Ombrageuse Amazone

This afternoon at the local hardware I shared an aisle with soaky runt the librarian from Fisher and Leo Sayer; it was a leggy moment.

Enmore monologue

Well the Mistress has been the veritable mamma with the gaily coloured plastic bag for she has been grooving it the whole night long with an abandon you could not possibly credit.

Lay it on me, brother, indeed!!

Catching shows by international pop stars and morose intense minstrels, showing the sights of her city of Sydney to guests from interstate, and droning on to very nice people about primary school days, the importance of the subjunctive and Wordsworth. Gordonia de Benatar. My apologies to the nice people.

Last Thursday M and I had the pleasure of seeing Glenn Tilbrook. It was a really wonderful performance and the audience was pretty marvellous too. Dicko's stunt double was at the bar and we were in the land of 1001 Grant and Phil Mitchells, i.e middle-aged stocky Englishmen with balding shaved heads who were sporting brightly coloured or patterned shirts that their mothers had no doubt posted to them for Christmas. It was a rollicking night, possibly not dissimilar to the Deptford Comprehensive Class of 75 Reunion, and wonderful hearing and singing along to all those top Squeeze songs and hearing GT’s newer compositions. GT was very entertaining, funny and involved his audience in a spectacular way. He is a top banana and I did not imagine that I would have two and a half hours crammed with such joy and engagement. Thank you GT.

The minstrels I encountered the following night – Dickie B and Edie, were quite a stark contrast. Fortunately I did have the delightful company of S and O who had come to town. We had a dinner and a show deal - the dinner was delicious, the venue tops, the show somewhat duddish. Troubadours specialised in tediously intense and monotonous tales of woe without an ounce of humour or showbiz zing. I guess i still equate dinner and a show with a night in Vegas and the Rat Pack - highballs, hi jinx and hilarity. Dear Edie read some Doris Lessing, girl. i know Doris Lessing mentioned in the same breath as the Rat Pack - crazy NSR. But really she could have just done a folksy version of Kim Hart's looking for love at first sight - her lyrics were that liberated! OH and Dickie B, Lou Reed could give you some tips on chatter and charm. The audience featured television and radio broadcasters, daughters of former radio broadcasters, indie of today and yesteryear, Pat the Rat, no she's returned to Erinsborough, and a bemused middle-aged dame knocking back Cointreau and ice, yes, I was in my element. The venue had very, very nice waiting and bar staff.

Still the turgidness of the Dickie B and Edie show was a mere blottini in four days of entertaining company, excursions, dinners and barbecues that were full of laughs and liquor. I am glad that tomorrow is a public holiday so I can rest on my new, marvellous mattress, bed and special pillow for pains in the neck. My new bed is so high I that I feel like that terrible Melissa from thirtysomething; if you don’t know who that is just picture a fully grown woman acting like a wittle girl but fear not the mistress won’t start posting or speaking in bubblegum talk. Not this week anyway. L♥v u:)

the lady vanishes

Cool it everybody, just cool it, don't worry am not about to release a mass of dead white moths, quote Pete Shelley or dedicate the posting to Brian (as if - not for that treacherous toad) ; let alone lamely attempt to call into line some blood thirsty racist bikers . Brothers and sisters everythink is alright, it's cool, not Kris Kristofferson cool, but A-OK cool, the mistress is back, safe, sound and smugly ensconced in the mansions after allegedly going AWOL for four days.

Wooh. Glad i got that out.

Apparently my absence from functions, cyberspace and text has been the talk of towns from Bellingen to Bendigo, a disappearance of Lord Lucan proportions. But i have returned - moustache intact.

Hey, i love being the talk of the town and can only imagine the type of chatter that would have ensued had others tapped into my answering machine and heard the message left on Thursday:

Hi Bel, it's me I got out of lock up last week and I'm on parole. The lady told me to give you a call and check in. Call ___ ____ on beeeeeeeeeeep.

The telephone call was not returned...Hell, i know the mistress is occasionally worthy of the moniker, Vinegar Tits, but she draws the line at the Freak - she ain't no screw, more Governor, natch, oh, alright, i'll concede to Bea with a dash of Lizzie. Nevertheless, not one of us was going to ring him. I'd never met the man, confound it.

Yeah, so when i wasn't on the lam or visiting those doing stir, i spent a marvellous Easter in the montagna, Rydal, Cox's river and Lithgow. On the way back was driven down the Bell's Line of Road. My it was pretty. Very green and lush. Bellbirds chimed on Bellbird Hill and Richmond looked beautiful. The town's sign claims that Richmond is historic and a Macquarie town.

Is there anything that bank doesn't own?

My mind then wandered to Richmond's famous resident, Mike Walsh, and pictured MW at home hosting an Easter Monday banquet with Midday luminaries such as Shirley Williams, Hollywood Howson, Jeannie Little, Dr James Wright, Jade Hurley, and leggy Jackie Love at his table, perhaps later performing Jesus Christ Superstar at the town's Regent Theatre, which MW restored. A bel can dream can't she?

I got back by midday, actually, and gave Tupper Mansions a wonderful spring clean. Then donned dark glasses, a baseball cap and proceeded to walk on my knees as i accompanied nicnkeith on their surprise walk with the plebs keeping it real visit to the Royal Easter Show.

Oh the media manipulation by the celebrity - surely it is time for a tanty in the Temple about that. Name your price i've got everything indeed.

Cold Mountain you are a caution! One minute you’re complaining about the invasion of the press and conducting drag races against the papparazzi on the south coast, the next alerting all media outlets of your queuing amongst the people to buy a show bag.

Live by the sword die by the sword or i'll be seeing you in the laundry just near that ironing press......

Oh telepathic line

For those of you who have had the privilege of my acquaintance, my affectation and occasional fits of tetch (hard to imagine I know) over the past score or so, the following will come as no surprise but for my newer legion of fans i really feel that before things go any further there is something you should know. Not only do i have a gift for the inane but i have THE gift, i.e. I have a sixth sense.

A gift but at times also a burden.

I was first made aware of this psychic ability in the early 70's.

It was a glorious summer's day and my immediate family had an outing with my father's side of the family to Bilgola beach; curiously my father wasn’t there; no doubt beetling about doing important business - booze bargains to be bought across town.

Bilgola was a beautiful beach, no surf, water was crystal clear and sand rather pristine. It was also sheltered from the wind. My siblings and I had just been having a discussion about marine life and were smothering sniggers caused by an adult's comment about octopuses having such long testicles when my mother, tired of my er, exuberance, sent me to the sea to wash the sand from my hands before eating lunch. I didn't want to go to the water for fear of being stung by a bluebottle. My protests were ignored so I went down to the shore and stood in the sea limply dunking the hands, occasionally turning around to scowl, when I felt a very nasty sting and beastie wrap around my seven year old ankle; not an octopus' testicle but a bluebottle's tentacle.

While the sting didn’t result in my donning a blue catsuit and cape, saving lives and fighting villains or other duties required of a Portuguese-speaking hermaphrodite superhero, it did inspire me to visit the local stationer's the following week.

From Mr Mussett I purchased a thick Pentel black pen and a very big white sheet of cardboard.

With these tools I created a Ouija board and after snavelling a sherrrry glass and crystal ball paperweight from my great-aunt’s sideboard I had all the fixtures and fittings to peddle my psychic talents.

Miss Bel was a most enterprising young gel. While other kiddies would spend recess and lunch debriefing about Fester Fumble and Miser Meany or playing elastics, Miss Bel would loiter outside christian schools giving demonstrations of her talents; she had learnt that the clientele at secular schools were tougher nuts to crack. Soon Miss Bel and her Ouija board were doing a roaring trade. You might recall those kiddies’ parties that featured face painting, jumping castles and blousy dames and kiddies sporting fairy wings and tutus being the rage in the 90’s; well Miss Bel, her ouija board and sherry glass, empty or full, were the 70’s equivalent - unreal orange peel was how the kids described them.

It was at one of these parties that I met Brian the autodidact who became quite the devotee and eventually my assistant.

By the early 80’s, adolescent ennui an’that had well and truly submerged one’s psyche so the séances and general sense of enterprise petered out while i fell in with a rum set and went from junior miss to mistress.

However, the gift still lurked. My mere mentioning of stars' names could lead to their deaths, their walking down the neighbourhood street or their tv shows coming a cropper the very next day. Election results were predicted, spoons bent, clocks and watches stopped, traffic lights went from amber to red, telephones rang. I was later to make cameo appearances and provide some storylines for the television.

So like most gifted and talented I plodded on, aware of my endowments, making sure everybody else was, and occasionally using them. However, the other day I happened on that former assistant's blog where he denounced my power describing it as fraudulent and at its best coincidence.

A cowinkydink not a power?

Surely not. Or perhaps it was another example of the delusion and malaise that have beset the mistress in later years and her quest for elan, oh and bling. One minute feebly attempting to be different: adopting the Edwardian 'g' drop, baskin' in the reflected glory of some faded pollie or star of the plasma screen, and now skiting of powers; only to spend the next validating it and her existence by documenting it all in cyberspace.

Really where on earth is Brian when you start spiralling downward and out.

Dissing you in cyberspace that's where.

Gather your wits Mistress don't let that Hector projector undermine you. Breathe in, breathe out. Didn't you mention Donny Osmond in your last posting? Affirmative. Didn't you just read that the poor pet had his show cancelled? Affirmative. Well there you go, gel, you've still got it and the gift.

Ohhhh, of course i dooooo! (uttered Julie Andrews' style )

Now i know what tall poppies, won't mention any by name..., battle against every day and i've triumphed. I've gone from poop to poppy.

Steady with your scythe, Bri, this poppy will not be felled, she's blooming upward and sidewards, gift, girth and gall.