hello

in space no one can hear you scream. in cyberspace no one notices your silence. i've just paid to 'own' this domain for the next two years so figured i better get back to posting. and i will as soon as i've bought something for my art director's birthday and decided whether or not i like porcelain raft or not (terrible name!)

spit it out

so i've just seen that i haven't blogged for more than a year. this is partly laziness, partly being sucked back into the world of the office and days spent in front of a computer, leaving little enthusiasm for the typed word and partly because of lack of anything interesting to say. i know, when did that ever get in the way of a good blog post? i sometimes think that if we actually only said the things that really mattered, really told someone something or imparted vital information we would spend much of our lives mute. and personally i don't think that's such a bad thing. a world without 'yeah, i'm on the bus' wouldn't be such a terrible place, would it? so, pet peeve number 1,320. chewing gum. actually not the gum itself but the people who seem to think i want to hear what sound it makes while it is being masticated. or that i might like to sit on a seat with a lump of wrigleys decorating it. or that my shoes lack a certain something.

dig it!

Despite my cultivated 'sophisticate' and indeed 'sophisticat' air, I admit I still have a rather schoolboyish (read Viz) sensibility when it comes to things 'toilet' related (yes, I know we say lavatory, but lavatory humour doesn't sound right).
I was recently on holiday with my fart obsessed neice and nephew and found, despite myself, their constant parping irritating because I was stuck in the back seat of a hot car with them, but also quite amusing.
Unfortunately, a cat, no matter how dear, evacuating its bowels on the carpet in front of you as you try to watch TV, or worse, eat supper, is neither grown up, nor funny. And so it was that we (as in my adopted household) decided that it was time to put poor Max to rest. Context: A spastic colon, pain, lots of drugs (him), lots of cleaning up (mainly me) and too many 'oooh, what's this?' toddlers running around.
It will be a chance for 7 year old Erin to learn about the cycles (and circle) of life, we figure. 'Erin. You know Max has not been well for a long time: we are going to ask the vet to come round and put him to sleep so he can go to heaven and feel better.'
Erin: 'Oh good. Does that mean we can get a kitten?'
So, the day arrives. I am at work and feel a pang at midday - the appointed hour.
I have agreed, nay insisted, that I bury Max, given that latterly, I was his refuge from screaming children, brown stains on the duvet a small price to pay for offering comfort to a creature in need (yes, I changed the covers!)
And so it is with heavy heart that I arrive back at a nearly empty home – Mylo, Max's brother is on the sofa as fat and uninterested as ever – to find the dispatched Max awaiting me. He is sealed in a plastic bag on the coffee table and still warm!
Forget finding the one you love entwined with another, this is heartbreak.
I take him into the garden and begin to dig.
Propers, btw, to grave diggers. Have you tried to dig any kind of hole lately? It's not as easy as the movies make it out to be!
As I am digging, fighting back the tears, young Erin and younger Molly decide to come out and jump on the trampoline.
So far, so vaguely annoying.
And then Erin starts singing: Happy dead day to you, Happy dead day dear Max, happy dead day to you.
From the mouths of babes and innocents, eh.
Please don't invite her to my funeral!

Dig it!

Despite my cultivated 'sophisticate' and indeed 'sophisticat' air, I admit I still have a rather schoolboyish (read Viz) sensibility when it comes to things 'toilet' related (yes, I know we say lavatory, but lavatory humour doesn't sound right).
I was recently on holiday with my fart obsessed neice and nephew and found, despite myself, their constant parping irritating because I was stuck in the back seat of a hot car with them, but also quite amusing.
Unfortunately, a cat, no matter how dear, evacuating its bowels on the carpet in front of you as you try to watch TV, or worse, eat supper, is neither grown up, nor funny. And so it was that we (as in my adopted household) decided that it was time to put poor Max to rest. Context: A spastic colon, pain, lots of drugs (him), lots of cleaning up (mainly me) and too many 'oooh, what's this?' toddlers running around.
It will be a chance for 7 year old Erin to learn about the cycles (and circle) of life, we figure. 'Erin. You know Max has not been well for a long time: we are going to ask the vet to come round and put him to sleep so he can go to heaven and feel better.'
Erin: 'Oh good. Does that mean we can get a kitten?'
So, the day arrives. I am at work and feel a pang at midday - the appointed hour.
I have agreed, nay insisted, that I bury Max, given that latterly, I was his refuge from screaming children, brown stains on the duvet a small price to pay for offering comfort to a creature in need (yes, I changed the covers!)
And so it is with heavy heart that I arrive back at a nearly empty home – Mylo, Max's brother is on the sofa as fat and uninterested as ever – to find the dispatched Max awaiting me. He is sealed in a plastic bag on the coffee table and still warm!
Forget finding the one you love entwined with another, this is heartbreak.
I take him into the garden and begin to dig.
Propers, btw, to grave diggers. Have you tried to dig any kind of hole lately? It's not as easy as the movies make it out to be!
As I am digging, fighting back the tears, young Erin and younger Molly decide to come out and jump on the trampoline.
So far, so vaguely annoying.
And then Erin starts singing: Happy dead day to you, Happy dead day dear Max, happy dead day to you.
From the mouths of babes and innocents, eh.
Please don't invite her to my funeral!

push it real good

i've just come back from a tour of the Sydney Opera House. i figured that as this was my third visit to the city and i had never actually walked up those stairs and into the place was a situation that needed rectifying. that today the opera house was free to enter was a situation that facilitated this.
cleverly i had signed up for email alerts about the open day, which i'd seen in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago. this meant that i was in possession of, if not a golden ticket, a pretty good 'priority pass' which meant that i did not have to join the initial queue to get in.
now, i'm not sure at what point a queue ceases to be a queue and turns into something much harder to control but what was happening down Circular Quay this morning must have been pretty close. to say that it was heaving is an understatement along the lines of saying the Pope rather likes the idea of Catholicism.
anyway, skipping my way up the steps i headed for the priority pass gate and did, to my delight, make it into the house (as we natives like to call it, before going on to talk about tinnies, joeys, vegies and anything else that can and therefore must be abbreviated). and then, the queues really started.
it seems that the whole of Sydney is, like me, to quote my friend Stephanie, 'careful with money'. obviously by this Steph means 'a tightwad', and i can't argue, my feeling being, you can't have your nest egg and spend it, as there were seas upon seas of blank faces waiting to move from one foyer to auditorium to foyer to auditorium.
i very soon turned into one of those people that really irritate me: a queue jumper.
i know!
i blame it on the crumpled up 'priority pass' print out in my pocket - i almost felt it was my right, no my duty, not to stand around for hours, prefering instead to insinuate myself amid large groups of tourists by way of making out i was with the person asking a question of one of the guides.
i was, i admit, quite shameless.
i also tried the 'oh where have you got to?' look as i sailed past the patient hordes. you know, the 'why of course i'm not jumping the queue, it's just that i've lost the people i'm with look.'
i was introduced to a version of this by an old friend back in Spain at a Madonna concert (I'm talking pre-Brazil surgery, popeye bicep Madonna, circa 1990). arriving fashionably late we pushed our way all the way through the crowd until we were just 3 bodies away from the stage. the whole time Eduardo was calling 'Mercedes!' to our imaginary friend up front. it worked a treat (not counting the trail of abuse we no doubt garnered in our wake).
so, i saw the inside of the house. and very nice it was too: exactly like i was expecting it to look. stages, seats and those weird mushroomy things on the ceiling that help with acoustics.
i will try and remember my barefaced cheek next time someone pushes in front of me, accepting it as karma earned.
as i left the queue had got even longer!

only me. again!

avid readers can put those tissues away now. the bitch is back!
i've had a blog-block since doing a silent retreat back in May: everything, twitter, blogging, hotmailing, botox, hair dye, deoderant, clean underwear – felt unnecessary and just more noise. but man cannot live on lotus positions and good will alone and besides, i saw something at the gym today i wanted to comment on.
not the woman who was so thin she could barely actually climb onto the stepper - the fact that her lips had been enhanced to life-raft proportions didn't make it any easier for her, radically moving as they did her centre of gravity but the amount of muscle marys in SUNGLASSES.
yes, first there was the jewellery - Lord Mayor stylee chains worn outside of the wife beaters. now we have sunglasses. inside.
i looked for white sticks and labradors in the lockers but found no evidence to suggest that these people were visually impaired so can only assume they were labouring under the illusion that they look 'cool'.
it is surely only a matter of time before someone opens a branch of Claire's accessories in the shower!

from the mouths of babes....

'Steven,' says young Erin last night. 'You like glasses of wine, don't you!'
And she's right, I do!
Fortunately I'm going on a 10-day dry out, I mean retreat, next week so you'll just have to wait for the clean, serene me