Pinky's Book Link

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Apparently there IS a CYCLONE coming after all.



Cyclone Dylan

I was in a spot of bother the other day on Twitter when I announced to my followers (some awesome people, some unidentified bots and numerous cats and dogs) that a cyclone was ominously hurtling towards us. 


A physics professor from the local university chipped me (and rightly so) about sending out alarming and non-factual information… so I deleted the tweet immediately.

Now, it seems that there IS a cyclone heading towards us and it is predicted to make landfall about 100 kms south of our city early tomorrow morning. As I gaze out the window it does appear to be a bit windy outside and spitting lightly, but nothing to write home about yet. 

Yet.

That’s the trouble with cyclones. They’re quite unpredictable. They can spin around, head back to sea and come back with a vengeance. Or they can change track, build in intensity and cause massive tide surges and devastating floods.

The big question however is… will school be cancelled tomorrow?

“You must be hoping so, Pinky!” I hear you jeering.

The truth is, no, I don’t want school to be cancelled.

The announcement won’t be broadcast until 6:00 am tomorrow morning and if I have to haul my menopausal body out of bed at that ungodly hour (after feverishly waking every hour bathed in sweat, on the hour, every hour) to check the Internet for notifications, I may as well get up, have a shower and go to bloody work.

That’s the only reason I dislike work at all in the first place. 

Getting out of bed in the morning.

It’s only three days into the school year but I can already tell I have a delightful class this year. One of my little nine year old students walked past me in the playground yesterday and lisped, “I love you Mrs. Poinker!” How could anyone resist that superstar adulation?

My class is a captive audience for me to practise my jokes on, expound my deep knowledge on various frivolous subjects to and entertain with my side-splitting anecdotes with added clowning tricks. They’re an adoring crowd… as opposed to my own kids who ceased listening to their asinine mother many years ago.

So… despite the rampant media sensationalism (by reporters who always seem to congregate in Cairns for some reason), I’m fairly certain and dearly hope Cyclone Dylan will prove to be another dud and we’ll all wake up unscathed and secure in our beds tomorrow morning. 

Stay safe everyone!

Monday, January 27, 2014

In Praise of the Rubber Thong



In patriotic jubilation, yesterday (Australia Day) was spent at a family gathering hosted by my sister Sam and her husband Pedro. There was a backyard pool, a barbeque, lots of snags and lamb chops and the odd cool, refreshing beverage.

But it was what lay beneath the table that arrested Pinky’s attention and a quick spot check revealed just how Australian we all are. There was no official dress code, no requirement expressed on the invitation decorously sent via text message and yet we all chose to attend suitably and identically attired.

WE WERE ALL WEARING THONGS! 


Pinky's Thongs*
                         
                                                       
                                                        Uncle Pedro's Thongs*

                                
                                  Sinead's Thongs*

According to my go-to source of up to the minute information, Wikipedia, the ‘thong’ has been around since Egyptian times when they were made from papyrus leaves; but I beg to differ. 

They were invented and embraced by Queenslanders as more than just an iconic form of footwear. They belong to us and us alone... we have a myriad of uses for them!

                                                  
                                               Scotto's Thongs*

1. They are ideal for leaving outside the front door for the convenience of slipping on when you need to walk across the front lawn to take the wheelie bin out. It negates the mandate to run the gauntlet of vicious spiky weeds invoking what’s known as the “Bindi-Eye Dance”. The best thing is the cane toads can’t hide inside providing the unsuspecting candidate with a slippery surprise.

2. Rubber thongs have the perfect aerodynamics for hurling at the wall when out of the corner of your eye you spot a flaming big cockroach tentatively making its way up the lounge room wall while you’re eating the dinner precariously balanced on your lap and watching Border Patrol.

3. Ever step in dog poo in rubber thongs? No problem. But have you ever tried to get dog poo out of the corrugated sole of your jogger? Found a small stick in the garden or a random ballpoint pen and attempted to gouge the excrement out bit by bit? Just when you think you’ve got it all you turn the shoe over and realise it’s soaked into the fabric. Rubber thongs can be hosed off… or just thrown out for that matter. They only cost two dollars at Coles.

                                Sister Sam's Thongs*

4. Rubber thongs save lives. My friend’s auntie’s sister-in-law’s cleaning lady was ironing when she received an electric shock and the only thing that saved her was the insulation from the RUBBER THONGS SHE WAS WEARING!

                              Greigor's Thongs*

5. Rubber thongs are perfect for our tropical climate cancelling out sweaty feet and invalidating nasty fungal infections like Tropical Toe. And when it gets too cold you can always wear them with socks!



6. Thongs are a social status equaliser. I once walked into a doctor’s surgery and guess who was wearing thongs? 

Me. But I wouldn’t have been put off it was the doctor.


7. Scotto has been known to chuck the odd thong at Ibis’s stealing the cat’s food, the television when Tony Abbott comes on the screen and our longstanding residents, the Mynah Birds, when they poop all over our patio table after he’s only just hosed it.

8. Personally I find rubber thongs to be the most versatile apparel in my wardrobe. Black thongs for good wear, white thongs for any time before Labor Day and pink for when I’m feeling flirtatious.

9. Top Tip: If your workplace health and safety people insist on you wearing closed in shoes my advice is to simply wear a bandage around one toe and you’ll beat the system for at least a week.



Anyone have any other uses I haven’t thought of?

*I may have accidentally mixed up some of the photos.

Posting at With Some Grace!... for FYBF





Sunday, January 26, 2014

An Immigrant's Guide to Australian Slang


Way back in 1947 my paternal grandparents arrived in Australia with their three young sons as ‘Ten Pound Poms’ which I suppose makes me a first generation Australian, on one side of the family anyway.


This is a newspaper from 1947. My grandmother is front row third on the right.

Thank God my grandparents made the decision to emigrate using the assisted passage scheme along with over a million others between 1945 and 1972 or I’d never have been born and that would have been a particularly disappointing outcome (for me anyway).

Excluding our First Australians, our Indigenous population (roughly 690 000 people), we’re all immigrants to Australia or the descendants of immigrants really, aren’t we?

It doesn’t mean any of us aren’t Australians... whether we arrived last year or with the First Fleet back in 1788.

I’ve never felt more Australian than the times I’ve travelled overseas.

Travelling around Ireland with five kids under eleven years of age and my then husband, was one time my antipodean identity was truly brought home to me.

* Mind you, Britain is our antipodes when you think about it.

I recall my five ravenous kids noisily spilling out of our ‘people mover’ in order to infiltrate a fish and chip shop somewhere in rural County Fiddle-ee-dee in 2000.

The patrons and staff fell silent, staring at us as if we’d just landed a flying saucer and emerged in lizard suits; especially as soon as the kids opened their mouths to speak.

“Or’ll have fish ‘n chips with termarda sauce, Mum!” they drawled in their Australian accents, scuffing their rubber thongs or bare feet on the floor of the shop. I examined the tanned faces and sun streaked hair of my tiny Aussies; a result of hours spent in our backyard pool and realised how alien we must all have looked and sounded.

When we finally touched down in Cairns after a month in Europe, the pilot announced our arrival in a typical Aussie twang but as we hadn’t heard it for a month it sounded as if he was taking the mickey.

“Why does he sound so Australian, Mum?” asked a puzzled nine year old Jonah.

A teacher once told me the Australian accent developed because there were so many flies and the English and Irish had to learn to speak without opening their mouths and letting the flies in. 

Try to speak in an English accent without opening your mouth very much… see!

It must be confusing for new Aussies to understand our accents let alone some of the words and sayings we have, so I’ve made a list of translations.

Dickhead: Anyone who cuts you off in traffic, burns off ahead of you at the traffic light in a souped up Commodore with a Chevvy badge or drives a Ute and has red P plates. On Australia Day they can be spotted with yellow and green zinc creamed faces wearing only a pair of budgie smugglers and a flag.

Bloody Dickhead: Same as above but gets really drunk and starts yelling at anyone who looks vaguely ethnic about how they should go back to their own country.

Bastard: Someone you can’t stand because they’ve slighted you in some diabolical way in the past.

Bloody Bastard: Someone you love because they’re a rascally rogue eg; “How are you, ya bloody bastard?”

Sanger: A sandwich usually containing corned beef and pickles or curried egg.

Sausage Sanger: A cheap form of food consisting of one piece of bread rolled around a sausage and can be bought outside a hardware shop on Saturday mornings. Found in abundance on Australia Day.

A Stephen Bradbury: When you win something by default. For example; when you’re playing Monopoly on Australia Day and everyone else loses interest and leaves the game to sleep off their sausage sangers and you’re the only one left.

Togs: Lycra sausage casings you squeeze into and attempt to hide behind a towel until the last possible second before you’re able to conceal your over-inflated torso in the swimming pool.

Are there bones in that?: What you say to someone who is choking on the coconut on their Lamington.


Pavlova: An ultra-sweet dessert used to throw at people on Australia Day when they cheat at Monopoly or do cannonballs in the swimming pool splashing chlorinated water in your plastic cup of Chardonnay.

Happy Australia Day you bloody bastards!

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Sinead's Poignant Ballad: Nothing Compares to Pinky.

As promised, tonight's post is a guest post by one of our dearest family friends, Sinead (not O'Connor or the one from Bananarama). She's one of the most acerbic, witty and annoying people I know and I'm sure you will find her waffling to be very entertaining.

               

Good evening readers (feel free to apply your own time zone, I care not a jot),

As those most loyal and faithful amongst you would know, I am Sinead - sidekick to Sister Sam (the Baldrick to her Blackadder, the Laurie to her Fry, the French to her Saunders etc ad nauseum).

Please note that my real name is not "Sinead". I threatened to sue the pants off Her Poinkerness if she used my real name...which is actually Geoff.

I have known and loved the extended Poinker clan for two decades - which is almost twenty years when you think about it. Sam and I first bonded when she would pop into the video store where I loitered behind the counter, Tarantino-style...just waiting for someone to read my manuscripts. She expressed a deep and abiding fondness for the written word (just what I wanted to hear, trying to flog videos and whatnot!) and I knew how to read so we formed our own little Book Club founded on a mutual adoration for John Irving's "A Prayer For Owen Meany"...cheers, John.




Perhaps our relationship would have maintained this vague customer/client status had it not been for the intervention of Sam's husband, the legendary Uncle Pedro. At the time, he was a rarely seen, formidable, grunting figure whose suburban reputation preceded him as a local bruiser/boozer/businessman with whom one did not f**k.

One November morning he bellied up to the counter and said. "You're coming 'round for a drink for my wife's birthday. She likes you."
(Nawwwww)
"Well, thank you so much but I couldn't possibly. You se.."
"You. Are. Coming. Round. For.My. Wife's. Birthday."


It was like a Jedi mind trick with more oomph.

Consequently, I meekly turned up with a bottle of something cheap, fizzy and vaguely celebratory...and I never left.

Pedro and Sam made me part of their family. Their generosity and kindness to me have been boundless. They have let me share the joy of their three kids as if they were my own. They loved and supported me through my father's long battle with cancer...Pedro even paid for his wake!

(Not sure what the old man would have thought about the night ending at a strip club but surely naked chicks make everything better?)

We've laughed, cried, sang, fought and loved each other regardless. We have drunk an unseemly amount of booze and often danced like nobody was watching...I hope nobody was. We dyed the dog green on St Patrick's Day and ceremoniously buried the cat when she passed all too soon. To be fair, I was only invited to the funeral because I could lay my hands on a shovel and wield it more efficaciously than a bread knife but that is incidental.

And that is the back story.

(Note from Blog Host: Here comes the important part.)

I met Pinky fairly early in the relationship. Sam is the quintessential "middle child" (quiet, unobtrusive, insular, weird) and has grown up with a certain degree of respect and deference for her older sister. If you have read earlier blogs, a healthy sense of fear for her own physical well-being may have factored into it. How I tried to kill sister Sam.


I cannot recall exactly the circumstances of our first encounter, but it was before Pinky fell pregnant with the delightful Lulu (aka "please let this one be a girl and maybe she'll stop!"). Sam prepped me for the meeting like it was going to be a mid-term at MIT - what to say, what not to say "please don't try and be funny because not everyone thinks you're as funny as you do".....I get that a lot.

So. Pinky pulled up to Sam's place one afternoon and the entire brood tumbled out of an unfeasibly small vehicle (Ringling Bros had nothing on them) and proceeded to wreak havoc while Pinky issued motherly warnings and karate chops in equal measure.

                                 

After initial pleasantries, Pinky gave me a quick "up and down" (she has a knack) and, apropos of very little said, "Ok, Sinead - who do you think is prettier... Me or Sam?"

Imagine, if you will, the horrible, slow, sitcom-esque moment in which I realised she wasn't hinting at some obscure family in-joke...

Sophie had an easier choice (apologies, Ms Streep)!!

I took the coward's way out and shot myself in the foot. Far less painful.

But seriously folks - along with Sam, I have been a Pinky fan waaaaayyy before this blog made it fashionable. I have attended her performances in amateur local dramatic productions (no Deidre was ever more sorrowful, to be sure, to be sure), I have applauded from the sidelines as she made the lunatic decision to strike out on her own with five kids in tow. I have cheered as she went back to university and studied her arse off to achieve her teaching degree (five kids still in tow). I snickered behind my hand when she started chatting to some geeky dude on the interweb...I believe you all know him as "Scotto" (I'm sure she'll tell him about the five kids one day).

I didn't have the good fortune to be raised with sisters, But now, thanks to Sam and Pinky, I feel that I am blessed with two - both younger and much, MUCH prettier.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Pinky Poinker Goes Back to School.


Today was our second day back at school before the Rug Rat Army infiltrates the grounds wearing their spanking new shoes and wrestling with huge cardboard boxes full of books, pencils, and glue sticks for us teachers to spend hours sorting when we’d much rather be horizontal on a couch with a crisp Chardonnay in hand.

What do teachers do when they have no kids to teach?
Sit on chairs designed for three foot hobbits with our lower backs going into violent spasms and suffering the exact same droning lectures we inflict on our students that’s what.

At ten-thirty we plodded up to the staffroom like a herd of weary cattle for a recuperative cup of tea and a snack.

A symphony of twenty cans of tuna snapped open simultaneously; a legacy of too much festive cheer and indulgence over the six week break.

You want to know what we talked about?

The main topic of conversation centred on our Christmas break up party in November and where we should hold it in 2014.

Jaded as it sounds for only our second day back in the trenches, there is a fresh wind of change at school this year. 

My Grade Four cohort has been transformed and Pinky’s long-suffering buddy teacher Rach, has moved into an administrative role. 

O’Reilly’s buddy, Joe the Irish teacher, wisely absconded back to the mother country and has been replaced by the boisterous and dynamic Shazza.

(Placing Shazza and Pinky in the same year level may prove to be slightly dangerous and was possibly an oversight by the bosses but we’ll try to behave ourselves and keep our heads low so they don’t realise their mistake.)

My new buddy teacher is a graduate teacher, fresh from University.

“You’ll scare the poor girl to death!” commented Kaz, when we met the quietly spoken, slender, slip of a girl yesterday.

“No I won’t! I’ll be a great mentor to Gemma!” I retorted with all the confidence of a nonlifejacket-wearing saxophone player on the Titanic.

“Well for a start you can stop calling her ‘Gemma’,” replied Kaz drily, “her name’s Jenna.”

The truth is I’m delighted to be in the position to act as a tutor, supporter and cheer-leader for my new buddy and have compiled a list of important items she may like to take note of;

The Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps at the tuckshop are glorious and very cheap when you compare prices around town.

Never ask Pinky anything about computers, Smart Boards or anything technical because she will just stare at you with her mouth open until she begins to dribble.

Pinky is quite selfish about her Blu Tac and Sticky Dots so don’t bother asking to borrow them. However, she will be very generous with her Smart Board peripheral cable.

Don’t steal Pinky’s special parking spot in the morning. Anne, the office lady, tried it on one day and a bitter feud resulted which lasted for two weeks, until Pinky needed a sick bucket and saw dust sent down from the office after an unfortunate regurgitation by one of the students and was forced to apologise to Anne on the telephone.

Finally, never approach Pinky in her classroom before school as that’s her precious preparation time. Also... because old ladies like Pinky tend to suffer early morning flatulence of the kind that no Glade plug-in air freshener can ever hope to disguise. Just ask Rach!


Tomorrow night, a dear friend of mine, Sinead, will be presenting a guest post in which she tells a few lies and litigious falsifications about how she met Pinky.

Monday, January 20, 2014

My Fatty Boombah Photos



I’m linking my post up to Kirsty from My Home Truths today and the terrifying prompt for the week is an expose of our worst photos.

Cripes! I thought. So many to choose from...

When I turned a certain age ending in a zero, my hubby Scotto made a slide show presentation of my life thus far, and he created a special folder entirely made up of Pinky Poinker images. 


He thoughtfully named the folder, “Pinky Through the Ages”.

Through the fricken ages?? What am I? Seven hundred years old?

Perusing the photos in order to write this post, it suddenly occurred to me that the most unappealing photos of me were taken just prior to giving birth to my five kids. Let’s face it. No one is at their best when they’re at their fattiest boombahish.

It might also be cautiously observed I am no longer married to the photographer concerned.

Just saying.


So here is what I was able to discover among the ruins.



Please do not be alarmed by the beer in one hand and wine glass in the other. This was taken about a week before I gave birth to Jonah and he has just graduated in law, so if you don't believe me that the photo was a joke then at least the child concerned didn't suffer any permanent brain damage. N.B. None that interfered with his academic ability anyway.


This was in the delivery room about an hour before the pugnacious Padraic, pushed his blonde head out into the world. The calm before the storm.


Two days before Thaddeus was born, my face and ankles were puffy and sitting on that hard concrete step made me feel as though my innards were about to fall out, hence the wince. I'd put on twenty kilograms with my first pregnancy through a steady intake of chocolate coated raisins.


And just as a treat I'll finish off with this weird scared little guy expression I'm wearing right after Hagar was born.

Though it just goes to show how photographs lie...
giving birth to my five children were the happiest times in my life.
My Home Truths

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Pinky's Golden Snow Globe Awards 2013



“Lunching alfresco beside the Fontana Di Trevi!”

“Just saw the cutest squirrel in Central Park”

“Sipping Cosmopolitans at a bar in Manhattan! Lol…”

“Chilling at the Tower of London with ma homies.”


These are the sort of Facebook updates Pinky reads with her sour little puckered up face as she scrolls down her timeline.

Everyone I know has been, or is about to go, on an overseas holiday in 2013... except me.

“Have a great time on your trip,” I jealously comment when they post a status about how they’re just about to board the plane. “Don’t forget to bring me back a snow globe!”

While they’re blissfully cavorting around the globe I’ll sensitively drop a subtle reminder in their message box like… “Hi!...S.G.”

In the last twelve months I’ve been gifted no less than nine treasured S.G.s from the United States, Italy, Ireland, and England which has allowed me to glean a modicum of vicarious pleasure from the travels of my wealthy friends.


I’d like to thank the nominees for the Pinky Golden Snow Globe Awards; Lulu, Jan, Rach, Dolly and Emmsie, however there can only ever be one winner.

And the winner for 2013 is… Emmsie!!!!!


                   Amy and Emma returned from the U.S of A.

Emmsie’s Acceptance Speech.

Thanks for nothing, Pinky!

After dragging these bloody heavy, expensive, annoying things around the United States I forgot to pack them in my suitcase when we were leaving. When I arrived at the airport, security wouldn’t let me take them on as hand luggage and threw them in the damn bin. I fished them out again and after considerable begging on my part they allowed me to pack them in a box and check it in. I nearly missed my flight because of your pain in the ass snow globes, Pinky! Here… take the bloody stupid things. You’re welcome.

Pinky would like to advise nominations are now open for 2014.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Pinky's Last Supper

                                   

Teachers all over Australia are in mourning as the Christmas holidays draw to an untimely close. The kids still have a week left but we teachers are required to front up on Monday for administrative stuff. I don’t know what sort of stuff… I like surprises so I haven’t read the agenda. Dreadfully boring stuff I suppose.

Kyles, our unofficial social planner, organised a lunch yesterday at a newish restaurant, The Lighthouse, to commemorate the end of freedom until the Easter holidays.

“Here she is at last!” called Kyles, as a dishevelled Pinky puffed up to the table of twelve ladies lunching.

“Where do I sit?” I bleated piteously, scanning the long banquet table and noting the lack of spare seats.

“Over there!” they cruelly pointed to a small table for two in the corner.

I always get left out.

The handsome young waiter kindly moved an extra table and chair on to the end and handed me a ticket.

The restaurant, in their wisdom, has developed a system for large parties where each individual is given a numbered ticket so that everyone can pay separately without the usual fuss. What a brilliant idea!

My ticket was number thirteen.

“Does this make me Judas Escariot?” I objected sullenly. “I don’t want to be Judas! I want a different number!”



It was then I had my own brilliant Pinky Punkster idea!

So… after much shuffling of chairs; bossy, shouty orders from Pinky, acrimonious grumbling from various individuals (Shaz, Kaz and Kristen), and stunned disbelief on the face of our waiter, I was finally able to procure the perfect snap!

There was a bit of an argument about who got to be Jesus  but we sorted it out in the end.


            Shaz ,Pinky, Mrs T, Sue the Librarian, Rach, Kristen, Jan, Kyles, Judy, Emmsie, Elle, Nic, Kaz.
                        Please click to enlarge!

I’ll no doubt get into trouble but I am so printing it out and pinning it on the staff room wall.

Thank you to Scotto for his outstanding Photoshop work!

Any suggestions for other iconic photos for next time?


Thursday, January 16, 2014

How long has blogging REALLY been around?

Often when you mention the fact you write a blog, people don't have the faintest idea of what you're talking about.

The thing is, women have been 'blogging' and using varied forms of social media to relate aspects of their lives and memories, political views and knowledge...since forever.


Cave paintings
Paleolithic Wife- Cooking Blog.

"Errg's Bites"

Full Moon, 17300 years ago

This is what my husband, Ugg brought back from hunting yesterday. Cooked it over open fire with nuts and berries I gathered. Fed a family of eighteen. Click on link for tasty recipe.
Image Credit



Ancient Roman Graffiti- Political Blogger

"Claudia Reports"
15 March 44 BC

While Brutus was at the Senate meeting I went into the town square and blogged about that right-winged b#stard Julius Caesar. Something has to be done about that misogynist. Women should be citizens!


Ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphics: Journal Blogger

"Pinky Salwasi's Crazy Life!"

Shumo, 3100 BC

It's summer and the kids and I popped down to the Nile Valley for a swim. Nebtawi (hubby) went to the temple all day to pray to the Gods so we had the day to ourselves.Picked up a nice side of gazelle from the markets and just hope teenage sons are home to eat it for a change. Sick of keeping leftovers in the icebox.
Image Credit




Normandy Craft Blogger

Image Credit

"Catherine's Crafty Corner"
Tuesday, 1075.

Well, we are finally up to the 65th metre of the Bayeaux Tapestry! Only 5 more to go! Mathilda's playing a practical joke and embroidering a Where's Wally somewhere in the tapestry. I bet you can't find it! We have free give-aways to the first three readers who comment correctly!
        

Feminist Blogger- Venus of Willendorf
Image Credit


 "Venus Greer and her Eunichs"
 25 000 BC

A Stone Age dissertation on why women should not be judged by their beauty.
I happened upon this when I was out gathering sticks yesterday. The statuette speaks for itself; please note the absence of a face or feet and the 'junk in the trunk'. Just what is the point of this? If I find the guy who carved this I'll hit him over the head with his own club. 


Marie Antoinette's Beauty Blog

Image Credit
"Marie and You"
October 15, 1793

The big trend now girls is powder, powder, powder. I use a swanspuff to apply and you can pick one of these up at Targette for three livre. Make sure you apply plenty of white paint beforehand to cover up the Smallpox scars! Rosewater hides a multitude of sins my lovelies. For example when you haven't taken a bath for eight years! Gotta go darls, someone's knocking very loudly on the door...

Cleopatra- Fashion Blog


Image Credit

"Cleo's Couture" 
11 August 30 BC

In my role as Queen of Egypt, I have to meet up with many diplomats and therefore attend many formal occasions. My secret to looking good on the carpet? Or rolling out of the carpet?
Bling! Some fabulous gold earrings and plonk on a wig... you're good to go. Those upper armbands are rocking it right now too, but I tend to shy away from the snake-shaped bands... they make me feel uneasy for some reason!




Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Pinky Poinker: When your kids don't need you anymore.

             Last night's Potato Pie and how much was eaten (by Scotto).

The evening meal was the last bastion of family solidarity at Chez Poinker.

For decades the nightly ritual of creating a hot, nutritious meal and placing it on the table in front of each of the five children has assisted Pinky in clinging frantically to the false self-image of a nurturing mother.

It seems even that solitary buttress has finally been smashed into the tiny shards of a broken mirror reflecting the tenuous and unsustainable lie I’ve doggedly attempted to preserve.

Even though twenty-four year old Thaddeus lives with his father and Jonah is currently residing in the big smoke; eighteen year old Padraic, Lulu, and twenty year old Hagar and his girlfriend Meggles, still live with us.


Well... they occasionally sleep here.

Early every evening, Pinky performs the same charade with the same hackneyed script.

“Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

“What is it?”

“Something delicious!”

“Okay… maybe.”

The final wretched scene of the farce however, sees our tragic heroine bitterly shoving leftovers in the fridge aside in order to squeeze in the latest abandoned offering to the Gods.

“Stop cooking for them!” Scotto asserts, while Pinky bleats on and on about wasted food, money and effort.

He doesn’t understand. Once I stop cooking dinner for them they won’t need me anymore.

For anything.

Yesterday, the final nail in the coffin containing the demise of Pinky’s usefulness was hammered in with decisive precision.

Lulu’s father bought her a car.

Now she can drive herself to work, netball games, parties, McDonalds.

I’ll probably never ever see her again.


                         And so the fun begins...

Linking up with Essentially Jess! 
               

Monday, January 13, 2014

A Guest Post by Pinky Poinker's Dad.

                                     

Last night I watched a fireworks show that made Sydney's New Year display look like a walk through a glow-worm cave. All from my front deck and all for free. For two hours or more a thunderstorm raged all around, and all above our house and it was the best lightning show I have ever seen.

There were complex sky-to-sky bolts with patterns that you couldn't dream up and great flashes of sheet lightning, but best of all were the sky-to-ground strikes, especially those that hit some of the tall high-rise buildings on the skyline. And the two that struck high tension powerlines only 300 metres away - wow! What thunder claps. How do I know that it was 300 metres? Well lightning is more-or-less instantaneous and thunder travels at around 300 metres in one second, and the bang was no more than a second after the flash---just ask my dog, if you can coax her out from under the bed.

Hello! All you readers of Pinky Poinker’s daily diatribe. I've been invited to make a contribution for whatever reason I'm not quite sure. It could be to raise the tone of the blog with a bit of quality writing , or then, it could be because I'm Pinky's papa. Anyway this post should help raise the standard to at least Upper-Bogan.


                                        Image Credit

To gain some insight into the usual scope and style of this site I have read some of the past efforts, and it appears to me that the whole thing is supposed to revolve around those five loveable rascals - Pinky's darling little children You know who I mean - the ones who phone me at 12.30 am to ask some inane question, the answer of which could readily be found on Google. The same ones who can make 3 packets of biscuits disappear faster than a politicians promise. The four gentlemen who all managed to crash their first motor vehicle---lovely Lulu hasn't managed that yet, who said that men are better drivers...?

          Little Hagar and Pinky's Dad. Perhaps the boys should have stuck to this                                                               mode of transport.


Pinky, of course, (let me assure you that my surname is not Poinker---that is her married name) is not without fault when it comes to motor vehicles. Has she posted a story about the time that she borrowed my car to go out-on-the-town only to park it in a forbidden zone from whence it was spirited away to an impounding yard? Probably not. That was the same car that she had sold to me when she was working for a car rental company.

What dear Pinky didn't tell me was that this car had been deregistered prior to the sale but that someone had forgotten to hand back the numberplates. In my blissful ignorance I assumed that the vehicle was correctly registered and the ownership properly transferred.

For a whole year I drove around in that unregistered car, and when a rego-renewal form didn't turn up, I made enquiries at the transport department and then had to bluff my way out of a prosecution and a substantial fine. And Pinky thinks her kids are a trial.

      A photo I snapped of Pinky in her uniform after she'd had a big night out.


I was a very thoughtful child, I moved away from my parents home at a relatively young age. I thought that my issued would do the same---and they did. The two girls moved out of our four bedroom house leaving just a son, Pinky's mum and me. So we sold the house and moved into a two bedroom unit. What happened? The girls decided to move back---five of us in a twobedder. So we bought another house and sold the unit. Before we could settle the contract the girls were off again. And this happened with 'regular frequency'. So we did the only thing we could think of and moved 1500 km away---to a mountain---where they didn't want to be. Where all the lightning and thunder happens.

Ciao Readers, Acolytes, Friends or whatever you people out there call yourselves.



Richard Not Poinker.

                                      

Sunday, January 12, 2014

How Fathers Influence their Daughters.




This is my favourite photo in the entire world. It’s my father cradling a three week old Pinky, circa 1910.

He was only twenty-five at the time, having married my nineteen year old mother eleven months previously (so they tell me).

Nah… I’m only joking, but apparently my dear old Nana was upset Mum had fallen pregnant so soon after marrying because it ‘didn’t look good’. What would the aunties think? It didn’t help appearances when 6 lb. baby Pinky arrived three weeks early either.

But back to Dad.

It’s his birthday tomorrow and after much determined pestering on my behalf, he finally agreed to write a guest post which will be published on Pinky Poinker in celebration of the special day.

If I was to sum my father up in one word it would be “artist”.

A painter, cartoonist, writer, landscape artist, sculptor, sketch artist, bullshit artist.


                              The coyote finally succeeds!


We grew up in a house filled with Dad’s artwork. Some of it was bloody good, some not so great.

Back in the seventies he decided to build a pool in our backyard. Not just have a pool put in, but actually build a pool. 


Every night after he finished work he would spend hours in the dark sink hole, troweling cement and grouting tiles by the light of a single light bulb, his only company a massive great cane toad. 

Julius, the toad, revelled in the swarms of mosquitoes attracted to the light globe and appeared each night to cheer Dad on. This self-imposed hard labour went on for months.

The result of his monumental effort was a fully tiled swimming pool fed by an elaborate, landscaped waterfall. It was truly a work of art.

My father undertook all of the wall-papering (big in the seventies), tiling, painting, concreting, carpentry and of course electrical work in the house. I don’t think we ever needed to call a tradesman for anything except when our huge umbrella tree grew to mammoth proportions and one day we noticed its guileful root shyly peeking out of the toilet bowl. Council plumbers were needed to dig up every plant infested pipe in the place.

After a few years living in the house Dad decided to build another story on top with a shingled roof; each shingle lovingly hammered in place by our unstoppable father.

They just don’t make men like that anymore.

                               Dad's old Falcon.

One of my earliest most cherished memories of my father was at the age of five. I’d just been awarded honours in a ballet exam and I couldn’t wait for him to arrive home so I could squeak out the exciting news.

I recall with clarity, Dad shouting in excitement and lifting me up in his arms towards the ceiling in elation. We were standing beside the dining room table; Mum laughed at us and the sun shone through a window on our right. The forty-eight year old memory is crystal clear. 

I savoured his praise then and still do now. Daughters need that demonstrative love and appreciation from their fathers.

                       Pinky and little sister Sam with Dad.

Dad is a bit of a human oxymoron; a cultivated Aussie bloke.

He imparted a love for the Fine Arts to us kids by taking us to the ballet, art galleries, museums and the theatre as we were growing up.

My sister and I now invite him to the ballet when the opportunity arises. Not that it does very often because he and Mum have retired to a place over one thousand miles away.

My granddad Bert, was also an artist and an eccentric rascal who taught himself to play the piano in his late eighties.



This is a self-portrait old Bert painted when he was probably in his mid-seventies. 

                         Bert at his ninetieth birthday.

I’m thinking perhaps my father inherited some of his artistic ability from Bert.

At first I think Dad disapproved of my blog, primarily due to the over-abundance of personal information I freely distribute on the World-Wide Web.

When I visited him last year he brought out a plethora of humorous and engaging articles he’d written for a magazine when he was about the same age as I am now. Many of the articles described the antics of every day life enacted by his wife and three kids. 


                                        

And so… father and daughter in the more mature years of their lives are bonding over the written word.

I’m thinking perhaps Pinky may have inherited some of her minimal artistic ability from her father.


Happy birthday my darling father xx

                                     Being a Granddad.