Desperately Seeking The Show

This story needed to be told, and I thought since it was a re-opening, I’d put the IPOD on and pick out a song title – and luckily, Girls Alouds “The Show” came on – so, here’s a story about The Show, bless…a good old Show, Aussie style…

Desperately Seeking The Show

Australian communities are founded on many things – disrespect of tall poppies, a basic suspicion of minority groups, a love of the local football team, and of course, the local show. The local show has caused more relationships to come to an end in the 15-18 year old age group than anything else in the world. Basically, the local show will feature farm animals, displays, games, a crappy ride that in probably being “tested” as we speak (by giving free trial turns to primary Catholic school children), and most of all, miles and miles of showbags. It’s around the showbag tent you see them, crying girls discussing their break up because their boyfriend had turned up with a sour look on his face and they had a fight and my god he said he loved me that bastard and so on. Those girls will later in life block your path to the toilet in nightclubs, crying in a similar way.

It’s a well known fact that most Australian children will instinctively flock to the local show, regardless of quality, but only up until a certain point in their life. It’s like one of the last bastions of cynicism that you have to face as a child – it’s just after you lose faith in Santa Claus – and you know you’ve hit adulthood, or at least adolescence, when the thought of wandering past grazing cows and sheep, or a clown trying to whip up interest in a badly held together balloon animal suddenly loses it’s appeal. Worse than that, is the first day you look out the window, hoping the black clouds will turn into rain so you don’t have to leave the house and traipse around the show trying to make the best of it. I still remember the exact day I had my first pangs of show loathing.

Around the time I was 14, there was a local old school Victorian show on that we had made plans to go to as a group, seemingly from January to November. It was mostly Megs Bs idea, one she sold with a great deal of enthusiasm. When I woke up on the day though, I was so flat, I could barely get out of bed. I checked out of my bedroom window to see what the weather was doing – bright, perfect sunshine when I was hoping for bucketing rain. It gnawed at me to find anything, ANYTHING, to get out of going, and I really had no idea where the feeling had come from. All that morning, I checked the TV schedule endlessly, hoping that I could find something I could legitimately claim I wanted to watch instead of going out and looking at the cattle, but alas, there was nothing – just Sevens Sizzling Summer of Golf. All day. And seemingly, not just on Channel Seven but on all the channels at once. I couldn’t even find a reason to sit in and play the Sega Mega Drive. My Mum was particularly keen for me to get out of the house in that perculiar Mum way. I really didn’t understand why Mums were always so keen to get their kids out of the house, since most of the time I would aimlessly wander around shopping malls or waste money on cassingles. Once, I walked to the next suburb and ended up sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant talking AFL to a migrant waiter for five hours, and Mum didn’t even miss me. It surely didn’t take that long to make beads did it Demi?

Claire had a faraway look in her eye for most of the car journey we made to the show in Megs Bs Mums yellow Banana box cramped Nissan. When Megs Bs Mum made a comment about her own driving ability, Claire stared out the window and muttered something about the G force rattling her fillings. It was her only comment of the entire journey. She fiddled in an edgy fashion with the car door lock. To be honest, our friendship had been stretched since she had come back anyway, since she still had her head in swinging Kilwinning. As for me, one of my quirks is that I hate riding in the back of cars, so tightly strapped in to the yellow Nissan, my arms pinned to my sides by an ancient rope seatbelt, I tried not to panic. I tried to focus on the radio but it was too soft for me to hear, and Claire was off in la la land. I tried to talk to Megs B, but she was too busy talking herself up to her Mum, and waving to boys out of the window. I was freaking out, silently, gritting my teeth and sweating, reciting Girlfriend lyrics in my head until I was eventually freed. Although I was only in the car for about 9 minutes, already the day seemed about 9 years long.

I remember what happened next really clearly. When I got out of the car, I ran, pretty oblivious to any other cars in the car park, just about getting myself clipped by a passing Van. I know it seemed ridiculous to be so panicked by a simple car ride that didn’t take that long, but I really remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I ran all the way to the entrance of the show, sat down with my back to the chain fence, and an Irish dancer in a pink skirt asked me if I was OK. I barely nodded in her direction, as I sucked in deep, pained breaths. Meanwhile, Claire and Megs B strolled up, oblivious, barely talking to each other, barely noticing me, as all of sudden, it started to rain, a big drop of rain falling right on my head and trickling down my eye. Claire tipped her Joe Bloggs hat, shook her head, and offered me a Push Pop. Naturally, I declined, but I was glad for the support. Megs B had already seen a boy she liked, paid her dollar, and was off on the chase, round the back of the shooting gallery.

By the time I’d got inside the gate, the rain was spitting furiously down on my face, making my sloppily applied make up run down my jumper. We walked slowly for about ten minutes until we found Megs B again. I was trying to make the best of it, and was chomping on an undercooked battered sav, when Megs B spied the helium balloon tent, next to a parade of donkeys or some fat girls who had made jewellery or something. She eagerly grabbed a helium balloon and held it up for everyone to see.

“Helium balloons,” she declared, “are fucking hilarious!”. To prove it she sucked on one, drawing deeply on it, until her voice was suitably helium affected. “See, I told you!” she squeaked, in a helium affected voice, and lauging in a helium affected voice. I had to admit, it was pretty funny, but I was splashing in a puddle of water, and shivering from the cold, and I was trying not to make eye contact with one of the fat girls, and so my laugh was tepid. Claire meanwhile, simply shook her head, wet blonde hair flaying in all directions.

“Not hilarious,” said Claire, hands on hips, eyeing off some cheap jam.

“Why did you two fucking come!” said Megs B, angrily, in a helium affected voice, her swear word in particular making her sound like Donald Duck. Claire simply shrugged, and stared again into the middle distance, as if transfixed by some distant stall of showbags. I wiped the rain from my eyes and tried to draw on all my experience as a bridge between the social classes, smiled weakly, and shrugged just as apologetically as Claire.

“We wanted to come because you did!” I said, throwing my battered sav into a muddy puddle until it made a loud splosh. “You sounded so enthusiastic!”

“I did!” said Megs B, scratching her head. “Yeah I did, because you always love going to shows! I thought I was being enthusiastic for you!”

We looked at each other, cold, miles from home, stuck in a muddy field surrounded by crap jewellery, uncooked food, meandering Irish dancers, rides that promised thrills and spills but delivered only mild whiplash, and fat blokes in AC/DC T-shirts growing out their mullets pushing past us, dropping chips on the ground. We looked at each other, like two survivors of some ghastly accident, and as Megs B looked across the field, towards where Mike Whitney was signing autographs, the look of horror on her face grew and grew, until it looked like she couldn’t go on.

At which point Claire, holding a pot of home made jam, came back, calmly re-adjusted her hat, and still staring right through us, brushed her chin against her expensive top, and said in a cold, clipped voice “Shows are fucked” before wandering off idly into the distance. We followed, trudging into the car park to sit and wait for Mrs Megs B to come back and rescue us some two hours later.

I’ve thought about this particular day a lot – it’s hard to know what I think of it, because at the time, I really thought everything was changing in my life. I thought I’d need new friends, and new interests. I really thought that as we sat silently in the car on the way home, that I’d barely see these people ever again. To be honest, nothing has ever felt more like a clear example of growing up in my life – even more than marriage and childbirth in many strange ways.

Of course, I look across the room now, at them playing Monopoly, and Claire still has that expression on her face – one of disdain that she finds herself doing something so trivial – and Megs B has the same expression on her face – one that suggests life is best lived stoically, without whinging, and everyone should just get on with it. I know that’s just how they are. I didn’t have anything to worry about – we stayed friends, we’re still kinda the same, and we’re pretty sure that we won’t grow up, not fully, for the rest of our lives.

Or maybe it was just we all realised, as a group, shows are fucked.

Alyson (who actually still loves shows)

Desperately Seeking Speed Dating (with a Jam Motif)

Ages and ages ago, on the Life Itself Board, the lovely Mr Bestworst wanted me to write about, ahem, "speed dating with a jam motif" - righto, let's see what we got...



Desperately Seeking Speed Dating (with a Jam Motif)

As I detailed before, I’m not the world’s best dater. I’ve only once got on the right side of the great “benny/sultry” divide, and that resulted in marriage and children, so I guess I only needed to get it right once. My first kiss (by kiss, I mean pash of course, not catch and kiss) was when I was 14, with a boy called Cameron, who was a sensational committed kisser. Like most Australians, this happened when I was on a fort in the middle of a park, and the mood was ruined by a 7 year old on a pink bike who said “ooooh, lovers” in that classic kid way. Still fair play to Cameron who kept going through the potential embarrassment and kissed with great authority right until the end.

Feeling quite womanly after being pashed (even though Cameron and I were never truly meant to be together, as I liked Girlfriend and he liked Nirvana) I felt the need to try and set my other friends up with boyfriends. This was my gift back to the community that I was part of, and I got quite scientific about it. This was, keep in mind ,1992, long before anyone had coined the phrase “speed dating”, that most difficult of social situations where you get 15 minutes with each person in the room before someone blows a whistle and you move on. My friend Jacx went to a speed dating evening once and the person she liked the best was the one she had the best argument with. I offered her five dollars for each time she could get the conversation onto aardvarks, and she pocketed a good thirty bucks. However, I digress.

I’ve said before I had a clearly defined role at my school, to be a bridge between the social classes, and it was in that role that I noticed that Katrina, the girl that sat behind me, a definite A class girl who hung around at the bitchy table, had the hots for cute but dumb social grade C boy Benjamin, who liked throwing Push Pops at kids, and who had interesting theories on the influence of interstate teams in the Australian Rules Football league. It was clear to me that they were meant to be together, and could possibly, one day, if things went well, pash on the top of the fort in the same way that Cameron and I did. Luckily, I had the perfect solution, the fortune telling game.

In Grade 8, nothing swept through our school like the fortune telling game. Not even the brief 80s Adidas tracksuit revival caught on like the fortune telling game. It involved 6 categories, including 6 people you knew (3 good, 3 bad) and numbers. Through a secret code (that I won’t divulge here) an item in each category was crossed off until, say, one person was left on your “boys” list and that was who you would marry, the numbers column was how many kids you would have etc. It got to the point you couldn’t move for hearing someone yelling “I’m not marrying HIM!” as if your fate was set in stone. I can’t remember who was the first person to engage us with this game, but they should have patented it, as 5 or 6 people began to claim it as their invention. I did realise that the more we played this game, the more likely it was we could find an easy way to ensure that Katrina and Benjamin could be together, without either of them losing their social standings.

“Benjamin did that game today,” I said one day in Science, quite idly.

“Really?” said Katrina, fiddling idly with a bunsen burner.

“Yeah, he’s going to marry YOU apparently,” I said, fixing a pair of Biggles-esque safety goggles to my head.

She smiled, then nearly set herself on fire leaning to close to the bunsen burner. I took the opportunity to sidle up to Benjamin, who in my mind had a pencil up his nose, but that was probably Mark Leaman, our school benny.

“Katrina did that test you know,” I said, for the boys called it “the test” and the girls called it “the game”, as we began to grow apart, and our differences became more pronounced.

“Sweet” he said. “Who’d she marry?”

“You!” I said, poking him in the chest.

I walked back to Katrina, and nodded. I paused crucially, and then kept the repartee going.

“Benjamin got Nirvana as his favourite band” I said, squeezing an eye dropper full of some green thing into a vat of blue things (science was not my thing).

“NO WAY” she said, betraying her A grade status with a flash of over excitement.

As you can imagine, and I won’t keep going, I did this for the best part of an hour, until both parties were convinced that they were soulmates and would live forever. It was speed dating with someone in the middle, with lies and spin and a little bit of ego stroking in between. I don’t know why I was so worried, but I really felt it my duty to set these two up. And I had things going totally my way, until the very last minute of Science class, when Amber Bennett stuck her big mitts into the situation.

“I hear you like BEN” said Amber, rolling her eyes.

“What would you know idiot? I hear there’s a chocolate frog in the bin for you to eat” I said (the full story of Amber Bennett’s social decline should really be told one day).

“BEN likes JAM SANDWICHES and he eats them like a pig!” I rolled my eyes in horror, for I had forgotten all about his poor personal eating habits, not just with Jam sandwiches, but milkshakes, pies and chips. Jam sandwiches were the worst though, as he’d wolf them down hungrily, and have big sticky jam marks all over his face, sometimes for the whole day. There was no way, NO way, an A grade super bitch was going to go out with someone with those eating habits. I sighed, and went back to mixing my toxins, when Katrina put her hands on her hips and looked Amber right in the eye.

“I LIKE JAM SANDWICHES” she said, fiercely. “It said so on THE GAME!”

I made a little “shoo” motion with my fingers in the direction of Amber, and she toddled off crestfallen. I smiled my happiest smile, and sure enough, within an hour, the school had a new super couple, brought together by the surreal combination of jam sandwiches, an imported game, my supreme and speedy matchmaking skills, and mutual “cor, I wouldn’t mind snogging that” flying out of whack hormones. It was a combination that no one, certainly not Amber Bennett, could stop. It had taken on a life of it’s own, and it was a rolling boulder no one could get out of the way of. It was, quite simply, meant to be.

Of course, 1 year later, Katrina got pregnant to Ben, but that, as they say in the classics, was not something I was claiming credit for. I’m all about the innocent…

Desperately Seeking Hats

My lovely online friend Edward O mentioned a long time ago he wanted a story on hats. Well, better late than never says I. So here it is, as a thankyou for all the lovely free songs!



Desperately Seeking Hats

My friend Tina T is something of a hat guru, having appeared in the opening credits of her finest TV role modelling a hat with a Co-star, but hats never really played a big part in my life, beanies yes, leading to an amusing Natalie Imbruglia anecdote, but I just don’t look good in a hat. It’s a bad thing for someone so in the sun as me, but I just really hate them. I got off lightly compared to my cousin Travis, who had thick horn rimmed glasses, and as such was nicknamed “Jonathan King” in less difficult times for the one time pop svengali, but it has left a scar on him so deep he can never truly wear a baseball cap.

My surfing teacher was an old hippy called Joe, who used to sit me down and spin me the most outrageous tales of how he had taught Dennis Hopper how to surf off the breaks in Malibu, but Dennis and he fell out one day over the best flavoured milk in the land. He was clearly lying, you could tell, by the fact that he clearly was making details up as he went. That was fine though, because as he got to the climax of the story, he would start jumping up and down from one foot to the other, and snarl and start doing voices, and it was very funny. Then, we’d sit and learn a little bit more about surfing, and he was proud of my progress, informing my mother about every detail, while she chewed idly on an Eskimo Pie and shivered in the cold before we all packed into the Torana for the drive home.

Surfing is a big part of my life, and my Mum was keen to fund my progress through the learning progress, but she would do so sometimes by buying the most ridiculous surf knock offs known to mankind from the local op shop. An op shop, for those who don’t know, is one of those second hand stores people go into from time to time to buy humorous items for retro nights, and it’s full of junk. My Mum, again with her hippy ethics, used to go in and buy me horrendous things like lime wetsuits, or big board shorts once worn by Big Bertha of Ballarat, that were 13 sizes too big. I would thank her for her trouble, then fold them into the back of the drawer, until she had a clean out, and gave them to my cousin James, for whom the cycle would start again. Once, she bought me a black tracksuit with a green stripe that joined up from top to pants. Suffice to say it was very neatly folded away.

One day, I was mulling over the two star review the new Collette album had received, when my Mum came bounding in from the op shop. She was chewing idly, and threw her bag on the couch. I looked up casually in time to see my beloved Mother sitting in a top hat, a black top hat with orange trim, and a big pink ribbon tied around it. It didn’t go well with her late 80s sparkly top and spangle pants, but she was smiling so serenely, I figured she perhaps didn’t realise she had it on. She picked up a copy of the Woman’s Weekly, and flicked through it, while I sat transfixed.

“Y, can you get your dear old Mum a Tim Tam?” she said, pondering the latest Charles and Di story. I thought I might have been hallucinating, through eating too much Milo out of a tin. She had a lovely turn of phrase my Mum, often saying “why keep a dog and bark yourself?” whenever I complained about fetching something for her. She serenely smiled as she munched thoughtfully on her chocolate biscuit treat. Joe, meanwhile, had entered the room, sat down on a beanbag, and turned on Countdown revolution, barely glancing in my mother’s direction. I began to ponder my options, switching between wondering why my Mother had decided to embrace the world of top hat magic, and my ongoing concern at anti Collette sentiment. In the end, I had to, as they would say, “go there”.

“Where’s the rabbit hiding?” I said, in my best stroppy voice.

“What rabbit?” said my Mum, taking a giant bite and devouring the Tim Tam in one.

“The rabbit inside your TOP HAT!” I said, tilting my head to the side and pouting.

“Top hat? I’m not wearing a top hat dear,” said Mum, throwing her magazine down and looking at me strangely. “Are you sure you are feeling OK Y?”

“Joe, what’s going on?” I said, for if someone could set my mother straight, it would be salt of the earth, honest as the day is long Joe.

“She’s not wearing a top hat” he said, transfixed as he flipped over to Home and Away, to see what Bobby was up to.

I got up, lifted the top hat from my Mums head, and held it in front of her.

“THIS TOP HAT!” I said, moving it back and forth in front of her eyeline.

“You’ve lost me, have you got a fever?” said my Mum, idly. “Maybe we shouldn’t go surf…hey, Frank, you bastard!” said Joe, suddenly going through his angry gears.

I put the top hat on my head and then took it off. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!” I screamed, with as much self-righteousness as I could muster. “It’s like when your cousin turned off the imaginary TV Y, there’s nothing there, don’t get so stroppy!” said Mum. And she smiled her best sweet motherly smile of pity, before suddenly cracking up laughing.

“Ha…got you worried!” she said. Joe turned around smiling, and then he too went into hysterics. “Made you think your old Mum had gone mad didn’t we?” he said, and there they were, frozen together in time, sharing an old persons sense of humour that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand. I stood, shaking my head, and then I realised that there was no way out. They were milking a moment for all it was worth, something really awful, a terrible, unfunny joke to be honest, but something they had worked on together, and something about the hope in their eyes, it really got to me. I couldn’t bring myself to strop off, berate them for their stupidity. I copped it on the chin.

“Yeah,” I said, mustering a weak fake laugh, “alright, you got me” I said, rolling my eyes in a “what am I like” kind of fashion, before sitting down and going back to my magazine.

Sometimes, it’s OK to give people their moment. For the next few years, my Mother would regale people at Christmas parties with her hilarious joke, and they would smile and laugh, or they would roll their eyes and shake their head, but it was worth the suffering and the mild mockery, because it’s OK to be the butt of a joke sometimes, no matter who awful it is, if it’s done without malice or cruelty. My Mum was and is incapable of either, and I love her, for all her stupid jokes and dumb ideas. It made her happy, and everyone is entitled to feel happy sometimes, especially if you let them think they are hilarious.

I still hate hats though. And always will. This is for you Travis.

Alyson

Desperately Seeking Lies

Lovely young Michael at this place wanted a story about Lies. I thought about it, and I suck at lying, but hey, something came to mind that I hadn't really thought about before...



Desperately Seeking Lies

Even though we'd all return the proverbial fifty dollars in the wallet, my friends and I at different levels of honesty when it comes to whether we'd tell little white lies. Jacx, my punk friend, and Tina T, my actress friend, would both find a way to soothe and cajole a situation and coat it in sugar if a harsh truth needed to be told. Me, I'm somewhere in between, where I won't blatanly lie, but I'm not adverse to the odd white lie if I think someones feelings need to be spared. Claire meanwhile is likely to be quite brutal with the truth, but is capable of little white lying to her nearest and dearest. Megs B, bless her, is totally incapable of anything but plain, brutal truth. Long before Dr Phil, she was telling it like it is, and I wouldn't have her any other way.

My cousin Lorinda briefly came to our school, when I was in Grade 10 and she was in Grade 11. Lorinda was a born extrovert, who didn't really like people that much, except for a couple of theatrical types. Even as the school bridge between the social groups, there was not much I could do to help Lorinda settle in, and she was gone within four months to become a pilot in the Air Force anyway, but I was confronted by her on a daily basis, usually to ask why I liked so and so, and so and so was a dickhead, and this person should be beaten. Oddly for my family, who I generally love, Lorinda and I have never really gotten on, ever since an incident with Barbie cards. I was so excited to discover that there were Barbie Cards for the collecting, that I raced around to Lorinda's house, only to find out that she about a billion of them, and was really smug about it. Lorinda became especially well known in our school after she hit a pole on her way to school, when she got the accelerator and the brake mixed up. Even so, after that she settled down, and stopped annoying me for a while. Life had returned to normal, until Easter time reared its ugly head.

Being a Catholic school usually meant that at some point, you had to step up to the plate, believer or not, and do something religious. Me, well, in Grade 3 I was Mary in a rendition of the Christmas story for an old folks home, and in Grade 7, I was palm holder number 3 as someone playing Jesus rode through the school on a bike dressed up like a donkey. I used both of these facts to get me out of any religious plays or re-creations after Grade 7, but Lorinda wasn't so lucky. In the same way that I was cheap manual labour once they learned I could paint, so Lorinda found herself in the thick of the action once they found out she was an award winning Rock Eistedffod (more on that later) winner. Sensing acting gold, and the chance to be pretty right on, the bods at Richmond Primary School decided Lorinda was perfectly suited to play the role of...Jesus. "Jesus? He was a bloke wasn't he! With a beard!" I said, when we met up for Cream Eggs that night. "It's interpretative", she said, as if that explained the great historical inaccuracy that was being perpitrated on us. And that was all that was said on the matter, until the big day finally arrived, and we settled in our grey, bolted down cloth chairs in the assembly hall, to watch the Easter story, as an interpretative dance number.

Needless to say, it was awful. Lorinda chose to portray Jesus not as a strong, noble man betrayed, but rather, as a slightly confused idiot boy, much the same way she had portrayed the little chicken hawk in the Grade 5 production of Foghorn Leghorn. Topping this off, Jesus was not only attacked by Romans, but smoke, lights, and a score that sounded like Phillip Glass had been asked to remix the Teen Queens. Judging from this, the Easter story wasn't so much the defining moment of Christianity, but a really bad night out at a crappy disco. I was sure at one point, Lorinda fell on her arse as well. The Romans did have togas on, but also very visible tracky daks, and the point about the devil was lost because the boy who was playing him did have a red top on, but it was a soccer top he had on back to front, so the devil had SHARP apparently on his back. Satire? You make the call. I could tell the more right on teachers were loving it, but the old school nuns, who probably wanted someone to die in order to prove an old school point, were pretty upset. The girls behind me were laughing really hard, and I was trying in my mind to think of something positive to say about it for later. For now though, I was slumped in my seat, not even able to focus on "Priest Bingo", to the point that there was a dispute over whether the priest said "lepers" or "leopards" (trust me, this was important).

We got out of the assembly hall like survivors of some horrible disaster, and huddled in the school playground, unable to speak or move. We had sat through some really bad school plays before, like the Grade 6 take on "drugs in clubs", but this was an all time low. After about an hour of just total silence, Claire nudged me in the ribs and said "Your cousins here". I stood up to see Lorinda, and looked her in the eye. Even though we were not close, she was family, and as such, I had to think of some little white lie, some way of ensuring that Lorinda would pursue her love of acting, when she was really hopeless at it. So, I out and out lied.

"That was really good!" I said, in my best benny cheerful voice. Claire, bless her, held herself back from saying anything, and the other people around me knew what I was doing, and nodded in unison. It seemed as though we had come through a crisis, when a little voice decided to disagree. Megs B sat her Big M down on the table, looked Lorinda in the eye, and said "mate, please, don't ever make me sit through a pile of shit again OK? Fuck me, it was awful."

Megs B took back her Big M, oblivious to everything else. Lorinda eyed her evenly, then broke into the biggest grin I'd ever seen.

"I like you!" she said, extending her hand to Megs B. Megs B shook it, nodded, and went back to her Big M, while all around her sat transfixed.

The thing is, some people can lie. Some people can't. Both of us, in our own way, did the right thing. We were both being ourselves. Lies can get us through the day, they can help us survive, but if we can't lie, we probably shouldn't. As long as we find it in ourselves to be comfortable with who we are, then how we choose to conduct ourselves will become second nature.

I wrote that paragraph for Megs B, just so that she reads it, taps me on the shoulder, and says "enough of the Jerry Springer bullshit Y, just wrap it up" - which she no doubt will very, very soon.

Desperately Seeking Hillbillies

I told you I was taking requests again, although this one was kinda hard - but still, our number one commenter wanted it, so here it is



Desperately Seeking Hillbillies

Back when I was little, and not quite as refined as I am now, I was often a handful for my parents. Not for any particular reason, I just had a lot of excess energy that could only be burned off by a lot of running around in circles or a lot of bouncing on a trampoline. My dad was always incredibly supportive of me though, and whatever activity I wanted to do, he was the one who found the time to take me and nurture my interest. My mum was the one who prepared my by buying the right equipment and so on, but it was Dad who took me to wherever I needed to go in Choco, our brown bomb Torana with the broken lock and two radio stations, both amazingly enough with football talk on them.

So when I decided that the time was right in my development to take up ice skating, Christmas time saw my Mum produce a pair of pristine ice skates, as endorsed by the Canadian National Hockey team. It was more than I truly deserved to be honest, and I was incredibly touched that my Mum saw fit to do such a thing. My ice skating career was not a promising one, even though I was able, if I chose to, laud it over all the kids at the Richmond Ice Rink (where Indecent Obsession once performed don't you know!) in hired blue skates. I was pretty awful at first, marching in step over the ice while cooler kids, albeit with less cool skates, glided past holding hands and doing triple lutz's. It was a lonely, cold road, and one that lead to tempers fraying, not unreasonably, with my Dad, who was giving up World Of Sport on a Sunday morning to watch his pride and joy skate laboriously around the ice for an hour. It might have been more entertaining for him had I occasionally fallen over, but I wasn't ineptly compellingly bad, nor brilliantly good, I just...marched...poor guy, the skating teachers weren't even cute enough for him to flirt with.

We reached an impasse one Sunday morning, when I was finally getting into my skating stride. It was raining, and Dad clearly didn't want to take me, but bless his heart, he did, he got out of that leather vinyl chair and drove me to the skating rink. It wasn't quite an officially religious miracle, but it was definitely close to one. My Dad didn't even adopt any kind of martyr attitude about having to do it, and I rewarded him with a fantastic display of actual proper skating. Yes, for the first time, I cast aside my normal skates of concrete, and I ice danced, I spun, I weaved, I bobbed and I zagged, and my Dad, he smiled delightedly through it all, clapping at all the right moments. It had truly been worth all the labour pains - his daughter could skate, and I was sure he was on the side of the rink, planning my glorious ascent into Winter Olympics glory.

I was absolutely buzzing with excitement as I clutched an Elle McPherson signature can of coke in my hand on the way home. My Dad and I were bonded, finally rewarded for all our respective efforts. We walked proudly from the ice rink, and were about to get into the car when I suddenly and quite proudly took the empty Elle McPherson signature can of coke, threw it high in the air, and booted it as hard as my little legs would allow. It sailed on an exceptionally graceful arc, and landed with a thud in a patch of grass, next to a bottle of ginger beer, that hopefully contained only ginger beer, and not some other fizzy liquid.

My Dad looked at me bewildered, as if a ghost had descended. He stood in total shock.

"What was THAT!?" he said, his eyes widening.

"What was what," I said, putting my skates in the back of our car.

"You bloody hillbilly! You litterbug! Gonna go and live in hillbilly country, you hick!" he said, pointing to the can. "I get up every day to do the best for you, I give up my Sundays to watch you march around the ice, and still, you are a hillbilly! You have no class! No class at all! Just throwing away your can when there's a perfectly good bin nearby!"

"I don't march around the ice! Did you not see me! I was a skating star! WERE YOU NOT EVEN WATCHING!" I said, pointing at...something...maybe the can, maybe the ground, but something, and whatever I was pointing at, it was done with anger you know.

We had clearly reached an impasse of monumental proportions, my Dad, bristling in this local football jumper, tired of this continuing Sunday debacle. Me, now satisfied I could skate, having my moment of ice magic ruined by the idle throwing away of a coke can, albeit a good and potentially collectable one, and by my Dad adopting a martyr position. We took deep, angry breaths in the cold Sunday Morning air. As we did so, a 1975 Datsun pulled into the carpark, screeching to a halt five feet from the kerb where we stood. The driver was a giant woman, the kind I'd never seen before, in massive overstretched pink leggings, and she unfurled herself from being desperately stuck in the car. She hitched up her leggings, pulled her hair from a bun, and gasped on a packet of Winfield blues she pulled from her seat. Remembering herself, she undid the back door, to let a clearly mardy little brat out of the car, in a Collingwood beanie and faded acid wash denims. He threw his skates on the ground, to the mothers obvious dis-interest.

"Don't wanna fuckin skate" said the kid, pursing his white lips in anger. Amazingly, the kid was going ice skating, but had sun block on.

"You know you need to spend time with your fucking Dad" said the mum, on her second cigarette.

"Fuck Dad!" said the kid. "Just...fucking stop whinging!" said the Mum. It was then I noticed she had roughly seven teeth, and was resting the cigarette between the gap between two of them. And before I had the chance to work out the health risks of this, she gripped the kid by the arm, bent over in her leggings, giving the world a wonderful sight to behold, and spat the cigarette on the ground, with some chewing gum coming out at the same time. My Dad was about to point out they had left the skates behind, but thought better of it. We glanced at the door to see Dad, in an AC/DC T-shirt, a giant handlebar moustache, and tied on neckerchief, begin a rant about certain ethnic minorities.

Dad I stood for a moment, transfixed, until Dad eventually said something that has resonated with me all my life.

"Y" he said, sounding like Yoda. "Y, they got like that because firstly no one told them to put their rubbish in the bin".

I ran over, I put the coke can in the bin, and we never ever spoke about ice skating again. Closure, as they say in the classics, was reached on all sides.

Desperately Seeking Connect 4

Short and sweet, and all about board games...good times!

Desperately Seeeking Connect 4



Desperately Seeking Connect 4

The last day of school is an important day in Australian school history. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in Australia, everyone gets to wear casual clothes, bring in board games, and then you put your desk up on top of another desk with your chair on top, and then run outside to enjoy summer freedom. It was a pretty magical event that never got old, in fact, oddly enough, even as late as the last day of Grade 10, we still observed a pretty similar ritual, even with exam pressure (pressure I never had, I had my art scholarship by then, and so didn't need to do anything except drink Fruitopia and listen to Melissa CDs). Fruitopia, there's something I need to talk about one day - iced tea with fruit flavouring and hippy messages on the bottle. But, I digress. Back in Grade 3, all we had was Coke and Big Ms, and on the last day of school, all Big Ms were free, given out by the lovely folks at the canteen. All, as they say, was well.

The move from Grade 3 to Grade 4 was a big one, not least because it meant that we finally got to play Grade 4 netball. For reasons I'm not quite sure about, this always meant players from the Richmond football club (anyone who knows AFL football would know that Richmond are almost always crap, so this wasn't the treat it was meant to be) would be at your training sessions, passing on tips. Yes, it is bewildering as to why. However, that was far from the best part, Grade 4 netball meant that you actually got to play other teams from outside the Richmond region, in a proper competition. This was incredibly exciting, since Grade 3 Netball tended to just involve playing your mates. We were assured that one particular trip involved a bonfire with boys from the local soccer club, and that it was, quote, "pash central". Given the girls at their netball team were equally loose with the lips, it was no surprise that our boys were equally excited to go on the same trip for football or soccer at a later date, and we chatted about our happy dreams for the coming year.

Except for one particular kid in our class, Richard Bastick. It had been a tough year for Richard Bastick, not least being labelled "Bastick the Spastick" before he even had a chance to get a "Hi" out. Yes, we were incredibly witty in Grade 3. I really liked him though, not least for his dogged determination every time he played Connect 4. No one could stretch out a game like Richard Bastick, as he pondered things from every single angle and mathematical point of view. Then, for reasons I'm not sure about, he wasn't in our class anymore, and it was then I first heard the phrase "home school". I didn't know why anyone (and to be fair, I still don't, but don't write in) would miss out on something as ace and fun as school just to sit at home all day (not a view all my contemporaries shared mind, especially my friend Kim, who was the first person I knew to wag). Apparently the teachers and his mum had a massive argument over this, and eventually, this being 1987, the teachers won, and back came Bastick the Spastick. Fate was not finished with him however, as his lack of social skills (and not, as Claire claimed, that he killed a cat and was going to jail) meant that he had to stay back a year and repeat Grade 3. There was part of me that was quite sad I couldn't do the same, since Grade 3 was all kinds of fun, and very low pressure. However, as I saw him sitting on the floor forlornly watching us as we had a talk to our new teacher about our new year, I knew that Bastick the Spastick was going through a pretty tough time.

It got worse though: between the Grade 3 and Grade 4 class room with a giant sliding door, like a curtain you couldn't see through. It was decided that we would begin the process of moving into our newest classroom a little early, and so we took our textas and our bags into the new class room to get a feel of what a slightly different classroom with big wooden desks felt like, as opposed to a classroom with...well, big wooden tables you sat around in a group. The difference was just massive, well, it wasn't, but it did feel like a seismic shift into adulthood. And when we looked across into our old classroom, all we could see in the middle of an empty room was Richard Bastick, cross legged on the floor, playing Connect 4 by himself, and rubbing the pieces together, maybe to start a fire. It was a forlorn and pretty sad sight. Even some of our nastier, crueller kids, were left genuinely sad that poor Richard was by himself, trying to work out a winning combination of red and yellow chips on his own.

However, such sympathy didn't last long. We began having a lovely chat amongst ourselves about the excitement of the day, when suddenly, there was an insane commotion behind us. We turned around to discover that Richard had decided to start treating us to a lovely dance which involved sticking his fingers up at us. A lot. And saying "bastards". A lot. In between times, he would blow what you might call "raspberries" with his tongue, and a glint of evil lurked in his eyes. I was quite taken by this sudden display of righteous indignation that we were leaving the poor boy behind, and as he wiggled his arse in his stubby shorts, we clapped along with him. For a moment, and then, just as quickly, he was back on the floor, playing Connect 4, and talking to the chips. And just as quickly, we ignored him again, going back to talking about Netball and heading up to the country.

I've thought about that day a lot. It was so surreal, such a blinding flash of magic, that I'm not sure if it truly happened. It's occurred to me writing this, you can keep a boy back from school, you can call him a stupid nickname, you can keep him back a grade, and you can leave him alone to play Connect 4 all by himself, but you can never, ever, deny a boy the right to get even with everyone by wiggling his arse and singing a song of joy about how everyone is a "bastard".

I like to think there's something inspirational about that, deep down. Well, at least he didn't choke on a Connect 4 chip, that was something too.

Desperately Seeking Success

Well, I plan a bit of a story telling blitz in the next few days, so if you are still reading, suggest away! Please! Here's one based on the fact that we're currently enjoying Dannii Minogue Success Month!

Desperately Seeking Success



One of the great things about being a benny is the fact that you don't really have to achieve much. The highfliers at our school, particularly Science bound Fiona, were always greatly constrained by expectations, and had to sit up until 3am just to be that much better than everyone else. For people like me, any actual effort was greatly appreciated. My one gift was in bridging the social classes though, and that was where expectation grew, and I felt genuine pressure to make sure that the day to day running of out school was smooth. So it was that I came to the Grade 9 fete, and what you might call my finest hour.

Science bound Fiona was so labelled because of her obsession with getting into NASA. It was good, Megs B noted, to have goals, but not at the expense of everything else. When I think of science bound Fiona, I always think that somehow she missed out on a lot of wonderful activities that the group participated on, so that she could read books in the library at lunch time. When Amber Bennett and Jane Almond had their famous "scrag fight" over Damian Murray in Grade 10, science bound Fiona was the only person that we didn't see watching, because there was a Behind the News special on the ABC at lunch time. Interestingly, science bound Fiona would later sleep with Damian Murray on a hay bale at the Grade 12 farewell bonfire night, but that, as they say, is another story, and we presume that this one night of noisy passion didn't ultimately distract her from her dreams.

The Grade 9 fete was most notable for the amount of sulking that went on, especially from Claire, Amber Bennett, and the boy who was normally my male equivalent, Darren Richardson. For some reason, the folks in charge of our school decided to hold a series of presentations, in which each of the Grade 9s would run a stall, or a small demonstration. It wasn't much to ask, until they decided that they would pair us up alphabetically, and that's when the trouble started. Megs B ended up with Amber Bennett (a disastrous pairing), Claire ended up with Dean Davidson (an even more disastrous pairing, to the point that Claire has never sworn so much in her life), I ended up with a girl I really can't remember called Jessica Garlick (this was years before a girl of the same name would appear on UK Pop Idol of course, and there is a chance, albeit a faint one, that was her - luckily, I found out in time she was pretty churchy and took offence to any puns about her surname) and worst of all, Science bound Fiona was stuck with our school benny, Mark Leaman. It was obvious what was going to happen: Science bound Fiona would spend 18 hours preparing an elaborate scientific display, and Mark Leaman would drink the chemicals and grunt when asked questions. It was not a pleasant prospect, and one that required urgent action. Especially considering that Science bound Fiona was doing so well at the time, there was a chance she would be put straight into Grade 11 from Grade 9. Someone had to do something, and since my job was to take care of these things, there was nothing else for it, but to have a quiet word with Mr Leaman.

I should differentiate here - I am a very proud benny, but there's a difference between being a cheerful, slightly silly benny with awareness, to being the kind of benny who eats silly string on a dare or breaks their arm on a waterslide because their friends told them you really didn't need a mat. So it was with some trepidation that I confronted Mark outside of Grade 9 art (more on which shortly) and gave him a playful punch on the arm. "How ya goin tiges!" I said, cheerfully. "Pretty fucked eh" he said, returning with a typical benny comeback.

One thing about Mark Leaman was that he was fascinated by Violet Crumbles. I don't think he could ever work out quite where the taste quite came from. I know this because he once did a talk about it, which I think was about the most he ever did any work for something, apart from his Grade 6 talk about thongs. So, I went for the weakness.

"Mark," I said, for that was his name, "listen, you have to a talk with Science bound Fiona, you know that don't you?"

"Fucking mole" he said, scowling, forseeing a future where he was chained to the library working hard, instead of being outside kicking a footy. He shook all over at the very thought of this week of hell.

"Well listen, you don't have to DO anything, Fiona will do all the work for you. But I need you to promise me you won't screw it up for her, I mean, don't be mixing chemicals because you think the colours go together"

"That was just that once!"

Claire was getting angsty because she had something important to tell me and I wasn't giving her my full attention, so I had to act fast. "Listen, you behave, and I'll tell you how a Violet Crumble is made!"

He looked at me with rapt awe. His little benny eyes couldn't quite process this information. He just nodded slowly, and went into art. Fiona was left totally alone to produce her inevitable masterpiece, a flowing display of chemicals and smoke and colour, and Mark kept to himself. The big day arrived, and Science bound Fiona nodded in my direction, unable to work out what I had done to smooth this meeting of minds, but comfortable that I had done something. Meanwhile, all I had to do was work out something to tell Mark, and we were all free.

It was then it happened - Science bound Fiona forgot something, maybe misjudged a mix, and instead of chemicals and smoke, there was just a fizz, and then nothing. Everyone was amazed, Science bound Fiona had screwed up. She tried really hard to fix it, but it was just a debacle. Everyone stood in awe, while Mark Leaman stood to the side, smiling his little benny smile.

I went up to him afterwards, and was about to launch into my prepared Violet Crumble story, when he adjusted his Levis and waved me away.

"You know Y, it doesn't do my rep any good working with fucking amateurs" he said, laughing, and putting himself in his favourite chair. He unwrapped a Violet Crumble, and ate it, content in his own little piece of success.

Desperately Seeking Cats

Oh why not, another challenge!

Desperately Seeking Cats

When I was much younger than I am now, I had a cat called Cankles the Cat. I called him Cankles the Cat because my mum, in a bid to avoid telling me about the birds and the bees, had said once "you know, when I was giving birth to you, I really had bad cankles" and off she went, to make scones or something, leaving me in a strange state of fascination as to what cankles actually were, and I wanted our cat to have a name that wasn't Tiddles or Milo or whatever. We got Cankles the Cat from an animal shelter, because whenever we walked past him, he would let out a slightly demented purr, and he had white furr with splodgy grey spots, and was cute as a button. I hadn't quite embraced my inner benny yet, but in every way, Cankles was a benny cat. Other cats would hiss and purr and threaten Cankles, and Cankles would inevitably either trip and fall, or run headlong into a wall or trip over a sprinkler. The other cats would be so taken aback by this display of bennyness, that they would back off, and leave Cankles alone.

Cankles finest hour was probably the day of my 8th birthday party, when I got a trampoline and a monster bouncy ball. I was outside playing with the bouncy ball, and waiting for my assortment of relatives to turn up, when my Dad came barrelling out of the house with a worried look on his face.

"Nothings wrong" he said, before dashing off again. He was always running my Dad, I think that's where Megs B got it from that time. He was a typical Aussie Dad my dad, to the point where he was called Kev, he loved to put on a pair of blue stubby shorts, he always "got my nose" and he always tried to fix things with amusing consequences. Best of all, he always seemed to be able to get me an ice-cream, even when we were on a boat miles from a shop, and I always thought that to be quite magical, and not at all because he just was good at planning. Once, a jumping jack firework actually chased him into the garage on firework night. He thought it was hilarious, because he was an Aussie Dad, and Aussie dads don't normally worry. However, the fact that my Dad was worried, not only worried, but actually rushing around, made me worry because if my Aussie Dad Kev was worried, either I was getting a massive surprise, or something had gone wrong.

It transpired that since the morning, no one had seen Cankles the Cat. This was unusual for Cankles, who had his own routine that usually involved a quite public cat display of idiocy in the morning, just to announce he was awake, then it was food, stretch, demented burst of energy, sleep, another demented burst of energy, and finally, more food and sleep. The fact that no one has seen Cankles the Cat and his food was untouched was clearly going to impact on the birthday party, and while I've never been known for my displays of temper or sadness, it would have still have depressed me for a moment between the fairy bread and pass the parcel. So, we formed a very serious kitty search party, that got as far as the lounge room, before the novelty had wore off, and we sat down for some ice cream (you see my point about Dad now I hope).

It hadn't occured to me until I typed this that this was my first brush with mortality, and the finite nature of life. If Cankles the Cat was gone, this would be my first experience of grief, of loss - oh sure, I lost a netball once when I was 5, because Amanda Vanderminsion sucked at catching, and I had to admit that chewing my Barbie meant it had lost it's normal Barbie shape, but this was a real life organic creature, and it was out of my life. Oh, the magnitude of the situation wasn't lost on me, and it was my birthday, and I really, selfishly hoped, that the death of Cankles the Cat wasn't going to overshadow it. I mean, I had no idea of how important each death really was. What about a cat? Would that be requiring a minutes silence, and speeches, while I sat in the corner yelling "OI, I'M OVER HERE! WHERE'S MY PRESENTS!" - that darn cat indeed.

As we pondered the list of kitty consequences that may have befallen Cankles the Cat and his sense of adventure, I sat down on our very 1980s sofa (brown vinyl, yes please) and heard a very faint "purrrr". It was then that my Mum, dressed in her hooped nautically themed sweater, saw a trail of green silly string that lead directly to a newly clawed tiny hole in the back of our brown vinyl sofa, and there, legs sticking out of the tiny hole, was Cankles the Cat, stuck fast. It turns out Cankles the Cat had made a new enemy, a can of green silly string, and spent most of my birthday attacking it with all it's might. Of course, the more he jumped on the nozzle, the more silly string came out, and the more determined Cankles the Cat was to demolish his elusive foe. And somehow, for whatever reason, it seemed he had decided that this foe was far too dangerous to take on, and so had tried hiding from it, by digging and clawing a hole in the couch and cowering and hoping it would go away. When we dug the poor thing out, he was shaking, and had a face covered in silly string. I'm not one for over zealous animal rights (even though I'm vegeterian) but Cankles the Cats poor little face was a picture of absolute benny misery, and I held him out for my Dad to see, hoping he would say something to make it all better, and save the birthday. Kev looked at the cat, looked at me, and looked at the cat again.

"Hey, who wants an ice cream!" he said, proudly.

Desperately Seeking Dentists

Hooray! I'm back! I'm doing some new stories! Now everyone has given up, on this website and stopped reading! Inspired by the fact that Dr Alban is a real doctor (well a dentist!) here's a nice story about dentists! Hooray (again!).



Desperately Seeking Dentists

Claire has been my best friend since I turned around and asked for help in completing a tough level of Granny's Garden on the BBC Micro in 1987. If I had turned to my left, and asked Jennifer Danielle Wiley how to get out of my predicament, my life would have completely different, and on such odd twists and turns does life hang. I can still remember it being quite exciting the first time she stayed at my house, and we stayed up until, oh, at least 10:30, having a nice old chat about things. And one thing I've always, always known about Claire is her lifelong loathing of dentists.

I'm not sure what it's like now, but back in the 1980s, it was very important that all schools had a dental van, and regular visits from a crazy mascot who encouraged you to brush. Our school had both, and our mascot was an early incarnation of the Giddy Goanna look, who would regularly try and get us to a dance movement which ended with "BRUSH BRUSH...SMILE". Naturally, no self respecting 9 year old would be seen dead doing such a thing, so it was usually just the bennys who did it, and I betrayed my inner benny nature with a pout and a shake of the head whenever early Giddy looked in my direction. Our dental van was usually parked to the left hand side of the monkey bars, which meant it cut an imposing figure. One of the girls in our class, the lesser spotted Patricia Ellis (who we never saw, ever, due to long bouts with illness and poorness - oddly, when we did see her, it was usually just to say something quite profound, and then she'd be gone again) told us several kids went in there and came back without teeth. Naturally, we took in this piece of wisdom, and then called Patricia Ellis a massive DUHBRAIN, but Claire, she took it to heart, and spent most of her lunchtime fretting about getting a call up to the caravan of death.

The worst time to get your teeth checked was just after summer. Not only was it annoying to have to give up a potential fun activity that was normally out in the sunshine for ten minutes in the dark of the dental van, but (and certainly in my house) summer was always the time for sweets. It was always time to muck around, have a play, and then run to the shops for some sort of sugary treat. The local store seemed like Willy Wonka's at times, and it was a great shame when one day it vanished, and turned into a juice bar. Not that some nice juice isn't fun, but a generation of kids missed out on eating sweets that had sat in a glass jar for 4 years plus, and that's a great shame, as risk is always a big part of childhood.

She got the call up just before music on a Wednesday, and it meant she missed footy maths and a nap provided everything went smoothly. What happened next is a matter between Claire, Flip the Dentist, and God (and possibly the Giddy Goanna mascot). After about an hour, Claire emerged, and for whatever reason I was by the monkey bars on my own (I think because I was student of the week, and got an extra 20 minutes of lunch, (an idiotic concept since everyone else was inside, so you just loitered around the playground bored on your own).

"How did it go Claire!" I said, expecting a big, best friend kind of response.

"CRAP!" she said, since Claire doesn't swear, and that's as far as she would ever push it. I did the supportive best friend thing and pulled a spaz face, and shook my head.

"It's not THAT BAD you big goose!" I said (in spite of my sugary treat loving, my teeth and gums were perfect, so I barely missed one sum in maths), but she beckoned me closer with one finger and whispered slowly "she HATED me! She didn't give me sunglasses!"

Sunglasses were part of the fun dental experience, the reasoning being that when you were staring into the massive bright light in the roof, it would be hip and trendy if you wore a pair of giant novelty sunglasses. In Claire's version of events, the dentist had to be talked into giving her sunglasses, and would have left her there blinded but for her desperate pleas. Then, she motioned to the stamp on her hand, a cheerful turtle giving a thumbs up.

"What, you don't like turtles?" I said, bemused that anyone could hate the slowest of all species.

"She whacked my hand REALLY HARD when she put it on! I'm telling you Y, she didn't like me at ALL!"

Claire sat on the ground, her faith in the dental profession crumbling like the bark Dull Dave used to throw in the woodchipper. She looked at me slowly and said "could you ask her what I did wrong?" She then stared at my chunky bangles like she wanted to steal them and have them for herself, so I wasn't really sure just how long Claire's sense of moral outrage would last, but I accepted that as a best friend, sometimes I had to do things that I didn't really want to.

I was bemused at the idea of having to go and use my social skills to go and ask Flip the Dentist why she was so mean, but Claire was insistent, and so I knocked gently on the caravan door, and peeked my head inside. It was totally dark and foreboding, and when I think back, perhaps even smoky. Flip the dentist was at the back of the caravan, and I peered through the gloom, I couldn't help noticing she was in some kind of distress.

"Sorry," she said, turning around to notice me, "I don't think I've got any other kids booked today."

"You're right tiges, my mistake, but are you OK?" I said. Flip and I had bonded over our shared love of fancy big chunky bangles, and so I did feel some concern that she seemed so uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

"No, not really, it's always a problem when kids bite you" she said, holding up one finger that was cut and bleeding. I smiled gently and nodded, and left it at that. I knew instictively then as I now know the problems that come with getting Claire to do anything she doesn't want to, never mind putting her in a chair and checking her teeth. I knew that Claire would have wriggled, moaned and stropped her way through the entire thing, and the poor woman never would known what hit her.

"Did you tell her off?" said Claire hopefully, when I got back into class.

"Oh yeah, big time!" I said, smiling broadly.

"Good for you! I hope one day, I can have your confidence to stand up for myself" she said, nodding. And one day, she did. But that, as they say, is a story for another time.

Desperately Seeking Witches

Young Michael wanted a story about witches, and a story about witches he shall get...even if its a little bit...um...spooky...

Desperately Seeking Witches

It seems bizarre to me that even with as much holiday spirit as I possess, Halloween is and was always one tradition that just never caught on in Richmond. Certainly, all the concepts appealed: I mean, I always adored getting into fancy dress, I certainly had no aversion to public performance, and if the end result of my troubles was some yummy chocolate treat, what was not to love? And yet every year, someone in my class would ask what I had done for Halloween, and I would shrug, having totally forgotten it was even on, and we’d move on to the next conversation, about boys, music, or why that little brat kid across the road had suddenly stopped pulling my hair and was now watching me intently as I walked – I mean, he used to shit me, but he’s getting quite grown up, and I think he might like me…you know, those kind of chats.

When I was 13, my parents began to travel away for the weekend, and I would understand more and more why they were going away. I would smile and nod as they went to a hotel. Still, I began to be given responsibility for the house more and more, and that was pleasing since I could brag about for a while, and not be pressured into hosting a party (yet). It was certainly an exciting time, especially when they left money for pizza and coke, and Megs B or Megs P could come around with a newly rented VHS tape and some gum. It was all good, clean, innocent fun, except for the time we put Jaffa’s in a catapult and fired them at some boys on bikes, and they couldn’t see where they were coming from. That was just…fun.

Lee Hunter and I were close friends in that wonderful pre sexual tension boy and girl way , and we planned a camping trip with some of our other friends, to coincide with another weekend away for my mum and dad. I was happily lying in the bath, trying to eat a pizza at the same time, when there was a fierce rap at the door. “FUCK OFF” I yelled, giggling. I was SO, like, outrageous! I settled back underneath the bubbles, when there was a second, more prolonged knock at the door. I screwed up my face, threw down the New Idea, and wrapped a towel around my soapy self, muttering as darkly as a 13 year old girl covered in soapy Mr Matey bubbles could get. “Lee, this isn’t funny!” I said, as I gripped our antique doorknob and twisted it to the left. Instead of Lee though, was a pair of slightly bemused, bewildered 7 year old girls, dressed as witches, thrusting Tupperware bowls at me. Their mum was visible in the car, reading a book in her turned on headlights. They smiled at me cheerfully, then thrust their bowls closer to me again.

“TRICK OR TREAT” they said together.

“Awww…cute!” I said, for I could never resist the charms of small children who had made an effort. I of course use the phrase made an effort lightly, since they had turned some black t-shirts inside out, but the hats were cute. They were still slightly unsettled my by partial junior nudity, so we stood in an awkward silence. I didn’t know what to do know, since I was unfamiliar with Halloween, and had nothing really prepared. For their part, their fun night out was being ruined by all this silence and standing around, so we took in our situation, before they went for it again.

“TRICK OR TREAT” said the witches, a little more impatiently.

At this point, I began to realise what true adult responsibility I had inherited. My parents would have calmly raided the biscuit tin, or maybe stolen some Maltesers from the charity fundraising tin, but I was panicked. I didn’t want to risk the vengeful wrath of two witch kids after all, so I rushed into the kitchen, threw aside the Samboys and the DMCs, and picked up something I thought they would like, wrapped it up in some kitchen roll, and went back to find one of the witches sitting on the doorstep saying something about “working hard for the candy”.

I thrust my treat into their hands, smiling and nodding. Luckily, there was no hilarity as my towel caught in the door or anything, and off they went, smiling, into the car. I got back in the bath, and curled back up in the bubbles, nervously. Certainly, I didn’t want the witches to come back, and complain about having been given a Weetbix cereal biscuit rather than a yummy piece of candy. I was fretting about it for most of the weekend, expecting the rules of Trick or Treat to wreak vengeance on the house while I was away surfing. I explained my problem to Lee, who was sympathetic.

“I think it’s just junior witches,” he said. “Besides, Weetbix is a treat!”.

I was re-assured by that, but I had a sneaking suspicion all weekend they would get me back. I even did a whole check of the house when Lee and I got back, but there was nothing there, no tricks, no taunting, no nothing – well, except one problem…the next time I had Weetbix, the milk was off, and I got a bit unwell…

Co-incidence? I’m never sure…maybe its best not to know…

Desperately Seeking Card Games

Ages ago, in this thread, I was challenged to write about Card Games and now, I know what to write about, with apologies to Megs B...

Desperately Seeking Card Games

When I was in Grade 8, our school entered a brief and troubling theatre of cruelty phase. Everywhere we looked, someone seemed to be either being bullied, dishing out some bullying, hanging around the fringes of a bullying motion, or just running from a teacher trying to give out a pink slip for bullying. It got very disconcerting, and in my unofficial role as "hands across the school" girl, the one person who truly covered all our social bases, I was dragged in one day by a passing nun and asked my thoughts on the problem. What problem I said, for my ability to not take sides had been my most valuable asset throughout my entire schooling life, and was a key part of my role. The bullying problem, said the nun, idly drumming her fingers on the desk, desperately thinking of a Jesus related metaphor to wheel into our conversation. She didn't quite overtly, later in the conversation, say that I was the school Jesus because I loved all mankind, but that was the implication, and it was left at that. Clearly, I had to be the bridge between the bullys and the bennys.

My friend Megs B, sipping on a fruit box, as she often did, was no stranger to bullying, after the rumours about her and Shane Rinner in Grade 5. She was a trusted aide, but a cruel piss taker when she needed to be. She wrote "No Y in Jesus" across one of my notebooks after I told her my mission. Still, no one liked a bully, and even if it was just a case of someone saying "your pink pen sucks", such criticisms were hurtful. So Megs B, after pondering all options, decided that the next art class would be a perfect start. We would wait until our art teacher would leave, and then we'd bridge the gap between the classes with a game of cards. Surely everyone loved cards. It would allow everyone to get to know each other, and more importantly, I'd give the credit for any decrease in bullying firmly to Megs B, since it would allow leeway to go and smoke every now and then. Everyone, as they say, was a winner.

I mentioned before in the first story about our woodwork teacher, and our art teacher, Mr McInally, was a borderline alcoholic firebrand, with a passion for colour, movement, and vodka. He had done some fearsome art installations in the 1960s, including one which basically involved him yelling at people for entering the room, yelling and yelling until he or they left. As a dedicated art lover and painter, I was very proud of whenever he liked my paintings. He also told me, in confidence, a particularly libellous story about Cher and half a pound of Dairy Milk which, for the sake of taste, I won't repeat. We bonded, but we also knew these bonds had limits. Sometimes, the class wouldn't want to paint, and it would be up to me to communicate this. "We don't feel inspired" I would say, rolling my eyes. He would be upset, but understanding of the artistic temprament, and leave the room to go to the staff room to berate punk kids, and swill vodka from a mug. When we did want to paint, he would dance around the room like a dervish, but today, no painting, no inspiration, vodka in a mug. I always felt bad doing it, but sometimes, it was important to get some space.

Megs B (and for that matter my other friend Megs Parminter, who’s grandad shot a Mexican who tried to rob his store, or something like that) was clearly the kind of person the casino was built for, and before anyone knew what was happening, we were in some kind of 1930s den of iniquity. I swear someone was smoking a cee-gar. Anyway, Megs B was front and centre, dealing cards, making up games in that ridiculous way people who can deal cards are want to do (“3 in a bed, Jokers Blind, Peruvian draw, all in, no paper clips allowed”). I nudged Megs B in the ribs and pointed to her rapidly accumulating pile of cash.

“Megs B, you know, we’re doing this to try and bond the class, it’s just for fun…” I said gently.

“You in?” was all she said, muttering darkly to herself.

I shook my head, as things began to spiral out of control. Amber Bennett lost her Cherry Ripe money and was fuming. The poor kids were crying. Even the bullies were swept aside, in Megs B’s lust for cash and success. Soon, kids were betting smocks and art supplies to try and take her down, but to no avail. Cash, smocks, lunch boxes, they piled up next to her, and it seemed as though our little bonding exercise was manipulated. It was then that Claire, who had wagged class to go and do something unspecified, swanned in, clutching a baseball cap. Everyone fell silent, as Claire spied Megs B large pile of swag, shook her head, and smiled the kind of smile I'd recognise much later as purest evil.

"Megs B, your wanted at the front desk, your mum has come to visit"

Megs B paused...she eyed Claire cooly, then looked down at her pile of cash, and back at Claire.

"Really?"

Claire nodded solemnly. Megs B put down her cards face down, and yelled snappily at one of the smaller kids to guard them, and sprinted off down the hall. At which point, Claire picked them up, studied them for a moment, and wandered up to Amber Bennett and casually mentioned Megs B had 2 Aces and 2 6s. A quick shuffle through the deck, and suddenly Amber was armed with a royal flush. And when Megs B came back, we casually sat around chatting as Amber wiped out Megs B, took all the prizes back, and distributed them back to those who'd lost them in the first place.

"Bastards!" said Megs B, jabbing a finger in Claire's direction.

"Now now Megs B" I said, darkly. "Remember, Jesus hated gambling..."

Oddly, Megs B wasn't happy, but bullying did stop, for we had bridged the gap between the bennys and the cool kids, since now, everyone had something to talk about - Megs Bs gambling rage became the talk of the school, putting everyone in a quiet frenzy, at least until that whole flashing incident...

And just as I predicted, I gave Megs B the credit, to the point she even gave a talk to the younger kids on bullying at the end of year. There's never any credit for bridging the social gap, just a nod and a smile, and the knowledge that you've survived, one day at a time...one day at a time...

Desperately Seeking Card Games

Ages ago, in this thread, I was challenged to write about Card Games and now, I know what to write about, with apologies to Megs B...

Desperately Seeking Card Games

When I was in Grade 8, our school entered a brief and troubling theatre of cruelty phase. Everywhere we looked, someone seemed to be either being bullied, dishing out some bullying, hanging around the fringes of a bullying motion, or just running from a teacher trying to give out a pink slip for bullying. It got very disconcerting, and in my unofficial role as "hands across the school" girl, the one person who truly covered all our social bases, I was dragged in one day by a passing nun and asked my thoughts on the problem. What problem I said, for my ability to not take sides had been my most valuable asset throughout my entire schooling life, and was a key part of my role. The bullying problem, said the nun, idly drumming her fingers on the desk, desperately thinking of a Jesus related metaphor to wheel into our conversation. She didn't quite overtly, later in the conversation, say that I was the school Jesus because I loved all mankind, but that was the implication, and it was left at that. Clearly, I had to be the bridge between the bullys and the bennys.

My friend Megs B, sipping on a fruit box, as she often did, was no stranger to bullying, after the rumours about her and Shane Rinner in Grade 5. She was a trusted aide, but a cruel piss taker when she needed to be. She wrote "No Y in Jesus" across one of my notebooks after I told her my mission. Still, no one liked a bully, and even if it was just a case of someone saying "your pink pen sucks", such criticisms were hurtful. So Megs B, after pondering all options, decided that the next art class would be a perfect start. We would wait until our art teacher would leave, and then we'd bridge the gap between the classes with a game of cards. Surely everyone loved cards. It would allow everyone to get to know each other, and more importantly, I'd give the credit for any decrease in bullying firmly to Megs B, since it would allow leeway to go and smoke every now and then. Everyone, as they say, was a winner.

I mentioned before in the first story about our woodwork teacher, and our art teacher, Mr McInally, was a borderline alcoholic firebrand, with a passion for colour, movement, and vodka. He had done some fearsome art installations in the 1960s, including one which basically involved him yelling at people for entering the room, yelling and yelling until he or they left. As a dedicated art lover and painter, I was very proud of whenever he liked my paintings. He also told me, in confidence, a particularly libellous story about Cher and half a pound of Dairy Milk which, for the sake of taste, I won't repeat. We bonded, but we also knew these bonds had limits. Sometimes, the class wouldn't want to paint, and it would be up to me to communicate this. "We don't feel inspired" I would say, rolling my eyes. He would be upset, but understanding of the artistic temprament, and leave the room to go to the staff room to berate punk kids, and swill vodka from a mug. When we did want to paint, he would dance around the room like a dervish, but today, no painting, no inspiration, vodka in a mug. I always felt bad doing it, but sometimes, it was important to get some space.

Megs B (and for that matter my other friend Megs Parminter, who’s grandad shot a Mexican who tried to rob his store, or something like that) was clearly the kind of person the casino was built for, and before anyone knew what was happening, we were in some kind of 1930s den of iniquity. I swear someone was smoking a cee-gar. Anyway, Megs B was front and centre, dealing cards, making up games in that ridiculous way people who can deal cards are want to do (“3 in a bed, Jokers Blind, Peruvian draw, all in, no paper clips allowed”). I nudged Megs B in the ribs and pointed to her rapidly accumulating pile of cash.

“Megs B, you know, we’re doing this to try and bond the class, it’s just for fun…” I said gently.

“You in?” was all she said, muttering darkly to herself.

I shook my head, as things began to spiral out of control. Amber Bennett lost her Cherry Ripe money and was fuming. The poor kids were crying. Even the bullies were swept aside, in Megs B’s lust for cash and success. Soon, kids were betting smocks and art supplies to try and take her down, but to no avail. Cash, smocks, lunch boxes, they piled up next to her, and it seemed as though our little bonding exercise was manipulated. It was then that Claire, who had wagged class to go and do something unspecified, swanned in, clutching a baseball cap. Everyone fell silent, as Claire spied Megs B large pile of swag, shook her head, and smiled the kind of smile I'd recognise much later as purest evil.

"Megs B, your wanted at the front desk, your mum has come to visit"

Megs B paused...she eyed Claire cooly, then looked down at her pile of cash, and back at Claire.

"Really?"

Claire nodded solemnly. Megs B put down her cards face down, and yelled snappily at one of the smaller kids to guard them, and sprinted off down the hall. At which point, Claire picked them up, studied them for a moment, and wandered up to Amber Bennett and casually mentioned Megs B had 2 Aces and 2 6s. A quick shuffle through the deck, and suddenly Amber was armed with a royal flush. And when Megs B came back, we casually sat around chatting as Amber wiped out Megs B, took all the prizes back, and distributed them back to those who'd lost them in the first place.

"Bastards!" said Megs B, jabbing a finger in Claire's direction.

"Now now Megs B" I said, darkly. "Remember, Jesus hated gambling..."

Oddly, Megs B wasn't happy, but bullying did stop, for we had bridged the gap between the bennys and the cool kids, since now, everyone had something to talk about - Megs Bs gambling rage became the talk of the school, putting everyone in a quiet frenzy, at least until that whole flashing incident...

And just as I predicted, I gave Megs B the credit, to the point she even gave a talk to the younger kids on bullying at the end of year. There's never any credit for bridging the social gap, just a nod and a smile, and the knowledge that you've survived, one day at a time...one day at a time...