A friend of my mate Veronica’s has a special exclamation that he likes to treat strangers to at historic landmarks and places of interest.
When, for example, he visited the Grand Canyon, in the middle of a group of tourists, he shouted loudly, in a tone of acute disappointment: ‘IS THAT IT!’ before wandering off.
He did the same at that famous sandstone terrace in Bath and in front of Big Ben.
The effect is, I’m assured, hilarious.
He came to mind yesterday when I visited Sydney’s ‘world famous’ Luna Park fun fair. Luna Park has a chequered past and has opened and closed more times than the proverbial prozzy’s legs, including one unfortunate incident where a group of kids were frazzled to death in the Ghost Train, which is pretty grim.
It’s been open in its current encarnation since about 2000 – after years of being consigned to history. Which I’m sure all the people who had spent A LOT of money on swanky apartments overlooking it were delighted about: who wouldn’t want a screaming rocket attraction whizzing past their window 365 days a year?
We went yesterday, it being Easter holidays and all. I’d wanted to go since I first saw the entrance from the ferry. It’s very 1920s – a huge face with bulging eyes and a mouth you walk through to enter.
So, in we go and we buy a ‘freedom’ pass. $30 for unlimited rides.
Which sounds like good value until you get inside and realise that the rides themselves are extremely limited. The ones you actually want to go on even more so. And most of those are closed. Which is why I remembered Veronica’s mate because, having wandered from one end to the next, dodgy groups of chip-munching, pierced-faced youths, I was temped to shout ‘IS THAT IT!’.
We went on a mini roller coaster, which I liked. Shame that the pleasure:pain ratio was so off kilter. After queuing for 50 minutes the ride was over in 30 seconds. (A bit like bad sex, where mediocre foreplay goes on forever, only you’re actually grateful that the main event is over in the blink of an eye.)
We also went into Coney Island (nearly wrote Canvey) – a ‘fair within a fair’ where there was a maze of mirrors (I counted 3 actual mirrors!), some of those funny cake walk things (if you know what that is please look up You’ve Been Framed best ever clips – number 1 is a woman having an unfortunate incident at a fun fair and makes me weep every time I see it) and those big bumpy slides you need a sack mat to go on.
I was unfussed about all of the above, but my mate Gerry was eager to try the slides so I offered to join her on the junior slope. So, we take our sac mats up the stairs and down we go. REALLY FAST.
I was totally unprepared for the speed at which I hurtled down the metal death trap. So unprepared, in fact, that somehow my arm slipped of my sac mat and scraped along the slidy surface, giving me some rather juicy friction burns along the underside, which took with them most of the skin.
So, $30 for one ride and a seriously grazed arm, which still stings today.
Today, fortunately, my adventure spirit was better rewarded. I went on a ‘bungee trampoline’. This is basically a giant elastic band with an airbed under it. You are strapped to the elastic band and whiz merrily up and down, like Wallace in the Wrong Trousers. It’s fun, in that slightly out of control, it could all go horribly wrong at any second, way. I was particularly thrilled that I managed not one but two backflips. Which were actually quite hard – the kid next to me couldn’t do one!
‘Good backflip,’ said the assistant as she unstrapped me. ‘I had a 59 year old lady from Manchester on yesterday she did one, too!’
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
from the archives
found this from back in the day. i made myself laugh. imagine!
Some people have combination skin. A greasy bit, a flaky bit, a spotty bit. I have a combination body. I have the arms of a Barbie doll, OK, they’re a bit longer but not much fatter. My legs could belong to a long-distance runner. A 14-year-old long-distance runner. A 14-year-old girl that is. You wouldn’t notice the difference if I stuck my chest and shoulders on to Mr Bean (though you might think he’d got hairier) while my belly does a very passable Giant Haystacks impression. It could be worse, I know, but I dread to think what that would look like.
It hasn’t always been like this. Oh no. In fact I suspect that if, somehow, I could fit myself in one of those clever machines used for crushing empty drink cans I would return to the me of 20 years ago. In those heavy (I mean heady) teenage years, I weighed about 4 stone more than I do now and rather than pear-shaped, I resembled a pineapple atop a couple of marrows, with asparagus tips for arms.
Don’t ask me what happened. Who knows? If we were in Ancient Greece I could proudly boast that I was a toy of the gods. Oh mock ye not, for I am a plaything of the divine. I am Stretch Armstrong, see how Zeus and Venus pull at my limbs. As it is, I can only guess that as I got taller, the puppy fat heard that there was a party going on round my midriff and decided to gatecrash. It’s obviously one of those great parties that no one ever wants to leave.
I’d love to be one of those people who just doesn’t think about their physical appearance, but I think if I did I really would turn into a vegetable. So much of my waking life is spent worrying, measuring, catching sight of, feeling unhappy with and obsessing about what is under my clothes that the fact that I hold down a decent job and have a healthy social life is a minor miracle.
Actually the healthy social life is partly responsible for much of the fretting. You see, I am at that stage in my life where my diary is beginning to read like a restaurant guide. Dinner at such and such with so and so. Lunch here with her. Dinner again with them again. And on and on and on.
And I know I’m my own worse enemy. If it were true that you are what you eat, I would be a bucket of cheap red wine with a mouldy old salad floating in in.
Invariably an evening out will start in some bar or pub. Now, I stopped drinking beer years ago, after the instructor in the gym I used to (until that day) go to, saw me in the changing room and declared, for all the world to hear – what is it with you English guys and beer? (I was abroad at the time) How do you say, beer belly? Ha ha. Beer and I have not been seen together since.
I will usually start the evening with a Bloody Mary, particularly if I am out with a certain friend of mine, who, after her first BM is literally struck dumb. We affectionately refer to this phenomenon as her turning into ‘Marcel Marceau’. She usually recovers her capacity for speech at some point during the evening, but it does allow me to say everything I want to uninterrupted.
While I am on the subject of Bloody Marys (if you follow the rules of grammar you end up with Bloody Maries which sounds like an Osmond after an axe attack), never order one in Australia or you will be served a tomato juice rendered undrinkable by the addition of several bottles of Worcester sauce and little more. But I digress.
Anyway, I shall then move onto wine, or, if I am feeling particularly restrained, a spritzer. Now I can speak a foreign language, I can drive a car, I can touch type and I can swim, but if there is one thing I have never ever managed to get the hang of, that is pacing myself when drinking alcohol. Actually it’s not just alcohol. Whatever I am drinking, no matter how hot, cold or intoxicating, it is almost as if someone has shouted ‘go’ and I have to empty my cup or glass or whatever as quickly as possible. Obviously, this is by the by for other beverages but with alcohol it does seem to mean that I get pissed in no time at all. So the spritzers soon dump the soda water and the glasses of wine soon add up to the odd bottle or two. And off we go to dinner.
For me, reading a menu is never an easy task. I go through each dish thinking, ‘cheese, no, fattening’, ‘avocado and mozzarella, couldn’t possibly, straight to my belly’, ‘duck, more like run and hide, all that fat’, ‘creamy…’ I don’t even bother to find out what. And on I go, eliminating anything that vaguely smacks of grease, calories and body. In the process I usually manage to eliminate anything vaguely appetising but I can’t help myself. By this time I will have reduced the menu to its two or three blandest, least tastiest dishes and it’s just a matter of deciding which of them I want least. Invariably when the waiter or waitress comes this will be the dish I order. I don’t know why, after my habitual 20 minute elimination run through I will be convinced of what I’m going to ask for, only to be totally bewildered at what comes out of my mouth. ‘I’ll have the garden salad, no dressing thanks, and could I have a bread roll with that please, no butter.’ Why I bother to torment myself with the menu I shall never know.
I wish I were one of these people who wasn’t particularly interested in food. I’d have so much more time to think about other things. Who knows, maybe I’d write a novel or discover a cure for cancer or something. As it is I am far too busy reading recipes for dishes I’d never let myself eat and wondering how fattening that sandwhich I had for lunch was and whether to have tuna with my jacket potato this evening (I’m having an evening in) or to go for cottage cheese.
I also suffer dreadfully from menu envy. Basically if it’s on someone else’s plate and not on mine (which it never is, obviously) I wish I’d had that. Even if I hate one of the ingredients. Even if I hate all the ingredients!. And I have to try it, to confirm how much nicer it is than mine. It takes a Herculian effort to stop myself from eating off other people’s plates. People are usually only safe the first time they meet me, or, if they’re lucky, if they are sitting at another table and I don’t know them from Adam.
And so my dinner will come and go and all the while I shall be glugging away on wine, drinking it like there is no tomorrow so that when tomorrow does actually arrive, not only will I have a shocking hangover, I won’t be able to remember much about the evening. Oh, I’ll remember who was there and where we went, but don’t ask me to recall conversations or times.
One of my best examples of ‘self-inflicted amnesia’ was the party I went to wearing a white T-shirt, nothing remarkable about that I know, except that I returned home wearing a blue T-shirt with Cuba emblazened across it. To this day, no one knows where I got it from or why I had to change. I have managed to piece together the fact that after the party we all went on to a club, though no one remembers if I had changed by then or not – Luckily I am surrounded by people who match me drink for drink and dead brain cell for dead brain cell.
So that’s me, Mr watermelon with matches for limbs. Drinks like a fish (a fish out of water, gasping for dear life, obviously) but restraint itself when it comes to food. Except of course at parties, gatherings and anywhere else where, rather than my own plate in front of me with what I ordered (but didn’t mean to) set down before me, I am faced with a ‘running’ buffet or finger food. Now I suspect that a running buffet may be so named because upon my arrival, my host or hostess will shout at the other guests to ‘run and get it while you can, He’s arrived’ though I have no proof of this. What I do know is that whenever I see a table laid out with food (a spread), something very strange happens and my understanding of the words hunger, want and full goes out of the window. I will start modestly. Celery, no dip. Carrot waved above a bowl of hummous (oil, too fattening). One seventy-fifth of a crisp. Then the alcohol will kick in and before I know it I am trampling over small children and old ladies to get back to the food table (which I will only have left when the need to go to the toilet or replenish my glass becomes unbearable). Back at the table I will begin tearing off hunks of bread, smearing them with butter and stuffing them with as much cheese, salami and whatever else I can think of, before stuffing them down my neck as if they were illicit substances and the police had just kicked the door down. I won’t only do this once or twice, but over and over and over and over again, through fullness (what’s that?) and beyond the pain barrier. I am quite convinced that one of these days I shall wake up in hospital, to be told, much to my horror, the story of my collapsing on top of the buffet table and being stretchered away to have my stomach pumped, much to the amusement of all my friends.
Well, it could be worse. I could take no steps to counteract my excesses.
You see, as well as having Betty Ford’s appetite for alcohol and a Pacman like ability to eat, I am something of a fitness fanatic.
Whether I go to bed at 9pm, sober as the day I was born or at 3am, drunk as a lord, at 6am sharp I shall be out of bed packing my bag for the gym.
I like to start my exercise with a run on the treadmill. Now, work hard play hard, no pain no gain. Or in my case, no pain, no calories burned. So off I trot. 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles and suddenly I’ve run the equivalent of London to Brighton. Apparently I look like a praying mantis in a hamster wheel. No matter how far I run though my belly never seems to get any flatter. It never ceases to amaze me how other people can stuff their faces on crisps and chocolate and never gain an inch, while I just have to see an advert for Pringles and an extra spare tyre appears under my T-shirt. I am like Jesus on a running machine. I run so that they might snack. Or maybe I get other people flab by some weird kind of osmosis.
By this time I have usually worked up a bit of a sweat (and gone an alarming shade of yellow) and am ready for some weight training. To say I am a ten-stone weakling would be underestimating my weight by a couple of pounds, but my puniness is something even I cannot deny. You know how sometimes you read in the paper or magazines about mothers who have lifted cars off of their infants or men who dug through tonnes of rubble to free trapped relatives? Well all I can say is that if something terrible like that happens to you when I’m around, don’t expect me to be of any use. I never cease to amaze myself at how little physical strength I possess. Now if it’s stamina you need, I’m your man. I’d be a great friend to have if you lived in a house powered by a dynamo linked to a bicycle. I’d merrily keep those pedals turning for hours, in fact I could probably power half of the national grid for hours on end, but don’t expect me to lift anything heavier than a bag of sugar. I’ll willingly try, but it won’t be a pretty sight. Particularly scary is the way my mouth starts tugging in a Bette Davis kind of way, mid-strain.
Which I suppose in part explains my combination body. Apparently the first place where we accumulate fat is the last place we shift it from. Hence my Ally McBeal extremeties and Humpty Dumpty middle.
So next time you’re feeling a bit down on yourself, like Mr Self-Esteem has tired of your company, just think, it could be worse. You could be me.
Some people have combination skin. A greasy bit, a flaky bit, a spotty bit. I have a combination body. I have the arms of a Barbie doll, OK, they’re a bit longer but not much fatter. My legs could belong to a long-distance runner. A 14-year-old long-distance runner. A 14-year-old girl that is. You wouldn’t notice the difference if I stuck my chest and shoulders on to Mr Bean (though you might think he’d got hairier) while my belly does a very passable Giant Haystacks impression. It could be worse, I know, but I dread to think what that would look like.
It hasn’t always been like this. Oh no. In fact I suspect that if, somehow, I could fit myself in one of those clever machines used for crushing empty drink cans I would return to the me of 20 years ago. In those heavy (I mean heady) teenage years, I weighed about 4 stone more than I do now and rather than pear-shaped, I resembled a pineapple atop a couple of marrows, with asparagus tips for arms.
Don’t ask me what happened. Who knows? If we were in Ancient Greece I could proudly boast that I was a toy of the gods. Oh mock ye not, for I am a plaything of the divine. I am Stretch Armstrong, see how Zeus and Venus pull at my limbs. As it is, I can only guess that as I got taller, the puppy fat heard that there was a party going on round my midriff and decided to gatecrash. It’s obviously one of those great parties that no one ever wants to leave.
I’d love to be one of those people who just doesn’t think about their physical appearance, but I think if I did I really would turn into a vegetable. So much of my waking life is spent worrying, measuring, catching sight of, feeling unhappy with and obsessing about what is under my clothes that the fact that I hold down a decent job and have a healthy social life is a minor miracle.
Actually the healthy social life is partly responsible for much of the fretting. You see, I am at that stage in my life where my diary is beginning to read like a restaurant guide. Dinner at such and such with so and so. Lunch here with her. Dinner again with them again. And on and on and on.
And I know I’m my own worse enemy. If it were true that you are what you eat, I would be a bucket of cheap red wine with a mouldy old salad floating in in.
Invariably an evening out will start in some bar or pub. Now, I stopped drinking beer years ago, after the instructor in the gym I used to (until that day) go to, saw me in the changing room and declared, for all the world to hear – what is it with you English guys and beer? (I was abroad at the time) How do you say, beer belly? Ha ha. Beer and I have not been seen together since.
I will usually start the evening with a Bloody Mary, particularly if I am out with a certain friend of mine, who, after her first BM is literally struck dumb. We affectionately refer to this phenomenon as her turning into ‘Marcel Marceau’. She usually recovers her capacity for speech at some point during the evening, but it does allow me to say everything I want to uninterrupted.
While I am on the subject of Bloody Marys (if you follow the rules of grammar you end up with Bloody Maries which sounds like an Osmond after an axe attack), never order one in Australia or you will be served a tomato juice rendered undrinkable by the addition of several bottles of Worcester sauce and little more. But I digress.
Anyway, I shall then move onto wine, or, if I am feeling particularly restrained, a spritzer. Now I can speak a foreign language, I can drive a car, I can touch type and I can swim, but if there is one thing I have never ever managed to get the hang of, that is pacing myself when drinking alcohol. Actually it’s not just alcohol. Whatever I am drinking, no matter how hot, cold or intoxicating, it is almost as if someone has shouted ‘go’ and I have to empty my cup or glass or whatever as quickly as possible. Obviously, this is by the by for other beverages but with alcohol it does seem to mean that I get pissed in no time at all. So the spritzers soon dump the soda water and the glasses of wine soon add up to the odd bottle or two. And off we go to dinner.
For me, reading a menu is never an easy task. I go through each dish thinking, ‘cheese, no, fattening’, ‘avocado and mozzarella, couldn’t possibly, straight to my belly’, ‘duck, more like run and hide, all that fat’, ‘creamy…’ I don’t even bother to find out what. And on I go, eliminating anything that vaguely smacks of grease, calories and body. In the process I usually manage to eliminate anything vaguely appetising but I can’t help myself. By this time I will have reduced the menu to its two or three blandest, least tastiest dishes and it’s just a matter of deciding which of them I want least. Invariably when the waiter or waitress comes this will be the dish I order. I don’t know why, after my habitual 20 minute elimination run through I will be convinced of what I’m going to ask for, only to be totally bewildered at what comes out of my mouth. ‘I’ll have the garden salad, no dressing thanks, and could I have a bread roll with that please, no butter.’ Why I bother to torment myself with the menu I shall never know.
I wish I were one of these people who wasn’t particularly interested in food. I’d have so much more time to think about other things. Who knows, maybe I’d write a novel or discover a cure for cancer or something. As it is I am far too busy reading recipes for dishes I’d never let myself eat and wondering how fattening that sandwhich I had for lunch was and whether to have tuna with my jacket potato this evening (I’m having an evening in) or to go for cottage cheese.
I also suffer dreadfully from menu envy. Basically if it’s on someone else’s plate and not on mine (which it never is, obviously) I wish I’d had that. Even if I hate one of the ingredients. Even if I hate all the ingredients!. And I have to try it, to confirm how much nicer it is than mine. It takes a Herculian effort to stop myself from eating off other people’s plates. People are usually only safe the first time they meet me, or, if they’re lucky, if they are sitting at another table and I don’t know them from Adam.
And so my dinner will come and go and all the while I shall be glugging away on wine, drinking it like there is no tomorrow so that when tomorrow does actually arrive, not only will I have a shocking hangover, I won’t be able to remember much about the evening. Oh, I’ll remember who was there and where we went, but don’t ask me to recall conversations or times.
One of my best examples of ‘self-inflicted amnesia’ was the party I went to wearing a white T-shirt, nothing remarkable about that I know, except that I returned home wearing a blue T-shirt with Cuba emblazened across it. To this day, no one knows where I got it from or why I had to change. I have managed to piece together the fact that after the party we all went on to a club, though no one remembers if I had changed by then or not – Luckily I am surrounded by people who match me drink for drink and dead brain cell for dead brain cell.
So that’s me, Mr watermelon with matches for limbs. Drinks like a fish (a fish out of water, gasping for dear life, obviously) but restraint itself when it comes to food. Except of course at parties, gatherings and anywhere else where, rather than my own plate in front of me with what I ordered (but didn’t mean to) set down before me, I am faced with a ‘running’ buffet or finger food. Now I suspect that a running buffet may be so named because upon my arrival, my host or hostess will shout at the other guests to ‘run and get it while you can, He’s arrived’ though I have no proof of this. What I do know is that whenever I see a table laid out with food (a spread), something very strange happens and my understanding of the words hunger, want and full goes out of the window. I will start modestly. Celery, no dip. Carrot waved above a bowl of hummous (oil, too fattening). One seventy-fifth of a crisp. Then the alcohol will kick in and before I know it I am trampling over small children and old ladies to get back to the food table (which I will only have left when the need to go to the toilet or replenish my glass becomes unbearable). Back at the table I will begin tearing off hunks of bread, smearing them with butter and stuffing them with as much cheese, salami and whatever else I can think of, before stuffing them down my neck as if they were illicit substances and the police had just kicked the door down. I won’t only do this once or twice, but over and over and over and over again, through fullness (what’s that?) and beyond the pain barrier. I am quite convinced that one of these days I shall wake up in hospital, to be told, much to my horror, the story of my collapsing on top of the buffet table and being stretchered away to have my stomach pumped, much to the amusement of all my friends.
Well, it could be worse. I could take no steps to counteract my excesses.
You see, as well as having Betty Ford’s appetite for alcohol and a Pacman like ability to eat, I am something of a fitness fanatic.
Whether I go to bed at 9pm, sober as the day I was born or at 3am, drunk as a lord, at 6am sharp I shall be out of bed packing my bag for the gym.
I like to start my exercise with a run on the treadmill. Now, work hard play hard, no pain no gain. Or in my case, no pain, no calories burned. So off I trot. 1 mile, 2 miles, 3 miles and suddenly I’ve run the equivalent of London to Brighton. Apparently I look like a praying mantis in a hamster wheel. No matter how far I run though my belly never seems to get any flatter. It never ceases to amaze me how other people can stuff their faces on crisps and chocolate and never gain an inch, while I just have to see an advert for Pringles and an extra spare tyre appears under my T-shirt. I am like Jesus on a running machine. I run so that they might snack. Or maybe I get other people flab by some weird kind of osmosis.
By this time I have usually worked up a bit of a sweat (and gone an alarming shade of yellow) and am ready for some weight training. To say I am a ten-stone weakling would be underestimating my weight by a couple of pounds, but my puniness is something even I cannot deny. You know how sometimes you read in the paper or magazines about mothers who have lifted cars off of their infants or men who dug through tonnes of rubble to free trapped relatives? Well all I can say is that if something terrible like that happens to you when I’m around, don’t expect me to be of any use. I never cease to amaze myself at how little physical strength I possess. Now if it’s stamina you need, I’m your man. I’d be a great friend to have if you lived in a house powered by a dynamo linked to a bicycle. I’d merrily keep those pedals turning for hours, in fact I could probably power half of the national grid for hours on end, but don’t expect me to lift anything heavier than a bag of sugar. I’ll willingly try, but it won’t be a pretty sight. Particularly scary is the way my mouth starts tugging in a Bette Davis kind of way, mid-strain.
Which I suppose in part explains my combination body. Apparently the first place where we accumulate fat is the last place we shift it from. Hence my Ally McBeal extremeties and Humpty Dumpty middle.
So next time you’re feeling a bit down on yourself, like Mr Self-Esteem has tired of your company, just think, it could be worse. You could be me.
esther rantzen where are you?
so, new me, new household. the people i am staying with share my bizarre sleeping patterns. this is largely down to Molly, their 15 month old baby who thinks nothing of screaming the house down at 2am and even less of demanding food and attention at 5am. regular readers (hi Jezza!) will know that 5am for me is like 8am for everyone else (i specifically avoided the word normal there for the sake of all the farmers who follow my blog) and so isn't much of an issue.
the Molly routine goes like this: Molly moans. return to silence. Molly cries once or twice. return to silence. Molly screams house down until Dad comes to get her and take her to parental bed for breast and extended sleep (I know A LOT of people who would pay good money for that!).
sometimes there is a further stage to the process. this is six (AND A HALF!) year old Erin screaming at Mum and Dad that 'MOLLY IS AWAKE!!!!!!!' I'm sure the neighbours are just dying to add 'AND SO ARE WE!!!!!!!' at this point.
last week there was a funny moment during this last stage where, as well as shouting that Molly was awake Erin began enquiring, in a whiny voice she has perfected since I arrived: 'Daddy, did you take my pants off? Did you take my pants off? Why did you take my pants off?'
fortunately i heard an earlier visit to the loo when, delirious with sleep, she refused to put said pants back on again but goodness only knows what those neighbours must think.
laughing about it (as in how we laughed) at breakfast the next day Gerry (mum) told me about the time Erin had caused raised eyebrows at playgroup, informing the teachers that 'Daddy is always fiddling with my bum!' - apparently there had been an episode of worms in the household.
but that's a whole new post.
the Molly routine goes like this: Molly moans. return to silence. Molly cries once or twice. return to silence. Molly screams house down until Dad comes to get her and take her to parental bed for breast and extended sleep (I know A LOT of people who would pay good money for that!).
sometimes there is a further stage to the process. this is six (AND A HALF!) year old Erin screaming at Mum and Dad that 'MOLLY IS AWAKE!!!!!!!' I'm sure the neighbours are just dying to add 'AND SO ARE WE!!!!!!!' at this point.
last week there was a funny moment during this last stage where, as well as shouting that Molly was awake Erin began enquiring, in a whiny voice she has perfected since I arrived: 'Daddy, did you take my pants off? Did you take my pants off? Why did you take my pants off?'
fortunately i heard an earlier visit to the loo when, delirious with sleep, she refused to put said pants back on again but goodness only knows what those neighbours must think.
laughing about it (as in how we laughed) at breakfast the next day Gerry (mum) told me about the time Erin had caused raised eyebrows at playgroup, informing the teachers that 'Daddy is always fiddling with my bum!' - apparently there had been an episode of worms in the household.
but that's a whole new post.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
pump up the volume
on the train home today i found myself being shaken from my Zen like calm by the irritatingly tinny sound of a young girl's headphones. i tried and tried to rise above it but it REALLY STARTED TO GET ON MY NERVES. of course i didn't say anything, favouring instead the withering look technique. it worked - she got off shortly after i started flashing evils in her direction (not directly AT HER, natch! i'm too passive aggressive for that).
and as she got off, i realised that the REALLY ANNOYING noise was still on the train! it was a bit like taking off a squeaky shoe only to find that it wasn't actually the shoe that was squeaking.
anyway, after adoptig the 'what the hell is that noise' stance - a bit like a meerkat but with a nasty smell grimace - i track the noise down to a pair of young, pierced-faced girls playing really tinny music out loud on a mobile phone. they were having a right old laugh, doing their makeup, chewing their chewing gum and playing their phones too too loud.
i was far too whimpy to say anything (though i know other people in the carriage were feeling annoyed) but it did occur to me that it would be funny to walk up to them and say 'oh, i love this one, can you turn it up a bit' and then embark on some mortally embarrassing dad-stylee dancing. i'm sure it would have them turning their shxtty music down in no time!
did i tell you i went to the beach today and had a totally lovely time?
and as she got off, i realised that the REALLY ANNOYING noise was still on the train! it was a bit like taking off a squeaky shoe only to find that it wasn't actually the shoe that was squeaking.
anyway, after adoptig the 'what the hell is that noise' stance - a bit like a meerkat but with a nasty smell grimace - i track the noise down to a pair of young, pierced-faced girls playing really tinny music out loud on a mobile phone. they were having a right old laugh, doing their makeup, chewing their chewing gum and playing their phones too too loud.
i was far too whimpy to say anything (though i know other people in the carriage were feeling annoyed) but it did occur to me that it would be funny to walk up to them and say 'oh, i love this one, can you turn it up a bit' and then embark on some mortally embarrassing dad-stylee dancing. i'm sure it would have them turning their shxtty music down in no time!
did i tell you i went to the beach today and had a totally lovely time?
Monday, April 13, 2009
a bird in the hand
Today my mate Gerry and I took six (and a half!) year old Erin for a ferry trip to the beautiful souding Cockatoo Island - an island (but you'd already guessed that, right) just outside Sydney harbour.
So, onto the exciting ferry we hop and 20 minutes later we do indeed arrive on an island.
Now, it being Easter and all we were slightly apprehensive about the trip as the transport timetables were gappy and the next ferry was two and half hours after ours and we knew from the good old internet that C.I. is a mere 500metres long.
But it's got a campsite on it so how bad can it be? Well, let's just say quite bad. In fact, let's just say that if they'd called it 'Bugger All to Do and Loads of Random Cranes Island' it might have been less of a trades description violation.
The island was originally a penal colony (as everything here in Oz seems to have been thanks to us) before being converted into a ship yard. It must have been quite grim. (must have been? like it's changed). Remnants of its building past remain - hence all those cranes, along with lots of rickety old outhouses, the odd barracks and, weirdly, a tennis court, which I suspect wasn't there when the Pomms were over serving time for nicking a handkerchief. 20 years hard tennis doesn't sound right somehow.
There is, as I say, a campsite too. Even this had a military feel to it - the tiny tents were all lined out on a grid and terribly close together. The shower block was nice though.
So, after 35 minutes we'd seen everything there was to see and done everything there was to do. Twice. And still a two hour wait for the next ferry. But no. Behold, a boat! Luckily Gerry had misread the timetable and we were saved. In no time at all we were back on dry land and ready for our next adventure.
Which was a walk round the Botanical Gardens. Which are a total delight and could, coincidentally have been called 'Lots of Cockatoos Gardens', for no sooner were we through the gates than we found a tree full of the yellow crested beasties. I am still blown away by the fact that flocks of bright green parrots hang out in my back garden, that ibises walk nonchalently down the street and that the parks are full of cockatoos.
'Please can we feed them,' says Erin. And, because we have not yet seen the sign that says PLEASE do NOT feed the birds, it makes them aggressive and dependent on humans' I say, 'why of course we can, little innocent one, have some of this bread that I have bought, thinking that Cockatoo Island may actually be home to some hungry nature.'
To cut a long story short, Erin was soon channelling the spirit of Tippie Hedron as we were divebombed by some rather scary cockatoos. Erin, quite sensibly ran off screaming 'I don't like them', while I fended them off with morsels of mouldy bread.
Our next brush with nature was to watch the flying foxes waking up in the trees. They always sound like they are having a row: 'I'm trying to sleep, get out of my face', 'it's your turn to hoover' type thing.
We then try and explain to Erin why the flying foxes and indeed all other bats sleep during the day and go out to feed at night. This caused Gerry to remember the time, shortly after arriving in Sydney, she went to a bat sanctuary and breast fed an orphaned baby!
How we laughed. I was mildly disappointed when she corrected herself to bottle fed.
So, onto the exciting ferry we hop and 20 minutes later we do indeed arrive on an island.
Now, it being Easter and all we were slightly apprehensive about the trip as the transport timetables were gappy and the next ferry was two and half hours after ours and we knew from the good old internet that C.I. is a mere 500metres long.
But it's got a campsite on it so how bad can it be? Well, let's just say quite bad. In fact, let's just say that if they'd called it 'Bugger All to Do and Loads of Random Cranes Island' it might have been less of a trades description violation.
The island was originally a penal colony (as everything here in Oz seems to have been thanks to us) before being converted into a ship yard. It must have been quite grim. (must have been? like it's changed). Remnants of its building past remain - hence all those cranes, along with lots of rickety old outhouses, the odd barracks and, weirdly, a tennis court, which I suspect wasn't there when the Pomms were over serving time for nicking a handkerchief. 20 years hard tennis doesn't sound right somehow.
There is, as I say, a campsite too. Even this had a military feel to it - the tiny tents were all lined out on a grid and terribly close together. The shower block was nice though.
So, after 35 minutes we'd seen everything there was to see and done everything there was to do. Twice. And still a two hour wait for the next ferry. But no. Behold, a boat! Luckily Gerry had misread the timetable and we were saved. In no time at all we were back on dry land and ready for our next adventure.
Which was a walk round the Botanical Gardens. Which are a total delight and could, coincidentally have been called 'Lots of Cockatoos Gardens', for no sooner were we through the gates than we found a tree full of the yellow crested beasties. I am still blown away by the fact that flocks of bright green parrots hang out in my back garden, that ibises walk nonchalently down the street and that the parks are full of cockatoos.
'Please can we feed them,' says Erin. And, because we have not yet seen the sign that says PLEASE do NOT feed the birds, it makes them aggressive and dependent on humans' I say, 'why of course we can, little innocent one, have some of this bread that I have bought, thinking that Cockatoo Island may actually be home to some hungry nature.'
To cut a long story short, Erin was soon channelling the spirit of Tippie Hedron as we were divebombed by some rather scary cockatoos. Erin, quite sensibly ran off screaming 'I don't like them', while I fended them off with morsels of mouldy bread.
Our next brush with nature was to watch the flying foxes waking up in the trees. They always sound like they are having a row: 'I'm trying to sleep, get out of my face', 'it's your turn to hoover' type thing.
We then try and explain to Erin why the flying foxes and indeed all other bats sleep during the day and go out to feed at night. This caused Gerry to remember the time, shortly after arriving in Sydney, she went to a bat sanctuary and breast fed an orphaned baby!
How we laughed. I was mildly disappointed when she corrected herself to bottle fed.
Friday, April 10, 2009
time rich blog poor
'how busy can you be that you don't have time EVEN to send an email?' i used to think when friends would move overseas and suddenly become totally incapable of maintaining contact. well, blow me, i've turned into one of them. never underestimate the role that your daytime job plays in keeping you in touch with your mates - it is infinitely easier to incorporate emailing buddies into your working life than it is into your non-working existence. which is why i have a very long list of people to email.
anyway.
i've been keeping myself entertained with the different ways that the aussies use to describe things. Grass verges, for example, are referred to as nature strips. garbos are binmen, ambos are ambulance drivers etc.
my favourite is 'bashing'.
when i was little, my granddad used to call me Basher because i used to 'smack'* people a lot.
in Australian English if someone is 'bashed' it means they've been mugged.
i know that that isn't funny but it tickles me when i hear a news snippet saying 'a man was bashed in a shopping centre yesterday'. it's like saying 'an old lady was pinched as she made her way home last night' or 'a young man is in hospital having sustained at severe Chinese burn in a nightclub brawl'.
anyway....
anyway.
i've been keeping myself entertained with the different ways that the aussies use to describe things. Grass verges, for example, are referred to as nature strips. garbos are binmen, ambos are ambulance drivers etc.
my favourite is 'bashing'.
when i was little, my granddad used to call me Basher because i used to 'smack'* people a lot.
in Australian English if someone is 'bashed' it means they've been mugged.
i know that that isn't funny but it tickles me when i hear a news snippet saying 'a man was bashed in a shopping centre yesterday'. it's like saying 'an old lady was pinched as she made her way home last night' or 'a young man is in hospital having sustained at severe Chinese burn in a nightclub brawl'.
anyway....
Saturday, April 4, 2009
from the mouths of innocent
so i am currently adding a certain 21st century spin to the nuclear household. i am staying with my mates Gerry and Neil and their kids. we are, officially an SITKOD – a single-income, two-kid, one-gay-man family,
Erin is six going on 18 (she keeps looking at herself in the mirror and saying 'Am I pretty today?' a girl after my own heart.
Molly is a year old and delight, but can be a screamer when the mood takes her.
Yesterday Gerry and I were talking about possible films to rent (as you do on Saturday nights when you reach a certain age). When she suggested Mamma Mia i said 'i'm not watching that s.h.i.t.' because in a house of children you have to spell out naughty words.
'Oh!' said Erin 'You spelled shit!'
how we laughed!
we finally settled on HSM2, which as i'm sure you already know is the follow up to the searing social realism classic High School Musical. the highlight for me was when Troy channelled the Zen masters by announcing to Gabriella 'let's not think about the future, let's just enjoy the here and now'. for Erin it was one rather melancholy (and so unremarkable i can't even remember its title) song about having to part and go off alone etc etc. 'I like this song,' she said in a tiny (as opposed to tinny) voice 'but in my heart it makes me feel sad. like i want to cry.'
i said that it was ok to cry but Erin rallied round: 'i'm only going to cry happy tears!'
that's the spirit!
Erin is six going on 18 (she keeps looking at herself in the mirror and saying 'Am I pretty today?' a girl after my own heart.
Molly is a year old and delight, but can be a screamer when the mood takes her.
Yesterday Gerry and I were talking about possible films to rent (as you do on Saturday nights when you reach a certain age). When she suggested Mamma Mia i said 'i'm not watching that s.h.i.t.' because in a house of children you have to spell out naughty words.
'Oh!' said Erin 'You spelled shit!'
how we laughed!
we finally settled on HSM2, which as i'm sure you already know is the follow up to the searing social realism classic High School Musical. the highlight for me was when Troy channelled the Zen masters by announcing to Gabriella 'let's not think about the future, let's just enjoy the here and now'. for Erin it was one rather melancholy (and so unremarkable i can't even remember its title) song about having to part and go off alone etc etc. 'I like this song,' she said in a tiny (as opposed to tinny) voice 'but in my heart it makes me feel sad. like i want to cry.'
i said that it was ok to cry but Erin rallied round: 'i'm only going to cry happy tears!'
that's the spirit!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
junior gaydar
i was once in the park with my mates Louise and Lee and their then five year old son Jack. out of the blue, and apropro of nothing Jack suddenly announced: 'your favourite colour is pink'. i asked him how he knew and he seemed bemused that i'd even bother to ask. i was reminded of this incident recentwhen Gerry came home with six year old Erin (they are my hosts during my stay in Oz). Erin had had a 'news day' at school (i know! whatever happened to good old show and tell?) and apparently she was very excited to tell the class about her new houseguests, one of Mummy's old old friend from England: 'Aunty Steven'!
I also recently spent the day with some other friends and their kids, one of whom asked coyly: 'how old are you?', when i asked her to hazard a guess she said '16'. bless!
so, new town, new gym. cutting down my attendance from every day compulsive to three-times-a-week almost normal, which i am enjoying, though Fitness First may be going into liquidation if i reduce my gymgoing any further. actually it's two new gyms - one top notch, full of heavily 'enhanced' ladies who like to work out before their salads one full of ozzie meatheads, lifting far too heavy weights and grunting. the other day i made myself giggle by imagining walking up to the bulkiest one there and asking if he could spot me. when he reluctantly agreed i would lead him over to the bench press onto which i've already loaded 2.5K weights and make a real song and dance about completing a set of 10. well it made me laugh.
I also recently spent the day with some other friends and their kids, one of whom asked coyly: 'how old are you?', when i asked her to hazard a guess she said '16'. bless!
so, new town, new gym. cutting down my attendance from every day compulsive to three-times-a-week almost normal, which i am enjoying, though Fitness First may be going into liquidation if i reduce my gymgoing any further. actually it's two new gyms - one top notch, full of heavily 'enhanced' ladies who like to work out before their salads one full of ozzie meatheads, lifting far too heavy weights and grunting. the other day i made myself giggle by imagining walking up to the bulkiest one there and asking if he could spot me. when he reluctantly agreed i would lead him over to the bench press onto which i've already loaded 2.5K weights and make a real song and dance about completing a set of 10. well it made me laugh.
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