The renovators

Tuesday 18 May 2010


The renovators strike their pose on E Street, outside number twelve. Adorning ladders, showing steadfast grit through shrouds of sanding dust. Inside the gutted carcass, on the kitchen floor sits Freddy crosslegged, age nearly nine. Playing with his tin soldiers; an entirely different kind of reconstruction. He watches, waiting for them to notice his apparitious nature. But the renovators are too busy to believe in ghosts. He selects his favourites from the colour charts they leave lying. Yellow Submarine, Red Red Wine, Blue Moon. They hear the tunes in their heads alright, but don’t put two and two together. Too focused on four by four. What planks Freddy muses. But they are re-vamping his house. And he laughs at his own supernatural pun. He’s looking forward to having inhabitants again. They have a lot yet to learn about life on E Street. This will be fun.

Who's line is it anyway?

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Yesterday my horoscope said I’m capable of achieving far greater things than I realise, but need to be pushed by others to help me get there. That sounds a bit like me; I thrive on challenges.

At the moment, I’m most intrigued by all forms of art and creativity. So help me out – and give me a line, a phrase, a concept or similar. The idea being that if I’m any kind of writer at all, I can take it and improvise with it and come up with something interesting – and no, it won’t be about me!


It can be absolutely anything. A couple of examples, just off the top of my head, of little snippets of words I've come across recently that I liked the sound of include:

  • Acid in the goulash
  • Call me back when someone else is home
So suggest something via a comment on this blog, email, MSN or whatever other method. Make yourself known or be anonymous, it makes no difference to me. GO ON - don’t hold back…

Lamington moments

Sunday 9 May 2010


This is a phrase I’ve coined for when stuff so uncanny happens it’s incredulous. When our first reaction is to hum the theme from Twilight Zone – or roll around in food colouring and desiccated coconut. And when we've forgotten the power of our own minds.


This week found half a dozen of us sitting around in someone’s lounge room doing a first read-through together of the script for our next production. After a while, someone wisely suggests taking a break. Man of the house courteously takes our drink preferences, closes the door upon his exit and wanders up the hall to the kitchen.

Not being able to put a plug in my sarcasm (sometimes I wish I was better at that), once he has gone I say quietly to myself as much as anyone – “perhaps you could also rustle us up some lamingtons too thanks”. Five minutes later his wife walks into the room carrying a tray of tea, coffee and six perky looking lamingtons! When we all look at each other and crack up, poor man of the house has no idea what’s so funny. He hadn't heard a word and who the hell has anything as random as lamingtons sitting around in their cupboards?


This sort of thing has been happening to me a lot lately. It's cool, I like it …but actually, if I’d known my magic was that powerful, I would’ve asked for afghans.

Chat up lines 1, 2 & 3

Wednesday 5 May 2010

As I now live with two sassy, smart, single, sexy girlies, we do have a bit of a laugh together about stuff that occurs to and around us. Should I ever feel the desire to write a book about this period in my life, I will call it “Three blonde bombshells and a baby grand piano” – yes, we have the latter.

Now if you have certain anatomy and ever venture outside the house at all, it’s just a part of everyday life that you get hit on - mostly by blokes, but sometimes the odd woman throws something into the mix for good measure. Obviously I would be lying if I didn't admit such approaches can be flattering; on the other hand some people are actually really fucken scary.

Chat up lines are met with either: (1) aggression/fear – you are seedy as all hell and you actually make my stomach turn, (2) something resembling disdain – like I’m sure I’m the umpteenth woman you’ve hit on today moron, (3) amusement – at least it was original and made me laugh or (4) albeit very very rarely, every now and then some poor sod may actually just hit the right note on the right day and get more than he bargained for. Oh yeah, and there's always (5) pity - let's not even go there.


So just for a giggle, thought I’d share some of the chat up tactics we come across. Here are some from most recent times...


#1
[Girl dances with friends in a very crowded bar. Boy approaches and lightly taps girl on shoulder.]
Boy: “I really like your dress.”
Girl: [Smiles] “Thank you.”
[Boy walks away again, with absolutely no attempt made to hang around and sleaze on in.]

Verdict: We’re not sure this was even a chat up line, but either way it was taken as a true compliment and girl liked it.


#2
[An email between two people who have never met about something entirely unrelated.]
Boy: “I own X company, am a Director of X company and blah-de-blah of X company.”
Girl: [Says nothing, but thinking “Oh big fucken deal. Do you have a soul, can you make me laugh til I cry and play my body like a musical instrument. I suspect not. But you have more than enough ego for the both of us.”]

Verdict – Girl’s thoughts say it all really. Girls to whom status and money are top priority are not worth having. Yes, we like and respect clever, motivated men but ego has been known to get in the way of everything.


#3
[An extremely drunken man approaches bombshells in the courtyard of a bar. He is struggling to stand and is somewhat incomprehensible when he speaks (due to liquor intake rather than accent). He leers over one of the girls. This is a shortened version of a much longer encounter (about the length of time it takes to smoke a cigarette).]
Boy: “I’m from Iceland.”
Girl: “Dried fish.”
[Boy is so close to girl he is practically falling on her.]
Boy: “You in this country aren’t even friendly. You’re all cold.”
[Yes, someone from Iceland actually said that.]
Girl: “What brought you to this country then?”
Boy: “Destiny.”
[Girl’s friend encourages boy to step back a little out of her personal space. Boy proceeds to practically fall into a large fuel burner, but he doesn’t really notice.]
Girl: “You seem to be burning your arse. Perhaps you should sit down.”
Boy: [Sidling up again] “Destiny brought me here.”
Girl: “Oh goody, the band has started again. I’m going inside now. Goodbye.”

Verdict – Girl was too nice. We are fairly certain this guy is a complete dickhead even when sober.

So what do you reckon, are we too hard on blokes? We say that we reserve the right to be fussy or look what we could end up with.