Arse end of the universe

Well, may Ava Gardner (possibly one of the worst actors evah. No,  truly Joan Collins was terrific in some Noel Coward plays and in Dynasty. Perhaps Aaron Spelling should have created some televisual spectacular around Ava...  As  for Ava's  choice of beaux, Mickey Rooney and Thugster Sinatra ... - Gordonia de Benatar), have been misquoted with her comment about Melbourne, which was nothing as crude as this post's title, while Shuting (oh geddit!) On the Beach but oh, it makes great copy; I think of it every time my mind drifts to Melbourne and her bluestone splendour of a summer.

A big hearty, sympathetic hello to my hot, sticky and grumpy cousins in the Riverina, Victoria and  S.A.

How ghastly that oppressive heat in Victoria can be. I give you props Victorians, or perhaps you'd rather be given paddlepops, but oh dear, that'd mean another lifetime on those already ample hips... As for S.A. well, angels, my limited imagination does not even dare contemplate the possible hot and scary scenarios occurrin' in that state of insanity.

Hope Code Red is extinguished very soon and please put yourselves before your chattels and exercise some good old fashioned common sense.

In the above picture, Ava looks quite a bit like Fanny Ardant, wouldn't you agree?

Silver Screen so far

Movies viewed this X-(sorry, wait a second, I'm putting the Christ back in, ooph, heavy as lead you are baby J) Christmas (Ah , that's better, Tubbs)/New Year break. Let's keep the holidays HOLY goddamnit!!

Lovely Bones – Quite good. Isn’t ‘quite’ a horrible and insulting qualifier! My paternal grandfather, who was actually very agreeable and kind but moderate used ‘quite’ a lot. Anyway the movie is quite good, pretty moving at times, still you could wait for dvd or for the digital tv free-to-air station to broadcast it.  Loved the fairy tale picture book  quality to the special effects. Speaking of special effects...

Avatar – REALLY BAD. Why on earth did I go and see this? I sincerely thought it was going to be about Lord Ganesh. The Avatars in this fillum were a hybrid of Jumblies and Angelina Jolie (hottt!). And the dialogue, NSRs. Good lord. How many times can people say “you’re going down, bitch!” I hope I never say that, except, well does that last sentence count?... On Christmas day one of my nieces told me she had seen said film twice and that it was A-mazing. I am surprised by her making such a pronouncement about something so woeful.. I wonder if she really did like the Christmas present I gave her- a lovely sponge bag with some nice House of Bromley lemon scented hand lotion.

The goddamn fillum was at Hoyts and it was chockers the day I attended. I had to park the Getz on the penultimate level of the shopping centre. Even worse there were no empty seats in the cinema's theatre. I had to sit directly next to people and a-top an elderly gent's lap. Fortunately they were not the types who sucked on slurpees or fizz, or shoved foul smelling popcorn in their cakeholes. What’s with all the eating at the cinema? The occasional choc top, yes but I say NO to those ginormous boxes of foul smelling popcorn and you should too.

Bright Star – BEAUTIFUL, MAGNIFICENT, devastatingly heartbreaking. Characters were lambs apart from loathsome, toady, jealous, frustrated Mr Brown. Most splendid actoring I have seen since Stefan Dennis masterclass or Cate Blanchett being interviewed by Kerry O’Brien on 7.30 report ...but seriously SUPERB ACTORING. Please see.

Cinema was gorgeous 30’s picture palace, restored by Mike Walsh but surely not in collaboration with  Jade Hurley. Woman seated next to mother had one noisy gurgly stomach. I originally attributed it to mother's belly which she denied but I suspect mummy was lying and put the blame on Mame, boys. Woman next to me was fond of a Fantale or ten. I hope she remembered to remove the wrappers, paper corrodes dentures, well it depends which movie star's bio is on paper. Not good to leave Monte Clift bio on teeth for too long. Fortunately, NO Marella Jubes available or I would have started thinking about Peter Carey as an adolescent and his sessuale awakenings.  Hope you are now.  One, two, three "eeeeeeeewee" ! That's right let it all out, pets, as did Peter in that Good Weekend interview in the early 90's.

Sherlock Holmes – Oh I know! and a step off, Bel and what would you expect to you an'all, thanking you muchly.   T'was rather enjoyable in its lame-O-ness. It was rather funny because Robert Downey as Sherlock Holmes seemed to be channelling Tony Curtis as Danny Wilde thus rendering Jude Law as Roger Moore playing Bret Sinclair AS Dr Watson. So a Victorian version of the Persuaders,  really. What more could one expect from G. Ritchie. Alas, no hokey, I mean, groovy dancing with Continental accented fillies at end; shame. AND NO music of the calibre of John Barry's compositions. Movie was too long. Cinema was pleasant and served quite a decent drop of sparkling and not much popcorn cooked or eaten.

It’s complicated – YES it is the title of a movie and not some lame-o relationship status that one of your Facebook friends has just notified the entire world about. I wonder if Facebook has a just tinkled or laid log status for one's profile, that would be a lot more interesting and a good way of monitoring irregularities in ones' 'friends'’ physical health. I mean it’s a given that one's mental health is well, shot – cos you have to be wacky, zany and just plain  c-r-r-razy  to be on Facebook. Actually, no, that's the pre-req. for my place of employment. Shake your head, roll your eyes upward and laugh for that is what  I do 5 days p.w.  I can't believe that I am paid to have THIS much fun.

Anyways I really enjoyed the movie and laughed a lot. I love MERYL and Alec Baldwin is a goddamn hoot. I enjoyed the schmaltz too.  So “bite me”, I think that’s the first time I have uttered that expression to boot. Don’t know if it is the correct context.

Love and bile and good times to ya for 2010

Are you ready to get going?!!

As you might recall little Keith Lamb hollering in the mid 70's to promote an energy fuelled chocolate bar known as the Chokito.  Oh memory lane, NSRs, memory lane. If only one's capacity to remember could be used for brilliance and not trivia - one would have had a lovely little Australian Post tribute en timbre by now... Well you can stuff your Chokitos, and no, not down the front of your trousers or your brasieres, for nothing will improve those appendages, you poor old fools (how could you ever have held store in such silliness?) for it is the GETZ what's been getting me going. 

This week I have avoided the Haughty North and the Oim not a raShirelist South, steered clear of that Meretricious East and driven over the hills beyond the Battlers' West and loved every goddamn minute of it!

The mist, the fog, the rain, the blazing sun, the hairpin bends, the roadwork delays, the rude articles honking (I DON'T CARE* if they are horny - time and place, NSRs, time and place), taking the wrong exits, the subsequent nervy b's...I've got a provisional licence to motorin' good times.

Mother Superior

O the independence. The joy to be in my darling little autistic black bubble on wheels;waving at the kiddies and vociferously cursing their olds, and as for those mothertruckers, do not get me started!

Sister Bertrille (Carlos lurking in background..)

Sister Bertrille and Sister Cisco (Carlos' s ear)

Blanche du Bois

Mount Titty Boom-Boom

 (B Whiteley on Lloyd Rees in Conversation with J. Hawley Good Weekend Sept 1990)

Happy newie, NSRs - 2010 has a lovely, happy and healthy ring to it.

*Soooooo 1977

That certain feeling

Soon there will be an Aussie saint for i have 'what a friend we have in jesus' whirring around my brain.

Apparently it's the 21st Century

In fact the first decade of this millennium will be over soon-ish (Look (a little tribute to the almost small 'l' Liberals named Malcolm there ) I don’t want to get in an argument about time measurement OK), and while I am still incredibly disappointed by the lack of jet pack there are even more troubling matters and I might just need to wear a t-shirt with a slogan

The majority of pollies seem to be goddamn Christian (generally conservative catholic to boot, and truly i thought Jensen Anglicanism was bad – it is) and proud, women are ashamed of feminism ( I think that Alan Alda is the only person who admits to being a feminist these days), people need to have their relationships recognised by the State and then of course there is the importance of faaaaaaaaaamily and its right to ginormous brand new houses with lovely air conditioning, bedrooms and en suites galore (lawks I remember when those choc galore biscuits kept us all happy), foyehs, Jacuzzis, good rooms and masterchef kitchens. Gordon, it's so god awful and does my disgust make me some kind of radical? That's the current climate for ya.

Perhaps it’s time to get some rocknroll playmates together and record and release a rock against wowser cd thingy.

Gorne her own way

No more leadership spillage for me, no more psephological ponderings for now.

I am off to see the originators of M E L T D O W N . It's carry on up the Hunter with Fleetwood Mac in the voines - a concert and excursion in two parts. Toot toot . Now where did I put that lacey shawl and would it not be dangerous to affix scarves over the car's headlights...

Carp & Demean

Dorian Gray - yet another remake en cinemascope. Oh why bother?!! Just read the blinkin' book and be done with it or hire that 40's film in which Angela Lansbury played Sibyl Vane and sang a Nightingale in Berkley Square, i think. The film also featured George Sanders, who was born to play Lord Henry Wotton. Hurd Hatfield as Dorian is quite the poop but then was not Dorian; well, a corrupt and vain poop which is possibly an oxy-moron and slightly worse than an uxurious-moron.

Nick Minchin - slick prick, evil Vatican cardinal/Darth Vader

Wilson Tuckey - R-r-r-rabid (am I channelling his irrational foaming fury? Oh my! I mean, "oh noes". )

Brownyn Bishop - R E T I R E you great beehived Punch puppet look-a-like of a right wing pollie.

Tony Abbott - Spare me and his longing for pre-Vatican II. I feel sick. Pass me that nice chocolate biscuit would you. Oh make it the whole goddamn packet, sweetness.

Joe Hockey - throwin' his fat into the ring


All of them make Malcolm Turnbull seem almost, no, Bel, you cannot and must not apply a kindly adjective to him, or feel sympathy, remember ute gate and all those rumours you've heard, nice and Malcolm cannot compute

And  PLEASE no more questions to me about chipped glassware and such like. It's like listening to some frustrated bride bleating on about her trousseau. Eeewwwwwwwe. It is not my lijne of work! Noelene Donaher obsessed and bitched about Paul and Dionne's chipped crockery and look what happened to all of them! Yes, Sylvania Waters is permanently submerged underwater, granted Noelene does look hot in that mermaid tail, BUT, and it's a big but(t), Libs, property values are down the gurgler. When property values plummet that's when the Libs will believe in Global Warming.

"Thanks, my friend." - When strangers address me as such (only strangers could as the friends I sort of have only address me when they chastise-1st born children become such know-it-all didactic P R I G S (no offence)) I should feel repulsed yet my curmudgeon lobe is curiously squashed and soothed by such an utterance. I get a peculiar tingly and untoward feeling; i think it's because i feel that there is an element of godbothery to it and as a child one of my biggest fears, apart from kidnappers absconding with my younger sister, car crashes, getting run over, being strangled by stray venetian blind cords swinging in the breeze, and being sprung as the culprit of the great firecracker sounding fart in B.O. Berwick's maths class February 1975, was that i would somehow get brainwashed and become a Christian.

Over and spun out (again)

Motor Vehicle Mama

Since being awarded my provisional driving licence and becoming a motor vehicle owner, I have completed my rites of passage and been beetling about NSW roads big time.

Props to me.

While beetling about i've been attempting to avoid all manner of road ragers (in the 80's we like raged (good times) and in the noughties we road raged (rude times ) like go figure. What has happened to common courtesy?! - SMH bloggers your time begins now!) and let me tell you the worst offenders are the pig dog bald and buff male variety (no doubt celebrity chefs - I did toot one of ‘em once but NSRs, just imagine how much toot/steroids those mothertruckers have done to behave as they do!! Oh I just shudder at the D R U G S ! These rd ragists are one fang away from serial killer or Lindsay Buckingham psychosis), stocking up on Coles brand soda water, practising my manoeuvres, and spending lots of time on the telephone line to the NRMA: sorting out insurance, slips and having the occasional workshop (when you say I have to pay $600 excess you make me feel poor and inexperienced).

I am the bomb (whatever that means. I heard Idol Stan and Big Brother contestants say it so it must be very deep and another way of saying awesome).

I am overwhelmed by a feeling of self-importance, enormous responsibility, misplaced civic pride and matoority. Consequently I cannot stop flicking my sheet of glossy hair over my right shoulder, tilting my chin to the left, and allowing a disgusting look of utter smugness to suffuse the oil painting of a face that the Creator bestowed upon me. (At this rapid rate of achievement, by next week i will be living in my father's den come funky pad, i don't know where my 52 year old brother will reside but eviction like shit happenz. Sorry NSRs, for the crudite and fibbing, i plainly still have one more rite of passage to go... )

Yeah so that’s me, and i really, really don't want to know about you because that's all we ever talk about, but the point of this post is to table the issewe that is the voice on the NRMA help line.

The kindly but correct tones of James Dibble /Bruce Menzies or Lozza Bailey/Lucy Bell have been usurped by those of a rockin’ kind of laid back Video Hits host full of uhs, pauses and up-endy inflections:

"Cars are cool but they can also be like a reeeeal hassle. Not a problem. I’m kinda here to help and uh, like unstress you. Press one if you’ve stacked. Press two if you’ve got an um existing policy. Press three if you want just chat …"

Crowded hours

Oh NSRs, do you sometimes find that things are just all a bit too much? Well do you know what, I do and today I wish that I could just dive into a William Brown book and become one of its characters, preferably a member of the Outlaws, for a week. Actually I'd like to be William and scheme some attack on Hubert Lane or Bertie Franks.

Pollie as pin up

Kate Ellis, my inner soothsayer has three words for you:

Natasha Stott Despoja

and just ornry old me wants to know what's all this arm wrestling with the Hulk business? Didn't Bill Bixby die?

Darling delicious black jelly bean of a car

Skinnamarink a dink a dink,
Skinnamarink a doo,
I love you.

I love you in the morning.
And in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening.
And underneath the moon.

Skinnamarink a dink a dink,
Skinnamarink a doo,
I love you!

Darling delicious black jelly bean of a motor vehicle you have transformed my world!!( you are my rock - oops sorry NSRs I thought i was accepting a Miss Lovely Motherhood award or parading down the Dalley M thong throng.)

Just hope that I don't get an attack akin to Bets Draper with that washing machine . . .

Blame it on Gothstock

Sunday morning at 12.52ish around my neck of the woods was

M E N T A L.

The police had got the word to G O. Sirens shrieked and what sounded like a fleet of the bleedin’ Sweeney screeched down my street stirring me from my dreams, which fortunately did not feature lame arse genwhinedoesgothandzombie and fleshy middle aged goth llladies commemorating All Hallows' Eve by the sportage of vavavavoom neckline ensembles and shadin’ theirselves and their treasure chests from the sun with lacey black parasols. Alas, I had truly ( sorry, verily) witnessed this gothicke grotesquerie 10 hours earlier when strolling down the main drag - 'keep yer mammaries to yerselves', i had hectored, in vain.

I was then well and truly woken by several reassuring bump, bump, bumps and a terrifying THUMP.

Adrenalin prickling and pumping, I scrambled out of my tangled bedclothes to race to the sitting room and stick my head out the window.

What a sight!!

Sweet NSRs by the look of these coppers they could never have passed for the Sweeney as they’d clearly never gone without dinner (let alone elevenses, and their trou pockets were no doubt crammed with snack packs and jam rolypolies). Bargearse/Bluey, more like. The great galoots had been in portly, sweaty pursuit of that object of the utmost importance, a stolen vehicle.

Oh the gaspillage of law'n'order funds (Surely the Cruel Sea wrote/sold a song about it?)

Sickmaking. Pass me that cream bun N O W!

Bargearse One not content with her car mounting the street's footpath had smashed its bonnet into the mansions' surrounding fence!! Bargearse Two tried to miss Bargey One and rammed his car's bonnet up the back of my neighbours’ motor.

Sirens continued to wail, porky pigs sweated and aimlessly waddled across the street, their guns in holsters jiggling against their jubblies, as they wondered “which way did he go?” and surveyed with surprise the enormous dish of crash, bang, smash ‘em up they’d served the residents of the mansions.

Goosey Goosey Gander

3 sniffer dogs, 2 smashed fuzz cars, 3 smashed civilian cars and 12 portly coppers later - ‘hot’ rod was smashed and abandoned and not one 'villain' nicked. Fortunately no one was injured in the debacle.

SISTERS!!!!!

If I hear one more woman qualify a statement with:

“NOT as a Feminist" or "I'm not a Feminist" (oooh heaven forbid)

I’ll, I’ll do my goddamn BLOCK.

Vagabond tongue - dicky word twist alert

Must work until Idol for I have been too idle at work.

Always ahead of the pack

With the demise of several 'legendary' 'good time' 'rocknroll' venues, Sydney's leading 'quality' broadsheet has replaced its Where's our summer gorne lament with Where's Sydney's live music scene? Even rockin' mamma here knows it's been dead for at least a decade. Clunkarama.

Did you know

Darrell Lea celebrates Choctober.

Marcia Hines has published a book of her platitudes to help one get through life; i think it might be called Go with what you know.

The dream team panel on the Insiders is Annabel Crabb, David Marr and Andrew Bolt. Yesterday's Insiders WAS magnificent and somewhat riotous. 2 minutes into the the introductory discussion Nanny Marr was fanging A. Bolt big time. When A. Bolt began his climate change scepticism rant, D. Marr turned away from AB, crossed his legs and proceeded to lounge while reading a newspaper, announcing " I'm reading the Sunday Telegraph!" Occasionally mid-fang D.M would pause, remove his glasses, suck on the ends of spectacles' arms then launch another attack. It seems that Annabel and David may have been chastised for being out of order during the screening of another segment as when discussion resumed they were less uproarious, less teasing and more patient with A. Bolt - shame. Perhaps Mother Bolt rang in and complained. Andrew Bolt was furious and gave Annabel Crabb dagger looks. It was an entertaining riot of a show.

You should always keep active. Well that's what an 87 year old woman with clear, light blue eyes and straight back advised me as i admired the kiddies' garden in the Albury Botanic Gardens. No, i was not swinging in a hammock and sipping a cocktail from a glass garnished with a minature parasol and slice of lemon, nor was i supine. I was my spritely, erect and approachable (oh me and Joe Hockey!) self. I've said it before and I'll say it again: kiddies and seniors are my most popular demographics. Am an utter right off with the ados and peers.

The Wine Room in Albury is the place to be of a Thursdee evening.

My great-aunt turns 100 this All Hallows' Eve and I will attend a party dressed as a ham (insert one liner about Ugly Dave Gray/Jimmy Saville/Joe Hockey/Wove here).

No need for a title

Fonzie found it difficult to admit that he was w-w-w-wrong; even to Mrs C and shortcake. My companion refused to accompany me into the joint so I , of course, told him to 'sit on it'.

montagna glory

High Society

Last night I was taken to the most divine (say it like Christopher Pahne would) bistro to celebrate my birthday.

My birthday actually falls in August and there is/was nothing august about it. Turning 40 was a breeze but the years that ensue, while a blessing are also a goddamn downer; just too confronting and really who wants a nervy b for her/is b’day. A veritable cherry atop yer middle-age spread.

Nevertheless I was very happy to celebrate my birthday in October because I have always been more comfortable with fiction than fact - some of my dearest friends and memories are phoney.

So the restron was gorgeous, absolutely delicious fare, and not too posh despite its location. Well for the true dwellers of the meretricious east this joint is casuale and akin to dining at your local Thai or Turkish (but not quite Aussie Chinese at the local rissole).

Towards the end of our meal a group of mid 30’s professional types were seated at the table behind us. I was probably digging my spoon into my dessert of white chocolate pannacotta, raspberries and a soupcon of superiority, when some friends of those derriere arrived to dine at another table. Amidst the welcoming cries and merging of tables , I heard the big lug of a rugger player type behind me boom to the female arriviste,

“Oh it's Piggy! Piggy, how are you? Oh you’re not so piggy now. Piggy’s now slim. Slender piggy.”
My delight was to intensify. 20 minutes later, having left the beeestro, we strolled down one of Woollahra’s avenues and as we passed another restaurant I gazed in the window at the diners and locked eyes with Diana 'Bubbles' Fisher.

Dusty, orange Sydney

This morning I woke from a wonderful dream, featuring some galpals and moi and our new super bestie Stevie Nicks, to enter a world where the natural light peeping through my window's venetian blinds was a glaring reddish orange.

I thought that there had been a very bad bushfire or a nuclear attack. It was/is very On the Beach meets the Midwich Cuckoos but like in real life. Eerie.

I then went to the world wide web and cosy old smh, which featured a report, Where's our blue sky gone (or summat), that explained the thick orange haze was caused by a dust storm.

The flat's hardwood floors now have a filmier layer of dust, it feels like talcum powder and my soles are oh so soft but orange. Llladies of Sydney put away your Thin Lizzy/Glo bronzer NOW.

The change of light is extraordinary. The green traffic lights are now a shade of turquoise, it is a turquoise man who indicates when you may cross the road. Most of the car lights are a lovely iceberg blue as are the Tupper streetlights; not quite the heartbreaking beauty that is the rosey hue of the lamps in Venice but still quite lovely.

I caught the bus into work, and all the passengers were very quiet; as hushed as on the Monday after lady di died (must get a burnt orange ribbonini at lunchtime to commemorate today's dust storm.) When the bus got further into the cbd the dust blanket increased.

Despite the wind still being rather forceful I saw shopkeeper on George Street attempting to remove the dust by beating his broom across the shop's entrance, and sending the dust to the next shop entrance. He really needed something practical like a leafblower.

Some people are wearing masks or scarves over their mouths and noses.

Over and out.

Two more for the Canon

The past fortnight or so I have had a hankering for some Dickens and Eliot, so Satdee afternoon I went to my favourite branch of the City of Sydney library. Alas the books I wanted were not there. Waaah.

Fortunately I stumbled upon a series of books based on the magnificent television show Rosemary & Thyme by Eastman. I borrowed two. So engrossing and so Blytonesque but i guess there is more talk of plants than food. Nevertheless they do have some nice cream teas, lots of crime, and glasses of wine when tucked up in their twin beds and googling suspects on Rosemary's laptop.

The Vernal Equinox

Has done in my sinuses. Pass it on.

Perches and twigs

Glory the ‘famous’ are falling like it’s the end of their life cycle.

The news bulletin concerning the death of Mary Travers featured comment from Athol Guy. Athol found Mary such a ‘warm and nice lady’ he yearned to hug her. I did not need to hear that while preparing my dinner.

The day before Mary’s death, Henry Gibson died. Apparently Mary Travers’s band inspired the feuding trio of minstrels in Nashville and Henry Gibson was of course in Nashville; utterly magnificent as Haven Hamilton. Oh these tenuous links are totally freaking me out. In truth Henry Gibson was pretty much a triumph in everything he did, comic genius!

Mal Leyland, Keith Floyd and Jim Carroll are also ‘famous-ish’ people who have recently died.

On Wednesday night the bus in which I sat stopped outside some building with a big television that was screening a repeat of that show with Elvis Costello and Lou Reed. First thought was that Lou had also died, then the bus stalled and i continued to watch Lou on the screen. And a second thought popped into my noggin which was that Lou had become almost alluring as senior. Now that is certainly something you do not need to read while surfing cyberspace.

Juicy days are here again

Well I am not sure if they are. In fact I am not sure what they are. However this morning when I read that announcement on a young woman's t-shirt apart from musing over its potentially lewd significance, I felt a wave of optimism.

The vernal equinox is only a few days away. Wisteria, poppies and cherry blossom are in bloom and the majority of trees have sprouted leaves the shade of peridot; all in anticipation of Spring and her grand tour for 2009.

Soon Rocktober will be upon us and I will be on hols - gadding about the countryside. Vale Mal Leyland.

G O R N E

Kyle Sandilands, the social contract, and now the Annette Kellerman swimming pool at Enmore Park. All GORNE.

I was walking through the park when I saw that the AK swimming pool had been completely demolished. Yes, not a skerrick of the complex remains, not even the scent of hot chips fried in ancient batter.

Between you and me, nsrs, i used to love doing the aqua aerobics at the AK pool. It was quite the workout (as we used to say in the 80's) and required intense concentration. Generally i'd focus on a cracked tile or some peeling paint when peforming some particularly grunty bumps and grinds while straddling that ridiculous and rather lewd noodle.

However, one day, when attempting a difficult twist while treading water, my focus fell on a person outside the pool. This human on the periphery puzzled me until I realised that it was actually a right on singer from an early 80' indie band. Unfortunately she was in my direct line of focus, and I couldn't retract my gaze. Worse she noticed me; i blame my bathing cap festooned with flowers. And double worse, back in the day things had been kind of, um, silly fractious between us. Hard to imagine, i know dot dot dot

In truth it was due to my youthful exuberance, well, general loudmouthery and mimicry of her buzz words and gestures - I told you that the social contract had gorne! Anyhoo I couldn't stop looking and then one by one more people came to her side, her friends, and they were all looking at me and talking as I continued to stare at her. I couldn't avert my eyes until the exercise finished. Eventually the class ended and I had to leave the centre. It was dark and I was rather worried that her posse would pounce on me. They didn't for they had GORNE.

Enough of my Busby Berkeley meets film noir aqua follies....

The old AK pool is making way for big new super deluxe aquatic centre. In the mean time one can bathe and do aqua aerobics at the Fanny Durack pool (she was apparently distantly related to Mary so it's not completely mindless of me to think Kings in Grass Castles, Kings in Grass Castles did i ever finish reading, Kings in Grass Castles? each time i think of that pool, so there!).

However, I won't go there for I prefer the Victoria Park swimming pool, open and long in lovely surrounds . I do worry about contracting aviance, er, avian flu - a lot of birdie business about there. But oh well if you don't take any risks in life you reap nothing. Well ,that's the quote on the foot of my desk calendar for today's date; it's attributed to Leanne Edelsten, who is these days best known as Jennifer Hawkins's mum.

Baby I'm bored

Speaking of precious cargo and parents... A month ago, I finished my working day and found myself at a seminar.
M E N T A L. What on earth will I do next? Well probably not further study at this point in my mind.

Oh brother, sitting in that seminar discussing literature with the dense, the conceited and the intense was worse than any of my many HSC/varsity nightmares.

Following some excruciatingly stupid, predictably petty observations about a particular writer, this person who had already demonstrated that she was the class's empty vessel asked/announced, in ponderous, moronic tones:

“ But HOW do you continue to find the energy, the ability to tap into your creativity, restock your stores, when you are a MOTHER and you give and give and G I V E?"

I’ll give you something, fecund, proud and procreation should not have been allowed. How about multi-tasking. Isn’t that what you 702/774 mums are renowned for? You're a mother and you're an insufferably annoying article; 10/10 so far, mumsy. I squirmed and submerged the lower half of my face under the polo neck of my powder blue jumper.

It takes a nanosecond to make a child and a lifetime of monopolizing any conversation to validate that choice. Put that thought on the foot of your desk calendar page, mater!

Baby on board

There’s a new kind of stroller for the parent pedestrian, as Tom Springfield once wrote.

As you know, NSRs, that practical small foldaway stroller was long ago superceded by those ridiculous, ginormous and cumbersome four wheel drives of push chairs. Well, the latter model has now , like most things, you know, mothers, wives, friends and lovers, run its course and been replaced and upgraded/babooshkaed/carlabrunied by a new, super, deluxe, i mean, luxe and ridiculous form of transport for life’s most precious cargo.

This new contraption is such a curious form, and I’m being polite. It looks like a lazy Susan table come palette fixed atop a tallish three wheeled stand. I guess it’s kind of Jetsons Space Age (but no jet pack required, shame).

Parent, generally proud poppa, pushes the object while jogging but the byebee does not look like it’s secured by a belt on the palette. Baby just sort of lolls about, which causes concern for Constable Care. Well, until the next possible imminent disaster pops into my head as I stride around Darling Harbour, hands behind back, surveying her port and quays. What’s that unusual ripple on the water’s surface..? Why do those boats bob so?
Quick! Where is some higher terrain....?
Tsunami everyone! T S U N A M I
Higher ground people, (I myself personally am perpetually takin’ the high ground), I bark then squeal.

I swoop onto that palette-on-wheels of a pushchair, scoop up baby, transfer its bonnet to my noggin, and demand that poppa get a move on and push us up that nice, hilly street.

Nozin' about

No I’m not pitching a program to aunty in which I hang out with teens and ascertain how their minds and hormones tick. I do that 24/7 – no bean bags required just a ‘puter and the world wide web. They call me June Dolly Watkins, cos grooming is my specialty. Woops that is not me either, more like another plodding plot for the filth at Sun ‘ill. Both sensational ideas but.

Now where was I ? Focus, focus, focus. Yes that’s it now I remember how it goes....

What I really want to share with you is a very curious sight I witnessed from the bus window last night.

Frank Sartor and Michael Costa in mufti on King Street Newtown chewing the fat and wildly gesticulating. Michael Costa’s mufti was crazy, crazier than his gesticulation! Army camouflage baseball cap and a smart but casual cotton knit with stripes, and chinos. Frank’s garb was kinda of drab, daggy leather jacket and jeans. Were they determinating Rees’ successor? Does anyone care? I don’t think even Quentin and the Stateline team can be bothered covering the state alp leadership tussle. It’s lame-O.

Snatch pant

Snatch pant, Snatch pant, l-l-l-ladies get your snatch pant.

As the Best & Less and K-Mart jingles and spruikers used to cry in the 80's and 90's. And very effective they were. Llladies of all shapes and sizes were sporting black leggings. Generally with large, long shirts but more often just with normal length tops and displaying their great smiling V to all and sundry. (oh don't choke on your pickle, prudence, i've got to give voice to this right here, right now! )

While I am a proponent of Lady love your cunt (why i think it was me on that celebrated Oz cover, wasn't it?) I consider the outline of the labia majora in the legging or high rise gabardine pant, or any outfit, as what Maggie T would call a major boo boo.

In the noughties the leggings have returned but are now known as the footloose or footless tight. Generally sported under dresses by stylish, chic, neat types (don't blow your pfff pfff valve*, yet, sweetness - worse is still to come!).

In the past few weeks as i've roamed around Sydney, from the haughty north to the I'm not a raShirelist South, from the battlers' west to the meretricious East, i have observed many things (about which i'm still to blog) but the most remarkable has been the return of the legging as trou - this time in faux denim stretch!!!

Granted the faux denim legging can look OK under certain shifts but when it is au naturel, l-l-ladies just put that smiling V away!


*a K.Elliottism i do declare.

Round and round she goes #19809

Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it;But we hae meat, and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit

Hello NSRs, I truly do not know what’s going on with the old brain but for the past three mornings I’ve woken up with that piece of Little Robbie Burns prose on my mind. It’s nice though ain’t it and always looks so attractive on tea towels… It was emblazoned on one used for drying dishes at one’s childhood family seat, and whipped agin one’s seat amidst the oh get and rack off tetches of evening washing up sessions (faaamily good times, thank god they've rolled on by) which reminds me of this other favourite ditty from my enfance:

When I was a little boy
I washed my mammy's dishes,
I put my finger in my eye
And pulled out golden fishes.

Delightful. 'cept I was a girl then and I am really not quite sure what I have become.

Perhaps these pomes from one's childhood are coming to mind because of an sms text message received on the mobile telephone last Satdee morn. It advised that Tim Rogers and a superpoop were doing a recital of my favourite collection of prose from the time whence I crossed the threshold from enfance to adolescence, and where I have, in all likelihood, remained.

Can you imagine my derision 'pon learning that that r-r-r-rasping ineffectual r-r-r-runt* was doing a tribute to Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!! It has evidently stirred my inner Colonel Blimp, doesn’t take much, admittedly, and my nice kind friends say it’s more Mainwaring than Blimp but let’s face it, it’s Blimp (still it’s nice to have a bit of Pressburger Powell gloss atop your Perry and Croft - and no, foot not dissimilar from bottom, that is NOT an allusion to a fricking Marty Rhone song - god give me strength!).

Response? What would my response be?

Get Yer Ya Ya's Out tribute night? Step off and into a grave! Will someone be hired to call "paint it black, paint it black , you devils?" If so can they please ensure that rent-a-fan brings a needle and thread lest that Tim claims to have busted a button on his trousers, for nobody would want his trousers to fall down now would they? Thank you kindly indeed! (It’s a shame that Mickey J had not read any Dorothy L Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey by the time of that 69 tour because I’m sure he would have embraced Lord P’s “thankee” and perhaps referred to Charlie as the good padre.)

Lament-A-ble. I mean to say, just go and put the original piece of hot wax on mr twirley whirley or try and compose some new music. Dude-dah!!


*r-r-r signifies the rolling of r's, you know how to roll your r's now, donchoo?

Her adjudication still brings me to my knees

I have been watching this year’s Idol and despite the excruciating auditions and all that honky soul hollering (howuh, howuh, howuh, ho – imagine Kylie and Dannii on YTT and their rendition of sisters are doin’ it for themselves (which was of course penned by Tony Newley and originally performed by Joanie and Jackie Collins)), I am absolutely fascinated by Marcia Hines.

Marcia is one riveting dame. Gone is the platitooodinal evasive adjudication such as “love the skin you’re in”, “you know who you are, you are what you are” and general proferring props all over the shop. Ladies and gentleman, make away for Marcia as pop psychologist, counsellor and heavy! During 2009 auditions she’s been workshopping potential stars’ scars, practically hosting rebirthing sessions and advising the young and upcoming that if anyone messes with ‘em, let her know and she’ll deal with ‘em! You go girlfriend!

Perhaps she sees the idol ‘gig’ as on its last legs and is laying down some foundations for a splendid new career as daytime variety talk show host/chanteuse combining Kerry Anne (granted MH has much better voice and crazier dance moves) with the sagacity of Dr Phil and the clout of Oprah. It would be rather marvellous and I would tape it, which is my totally giving Marcia props.

Conk City

Perhaps it's due to the unseasonally, oh sorry, unseasonably, warm weather, a premature primavera, if you like, but I have to say that the conks are out and at it in full force and it's wa wa wa waaah central.

Most nights around three am, if i'm not awoken by a feeling of doom i am stirred from my slumber by a rabble of conks buzzing the intercom of the building entrance. They are young, they run green, buzz my bell, make me scream. It's not like it's once and they run away. After all I recall that appeal, as a 9 year old.

No, this goes on for about 20 minutes and because the building's insulaton is pretty lame i can hear the other flats' buzzers going off too. It happened again on Friday. As the buzzing goes on I wonder whether it's some boozed out friend on the wrong route for good time centrale.I duly roll over only to twitch then turn back to lie rod straight on dootiful daughter alert.

Could it be a family emergency or just pater needing assistance yet again for his cockin' computer. Surely not at 3 a.m? However, octogenarians do keep curious hours. Oh woteva pops. Don't derange this fille rangee. I jam the earplugs deeper into my ear canal and slide further under the bedcovers to eventually sleep fitfully and later rise more Eds Monsoon than Doris Day.

The icehouse down the road had been doing a roaring trade until its great galoot of a kitchen wiz left some chips unattended in a vat of fat on the stove causing a fire and blowing out the power grid (?) across several suburbs for about five hours. It also brought the fuzz and the firies and caused quite the commotion.

I've now got a shocking bout of rsi (or is it carpal tunnel syndrome?) from twitching the lace curtains.

I thought that this explosion marked the icehouse's end but its owner seemed to just give the joint a lick of paint and a new lord has been installed. He is very garrulous, very flash harry and somewhat careless. I 've watched sufficient eps of season 1 of the Wire to have an inkling what will happen next, let me tell you.

And you know you can set your watch by this conk even if it happened in the northern hemisphere but oh, well, just sit on it, Mr/Ms C (and that ain't short for Cunningham) for this is NSR.

Tales of the self-obsessed and unaware

God if I were really to divulge tales of that calibre you’d be utterly bored but also kind of tetchy. Aggravation centrale.

What eh really would like to say is:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s response and reaction to that reporter's asking for President Clinton’s perspective was utterly JUSTIFIED. Even if it transpired that the translation was mucked up and the 'journo' meant President Obama. Really...? Big whoop. She was right to set ‘em straight, which is all she did. It was a stupid question and warranted short shrift. As for the way Fran Kelly and Virginia Trioli have been going on about it. Get out of the pool!! Why don’t they just call HRC a ‘shrew’. Perhaps the media could focus on the actual significance of the Secretary of State's visit to Africa.

Yours,

Pepped up and opinionated.

Ananas the high priest of fruit

Busy, busy, oh so busy but while I’ve got you here may I ask whether you eat pineapple?

Pineapple is delicious at the mo. I’m talking about the fresh variety not the canned stuff - leave that for those delicious toasted cheese and ham sangers of a Sunday would you.

When I think of pineapple several things come to mind : perfect digestion, the big P at Nambour and its darling choo choo train, the Aug/Sept school hols of cheese, ham and pineapple toasties past, and of course Blue Hawaii starring Angela Lansbury and Elvis Aaron P (for Presley not Pineapple).

It is somewhat unnerving that within those memories lie connections to the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition.

Such a small world, almost as small as Tony Abbott's mind.

Avocados are also at their most delicious NOW. Pineapple and Avocado are in their prime like Miss Jean Brodie once was and me, I guess...gumps. (and yes, i am aware that one really cannot talk about fruit being in its prime, foot not dissimilar from bottom type, but this is my blog and i'm having a goddamn Windmills of my mind moment alright? Well, it's fine by me, sugar. Lovely. Now where was I? )

Oh yes... Are you still in your prime, boys and girls? More’s the point can one possibly still be when one nudges the mid forties? I thought one could but I think that J Brodie was possibly in her early to mid 30’s.

D E S P A I R

What is one to do? Run off with the Fascists? Too tiresome, not to mention taxing on the plantar fasciitis and well, which ones? (Right on).

Oh cock to political engagement! I’ll just run off to the Rod Stewart Academy for young ladies and get myself a nice young l-l-l eggy blonde. Granted that's more the domain of the has-been cockstar and not entirely suitable for aspiring pink lemonade drinking Baronesses; Why it could lead to one chartering a yacht to that notorious isle of sapphic love! (Don't tell T. Abbott, Krudd or that shit 'appens Albanese.)

A veritable gels' own adventure.

What curious new dawn beckons Bel. And where on earth is my local chandlery?

Wireless

Have you noticed that during the 7 o'clock news bulletin preceding AM on Radio National the newsreader has commenced announcing “9 minutes past seven"? It’s rather out of the blue (or should that be random?) and then the newsreader finishes bulletin with a very brief weather forecast.

What is with this "9 minutes past"? Could it be that the bulletin had been cutting into A.M’s time and Tony Eastley got tooshy? Did T.E. demand that AM start on the dot of 7.10 to allow sufficient time at the end for the witty banter baton exchange with Fran Kelly?

Does anyone care?

And Charlotte Glennie is back! Reporting from Brisbane but back nevertheless. I wonder if she is good friends with Christopher Pahne? Someone has to be, well apart from Lexie Downer.

Double ignominy

For the past month I’ve been doing a battle against some tedious low grade virus which incapacitates me for two days per week.

Whoopee zing and a hot motherycockadoodledoo, I know. S’winter after all. However, when LGV made its last special guest appearance, Thursday and Friday all day and a l l night, I decided that it was time to see a doct-err . Perhaps I had the Epstein-Barr virus (all that living and loving and learning in the vibrant varsity campus of life) or could it be that I was suffering from such ennui that I am now imagining these illnesses. As if!

Unfortunately my preferred medical practice was booked out so I had to go to the local medical centre. Quack-a-rama. Upon arrival I was instructed to wash my hands and wear a mask so as not to spread my disease despite not having ‘flu or cold symptoms. As I sat in the waiting room flicking through a mag, and wondering why other patients were permitted not to wear a mask, I surreptitiously slipped the mask’s hoops off my ears allowing the mask to slide from my face when a doctor arrived and barked at me to put the mask back on. It was quite the rebuke even though not clearly audible for doctor was sportin’ a mask. Lawks was he swine afflicted?

Eventually I was summoned from the waiting room to my appointment. It was with the very doctor who had chastised me. Oh brother. Doctor began his consultation with another tirade about the importance of the mask sportage and instructed me to have it on until I left the surgery!! I gulped some air and proceeded to enumerate my symptoms. He sneered and enquired whether I was a smoker. I exclaimed no, pulling down my mask to convey my injury to such an insult, rapidly returning the hideous, smelly, fuzzy fibrous cloth to my face before i was further admonished.

Dr Cockfoster scowled and then took my temperature and said it was fine and that I didn’t have the ‘flu. But…I never said I had the 'flu. Waaaaaah. I suggested that he check my ears and the glands around my throat as they were tender, oh what about a blood sample, sugar, but he refused. Perhaps he couldn’t hear owing to the mask muffle but it's more likely consequential to a no temperature, no illness philosophy. He did however recommend that I use garlic and ginger in my cooking, which I so already do, and provided a medical certificate advising that I am suffering from a medical condition (?!) and unfit for work/school for Friday 10th July and that "she states that she has been unable to attend work from 9th July.”

Not quite Smiler

I was looking for footage of D. Waterman playing William Brown in the BBC series but found
this .

A tawdry image shared is a repressed memory spared.

Stick to your flaming knitting!!

In this time of the GFC and the Great Recession one is ever so humble to have a job and continually tugging one’s, never anybody else’s, forelock .

Nevertheless this does not mean that one, or even you, should have to put up with the most ridiculous, dicky and utterly trite language.

Comrades (Hey, it is EG Whitlam's 93rd bday today after all) you are making my ears bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeed.

Sitting hunched over my keyboard in the corner of my delightful workstation/cubicle I am stirred from my diligence by the words “Knock, knock” wittily uttered by unctuous Splodge(tautology?),who then issues me with an imperative tagged with the conditional!! What a technique and what a *&^%!

Two things about the dickiness that is ‘knock, knock’:

(i) what is wrong with ‘excuse me’?! I promise not to retort with ‘you’re excused’. Oh office banter you are so cute and drole, I now pronounce you Mickey Office-Banter.

(ii) When utterer is actually standing beside a door!. Dear colleague there’s no need to be coy, you can rap your knuckles right against that door’s hardish mock wooden surface. Oh yes you can! Actions speak louder than words, woopsy I've almost come over Mickey O-B.

And as for the language in the variety of formal bang-on sessions - vexation exclamation marke centrale!! Let's face it, that is the goddamn 'elephant in the room'. Oh my godfarva, if only there were an elephant in the room, i'd mount the darling and yell a hearty 'charge' !

From the ever present desire to be on the same page to people saying that they’ve been having ‘side bars’ with others (no doubt these 'others' are grassroots stakeholders or summat.) Then it's on to worry about ‘siloing’ and ‘lockstepping’, intentions to ‘socialise’ certain concepts before 'roll out' not to mention requests that we have a 'quick'n'dirty' (oh the crudite!) overview, 'park ideas', ‘press pause or rewind’ mid-discussion. I myself personally would not be averse to pressing ‘stop’ or perhaps something totally out there such as ‘stop’ and ‘eject’ simultaneously. Woah mama!!

However the dickiest expression of them all is yet to surface at my bureau. A friend told me of some Jargonista who regular peppers her parley with the term ‘real estate’ to refer to new equipment. And worst of all when said Jargonista wishes to convey that her team/unit is going to focus on its key responsibility and/or area of expertise she says “we’ll stick to our knitting”.

Ludicrous!!

"Cheer up, it might never happen”

chirped some irritating senior dimpling and jigging before me as i attempted to pass (not stomp by, mind) in a station underground shopping complex at 3.45ish yesterday afternoon.

Well, sweetheart, from looking at you it possibly had.

Cannot these troubles in kitbag packers just zip it. Furthermore, there really is nothing more disgusting than someone over 10 behaving cute.

Glory you’re a senior, sir get a bit of dignity about you and embrace your inner curmudgeon.

And really why in the bejesus do I have to smile while I stroll. I’m sufficiently decowative as it is, I mean, I’m a liberated woman! Life may be a flipping cabaret but it certainly cannot always be chuckles centrale.

And one other thing cuteswutsey senior perhaps I was actually worrying about someone who is sick, mourning a loved one or puzzling over friends behaving in fashions most bizarre. And yes I possibly could have been but it was more likely I was wondering whether I’d turned off the iron, what was causing my foot to ache or why no-one sold jam doughnuts in the ceebeedee. Possibly all three so is it any wonder I looked so glum chum.

And for my next trick...

Elton John reportedly performed a rendition of "Candle In The Wind" to guests at his White Tie and Tiara ball, moments after learning of Michael Jackson's death.

Moments later a piano key lid was slammed down on a set of bejewelled, mottled pink sausage-like digits. E-bony and Rooo-bee ...

GET THAT DRIVE

I am reading the Bruce Beresford memoir/diary. It had been recommended by two people whose opinions I almost respect.

It's an interesting read but it exhausts me. Well, Bruce Beresford's drive does. It is extraordinary. Where does he get it from?

W H E R E?!

I would like 25 percent of his drive for Christmas please.

A view from the faaaaaaaaaaaaamily room

I'm not outraged about the Chaser business and not that interested but really must opine. I think the Chaser is generally fairly lame and tame. However, if i were 13, had never seen any biting and nasty satire, i would love it but then i loved the Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower at 7. Now that I am 75, the days grow short and i'm in the autumn of my years, I have matooered and only have time for my jokes and world-class perspective. Nevertheless I think the indignation, the sacking and fricking Kruddy are just downright silly. In fact Krudd and the general outrage about it all are the most appalling.

I really cannot stand Krudd. His prissiness, his overarching aching desire to be popular, his tactile ways - stop hugging the common people, his conceit, his delivery of speeches and eulogies - oh his pause for effect, his moral rectitude are just disgusting. Julia Gillard soon please. Well how about NOW.

I'm a fan but

Several times per day for the past five months Connie Francis's "where the boys are" wafts out from a colleague's office .

It is such a mournful tune.

Each time I hear it a wave of unease bordering on agitated despair washes over me. I feel like an extra from a truly distressing scene in Blue Velvet and that some terrible repressed memory longs to emerge.

Follyfoot

Mayday, Mayday as Captain Peachfuzz used to cry.

Yes, it is also May Day but no, I am not wearing a sprig of lily of the valley on my lapel or anywhere on my person, or marching or dancing around a maypole (apparently one of the rockstockracy set has a gold one in her bathroom but it's sans ribbons making it one of them poles de sauce ). I do all of that come October (well not the sauce pole dancing, I hear you can get some very nasty sprains) for I live in the southern hemisphere.

It is autumn in the southern hemisphere and the air has been kind of nippy in sin city.

Yesterday I bought a lot of hosiery at Myers, 25% off one particular brand. Apart from the discount I was drawn to the packaging which boldly claimed that the line of hosiery was the brand preferred by Qantas hosties – a mark of prestige no less. This of course greatly appealed to me, which granted is rather curious for be the matter sociale, intellectuale or real estatale the mistress likes to think that she is generally NOT a snob.

That bold statement made, she is a bit of snob when it comes to the old champers and was always mildly appalled by the prospect of imbibing a glass of Cock Ridge blush. Nevertheless duly knocked it back ('Saint Bel') and its parent bottle ('Supertrooper') and no doubt proceeded to behave in a fashion that appalled all present. Oh just rack off, Fischer, it was the mid to late 90’s, I was in my 30’s and celebrating the end of a recession.

However I digress, blame it on the Blue Dalton who I saw for the first time in 15 years last weekend ….

And in the spirit of reminiscing…In the late 90’s I frequently shoved my snout in the bargain troughs at the bottle shop that was conveniently located next door to my former residence, Derwent Flats (my how i've come up in the world...).

My favourite DROP for a very reasonable price was a variety of methode champenoise called Omni. I told a friend and colleague, who was a wine expert - in a fun way not in a C. Erskine-Browne way, about this drop called Omni, which was not bad and quite a bargain, to which he purred that it was the splash that Qantas reserved to serve its First Class passengers.

For years I would present this brand to people advising and wowing them with the Qantas First Class factor. Frills and thrills at no frills prices. Only to find out several years later that it was a joke and my covetting prestige at bargain prices had caused me to be punk’d big time!

So you see it’s with some trepidation that I proceed to boast about the brand of hosiery enveloping my pins and toes for snobbery and boasting are perilous follies bound to lead to ignominy.

Tweeter-Twitter

(For those I’ve already told, respectfully I say to thee ‘bad luck'. I have to increase the blog quota for April, ye see or I am in soup city with Blogger dot com (that old joke, again - yes sorry, not really) )

Last Friday I saw Daniel Johns down by the posh part of Circular Quay, the western part. I am surprised by the thrill but it was very thrilling. I wanted to look at him and his companion a second time but resisted, he is such a lovely sensitive, creative thing i didn't want him to turn me into a pillar of salt so i thought i'd blog about it instead.

Then today I saw ONJ in Myer!!! I was stimulating the economy and she was ostensibly promoting those wii smart brain boxes but really just seemed to be sitting down looking G O R G E O U S, being utterly charming and signing autographs. It must be extraordinary to be a blue eyed blonde with those creamy pink apple cheeks and talented.Fairy floss perfection! The current editor of the Women’s Weekly was also there and she was probably ruminating about cotton candy and such. Is Myer owned by ACP? Perhaps I need a Wii brain thingy.

This morning I spoke to a young woman whose first name is Bliss and then a young man by the name of Englebert, which is so much more dignified than Bliss. No offence Bliss.

Do you eat Baked Beans? I do and I love them. They are so delicious and satisfying.They are a complete meal.

Two celeb sightings and a small tin of baked beans and I am really happy.

Rap rap R A P P Y

This evening as I approached the final stretch of my walk home from work, among the promenading throng on the narrow paths of King Street a curiously dated vision appeared.

A male, Generation X-er garbed in a rapper ensemble including a baseball cap worn sideways (RAD) strutted past, hangin' tough as his legs, arms and hands cut loose through the air no doubt in time to the tune blaring from his ipod into the ear piece whose wire dangled about his chest.

As he caught me eye, he bellowed:

"You ain't fucken cool, man so you can stick it up your arse."

Now to what song could that lyric possibly belong...

Wee, wee, wee all the way to the infirmary

As if the daily battle against the global warming financial crises, Bikies, ATM bandits and sharks wasn't enough without the emergence of the swine 'flu pandemic!

We're doomed I say, DOOMED!

Age I do abhor thee

Oh pets and lambs, and curious species that are NSRs I have had to discard the chemist magnifying reading glasses which I’ve been sporting these past eight months, they were giving me headaches and hurting my eyes. So endowed with Kruddy money and on easter V A C A T I O N, I toddled off to the optometrist where I was diagnosed with an astigmitism (?) of the left eye, which surely would have been present since i graced the earth or perhaps not...

Oh I don't know ! (Remember rrround those vowels a la Julie Andrews/the Brothers Gibb and your diction will be perfection, yours Evie Hayes.)

Am sure i had the eyes tested when I was in Infants. Each year we had one day, generally when it was overcast and cool, where we Kindergarten to 2nd class pupils had to strip down to our singlets and underpants and queue in the playground outside a makeshift hall to see some health officials. Once you got into the hall and made it to the desk of the Health Official, he/she would check your ears and eyes, listen to your chest, and then with a ruler flick wide the elastic band of your briefs and peer down at your frontbottom and write notes on clipboards. I don't think the state's primary schools still perform that type of health check.

Anyway back to 21st century me. So yes after 45 minutes faffing about trying on a variety of eye frames I finally settled on a pair. I was going for more trad frames but the very kind optometrist indulged me and persuaded me to go for a bolder hue, purple! He said the colour would complement my crown of dark hair.

''I guess it will bring out the Liz Taylor violets" i dimpled as i once again patted my snoode, sucked in my cheeks, pucked up my moue and peered adoringly at my reflection, which screamed back in horror, natch.

No doubt the Optometrist pressed the adore button at that point and another star was added to my title of Icon, and a couple of more boozed and pilled addled spinners were pushed from the mantle, bye bye Judy, bye bye Liza. Ms Liz is of course firmly ensconced on the sign’s tippity top, albeit in a wheelchair behind which crouches a carrion crow like Joan Collins or is that Dannniii?

Tweeter Twitter Twatter

Lindsay Lohan looks a bit like a young Susannah York.

While interviewing Olivier Blanchard last week Kerry O'Brien shrieked "more bang for your buck" about 4 times. Was the autocue jammed?

Just before Easter while shopping in Coles the soundtrack to accompany my purchase of yoghurt (Jalna is my brand preferee) and three beurre boscs was My Sweet Lord. I heard the entire song, it's quite long isn't it. And do you know what the Coles' mix only featured the Hallelujah chorus and none of the Hare Krishna or Gurur Vishna and other Gurur bits.

Julie Andrews and Roger Moore could be brother and sister. They really could.

Clunks Passiona style

Hey guys, buds and special fwends do you remember (granted a challenging activity for the majority of you) a tattoo that was very popular around the mid to late 90s which depicted a ring of barbed wire and is generally placed midway around the upper arm. It was highly prized by Sydney Eastern suburbs beaches types (read wankers, no offence but), Pamela Anderson and lots of other people of that calibre.

Well i do and it's been dominating my pondering hours and i've generally concluded that it will actually be even more trag as the years pass. This morning on the bus when i espied a pedestrian sporting aforementioned tatt it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps this image was not actually meant to be barbed wire but meant to convey a goddamn crown of thorns!! OMG and more grotesque.

Windmills of my mind #2

In truth the blogosphere is just a form of public therapy, and here i should make some hilarious allusion to the fact that with therapy you get charged for the hour but only get 50 minutes with the shrink... yet no matter how hard i contrive that witticism just cannot be applied to cyberspace. Bummère (it's OK for me to talk about my mother like that but not you!)

This morning in between my chores and slipping into the 2nd b.r. to access the internet, i've converted it into a cyber chamber, thoughts about John Paul Young keep popping into my head.

I really don't know why.

First i was thinking about his comments in the 1977 or 1978 RAM Rock Readers poll.

When asked about his political allegiances/preferences he wrote "gorne fishing". I was shocked by his apathy at the time, actually i still think it is lame-o. Incidentally, the same poll featured an alleged quote from Debbie Harry stating that 'the only good thing about Australia is the smack.' I don't recall madly thumbing through the 's' section of the Oxford dictionary at that point. I would have already read several books by David Dalton, plus that delightful Going down with Janis Joplin, oh and that ridiculous Mick Jagger by J Marks book to have been well versed with synonyms for sugary breakfast cereals. 'Rock stars have such sweet tooths yet they do not pack on the pounds.', I mused as I examined my hair's split ends.

Then thoughts of Squeak led to my picturing him all squirmy and squittery and unco-ordinatedly bopping while singing "i wanna do it with you" on Countdown. Enticing or what! This then led me to think of his crimped hair and how a girl at school told me in 1978 that when she crimped her hair she looked like JPY. Why on earth would you want to look like JPY?! Well i did like his nautical ensemble when he performed on that pontoon in Sydney Harbour one Rocktober.

Every pop star has to have a go at sporting a sailor suit it's a winning look and has been favoured by bands from the Rolling Stones to Mother Goose. In fact i think Squeak's ensemble may have inspired the attire for that it's only rocknroll film clip. So not only was Ronnie Wood diddled for that song's writing credits but our very own JPY for the look!

And if you're in a band and fame has eluded you, may I suggest that you go down to your local army and navy store (a bit different from the ones that Hilda Rumpole used to frequent - they stocked nice chinaware) and purchase a sailor suit pronto! Post some pics and film clips of you and your band en nautique on Facebook and You Tube and I guarantee that your ship will come in.

Hey everybody take a look at me

Back in the day the most popular trend on the street for the people who wore t-shirts was to sport a Ramones t. One in five people did, with great smugness and a spurious feeling of street credibilite. And yes, many a time back then did i blog on about it - my humour and general slant is drawn from the powers of observation... (bully for me and everyone under the sun!)

Anyway that Ramones t-shirt trend was briefly replaced by Blondie t-shirts, alas none with the slogan “Blondie is a band not a person”, perhaps that was just confined to badges. Both have now been usurped by the style retro enfance. T-shirts with popular culture icons from one’s childhood. Marvel comics heros , tv shows, and very popular with many gels born in the late 80’s and 90’s are the t's featuring those Roger Hargreaves Little Miss characters. I have not seen any of their male counterpart wearing the Mr Men series, apart from one t that read Mr Cock but i don't recall that book, perhaps it was indexed.

I don’t need t-shirts to demonstrate my retro enfance allegiances for I have Facebook. And to have both would be just plain greedy, and, greed is bad, which also happens to be the slogan of my favourite t-shirt, written in Choose Life font, natch.

Crackers

Yesterday between the hours of 4.30 and 7 p.m. was curious to say the least.

After work I set forth to visit a friend in hospital. I left the bureau, striding down Barrack and crossing George Street. I marched down Martin Place, once named Martin Plaza (pity poor Martin ‘Mental as Anything‘ Murphy who thought it would be drole to have Martin Plaza as a nom de stage but dated himself immediately and continues to do so if he still sports that ridiculous white cowboy hat and struts along the promenade in Coogee or perhaps that was just his style for the late 90’s...)

Yes, so I was walking at a cracking pace down the Place and up, past the Cenotaph, the wacky, zany nozin’ about charity spruikers, and lots of middle-aged ladies sportin' floral sunfrocks with vavava-voom necklines. I crossed Pitt to continue my ascent when this stranger stopped in front of me and uttered the most ridiculously effusive compliments, warranted but nevertheless ott (oh welcome back 'ott'. Did you run away with 'trendy'?). Admittedly I was a somewhat dignified contrast to all that cleavage and red raw decoll – yep I was sportin’ a stripey neck to knees, a pink tutu and a giant green St Patrick's day hat. A noughties nod to the band Mother Goose. I thanked him and said he was most kind and attempted to continue the march.

He grabbed my hand , squeezed and caressed it, imploring me to meet him for a cup of coffee some time. I eventually unwrangled my hand from his grasp, looked around for Candid Cameras (kind of like “Ashton Kutcher’s Punk’d”, kidz), and bade him farewell. He then said I was a very negative (?!!) and untrusting person and with that the Impulse sans fleurs moment ended and I continued my way.

I finally got to the bus, a trifle puzzled but 'negativity' well intact, and reached Randwick Junction. As I approached the hospital I bumped into someone I had thought of the week before who I hadn’t seen for 12 years. Ain’t that a cowinkydink!! Alas it was not New York City Funk - the Sydney identity of the 90’s. Not a day passes without my thoughts turning to him. Haiku mo: New York City Funk where have you gone? Did you finally make it to the Big Apple? Or just turn into Matthew Hall?

After I’d made my lavender lady visit, during which I’d had my arm stroked continually by another visitor who stood beside me - so much tactility that afternoon I must have entered a Prozac zone for I was clearly no longer too hot to touch, I embarked on the tedious journey back to the inner west.

I walked through the delightful grime and humidity of Central's underground from Eddy Avenue to Devonshire Street tunnel, scanning the lists of names on the war memorial plaques in their handsome wooden cases along the tunnel's walls then turning my gaze to the big advertisements in one of which I espied the father of one of my brothers-in-law! There he was plastered on the wall promoting a telecommunications company and playing a suitor to Carol Raye! And no, he is not Barry Creyton.

It's a living thing!!

Don’t worry the mistress has not gone all pro-life on you and about to bleat that "Johnny would have been 12 today if his mother had not had an abortion." A quote from a pro-life campaign pamphlet placed in the faaaaaaaaamily’s letterbox circa 1974.

In fact I am exclaiming about language, the English language, you know that feisty, unwieldy, capricious, vagabond temptress of a tongue.

“Oh lady behave!” I cried to the telly the other evening while watching the ads in between Two and a Half Men. (Yeah, I disgust you because yes, I do enjoy that show. Hey, I’m thrilled to see all my Brat pack mates together again; Jon “Duckie” Cryer so gainfully employed and Charlie Sheen is like a total male feminist these days).

The commotion was caused by the promotion of a new dessert offered by one of those fast food chains that sells every possible ingredient on a soggy crusted pizza (commonly known as the got problems with me glands lovers special).

Said dessert/pudding/sweets/afters was called a ‘chocolate lava cake’ but it plainly looked like a self-saucing pudding to me. Is the term self-saucing pudding now over, passé, obsolete, dare i say, extinct in the culinary kingdom? Now only to be used to describe neo-cusser Pastor Krudd or other self-satisfied toads who one has the misfortune to endure in one’s quotidian.

D e v A s t a t e d.

Doppleganger Goddamn!!

Over the weekend in between beetling about the great Sydney metropolis, from the battlers’ west to the meretricious east, from the haughty north to the “I’m not a raShirelist” south, I was clearly in generalisation mode and also pondering people (yes, I can multi-task of which I am most proud), dead people. Dead and interesting people. Dead, interesting and famous people. So many thoughts, so many qualities all triggered by one email, an invitation to join the Ronald Colman Appreciation Society on the worldwide pencil case that is Facebook.

I duly joined the club for I like the sap, and firmly believe that everybody needs a club. Furthermore Colman did inspire the Odie Cologne and Maxwell Smart’s Prince characters, not to mention his sterling interpretation of Sydney Carton and that cove in Random Harvest, and then of course there is the Ronald Coleman Lodge Nursing Home near Bondi Jungle…oh that's coleman with an 'e'

Anyway would you please just let me attempt to assert the point of this Bill Collins-like ramble, mmm, I’m a bit thirsty, water or juice?, yes, well the point is:

(TA-DAH) thoughts of Ronald Colman led me to think about George Sanders and how he married Ronald Colman’s lady within weeks of her being known as widda Colman. So I wikied George Sanders and really didn’t glean much more about him and widda Colman; you all know about George and the Gabor sisters, his battle with the booze and that suicide note. However, I did happen on information about George’s brother Tom Conway, who was also an actor who lived his life through the bottom of a booze bottle. Are we not all a little bit thespian?

But look at this!!! Just LOOK I say.

George Sanders

Tom Conway

It’s a resemblance of Samantha Stevens and cousin Serena proportions, except they were meant to be cousins but even spookier two different actresses played them, Elizabeth Montgomery and Pandora Spocks!! Farout brussel sprout. Please don’t raise the similarities between Patty Lane and her cousin Cathy in the Patty Duke show (also produced by Bewitched’s William Asher) for I am like totally discombobulated now as I type.

So now I must go and search for my doppelganger, I feel so a-lone. I suspect it was the character Archangel in that asylum scene from the Nun’s Story…While I do that you should read this excellent article , always infinitely much pleasanter than those rude'uns.

Goodbye.

The Mistress and the rum realtors

The other evening as I fed the week’s dainties and morsels to the block’s garbage and recycling bins I was distracted from my act of benevolence by a very loud “Psssst”. I turned to see a man emerge from the shadows near the bins with an “excuse me" and "I’m sorry to startle you."

Well, how about not lurking in shadows and trespassing after dark, fella, not to mention saying "pssst", I thought , but instead said ,“oh that’s alright” and "How may I help you?" while taking several steps back. The last time this happens I’ll probably offer to sharpen the knife.

Having broken the ice, the fellow proceeded to grill me about the block of flats, asking how well they had been renovated, details about the fixtures and fittings, and whether the residents were happy with the quality of the renovations. Yes, I was still there in the shadows by the bins, intrigued by the ludicrous situation, I think it was the “pssst” that had reeled me in, but still somewhat cagey.

I answered his questions with questions and learnt that his father had apparently once owned the block and believed that he’d been diddled in the sale of the block to the developers. The sum he’d got sounded perfectly good to me (loads of lolly not to mention humbug all round) and as for the hard luck story, the previous owner was a slum landlord.

The tale continued for a while, how his grand pappy had laid the building’s bricks, etc. and that the dispute could go to court. I lost interest, my frontal lobe struck a gavel against its remains declaring both parties as bad as each other ("business is business, Gran(pa)" ). I then heard myself utter "oh, for fuck's sake" to something that realtor-in-the-dark said. This shocked him, granted swearing is a lot more offensive than lurking in the shadows and pouncing on people.

Conversation brought to a close he scrawled his number on a scrap of paper and asked me to contact him should I be prepared to provide further information. I have not. Property being theft and whatnot.

Flights of fancy

Last night I dreamt that Prince Phillip had died and I was in trouble because I didn’t tell the Queen but apart from that I am quite well in the conscious world, despite the ever present Sydney spectres of sharks, ATM bandits, bikie wars and acronyms.

Today marks the six month anniversary of a special bond that has developed between me and the Avian Kingdom.

I recently bade farewell to the Channel-Billed Cuckoo, a visitor from Indonesia and/or Papua New Guinea between September and February. This cuckoo’s dignified and handsome appearance belies a god awful (no, that is unfair, nothing could be that awful) cry that is uttered at dawn and dusk. Its cry is the combination of a wail and a shriek.

With the cuckoo’s departure my fascination/irritation has been transferred to the plague of Umbrella Cockatoos who have beset Victoria Park. There must be a couple of hundred of them flying about in the evenings when I walk through. They are really rather cracked and full of energy with a hideous plaintive cry and they have so much fun. They fly in packs and then hoards of them congregate on the branches of gum trees and some quite small trees. They hoe into the leaves and nuts causing the small trees’ branches to bounce. The trees look as though they will topple under the weight of so many birds. Imagine the trees’ bitching afterwards. It’s a ludicrous sight, the birds are so out of proportion to the tree, it’s like a medieval painting.

Generally the birds fly, squawk and defecate across the park and pool oblivious to the pedestrians and swimmers. However last week as I crossed the park the wind’s direction changed and it spun out the cockies, who decided to leave their trees and head towards more sheltered terrain. However the wind and their panic disoriented them and they flew low and entered the human domain. I had to raise my umbrella to defend myself as they swooped askew. Their swooping intensified and it seemed that battle had begun so I ran, squawking with terror and delight to the end of the park and the sanctuary of City Road.

Next week: my encounter with Gang-Gangs.