... Got my Bake On, Christmas Style

This is a picture of the (gluten-free, fructose-friendly) fruit mince tarts I just made. I also made Cointreau-infused whipped butter to go with them. I didn't take a photo of the butter, though, because it just looks like a big pile of yellow. Not so high up on the photogenic scale.

Anyway...

Today I got my bake on, Christmas style. Christmas has always really meant something to me. Puddings made by Grandfather, impromptu Christmas concerts at home, the house smelling like fresh pine for the whole month, our dining table set with crisp linen and white china. I like multi-coloured fairy lights. I like tinsel. I like that my Mother and I would always cover every inch of living space with so much decoration that it looked like a Christmas elf had projectile vomited through the entire house. 'Scrooged' is one of my favorite movies. And I sing at the end, oh yes I do, when Bill Murray instructs us all to join in. I almost start to cry every time I watch Willie in "Bad Santa" grip that steering wheel, and speed away from the cops muttering to himself "it's Christmas and the kid's gettin' his fuckin' present". Shopping, wrapping, eating roasts with gravy (even when it's forty degrees outside), breaking open Christmas crackers, wearing stupid paper hats - I love it all. I have great affection, in particular, for the mixed spice, dried fruit and brandy combination favoured by many desserts at this time of year. In my humble opinion, those little enablers to waistline crime are seriously THE BOMB. So with this in mind, it seems strange to me in hindsight that when I was diagnosed as Allergy Girl around this time last year, that the interruption to regular programming for Christmas feasting didn't bother me at all. I guess I was so tired of feeling sick all the time, that I was simply relieved to know that by giving some things up I could put food in my mouth again without having to play a round of Mystery Stomach Wheel of Fortune ("is it going to land on Nauseous? Fine? Nooooo, it's The Runs for this little lady! Congratulations!")

But 12 months on, with a once again functioning digestive system and the knowledge that there is Life on Mars (gastronomically speaking) after a Fructose Malabsorption diagnosis, the Ghost of Christmas Treats Past has started whispering in my ear. Two weeks ago, the smell of fruit cake cut-up on a platter near the coffee machine tickled my nostrils. Last week, pictures of plum pudding with custard on magazine covers compelled my gaze to rest a fraction too long. Then finally, oh finally, the breaking point came on the weekend upon seeing fruit mince tarts in the supermarket. At that point the ghost was no longer whispering it was beating me over the head with it's chains and howling up a storm. It was the first time I found myself really lamenting that I couldn't eat regular girl food. I turned to the tarts in the gluten-free aisle in hope but I knew they contained apple before I even turned over to the ingredient list (and besides that, they would've probably tasted like little discs of powdery cork-board stuffed full of soggy bean bag filling). So torn up with the agony of my love for Christmas, but my hate for wheat and that wretched Judas of a fruit - the apple - I was left with only one option: to bake a super tasty, gluten-free, fructose-friendly fruit mince tart myself. And then eat it and eat it good.

Hence, today I did what I set out to do. I came, I saw, I kicked its arse. I made super tasty fruit mince tarts that contained neither wheat nor apple. And when those little round pockets of delicious mixed spice, dried fruit and brandy heaven had cooled just enough for me to pries them out of the tin - I picked one up and stood in the kitchen smearing large spoonfuls of Cointreau butter onto it with each bite until it was all gone. Maybe I even had another one after that.

God bless us, everyone.

...Woke up in Paris

Sometimes I think there are too many words in my world. So for a change, this is what I saw today (well, today last week if we're being technical about it).











Viva la France.

... Learned to Love the Thigh Meat

So my usual repertoire of thoughts regarding my body is generally quite positive these days. I've learned to accept that, yes, I will always struggle to fill a b-cup. It actually works in your favour if one of your "Ulti-Woman" idols happens to be Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. In addition, thanks to J-Lo (back from the days when we all knew her as Jennifer Lopez) in the white, Western world we've learned to accept "that flat butts" aren't "the thing" and to internalize the important affirmation that the "anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon". Therefore, frequently not being able to find pants that can tame the junk in the trunk is not as traumatic as I once found it in my more tender years.

Where this Woman Hear Me Roar love-a-plooza still all comes crashing down, though, is my thighs. And it's not because I think they're too big, or that I'm too short, or because of cellulite or hair or veins or any of the other run of the mill "I hate my thighs" arsenal known by all women everywhere. It's because I think they look like chicken drumsticks. If you're confused, imagine getting two nice, big plump chicken drumsticks and standing them up onto the little pointy ends. While doing this, make sure you place them close enough together so that the fleshy round bits at the top end up touching. Now wrap them in denim. Put some miniature red high heels or a pair of cowboy boots on the little nubs. Et Voila - that's what I see when I look at myself in jeans. Pretty much every time.

However, after running through the usual mental checklist before leaving the house for dinner the other night (wallet, check, hand bag, check, lip gloss, check, look in mirror and curse the furies for giving me ugly chicken drumstick legs, check) I had to pull myself up for cursing the drumsticks later on. At the table next to us, there was an old woman eating dinner with her son. And when she'd finished, I sat there and watched her as she gingerly made her way out of the restaurant, leaning on a walking frame. When she stopped at the two small steps she needed to walk down to get out the front door, so that two people could physically help her down them, it made me stop too. I suddenly didn't care that I'd thought my legs looked like blue denim clad, free-range thigh meat before leaving the house - they'd got me up those stairs without missing a beat. In fact, they'd been so good at getting me up those stairs I hadn't even registered that they were there.

My legs traverse steps for me every day. They peddle my bike. They tense to hold me up when I get on tippy-toes to get flour out of the cupboard. They help me dance with my best friend at Ding Dong and wrap me all the way around my boyfriend for a cuddle when I wake up in the morning. I'm now on holidays, and they're going to walk me around the streets of Paris wherever I want to go and get me all the way down Portobello Road and back up again without a complaint. They aren't just useless lumps of flesh for me to curse at because they don't look "right": they're strong and efficient and cleverly designed with complex moving parts that all work together to allow me to do the things I love.

So ladies, all the ladies, if you want to drive your own Mercedes (metaphorically speaking), my advice is to learn to love the thigh meat. They deserve your love, even if you think they're too skinny, too fleshy, too short, too white, too hairy, too blotchy, too muscly, too dimpled or just too anything. Just remind yourselves of every single thing they help you do every single day. And you know what? I'm going to lead by example and tell myself that too and instead of cursing, start reminding myself that there's always a fight over the drumsticks on a Sunday roast. You know why? Because they're damn tasty.

...Got Lost and Found the Swiss Alps via a Thermos

"Lost and Found" on Smith Street is my Happy Place. Adam Sandler has a golf course inhabited by dwarfs in chaps; I have an indoor second-hand market in Fitzroy. Horses for courses, I guess.

While I do like adorning myself, and wherever I live, with vintage in all it's bedazzled, gold trimmed, baker-lite glory, "Lost and Found" isn't my Happy Place because of what I can hand over money for and take home with me. I love it because the music is always "just so". I love that the boards of the warehouse shell it's contained in have a little bit of give that only age can bring. And I love that while you're making those measured, peaceful steps amongst the merchandise and creaking boards, people don't come up to you to ask "how you're doing". In fact, in the labyrinthine nooks and crannies created by racks of clothes and shelves of jewelery (and crocheted rugs and ceramic lamps and snakeskin handbags) you feel utterly and complete lost in your own world of curiosities.

Whatever my life is when I step back out out those doors on Smith Street, just isn't there for those few moments when all the objects "not of our time" transport me somewhere else. To a sheepskin rug that was under my Zia's coffee table that I used to lie on when I was only three or four and run my fingers through over and over. To tin cups in different metallic 70s shades, that my Grandma and I used to drink out of when the house she lived in was being renovated and all the china was still in boxes. To my Pop's flat I went to only rarely, where I'd eat Choc Royals and watch Sesame Street on a big, old wooden TV with a round screen and brass dials, with the picture coming out in strange, faded colours.

There's also the sheer thrill of the unexpected at "Lost and Found". You never know quite what you'll find. Never. Which is special, considering that so little in your day to day life has the potential to bring you that teeny-tiny joy of something off the map. Maybe you can assume there will be fur coats that smell like moth balls, a range of printed nylon scarves, gold clip on earrings, perhaps a retro telephone stand... but other than that? You're in a foreign land where anything is possible. Where a gentle chaos reigns as to which curios and memories of the not-so-distant past have found there way there. Like when I visited a few days ago, I found an orange tartan-pattern Thermos in the exact style I'd found in a Salvation Army Store about five years ago (but have long since lost). One of my good friends had only just last week been talking about my slightly compulsive ritual of sitting out the back of the store we worked in, eating my soup out of this old Thermos almost every single day. She also mentioned how jealous she was of it at the time. Yes, my dears, she was jealous of a $7 Thermos from the Salvation Army. Which, in her defense, I can understand. I loved that Thermos as intensely as anyone could love an item of kitchenware without having it develop into some kind of disorder. The thing was, and still is, that there really isn't anything in the modern Tupperware arsenal with as much panache as on old school Thermos in mint condition.

And, so, in the Tale of Two Thermoses, here I was in "Lost and Found" five years/ one week on and I'd found another one. Conjured up out of the ether and just waiting quietly for me. Like I'd pulled up outside the train station to collect it with all of its bags to take it home - as if that had been the plan all along. So going back today to take possession of the Thermos in order to gift it to my friend, I had another wander through. And you know what I found? The Swiss Alps. So I decided to take them home with me. For only $8, how could I refuse?

...Met God and Found it a Little Underwhelming

I don't believe in God. This was cemented for me around the time my goldfish died and it became clear to me that it didn't get to go to heaven. And even if I made it a plastic take-away container coffin lined with tissues, rather than flush it down the loo, it didn't change that fact. So in my mind, if the fish wasn't going to heaven, then my dog wouldn't be going to heaven. And if my dog wouldn't be going to heaven, then I also, most likely, would not be going there either. Why? Because we all had brains and eyes and mouths, so why did my set of those things qualify me for heaven but not Apricot Fish and Toby? It didn't make sense. It was far more logical to conclude that heaven just didn't exist. It was a whole “I’m six and have just set off an existential chain reaction” kind of thing. Part of me wishes it could have come a little later in life, but don't cry for me Argentina: while I couldn't hold on to God, at least I did get to hold on to Santa Claus for a few more years. Beggars can't be choosers.

Saying that, though, a decade later I did manage to create my own deities to worship. To replace the God I had lost with Apricot Fish's passing, when I was sixteen and discovering the power of being a girl and being angry, I managed to develop the self-made holy trinity of Germaine Greer (the father), Naomi Wolf (the son) and Courtney Love (I'm guessing that leaves her as the holy ghost. Makes sense - she sure could wail).

And despite having progressed through the following decade of my life from that point to marvel at Germaine Greer digging in a foxhole of increasing craziness, and to witness Ms Love's fall from the "elegantly wasted" grunge A-list to the Z-list position of celebrity roadkill addicted to plastic surgery and prescription medication: I've still always had Naomi Wolf. The Beauty Myth. So insightful. So relevant. And still relevant two decades later. It responded in shock to the fact we were losing a generation of women to bulimia and anorexia with no international epidemic being announced. Without even any questioning of what could be driving so many, from one gender all over the developed world, to start starving themselves to death. It challenged the unquestioned mandate the media seemingly had to present women however they wanted: with no cellulite, no body hair, and no thighs for that matter. It also altered the way that women thought about those images of themselves they were being presented. It dared to say – you’re apparently through the glass ceiling, sweetheart, but this is why you still don’t feel you got anywhere.

It was the bible for new feminism.

So with Naomi Wolf's visit this week to Melbourne, upon being offered a ticket to see "God" speak, I was of course ecstatic. At the possibility that God, through some fluke of my work connections, was going to perhaps grant me a personal audience? I couldn’t even function. But after hearing the sermon delivered I was left... a little cold. There was nothing ecclesiastical in that auditorium for me. Her argument was ill defined, lacking intellectual rigor and delivered with a boisterous LA accent (that particularly grated during the section where she advised a member of the audience to take up meditation as a way to "counteract negative thoughts"). After that, when I was finally introduced and got to shake her hand - to literally touch God - I'm glad there was no time to say anything. I felt cheated. As a disciple I came away feeling as though I were better equipped to spread the doctrine than the oracle herself.

Perhaps it’s a warning about creating false idols? Or maybe just that Christianity sure has it worked out: they've set it up so that the author of the text can never present themselves to disappoint. One’s deities sure are best kept at arm's length.

You never want to deal with something as tricky as the medium getting in the the way of a good message.

...Thought about Grande Dame Germaine

Germaine Greer changed my life. I was sixteen and disenchanted with being the cute, short girl with blond hair. I WAS the cute, short girl with blond hair but I was also so much more than that. Hamlet was my favourite play. I owned a fox terrier named Ted. I was afraid of the dark (even at sixteen). I got straight A+'s. I spoke Japanese. I'd survived the many wars that involved my respective family members. I could play the violin. I liked sushi and sci-fi and was a shit-hot debater. But I felt like all that people saw was the blond and the cute and the short. And the really horrible part of that was - I felt like I was just meant to put up with it.

But one night I was researching ideas for an art folio and I stumbled across an an extract from The Female Eunuch and it changed all that. Something exploded in my brain. It put a finger on why I felt frustrated about walking on to a crowded train carriage and not only feeling like I was there to be stared at but that I was also expected to play along, to play up to it, to look away quietly so I could be looked at. It helped me suddenly make sense of why I liked listening to Courtney Love screaming out of my stereo about being pissed off that she was made of "doll parts". It made me cut off my hair. It made me wear only Doc Marten boots for three years. It made me start sticking my middle finger up at the cars full of men who honked their horns at me when I was just trying to walk down the street with my friends.

It made me who I am today.

And I wear lipstick. I shave my arm pits. I love to wear as many items of personal apparel as possible adorned with cute little animal trinkets. But to all you haters out there who would take that as evidence to call the revolution off - it don't make me a cog in the machine. I am a feminist. And I could explain the ins and outs of that in all kinds of fancy language (and I have the degree to prove it), but I don't need to. All you need to know is that Germaine Greer changed my life. So I leave you with this. Courtesy of Grande Dame Germaine...

Maybe I don't have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don't know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I'm sick of the masquerade. I'm sick of pretending eternal youth. I'm sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I'm sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I'm sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I'm sick of the Powder Room. I'm sick of pretending that some fatuous male's self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I'm sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I'm sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate.

Respect.

...Didn't Write a Damn Thing

I haven't updated this week. My challenge to myself when I set this blog up was to, at the bare minimum, write once a week. But my week is nearly over and I thought I would write something tonight when I had all that Loser at Home on a Saturday Night Alone time... but I didn't. And not for any good reason like "I broke all the bones in my fingers so couldn't type" or "Mum was cooking a lamb roast so I had to call up Tom Cruise and tell him I couldn't make our date but his entourage kept giving me the run around". There's just nothing in there. And by "there" I mean the ol' coconut that holds me brain in. It's all gummed up like a shower drain filled with hundreds of old hairs wrapped around the underside of the plug hole. And I know what to blame this on: I'm thinking about excel spreadsheets and dispenser brackets in Singapore and what kind of cleansing kit the Taiwanese would really, really like.

You know, the stuff that's going to change the world.

So anyway, when I get home from work and have brought all of that home in my head with me, I end up trying really hard NOT to think about it. Which unfortunately results in the mental equivalent of stuffing cotton wool in my ears to block out white noise - sure I can't hear the white noise anymore, but I can't hear anything else either.

As a result? No writing for me. Instead, my big achievement for tonight was to watch about eighteen episodes of Sex and the City, eat snakes for dinner, make a chicken casserole (which I don't know why I didn't make earlier in order to avoid scoffing the bag of food colour and sugar in place of a crucial main meal), ride my bike to the IGA for baking soda (taking the long way home for no good reason other than I was liking the "whooshing" feeling) and bake banana spice muffins.

Tidy little list of activities there, but not one of them involves writing a damn thing. Anyone for muffins?

... Thought about Possums

DISCLAIMER: "Possum" is a euphemism for a specific part of a woman's anatomy that I stole from Michi Girl (http://michigirl.com.au/newsletter/melbourne/2226/comfort-zones/). Ye who feel generally prudish or uncomfortable with talk of the privates I have two things to say:(a) I have no idea why we would be friends. But more importantly (b) Turn back here or enter at ye own peril...

So my daily dose of Michi Girl came into my inbox in late January with a cute little turn of phrase I hadn't yet come across, that involved Michi stating that all the dresses she tried on "came right up to possum". Now this tickled my fancy no end. Having never heard this before, and long been a believer of getting the vagina talk right out in public, I was delighted to find a euphemism that seemed so friendly, so PG rated and so damn cute for this part of the female anatomy. I don't have a problem with saying "vagina"(obviously, as I've already used the word three times in one paragraph) or even talking about "My Vagina" (four times now) but the truth of it is that it's a cumbersome, boorish sort of word. Not at all fun to say like "dither" or "speckle". It's more along the lines of "fungicide" and "quarterly projection".

I also took joy in the idea of "possum" because I suddenly thought of all the possibilities of how it could be used in general conversations where one would have to otherwise do that twee thing of lowering the voice, like in a stage whisper, to deliver a line like "I've got thrush" (*the audience gasps*); or inserting mime into otherwise performance-free adult conversations e.g. Girl 1: "What's wrong? You don't look well today?" Girl 2: *contorts face into a grimace, widens eyes and looks down while making small, rapid pointing movements to the ovaries*.

For me, I would lower my voice or mime in these situations not because I'm embarrassed that my body is functioning in a female specific way, but more that the language I have been given to talk about it is crass, or laden with sexual innuendo, or overly formal/ medical, or simply viewed as not appropriate to use in a public setting with your "outside voice" on.

If we adopt the Possum Principal, on the other hand, the possibilities suddenly become endless: "possum's not well today" (I have a UTI and/or thrush), "possum's a bit itchy" (used when in the chemist trying to buy Canesten), "possum's behaving strangely" (my period is weird), "possum's late" (shit, I need to go get a pregnancy test), "possum's been cranky all week" (bad period), "possum needs a haircut" (time to book a wax), "possum's lonely" (I'm pretty sure you know what I'm implying with that one), "did you see that picture of her with her possum out?" (for any discussion concerning issues of New Weekly circa 2006 featuring Paris Hilton or Britney Spears).

I think any move we can make to allow people to talk openly about possum in public is positive. Unless of course that person is Tony Abbott. He should definitely be playing possum (on ANY issue to do with women) rather than talking about them.

Power to the Possum, people.

...Attempted to Wrangle a Possessed BlackBerry

My phone has basically turned into the telecommunications version of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Maybe this is my fault, as the start of this strange behavior did seem to coincide with me spilling a full glass of pinot noir on it at the pub last Friday night. But anyway, as we're not here to assign blame let's just focus on the facts. Whether or not it was caused by the pinot baptizing, the once docile child I'd spent hours playing with; proudly taken out to show-off in public because it was so pretty and smart; slept easy next to knowing it was peacefully resting in "sleep mode"; is now rotating its head on an angle which defies both god and man to stare with its dead, soulless eyes and spray green vomit all over me. Seriously. I try to type an email or do anything at all functional - like unlock it when I want to or set a morning alarm, just like we used to in the good old days - and the keys randomly activate themselves, turning words into gibberish and the time zone from Melbourne (where I clearly am) to Hawaii (where I'm clearly not). Needless to say I need actual English when trying to send through product release strategy to Japan (as they only read Japanese and English there and not gibberish) and I would like to wake up in time for work and not the afternoon luau. And that's not all. If the battery's in, the screen light never goes off. I can't leave it alone by itself unlocked as even sitting quietly on my desk it starts to spasm, the screen flashing as it jumps wildly through assorted menu icons, cackling its hateful cackle at me and draining the battery. It's even banned me from using the internet on it. Where there was once Facebook and instant weather updates, there's just... nothing. How foul, strange and unnatural is that? A BlackBerry that DOESN'T web browse?! That's just a really large and useless phone, DAMN IT! OH GOD! ANGELS AND MINISTERS OF GRACE DEFEND US! BE GONE DEMON!!!! BE GONE! I COMMAND THEE OUT!!!!

The point to all of this? Just remember that it could happen to you too. So take my advice: even though it's been given the name of a fruit (a thing in nature that usually doesn't mind a good rinse) don't get your BlackBerry wet. And never, ever feed it red wine after midnight.

Yes, I know that's a different film reference, but you still get the point.

...Recovered from Australia Day

Yesterday was Australia Day. I had a terrific day, but ended up going to bed with a splitting headache. Not that I'm complaining, as I realize that's just sometimes how it goes. Particularly when you sit in the park for roughly ten hours, in the sun, drinking wine. I did also eat fructose-free vegetable fritatta and tabbouleh made from quinoa (a random and exotic grain I never knew existed until wheat became my nemesis). However, mostly in my day there was the sun and there was the wine. So waking up this morning was near impossible. Covering my persimmon coloured nose, similarly impossible. Having to work all day with the remnants of the splitting headache I had started to develop about 6pm the previous night (but continued to drink my way through for another couple of hours) turned out to be possible, but fairly unpleasant. Yet as I looked around my office at the patchy brown/ red/ browny-red faces of my colleagues, I was comforted by the fact I was not alone.

Ahhh, Australia Day. What a unifying force you have on us. Australian's all let us rejoice for we use the public holiday to drink just a little too much and forget to apply adequate sunscreen.

And that little ode is as far as I'll ever go towards proclaiming chest-beating and flag-waving support for January 26th. In fact, I never flag-wave. I make a conscientious objection to flag-waving, particularly on Australia Day. I do like Australia Day... because it's a public holiday at a time of year we've got good weather. It means I can get my friends together in the park when we'd otherwise be chained to our desks. We can say "damn the man" without having to take any annual leave! Weeee! But as for flag-waving when there are no other flags being waved at the same time (like at a nice sports party like the Olympics)? I'll leave that for those who do fun things in their spare time like race riot on Sydney beaches.

And that, my dears, is the uncomfortable fact we sweep under the southern cross and union jack. We have to remember that "our" flag is a flag of colonisation. A flag that the racist and undereducated can still use to say "I belong here more than you do".

So until you give me a new flag to wave which doesn't scream "You have to be white to wrap yourself in this! Yee-hah I love being white!" I won't do it. That's why I want a new flag. One with a dreamtime kangaroo (in a Ferrari jacket) and a Chinese dragon (wearing a kilt) making out underneath the southern cross... in front of a gay pride rainbow. And until the day I get that new flag I want, you won't see me proclaiming all things "Aussie" on January 26th in any hurry. My Australia Day tradition will, instead, continue to be to drink too much wine in the park and then trundle back to work the next day, grumbling as I go (without a flag in sight).

...Remembered Some of What I Remember

If I tell you that I went to see that Daniel Kitson show again tonight, will you promise to believe that I'm not stalking him? I have a boyfriend. I'm fairly stable emotionally (well, most of the time) and while I found Daniel Kitson endearing, I am not about to start chasing after him from country to country just to sit in the front row of his show every night and then sneak into his hotel room while he sleeps to write love notes in lipstick to him on his bathroom mirror. P.S. If I was to do something like that, I would use pink lipstick and dot all the i's with love hearts. But as I wouldn't, I guess that's not so important.

Anyway....

I went to see the show again tonight. The reason I went, while I did enjoy it and didn't mind the thought of a second round, was mostly because I really wanted the chance to look at it objectively. To listen and to watch with clarity. Because the first time I sat in that room with this slightly odd, bespectacled chap in brown slacks, surrounded by battered suitcases that became beautiful, light-filled dioramas - I was overwhelmed with the emotion of remembering; by the essence of the very thing that he was putting into words, that he was able to describe, that he was sketching out over the framework of how he felt about the flat he lived in for six years. And so I behaved very strangely after I'd seen it. It opened all these little light-filled suitcases inside me so that they were beaming memories I'd forgotten I'd remembered. And I couldn't look at it all objectively. There was just too much emotional white noise inside me created by rooms, and places, and people, and a potted plant on the bench, and a fish bowl filled with cigarette smoke, and Chanel N0.5 on a mohair jumper. I went quiet. Then surly. Then picked a fight (a small one, thankfully, and with my partner not a stranger in a bar). Then became suddenly and unjustifiably weepy considering I was neither pregnant nor a couple of days shy of my monthlies. Very odd.

So after a second viewing, I'm glad to say I've managed to avoid the weepies. The second time around, I realised that the first time I saw the bespectacled man and his suitcases show, it not only triggered the act of remembering but also the realisation that those things you remember (underneath it all, no matter how fond the memories are) actually sting as you remember them. They remind you what you've lost. What you were to never have, that you once believed you would. But mostly, they're painful because they remind you that for everything you've remembered, there are things you've forgotten. Memories lost to the place you left them.

And the bespectacled man in the brown slacks pointed out that that's why we keep things like bits of paper and other useless objects - because they help us to hold on to those memories we'd lose without them there to prompt us (and it seems pretty obvious when I repeat it here, but I guess you'll have to take it on faith that it was pretty freaking profound when he said it). That's why we have the impulse to watch a favorite film over and over: we do it because it returns us to something from the past. It helps us to remember the time when we first watched it, or the last time we watched it, or the time we watched it with so and so. Like last night, Speed was on TV and I was inexplicably overjoyed. In my eyes, Mr TV had done me a HUGE favour. Imagine a five year old unexpectedly being told she gets to to choose ANY cake she wants from the Women's Weekly cookbook to be made. ANY of them. The castle, the train, even the swimming pool of jelly cake. Yep. THAT'S PRETTY DAMN EXCITED! So of course I watched it. And loved it. Like always. I even started writing a post about it (which was aborted due to arrival of boyfriend and then the needing to sleep). This is where it got up to:

What I Did Today... Watched a Movie about a Bus and Remembered 1994

Speed (1994) was on TV tonight. As you can tell from my date annotating of the film title (a typing nervous tick I picked up during my four years studying film at university and just can't seem to shake) it was released in 1994. That is a wee little while ago. There are babies born in that year who are eligible for their L-Plates now. True story. However, by virtue of me being born in the year that The Empire Strikes Back was released, I was fourteen by the time Speed rolled around. I went to see it at the cinema with my friends. I remember the outfit that I wore.

It's clear to me now, that actively remembering the things I've remembered has sneaked up and taken hold of me. Without even realising it, seeing the bespectacled man's show last week had prompted me to write a blog post last night about a film starring Keanu Reeves in SWAT uniform saving the passengers on an exploding bus. From seeing the bespectacled man's show again tonight, I now know why I was doing it. Why I'm compelled to watch a film I've seen countless times before. Not because I really like Keanu Reeves in SWAT gear, but because it helps me remember the time when I was fourteen.

And thinking critically about all those objects in my life that I've held on to, and hold on to, and what exactly they make me remember: it changes them all slightly. Like the Cindy Sherman postcard that I bought at Tate Modern last year that reminds me of being in London... but that I bought because it reminded me of studying Cindy Sherman at uni, which at the time made me think about the trip to Sydney with my mum when I was nineteen where I saw a retrospective of her work, which I went to see in the first place because it reminded me of studying her photographs in high school. Thinking critically about why I put that postcard on my fridge, it suddenly becomes a Hall of Mirrors of Memory. Like I guess it does every time you stop to remember what it is you actually remember about something.

Gosh that's an exhausting thought. I don't think I even have the energy now to go write those love heart i's on Daniel Kitson's hotel bathroom mirror. Pity.

... Googled "66a Church Road"

No, I'm not looking for a new apartment (well at least not yet anyway).

Last night, I saw an amazing show titled 66a Church Road - A Lament, Made of Memories and Kept in Suitcases. It was written, and performed, by stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson. But it wasn't stand-up. It was a beautifully executed piece of theater. And I have to qualify that last comment be saying I am NOT usually the girl who's all aboard the theater train. Ask anyone. Ask them about the time I drank a whole jug of beer on an empty stomach before a third year Creative Arts performance and then nearly suffocated on my own stiffled laughter because the penis on the nude man being yelled at in German and hit with books was wobbling and then shrinking back up into itself with every blow.

I hate performer nudity in confined spaces. Can't stand interpretative dance pieces. Am quite comfortable not to have my bourgeois perceptions of "art" challenged. Would probably be much happier watching Die Hard 2 on TV. Thank you very much.

But this piece was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Set-dressed and staged with visual grace and sensitivity to the subject matter. The monologue itself full of wit and pathos. Delivered with galloping momentum, perfectly punctuated by stillness and darkness and pause.

And it was also very, very funny.

I loved it. So today, I googled it to see what other people thought. Here's some of what I found.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/arts-reviews/daniel-kitson-66a-church-road/2009/11/29/1259429301467.html

This review, I'm convinced, was written by a soulless twat with a fake tan, who is clearly the type to walk around on the weekends in Italian leather loafers with the collar of his "casual" shirt popped up.

He completely missed the point. You don't leave the theater with a feeling of "moral superiority". You leave feeling so deeply and completely the beauty, and the loss, that comes with remembering the people and places from your past who were once "home". I don't know who can still be in possession of their soul and conjure up "superior" as a concluding emotion, when walking away from a performance which invites you to dig through the box containing all the things that made you feel safe and loved that you lost somewhere in the past and you can never, ever have back again.

I believe that somebody probably should have pointed out to this reviewer (a.k.a Satan's lapdog) that this show wasn't JUST about Daniel Kitson's old flat. Like Heart of Darkness is not JUST about a guy who goes on a river cruise in the jungle to find some other guy and bring him back. Sweetie, have you ever heard of narrative complexity? Layers of meaning? Symbols, allusion, allegory, metaphor?! Any of these concepts ring a bell?!!! FYI the show was about NOSTALGIA. Something that Kitson's voice-over actually signals at the start of the show when he defines "nostalgia" for us. Though perhaps that was something you missed as it did coincide with the "ukulele" music (which, another FYI, I'm pretty sure was actually a guitar).

For quick reference, I much prefer this summary of the show:

http://www.perthfestival.com.au/66a-church-road

This one below is fitting too. Interestingly, I think Satan's lapdog from the first review even read it for "inspiration" (but on account of having no soul, missed the point when attempting to plagiarize parts of it):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3558475/Edinburgh-Festival-66a-Church-Road-and-A-Festival-Dickens.html

And this one concludes with the very thing that resonated with me so deeply about 66a Church Road:

http://www.australianstage.com.au/200911273028/reviews/sydney/66a-church-road-a-lament-made-of-memories-and-kept-in-suitcases-%7C-daniel-kitson.html

What I'm trying to say is - if you can, go see this show. It's on until January 31st at The Arts Centre.

Thanks. You've been a wonderful audience. Try the veal and don't forget to tip your waitress.

... Ate a Frenchman's Sorbet on Company Time

Today, I went back to work. For a person who's main priorities for each day had only just recently entailed watching back to back episodes of Scrubs, attempting allergy-friendly baking and taking a low-rider on excursions to the IGA five blocks away - that pretty much sucked.

For starters, I had to be out of bed before 11am. Also, it involved putting on "big grown-up girl clothes" (as opposed to the Bonds underpants and Hello Kitty singlet I've been sporting around the house of late). Everyone knows that accessorizing in anticipation of entering the workplace can be exhausting. Particularly when underwear has been your couture de jour for the good part of a week.

So anyway. My morning.

Alarm goes off. Get out of bed. Decide too grumpy to even shower. In place of: wash face, bobby-pin hair, spray on equal parts deodorant and Comme des Garcons 888. Put on "big grown-up girl clothes" (Zimmerman dress, Mimco necklace, vintage zebra bangle blah blah blah). Kiss boyfriend goodbye in manner of worker drone about to go collect pollen for the queen. Walk through East Melbourne to Face Cream Cult Central, sit down at computer and open Outlook. Click through unopened emails. Delete some emails. Write some emails. Contemplate writing unhinged Haikus and sending them to colleagues in manner of Jack in Fight Club. Go down to the kitchen for lunch. Go back to desk. Proved right in prediction that air-conditioner would cease correct function around 2pm. Feel smug in accuracy of prediction. Read more emails. Delete more emails. Suddenly lose smug feeling re: air-conditioning malfunction on account of becoming increasingly hot and dizzy. Contemplate best place in office to slash-up. Interrupted mid-suicide fantasy with offer of trip to Monsieur Truffe for homemade sorbet. Day becomes amazing.

And just like that, six of us walked out of the office in a pack on the promise of an icy sweet treat. We didn't ask permission and we didn't care. It was over 4o degrees and that meant blazers off and running through the sprinklers at the bus stop. We were bad ass. These bees wanted cassis sorbet (perhaps also with a scoop of sour cherry). We sat on the couch in the coolness of that jaunty Smith Street chocolate cave, while the kindly Frenchman (with a sanguine smile and exceeding goodwill for someone also experiencing a 44 degree day) served our $2.50 scoops of icy goodness in little china bowls with handmade wooden spoons.

Raspberry. Apricot. Sour Cherry. Cassis. Dark Chocolate. All. So. Good.

So my advice, for what it's worth, is this... if you work within walking distance to Monsieur Truffe and are recently back from holidays, feeling about eight years old at the end of summer in your heavy leather shoes and scratchy wool blazer, do EXACTLY what I did today. Go and eat the Frenchman's sorbet on company time.

... Cooked my Epidermis

I'm just going to put this out there. Judge if you want to. But here goes...

I like to sunbake.I deliberately go out and lie down in the sun. With as many clothes off as possible to maximise how much of the sun can "get" on me in one go.

And I know this admission is not at all politically correct. I write this post in full knowledge that the anti-cancer council will most likely seek out my home address in the coming days to form a lynch mob to chase me down the street. They'll throw those ugly baseball caps with the neck-covering flaps at me until I fall to the ground, upon which they will kick me repeatedly and then drown me in a pool of 500+ invisible zinc sunblock.

But I can't help it. Sunbaking is like crack to me. I can't get enough. Well actually, it's more like a weekend social smoking habit that I can't quite kick... and don't seem to have any plans to give up anytime soon. As I no longer smoke "for reals"* I'm finding it difficult to motivate myself to turf this potentially long-term health risk/ short-term source of instant gratification as well. You see, I have so few vices left. At one stage you could have called me "Vicey McVice-Vice". Which would have been a dumb name, but pretty accurate concerning my lifestyle choices. Now I'm living pretty clean. But I do need to keep SOMETHING that resembles a vice of SOME description. Don't ask why (that would probably take a lot longer to unpack than anyone here's actually got). I just know that I need it. I'll stay off the cigarettes and making up most of my weekly calories in booze, as long as I can keep sunbaking and coffee. Deal?!

The other problem with going the "No Gary! No!" route with sunbaking, is that the sunshine makes me happy. REALLY happy. It gives me happy chemicals in my brain and makes me feel WARM. This is actually important to me. So much so that I believe I'm genetically part-reptile. I cry if I get too cold. If my body gets below a certain temperature, I can't think and my body shuts down. Like a crab going sleepy-bys in the freezer. And I know a crab isn't a reptile, but I'm sure you get the point.

Right about now you might be asking me why I don't just go get a blanket, stitch a hot-water bottle into my underpants and wear mohair-blend clothing all year round? But I'm not talking about needing to be "man-made" warm. I'm talking about the Aztecs sacrificed virgins to it**, we live and die by all mighty Ra, "Apollo I bow down before thee" kind of heat THAT ONLY THE SUN PROVIDES. My idea of heaven is a sunny day that never ends, with a hot rock to lie on and an epidermis that never, ever burns. Period. Oh, and maybe to have my boyfriend AND Robert Downey Jr (shirt off, covered in movie sweat like in Sherlock Holmes) there too. With gin and tonics***. Obviously.

In addition (and I'm not sure if it's chicken and eggs or simply "like-attracts-like") but the best friend I've had in my life for the last decade or so is a self-confessed tanorexic. Which is fair enough in my opinion as she does look bangin' with a tan. My Mother once attempted to chastise her after arriving at our house post-solarium session by warning she would turn into a "California walnut" one day. However, that didn't really land considering my Mother is the person who taught me "it's never okay to get sunburnt... until the LAST day of the holiday". She's also the person who calls me a "wuss" whenever I attempt to apply sunblock of any kind.

So long story short: what I did today, was go to the beach with my Mum and the California Walnut. We were all very excited. 36 degrees. Blue skies. We stretched out on the beach for FOUR whole hours with not a t-shirt, umbrella, sunhat or beach tent between us.

But please don't fear, good readers, I DID wear sunblock. Reef Tanning Oil.

Hey, at least I'm not a crack addict.

*this is true 98% of the time
**proof that "saving it until your married" may not work out so well for more than the obvious reasons
*** Bombay, lots of ice, fresh lime. AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PUTTING LEMON IN THERE, SATAN, BECAUSE I'M IN HEAVEN YOU BIG LOSER

... Bought a Gluten-Free Cookbook

I never thought that I would be Allergy Girl. And I don't mean that to sound like I'd never thought I'd be a superhero who perhaps shoots pollen from her wrists to induce fatal hay-fever (which would be kind of cool), because who would actually ever think that?! But rather, I never thought that I would be that girl who has to sit in a restaurant or at a friend's dinner table and say "Does this dish contain...?" or "Sorry, but I have an allergy to...". While it of course isn't a tragic, life destroying event to discover that I have developed fructose malabsorption (I mean I still have my freakin' legs so I'm not going to play the "disability" card here) but enjoying food is a huge part of what I do for fun. It's also a huge part of who I am. Being the guest with impeccable manners, who's easy to cook for because "I eat everything" is something I could pride myself on and I believed displayed I was brought up "right". Being able to seamlessly traverse the choreography of fine dining from start to finish without a missed beat was a marker in my mind of a mastery of social etiquette. So now finding myself allergic to an array of seemingly disparate ingredients which includes (but is not limited to) wheat, onions, leeks, apples, pears, honey, dried fruit, artichokes, coconut milk etc. etc. pretty much guarantees that there will always be an element of "fuss" attached to me eating. Anything. Anywhere. The tight choreography that used to happen between me and a waiter now has all the finesse and grace of debutant ball rehearsals in the school gym as I rake through a menu asking for "gluten-free" and "onion free" and then still coming out with "oh no, actually I can't eat that if there's tomato paste in the sauce. Can you tell me what's in the fish instead?"

However, I have two big shiny lights of benevolence guiding me through this introduction to the Allergy Girl club. The first, is a beautiful colleague of mine who I've worked quite closely with over the last 12 months. She coincidentally has the same food allergy. It's dorky, but now that both of us have the same spastic digestive systems I feel like we're in a special club together. Like Tyler and Jack, but with less punching and more conversations about gluten-free baking. We're like FFBFF (fructose-free best friends forever). The second shiny light through my current food allergy baptism is a dietitian called Sue Shepherd. I am a TOTAL allergy spaz groupie for this lady! If I saw her in the street I would take photos on my BlackBerry and beg for an autograph. She's written most of the meaningful documents on the internet I first came across when trying to understand my new position in the restaurant dining caste system and is also the author of the Fructose Malabsorption Food Shopping Guide which is a pocketbook that tells you at a glance what 500 million things you can't eat and exactly what on a supermarket shelf you can eat. She's also authored some cookbooks. One of which I borrowed from my FFBFF before Christmas and used to make a gluten-free lemon slice. It was tasty. It made me happy. It gave me something delicious to share at "Fructose Club" and to share with the people at work who don't have cranky digestive systems.

So today I went to Readings and bought my own copy of Gluten-free Cooking. My superpowers, now that I'm Allergy Girl, will include being the guest who always brings something delicious to share at the table, the girlfriend who cooks amazing weeknight dinners rather than calling Indian take-away, and the diner who's learned some smooth allergy-friendly ordering moves from cooking all of it at home first.

I'd also like to do that "wrists that shoot pollen" thing as well at some point, but have decided it's probably best I start small and work my way up to that one.

... Created a Blog Instead of Riding my Bike

So I inherited this bike just before Christmas. Not the death of an elderly relative kind of inheritance (though I'm sure someone from the blue rinse set would look pretty sporting on this bad boy). Rather, I inherited this bike from a friend subscribing to the "free to a good home" school of sales. As this is usually only an offer you come across concerning a litter of unwanted mixed-breed kittens (and not a mint condition, cream-your-pants-it's-so-cool Mexicali Beach Cruiser) it's probably not too much of a stretch to imagine how much of a good deal I believe I got on this two-wheeled, leader of the pack bundle of goodness.

And now for some back story.

Up until seeing this picture, and the accompanying "Ken Bruce has gone mad!" sales offer, I had not been on a bike in over fifteen years. Not because the opportunity simply hadn't presented itself, but because I had developed an aversion to riding bikes. I had nothing against bikes themselves, or other people riding bikes, but the physical act of me personally sitting on one and pushing the pedals around to make it go some place? Vaguely horrifying. Something I always recognized as not being at all a logical emotional response, but all the same still felt at a level very much on par in the phobia stakes with my aversion to The Creatures of the Sea (yes, all of them, even seaweed).

Most of the time, through sheer necessity, you reach a point as an adult where you have to face your fears - but when you have a phobia of bike riding? When there's feet and trams and trains and taxis and cars, it doesn't really interfere with one's day-to-day routine. I'd therefore allowed myself the luxury of feeling the fear and doing nothing about it. At best, I looked on it as a personality quirk. At worst, as a private, dirty habit that wasn't harming anyone else (like smoking in your apartment at 3am with all the doors and windows shut, or picking your nose while watching TV).

But the photo of Pedro changed all that. Those wide handle bars, fat tires and that shiny, shiny black paint-job with flame detailing to rival anything Mattel could of dreamed up for their Hot Wheels line in the 1980s? My heart was pounding and it wasn't out of fear. That damn little Mexicali had stolen my heart.

Now Pedro is living in my teeny, tiny courtyard. I had one assisted ride to get him here (and loved it) but have been away since bringing home baby. First day back, my best intentions where to go out for a trot. Make sure "getting back on the horse" was something I could make stick. In fact the plan for the day was to create this blog AND go out for a bike ride. But as the day has unfolded, with me still in a hello kitty singlet and my underpants at nearly 6pm in the evening, computer in lap and this first post for what i did today almost done...

Turns out that what I did today was to create a blog, rather than go ride my bike.

Sorry Pedro.