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Saturday, September 23, 2017

Why I'm Going to Lie About My Age!



It’s my birthday on Monday and I’ve noticed that lately, when I tell people I’m almost 57 years old, there are no gasps of, “Oh no! You couldn’t possibly be! You don’t look anywhere near that old, Pinky.”
 
I wait for it. But the shock and astonishment never seems to fall upon their visage.

I stare at the people in question in concentrated silence until they begin to shuffle their feet in discomfort.

I fix them with my beady eyes, searching their face for some kind of bewildered admiration.

After a while, I realise with a stunned and disappointed insight, they think I actually look my age.

So it's been decided, I'm going to start telling people I’m 67. 

Surely that should get me some compliments?

I bought my own birthday present yesterday. Scotto will reimburse me and it will be his present to me. He’s not allowed to know what it is because one of us has to be surprised on the day.

“I hope I like what you got me for my birthday,” I excitedly whispered in his ear as we snuggled in front of the telly last night. “I hope you didn’t spend too much money on me, darling.”

He looked confused for a few minutes but then light dawned on his face. He played along.

"Is it something I can wear or something I can eat?" I enquired coquettishly. "Can I shake the box? Pleassse?"

“Don’t look at the other white package on the table,” he cautioned, wagging his finger at me. “There’s another birthday surprise in it.”

“Do you mean the present from the kids?” I scoffed. “But I already know what that is, silly! I told you to tell them what I wanted!”
A weary expression spread over his face. I could see he wasn’t going to play my game anymore.

To be truthful, I have a strong suspicion Scotto is attempting to kill me before I reach my next milestone.

Remember the mountain’s Scarecrow Festival I wrote about last year? Well this year Scotto entered his own scarecrow to promote his computer business in the community.

I was leaving for work last week and as I opened the front door, I caught this in my peripheral vision.



I jumped out of my skin, swearing loudly. 

I’d thought it was a big yellow carrot-creature come to slit my throat.

Cursing Scotto under my breath, I bent down to pour Whiskers in the cat bowl and endured a second coronary event when I stood up and spotted the behemoth five seconds later; then again, as I pulled out of the driveway and glimpsed the malevolent monster, towering menacingly at the front door.



I was very glad when Scotto took the terrifying thing away for display.

Yesterday, as I was taking a box of wine bottles out to the bin, I rounded the corner and swiftly dropped said box, smashing glass everywhere when I sighted this freak hanging over the fence leering at me.



I swear Scotto is planting the evil stuffed thing in odd places in an ill-disguised endeavour to murder me via a devastating cardiac arrest. 

If I am found dead in bed with this thing next to me on Monday morning then you will know who caused my sudden demise.

But you’ll be pleased to hear I am still alive at the moment and getting very excited about the impending B day even though I will be turning the magic 67.
I know! How the years fly by.

Feel free to comment on how you can't believe I'm 67.


Saturday, September 16, 2017

What the Dickens? It's School Holidays!



It was with carrying a not desolate and bleak, destitute heart in which I departed my dear place of industrious labour yesterday and set afoot on my extensive and arduous journey back to my soothing and familiar home where my dear husband sat in the dewy, green, back garden, anxiously awaiting my appearance and wearing a ponderous and expectant visage with many a gentle sigh forthcoming from his broad chest; but with a happy one.

If you haven’t guessed, I’ve been listening to Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield on audio all week.
NB: the Dickens' character NOT the magician.
I shall carry on with a similar style of rubbish for the remainder of my post.

My dear reader, I can not for the life of me, express what an immense relief it is to be finally freed of the stifling and oppressive establishment that is school life. Not only shall I be liberated from the dreadful clamour of the beseeching and regimented bleating of the alarm clock at a time before the cock crows every morn, but I shall be enabled to slumber to my heart’s content on each and every morning for the next thirteen days plus one.

No more will one such self be mandated to travel out of one’s way to visit Aldi to shop for nourishing substances for one’s pets on an already gruelling and toilsome excursion on return to one’s abode, but one shall be able to visit the said store on a whimsy, a mere whimsy, my dear fellow.

There shall be joy and merriment celebrated on every minute ticked by the clock, on every whisper in the breeze as I sup on my port wine in the fire lit parlour; on every glittering view I glimpse from my chaise lounge as I repose in a reflective introspect whilst gathering my weary thoughts, cupping my steaming mug in my withered hands.

The long forgotten night terrors revitalising hideous recollections of the tedious marking of badly spelled persuasive essays, the horrors of an all-day soccer gala day, the utter dreadfulness of a disconcerting and strenuous school camp… will slowly dissolve into a faded and indistinct memory.

In short, my dear reader, the school term has at last come to a hasty and propitious end and my future lies like a glittering jewel in the crown of a great monarch with all the promise of a something one might only dream of on the sweetest and most headiest of nights whilst drowning in the aromas of all the night flowers blooming in the most intoxicating and reckless of manner.


And so I leave you, perhaps perplexed as to what you just read, perhaps quietly snickering at the jumbled and disorderly mind that is Pinky Poinker, perhaps quietly nodding in mournful pity at the wonders of a truly mad and tangled mind. Whatever, sir, I wish you a good and happy life and a very nice school holiday.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Pinky's Restaurant Review!



I look forward to Saturday because Scotto takes me out for lunch.

It’s like ‘date night’, except we call it, ‘date day’.

Today, we decided on Mel Gibson’s pub on the mountain for our weekly romantic assignation.

We’d just hiked for an hour down to a waterfall and back and we were both starving to death.

I sat down with my piccolo of champagne in peckish anticipation and excitedly ordered a smoked chicken salad. I normally don’t eat chicken (or any meat, except fish) but I’ve had the flu for the last four weeks and thought some iron might be good for me.

When the waiter eventually placed my plate down in front of me, I scrutinised it with bleak suspicion.

I prudently picked around the plate with my fork, like a surgeon inspecting an inflamed intestine for obstructive, malignant tumours.

“What’s wrong, Pinky?” asked Scotto, ravenously slicing his medium rare rump with a razor-sharp steak knife and licking his lips.

“The chicken is pink!” I whined. “I don’t trust pink chicken, Scotto. I could get food poisoning.”

“I think it’s just the juice from the red onion,” he reassured me, a bit too casually for my liking to be honest.

I cautiously took a tiny nibble.

“It’s ham!” I shrieked, spitting it back on to my plate.

The people at the next table paused and gaped, forks halfway to their mouths.

The strange flesh had the texture and taste of ham. It even had ham rind on it. I was appalled.

Scotto, examining fake chicken/ham.


If there’s one thing I don’t eat, it is pig.

Why?

1. Pigs have similar DNA to humans. Would you eat a child?

2. When humans burn, they apparently smell like pork cooking. Would you eat a burning child?

3. Pigs are very cute and one day I will have one as a pet. It will be called, Babe or perhaps Wilbur.

4. Pigs have worms.



Scotto, highly frustrated and mildly vexed at this turn of events, miserably carried my meal back up to the kitchen, glancing back at his steak with yearning as it sat, neglected and cooling on his plate.

He returned triumphantly, announcing that the ‘manager’ had it all under control and was sorting it all out.

Within twenty seconds, I spotted the ‘manager’ heading our way, balancing my plate in one hand as he careened through the beer garden, his face a blood red, the shade of a slaughtered pig.

“It’s not ham,” he wheezed triumphantly. “It’s smoked chicken. Apparently it just looks like ham. We can get you something else if you prefer…”

I smiled sweetly. “S’ok,” I simpered. “Thank you very much, sir. Of course it’s chicken, silly me. Sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

I watched him walk back up to the kitchen. No doubt, back to the chef where the two of them would laugh at the stupid woman customer who couldn’t tell the difference between ham and chicken.

“I’m. Not. Fudging. Eating. One. Disgusting. Bite,” I snarled savagely as soon as the alleged ‘manager’ was out of sight.

“Why not?” Scotto queried, chomping on some juicy steak, blood trickling, Viking-like, down his chin.

“Because they probably fudging spat on my fudging meal!” I hissed, pushing the plate away in a hangry fit of temper. “Or they pooped in it more likely.”

“Pinky. They wouldn’t spit or poo in your food or they’d lose their licence,” Scotto half-heartedly cajoled, popping a delectable chip in his gob and smacking his lips.

“Bullshit!” I sulked, pulling all the slices of artificial chicken out of the salad and making a huge pile on the side of the plate, just to make a point.



“Mind you,” I conceded, “they probably wouldn’t have had time to squeeze out a poo. It’s probably just spit and phlegm.”
I sat there, eating nothing, mouth dribbling copiously as I watched Scotto sop up his steak juice with crunchy chips and slurp them into his mouth with rapture.

When the waiter came to collect my uneaten meal I made a point of asking for a ‘chicken bag’ not a doggy bag.

“I’m going to feed it ALL to my chickens,” I announced meaningfully, my gimlet eye fixed on the poor youth, in spiteful retribution for my failed date-day.

I hoped the waiter would notice that I’d eaten nothing of the fake chicken food and show the fudging ‘chef ‘what I thought of his fudging crap cooking, but he was too busy laughing at my request of a ‘chicken bag’ and started telling me stories about his own chickens.

So guys, we won’t be going back to Mel Gibson’s pub ever. Sorry Mel, but your chef doesn’t know his livestock.

My cannibal chickens enjoyed eating the fake chicken/pig, and I’m still very hangry.

Scotto probably has indigestion from his steak which probably serves him right. I don’t know if he does or not. I’m too cranky with him to ask because, in some obscure small way, I’m sure it’s all his fault.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

One Smart Fellow, He Felt Smart.



The line in the title of this post is the beginning of a tongue twister the PE instructors taught our classes on school camp last week at Lake Moggelydoogelly. I was there for two nights and three days with my buddy teacher and the two school principals.

There were expert instructors who ran our activities over the three days and two nights and they, in their youthful exuberance, heightened my self-awareness, that I have indeed developed into an elderly, decrepit and whinging old crone.

“What fresh hell is this?” I’d mutter to myself, grimacing in deep suspicion at the commencement of every new physical challenge.

There was the three and half hour hike over a rocky hill and up to the top of a lofty, snake infested gorge.



 There was the three hour canoeing expedition where (with aching arms) I steered two frightened little boys clad in life jackets on an inexorable journey across an icy and sinister lake. 


There was the two hour mountain biking activity where I may have shouted an expletive within range of several children’s earshot as I death-defyingly plummeted down a jagged slope towards a broad eucalyptus trunk, legs flailing and grasping desperately for the elusive brake.

After each daring trial, my principal would spot me limping piteously up the path and ask chirpily, “Did you have a good time, Pinky?” To which I would stare at him through bloodshot eyes and reply tersely, “No. Not really. Not at all actually, but thanks for asking.”

I sat beside him tugging off my runner one morning, “I think there’s something biting my toe,” I complained bitterly. “But don’t worry about it, it’s probably just a red-back spider.”
I turned out to be just some sock cotton wound tightly around my toe.

Then there was the whole ‘feeding the children thing’ three times a day.

One little student refused to eat anything except bread and cake for three days. “Oh well,” commented my buddy. “He will probably have trouble going to the toilet after this. Not that any of us here will be going to the toilet while we’re here, of course.” She added pointedly.

I turned to stare at her with a renewed sense of admiration.

She too, was a ‘never poo away from home’ girl.

All my colleagues back in Townsville teased me no end because I could never stay on girl’s weekends for more than one night and here I was finally buddied up with a like-minded poo girl. Unless, of course, she was merely attempting to warn me off pooping in our shared toilet for the duration of the camp.

I think the worst thing was that I was sick. I had a relapse of the flu I’d had a couple of weeks ago and woke up every morning with a deep, rattling cough and a drag queen voice.

Not that there was much sleep to be had what with homesick children, children with weak, but urgent bladders and squabbling, rambunctious possums and eerie, werewolf-like howls emanating from the surrounding bushland.

I tried to pretend I was on that show, Survivor and at night I would pretend I was in rehab.

It would have been so much more manageable with a cheeky red wine around the bonfire every night.

But it’s all part of being a teacher. The kids loved every second of the camp and even though every muscle in my body is screaming and after the bike riding I’m walking like a King’s Cross hooker, I managed to get through it.

Two smart fellows, they felt smart.

Three smart fellows, they all felt smart.

And they all smelt fart together.

Damn, I’ll never get it right.