary might happen to be.

            Nor were the Criminal Crumblies ever on time for departure. Many a morning the rest of us waited on the bus while the driver went to bang on the door of Ronnie and Doris, slumbering blissfully under the sordid weight of yesterday’s illicit croissants.

            Having remained aghast and honest under duress, what happened to me at the cheese factory wasn’t fair. The man assured us his gouda was export quality, perfectly legal to take back into Australia. We believed him, and bought up big. Not half an hour from the factory, the Greedmongering Geriatrics decided they’d consume theirs on the bus. Huge wheels of cheese were dragged out from under the seats and the back rows (where the naughtiest oldies sat) became a veritable munchfest. Dentures were cemented together and constipation became the buzzword of the day. I looked on in scorn. Until Customs.

            Once there, the Pillaging Pensioners finally came into their own. They stood around smugly, their own gouda safely lodged halfway down their alimentary canals as my cheese was confiscated. Oh, quelle fromage!

            ‘Serves her right,’ they were probably thinking. ‘Self righteous, cheese-saving cow.’ And off they went with their ashtrays and towels, home in their BMWs to wash the smell of salami from the sullied gussets of their Bonds Cottontails …

.oOo.

 

Press firmly on the dotted line to annihilate this product …

Packaging is an anomaly sent to try the most patient and coordinated among us.             Not only is there too much of it, but most of it doesn’t work in the manner in which it promises. You need a Product-Opening Conversion Table and an 11-year-old lad.             ‘Tear along the dotted line’ can be translated to mean ‘Cover your feet liberally with birdseed,’ ‘Open this end’ means ‘The other end’s even crappier,’ ‘Cut here’ means ‘Perforations are too expensive’.             What was wrong with tootling along to the grocer’s and asking for half a pound of whatever and having it weighed out into a brown paper bag? Sod all, Your Honour. It was simply a matter of taking it home and transferring it into the ol’ bakelite canister – where you were pretty sure you’d find it again on opening the lid unless Uncle Albert found it first and had his wooden teeth installed.             As with everything simple, the smartarses had to get involved. Biscuits have to firstly go into a plastic tray, which is sealed into a cellophane thing and then put in a box. Go figure. Each of these receptacles then has to be squashed into your kitchen bin, on top of the other 300 discarded wrappers you’ve had to wrangle with since breakfast. Too bad if you’ve got PMT and are known for suffering from chronic domestic discoordination.             But the natural enemy of any modern-day packaging is the 11-year-old lad. If you have one, don’t let it anywhere near a tissue box. There’s this little perforated oval on top of the common or garden tissue box, which you are invited to press out. Then there’s a bit of plastic with a slit in it, through which the first tissue can presumably be pulled if you have an hour to spare and are adept with surgical forceps.             If you are an 11-year-old lad, however, you attach one end of the tissue box to the tailpipe of the family car, the other end to the rotor blades of a malfunctioning lawnmower and offer the resultant mess to a passing dog. Oh, that’s not what he did? Could have fooled me.             ‘I was just trying to help,’ he told me with a desecrated offering held out in front of him. It was several minutes before I could even work out what it had been.             It’s much the same protocol with cereal boxes. An 11-year-old lad will find it necessary to completely mutilate the exterior box in order to find the plastic bag. If the outside of the box indicates the addition of a plastic caveman – or even a dumb card with parrots on it – be prepared to sweep the entire contents of the box straight into your wheelie bin. You might as well do this anyway, because when he attempts to open the plastic bag it will just rip straight down the side from top to bottom. He’ll say ‘whoops’, which won’t be any consolation. Then he’ll say, ‘Who cares – it was only a dumb card with a parrot on it.’             There should be a warning on the top of the box like those TV censorship symbols. Tissue boxes should be rated R – nobody under 18 should be permitted to attempt opening them. This is because you buy them for the aesthetic appeal and there isn’t any of that left after it’s been savaged by your 11-year-old lad. Cereal boxes should be PG – not to be opened without a parent supervising. The only containers for which it would be necessary to apply a G rating would be those childproof pill bottles – because once you’ve turned 18 you haven’t a hope in hell of opening one. You need to call in an 11-year-old lad. It’s a well known fact all grandparents have to ask their grandchildren for help. Nicely. Pretending they’ve mislaid their spectacles.             Package-opening accidents can be avoided if you shop when your children are at school. This way, you can open everything yourself, before they get home.             It’s the only way you’ll ever get an entire set of parrot cards all to yourself. .oOo.