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Saturday, March 2, 2013

The apples didn't fall far from the tree.


Me back in the 80s catching a nap after a big night.


I have a severe case of heartburn. Scotto and I just scoffed Hungry Jacks burgers in order to appease the self- inflicted nausea and dizziness resulting from last night’s revelries. My friend Diana’s talented husband plays in a punk/folk band and we wildly threw caution to the wind and whooped it up until way past Cinderella’s bedtime. 

The fat in fast food is alleged to possess certain properties that speed up the elimination of alcohol from the body by forcing the desiccated liver to work faster. 

Fast food is a bit of a misnomer. We had to sit in the drive-through for twenty minutes whilst bungling teenagers stuffed up our order. My chicken burger came with the very, very well-done chicken oven-pressed to the outside of the burger. 

I ate it anyway.

It’s a bit pitiful that midnight is such an absolute curfew for me nowadays. How did it come to this? Back in the olden days when I was in my twenties I was an unstoppable partay!! animal. Going out partying on a week night; I’d stagger home at five o'clock in the morning, get up at six to get ready for work, snatch a half hour nap after work, then do it all over again. 

Working for a rental car company at Sydney airport meant I was surrounded by co-workers of the same ilk as myself; young, brainless and reckless. 

We would cover for each other whilst the more severely hung-over girl went for a nap in one of the rental cars. 

One day I was in a deep dream when I was startled by my colleague urgently bashing on the window. 

“Pinky! Wake up! You’ve been asleep for three hours and the boss is looking for you.”

One Christmas Eve I went out with my friends to a party and carelessly left my bag somewhere. It was five o’clock in the morning when I finally began staggering around the party looking for it only to discover it had been misappropriated by some auspicious thief.

My flatmates had gone interstate for holidays and I found myself with no house keys and in a bit of a pickle. I was locked out of the third story unit and it was Christmas morning and there was no possibility of getting a locksmith. 

On the balcony of some neighbouring units I espied a benevolent father dressed as Santa Claus enjoying the spoils of Christmas with his young family.

“Excuse me,” I butted in rudely, “I seem to be locked out of my unit. Would you have a ladder?”

He seemed more than a tad peeved at this intrusion but grunted irritably and came to my aid. 


His wife and three little kids watched on uncertainly as their Dad, dressed as St Nicholas, climbed the ladder and obeying my foolish directives smashed my bathroom window. 
You can’t get a glazier in Sydney in the middle of the holiday season. 

When my flatmates returned home late at night after a ten hour drive from Brisbane, the view into our bathroom was still accessible by the two hundred or so people living in the opposite units.

“What the f#%k has been going on here?” screamed my flatmates. “Why is there no window?” 

“The bloody b#$ch hasn’t even left any milk in the fridge for coffee.”

Like cowardly custard I stayed in my room pretending to be asleep until they’d calmed down the next day.