What are you gonna do when the police pull up in your driveway at 2:00 am? Huh?

As a mother of five children between the ages of 19 and 26 (4 of them boys), I find myself worrying about their safety every Friday and Saturday night when I suspect they’ve gone out on the town as most people their age would. I feel sickened every time I read or hear about young men and women struck down in the prime of their life by a coward punch when they’re out enjoying themselves. Do you worry? I dread hearing the phone ringing in the middle of the night. I jump when it rings before seven o'clock in the morning. (Stop ringing me so early, Dad!)

Do you think you'll worry when your five year old gets to this age because believe me, it will happen very quickly. 

Before you know it, the evils you anticipated from the playground bully will become much, much grimmer. The bully will be much more dangerous.



Whilst there are clever advertising campaigns educating young people about the dangers of this random type of violence, I’m afraid it doesn’t seem to be working. The problem is that when the perpetrators of these crimes are fuelled up on ice/drugs, steroids or alcohol, the advertising campaign is probably not at the forefront of their minds.

My idea of petitioning the council was to start a conversation about instigating some type of legislation so that the onus is perhaps placed on the proprietors of night clubs and other hot spots to reinforce the safety of their patrons by laying down Soft Fall in the immediate vicinity where intoxicated people are lining up to gain entrance, being refused entry, leaving after drinking for hours and where fights and arguments often start. 

Can you imagine if every night club in your area was mandated to put up a mere ten metre square of Soft Fall, how much it would actually cover? Gosh, they have it in aged care facilities, childcare centres and golf clubs for the patron's protection; surely swaying, drunken idiots warrant some protection? It may even reduce their insurance premiums.

And it’s not only the victims of coward punches who’d be afforded some protection. A vast number of scuffles and altercations occur in the area surrounding the entrances of these establishments; altercations where the police are attacked and even bouncers. I must also add that it's not just young people targetted in these random, violent attacks. Plenty of older people are assaulted as well.

It just seems like a sensible all round safeguard to me to have Soft Fall in places where crowds of people are drunk, off their faces, unco-ordinated and severely lacking in balancing skills and often very unreasonable and fudging ANGRY.



It seems as though the worst of the injuries inflicted occur, not so much from the actual punch, but from the impact when the victims hit the concrete footpath. You only have to watch the video of the young mother who suffered a coward punch in Mt Isa last weekend, just outside the entrance, to see how she sustained her skull injuries.

"The young men wheeled in before the neurosurgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital have often suffered two blows to the head.

The first is from the punch itself, the second they received when their head smashed against the hard ground. ''That second blow is often more devastating,''  The Age

There are two major factors that cause the really serious brain injuries. It is usually not the initial punch or blow, as the face and skull can adequately protect the brain from a punch – even a so-called king hit.

However, if that punch renders someone unconscious, then it is the uncontrolled fall from the standing position and the head hitting the concrete or gutter that is where the serious brain injuries occur.

Dr. Anthony Chambers: a trauma surgeon at St Vincent’s hospital

Whilst laying down Soft Fall around nightclub entrances and thoroughfares may seem like implementing a ‘nanny system’ for want of a better term, and people may argue that young adults should be responsible for their own safety, the fact is that legislation was passed ensuring bike riders wear helmets and drivers wear seat belts. There is legislation to ensure our pools are adequately fenced and that the council puts up barriers to stop people accidentally falling off bridges etc. If that soft fall even stops one death wouldn’t it make it worth it? Wouldn't it?

When you think how many people just one young death affects, from parents, friends and families to the police, the paramedics, the doctors, the nurses… I think even one less death would make it worthwhile.


Punishment in the form of mandatory sentences is an excellent idea but it won’t bring those young boys who lost their lives back, will it? 

We need to do as much as possible to prevent it happening in the first place.

As a parent, I can’t think of anything worse than seeing a police car pull up and park in my drive way at two o’clock in the morning. I know what my first fear would be. It wouldn’t be good news, would it? And it could happen to anyone, anytime. It could happen to you and your loved ones.

 Naturally, I’ve discussed this with my own kids and expressed my fears. I think most parents have, but there’s not much you can do to protect your kids when most of these coward punches are thrown by surprise or from behind on unwary, innocent victims.

I’m not a politician, I’m not a medical expert and I’m not a law enforcement officer, I’m just a worried mother.

Educating children from the early years up is a great long term plan but something needs to be done for the short term outlook.

Sign my petition. Just click on the link. It takes a few seconds.

Petition Link!

Thank you to everyone who has already signed it.

Linking up at Essentially Jess for #IBOT.

Australian Movies Rock.

“I’ll only watch it if nobody gets their head cut off, dies a gruesome death or spews blood,” I warned Scotto when we were about to watch an Australian movie called, Last Cab to Darwin this arvo.



We’d been watching the entire series Game of Thrones for the second time over the last two weeks, followed up by Tarantino’s Eight Ugly Somethings and Inglourious Basterds and frankly I was sick of seeing people having their buzz cuts scalped, their ball sacks impaled and their tongues ripped out of their throats by force… not that you could have your tongue ripped out willingly or without a certain amount of force… but I am getting off the subject.

(N.B. I didn’t say ‘But I digress’ because I fudging hate that overused idiom. What? Do people honestly think they sound intelligent because they say, “But I digress’? I fudging hate that.)



Anyway, I’m off topic.

We were one quarter of the way through the seemingly innocent, bland movie about a guy on a journey( another word I hate) to euthanise himself in the Northern Territory, when out of the blue… he spews blood.



“YOU PROMISED ME!” I screeched at Scotto. “YOU SAID NOBODY WOULD SPEW BLOOD!”



I hate blood emanating from mouths whether it be from gunshots, falling from a high building, a sword through the gullet, poison, or even from a broken tooth or diseased gums.

I think it originates from reading Little Women at twelve years of age and one of them, Beth I think, coughed up blood and promptly carked it. I cried. Oh, how I cried, and I’ve been terrified of coughing (let alone spewing) up blood ever since.

It’s my Auntie Caroline’s fault. She should never have sent me such a gory novel at the highly impressionable age of twelve.

The movie was very good despite the blood soaked spew which actually happened three times in the movie.

The young aboriginal actor, Mark Coles Smith delivered the best performance. He was deadly.

You should watch it. Despite the blood streaked vomit it was brilliant. Aussie movies rock.

Seen any good movies lately WITHOUT blood and gore?

Grow Some Ovaries!

In regards to the story about the journalist who was ‘insulted’ by the cricketer, (laughing out loud... a cricketer, no less, hardly the bastion of human sensitivity) and then the story about the politician who insulted the public servant by kissing her on the cheek in a bar and the aftermath with the dumb text sent by another politician to a female journalist calling her a f#cking witch, I can’t restrain my social media suicidal tendencies and I suspect I am about to lose a lot of followers and upset some people.

My mother’s reaction to the explosive story was the best I heard.

“Why didn’t she tell him he was uglier than a hat full of arseholes and she wouldn’t have a bar of him because he was old and ugly and embarrass him publically? These young girls need to stick up for themselves.”



I had to think about it for a while but after some consideration I think my 75 year old’s mother’s sentiments are correct.

If we, as united, empowered women, go around whinging about how down-trodden we’ve been for centuries and crack a sook act every time someone crosses the line then what are we but a bunch of whistle-blowing girlie-girls?

If we want respect as women we have to stop the bloody whining. Stand up for yourself girls!

I had a guy come up in a bar to me once and ask me. “Are those tits real?”

I answered, “Yes. Is your dick real?”

He staggered away like the stunned Neanderthal fuckwit that he was. Was I upset? A bit. But at least I got him back.

I realise it’s all very well to be saying what so and so should have done when a more powerful man put the weights on her… but honestly, even in the eighties when I was confronted by CEOs at the company I worked for, who made certain suggestions, I merely told the sleazy old fudgers to sod off.

Nicely of course, because that’s the way I was brought up, nice… but not a fudging dumb idiot who couldn’t stick up for herself.

Of course, as women, we do have to put up with a lot of shit, but you know what? For every areshole man out there, there are many, many good ones (excluding politicians). Instead of seeking sympathy on social media and getting all huffy about it, do as my septuagenarian mother suggested… give them back two times what they gave you.

Sort of like in the school playground really.

And surely, if we all give it back to them they'll eventually learn?

True empowerment doesn’t come from crying poor and acting all helpless and downtrodden, it comes from showing your true colours and bloody well giving back twice what you received.

New Year Ablutions!

I had three New Year resolutions. Three easy resolutions.

There was no way I could fail...



The first was to take vitamin D for my possible self-diagnosed osteoporosis, the second was to start pulling coconut oil and the third was to eat three dates a day.



“Why don’t they make transparent bottles for tablets?” I whinged to Scotto when I was buying the vitamins from the chemist. “I can’t tell how fudging big the mongrels are.” I shook the bottle. “They sound small, let’s take the risk.”

“How can they sound small?” Scotto asked.

“I don’t know… they just sound small enough to swallow. More room in the bottle or something,” I replied sagely.



Sure enough, when I opened the bottle after I’d paid for the fudgers, they were the size of Brazil nuts. I managed to swig them down for three days in a row (bloody huge mofos as they were) but five minutes after I’d gag them down, I’d feel extremely nauseated, so that was the end of that, #1 resolution… gawn. How can vitamins make you feel sick?


The funny thing is, I fell down the stairs (looking at my phone instead of where I was going) yesterday and didn’t break a single bone so I don’t think I do have osteoporosis anyway. It hurt a lot but strangely I didn’t even bruise. Maybe I’m a super human and the superhero gods haven't told me yet.


The coconut oil pulling is very interesting. It requires you to swish a tablespoon of the oil in your mouth for twenty minutes straight (no swallowing). The oil draws all the toxic bacteria out of your gums so you DEFINITELY can’t swallow it or you'll ingest your own filth. 

Even though it sounds easy, believe me it’s not. The saliva builds up in your mouth so rapidly, before you know it your mouth is inflated like a puffer fish and all you want to do is spit it out all over the cat, but my gums are in a sad state of affairs and I’m determined to self-heal them.

I was five minutes into a session of pulling this morning when the mailman arrived with a beep-beep in the driveway and a parcel for Scotto.

“Fmmmmck!” I uttered in exasperation.

I didn’t want to spit it out and have to start all over again so I answered the door and hoped like hell I could bluff my way through.

“Is this Mr. Scotto Poinker’s house?” the jolly man asked, holding out a pen and little screen he was about to give me to sign.

“Mmm mmm,” I replied, nodding my head in a relatively normal manner.

“And what’s your name, luv?”



“Mmm hahn awk,” I replied with my chin up in the air so the toxic oil didn’t slobber out and with my eyes bulging out their sockets.


“Of course,” he stammered, handing me the pen and screen thing, then nervously taking a step back and wiping his hands on his pants. “Sorry, my hands are dirty. I just had to change a tyre.”



“Mmm mmmm glmm mmm,” I replied sympathetically, knowing in my heart he just didn't want to catch what ever I was afflicted with.

“Is anyone looking after you, love?” he asked.

I nodded emphatically, oily drool dribbling from the corners of my mouth. "Mmmmmmm!"


I wonder what he thought was wrong with me? Mentally impaired? Psychotic? Mute? I guess I’ll never know but I waved to him in a cordial, almost royal fashion as he screeched back down our driveway.

The three dates a day thing is going pretty well, even though they look like plump cockroaches, they’re quite tasty. I’m taking them for the iron and potassium not for their laxative effect. I have no worries in that department you’ll be happy to know. My toileting expeditions last about twenty seconds and Scotto gets very jealous of me, especially when I emerge almost as soon as I’ve entered and boast about how I just lost two kilos.

“But how?” he’ll stare at me in bewilderment and envy. “How is that even possible?”
“I know!” I skite unashamedly. “I’m pretty good at it aren’t I?” Then I do a little triumphant dance in the ensuite.

I put it down to the fact that we weren’t given any rubbish when we were kids. If we wanted something sweet we were directed to the packet of prunes/dates/dried apricots in the fridge.


Not that it’s something one should necessarily be proud of but sometimes you have to recognise your talents wherever they lie.

There you have it. I’ve stuck to two out of three of my resolutions and I’m very proud of myself. What about you?

What is Love? 2015.

Our Wedding Day

2015 taught me what love is.

1. Love is being with someone who doesn’t argue when you insist you want your dogs to come on holidays with you.


2. Love is lending someone your favourite head phones and not yelling at them when they accidentally rip them to pieces doing something silly.

3. Love is cleaning every smudge and fixing every crack in the wall, shampooing every stain on the carpet and replacing every broken set of blinds your kids broke whilst at the same time tearfully recalling the foolhardy shenanigans that caused them with a fond nostalgia.


4. Love is getting up to bring your partner coffee in bed when you know they’re only pretending to be asleep even though it’s their turn to do it.

5. Love is patiently explaining the theory of relativity to your partner even though you know that deep down they’re far too stupid to ever understand it… not even in a bazillion light years.

6. Love is waiting patiently in the car while your partner disappears into a computer shop and three days pass before he reappears and you still don’t punch him in the chops.

7. Love is risking your life for your partner because she has a morbid fear of oven cleaner.

8. Love is offering to put a head on a spike in order to protect your loved one and warn off hostile infiltrators.

9. Love is protecting your loved one from rabid wildlife even though you are just as terrified as they are.

10. Love is being there for your loved one when everyone else they hold dear has left the nest.


Wishing you all a happy new year in 2016 everyone and hoping love finds you.

Thrame of Gonads

Now that I’ve finally managed to clean the stubborn orange flakes from the inside of the Christmas, Buck’s Fizz glasses it’s time to reflect on… I don’t know… how I waste too much bloody time watching television.

Lord Scotto of House Poinker and I have been watching the entire series of Game of Thrones for the second time. We’ve slipped into a kind of television psychosis where we’ve begun to speak in medieval tongues and refer to each other as my Lord and my Lady.

“What shalt we do today, my Lord?” I asked him whilst watching my faithful Direwolf, gnawing a rabbit carcass on the flagstones.

Faithful Direwolf

“Might we journey to the inn for a chicken and ale, my lady?” Lord Scotto replied. “There’s naught else to do.”

“The inn is so terribly boring while life is full of possibilities,” I answered, gazing over his armoured shoulder at the mound of dishes in the sink. “Besides, I have imbibed in a good many ales these past few days.”

“If you look back you are lost,” he grasped my pale cheek and turned it away from the filthy quagmire in the scullery.

Then he rose and sauntered to the cold box, whistling a tune. Quick as a snake he swallowed a sweetmeat from its interior.

A hot wind was blowing from the north, and it made the palm trees rustle like living things.

“Rain is coming,” Lord Scotto whispered.

“You know nothing, my Lord,” I retorted. “The Lord of Light on Channel Seven has predicted no rain. We live in dark times, times of drought.”

“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," I continued sadly. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves we will need to go out and water the lawn. We have no time for the inn… for I am the watcher of the lawn. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the grass. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that makes the lawn verdant and glorious.”

“But… everything's better with some wine in the belly,” Lord Scotto laughed, taking a bite of his cheese.



I sighed, my sigh as soft as sin. “Choosing... it has always hurt. And always will. I know. Lawn or inn? Inn or lawn?” I struggled in my thoughts, torn apart at the idea of a parched garden in the morn.

But the master of cajoling manipulated my yearnings with his silver tongue.

We rode to the inn on the Veloster steed and I was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished two whole chickens and part of a third, and drank a flagon of wine, talking, laughing.

The wine went to my head, I fear. The next thing I knew, I was sharing his bed. Afterwards I was shy and wept, but he kissed me and sang me a little song about a spider climbing a water pipe and being washed away by the rain and when at last he opened the blinds, the puddles of rain were glistening in the pale morning light.


I had never loved him so much as I did in that instant. The drought had broken.

Quotes borrowed from Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Christmas when the Kids are Grown Up.

Just like a true Christmas miracle we finally have a contract on the sale of our house.

Fingers crossed it will go through successfully in early February.

Woo-hoo, Gold Coast, watch out for the Poinkers!

When I’ve mentioned to people that Scotto and I are moving south next year, quite a few people have looked shocked.

“But what about your kids, Pinky?” they’ve demanded.

Usually, I sit there gasping for air, riddled with guilt at what a selfish mother I must be to abandon my babies like that and wonder what everyone must think of me.

But I’ve been thinking about it.

The thing is, my five ‘kids’ range in age from twenty-six to nineteen.

The baby of the family, Lulu, has nicked off to her boyfriend in Melbourne for Christmas and twenty-four year old Jonah, is celebrating Christmas in the big smoke as well. The other three are still in town and will be around for Christmas Day festivities but it’s not as if any of them cling to my apron strings. Purse strings maybe, but not apron strings.

Every single one of my kids has been on at least one overseas holiday this year and I can assure you I wasn’t invited to accompany any of them. Half the time they don't even tell me they're going. I find out afterwards when they present me with a snow globe from Hong Kong.

My ‘kids’ wouldn’t bat an eyelid at moving cities without me, if the opportunity arose.

I’ve told them all they can come with us when we move but strangely they’re not at all interested.

I think it’s something to do with the fact they’ve grown up to be secure, self-sufficient, well-balanced individuals who have interesting lives full of wonderful friends and passions of their own.

They don’t NEED me anymore.

But that’s not something we as parents should grieve over.

It’s proof we did our job properly, don’t you think?

I’ll miss them of course but you really can’t live your life for your kids. That would be too stifling for them.

Besides, my other five, hairy babies (see above) give me all the slobbery cuddles I need when I'm feeling lonely.

While you're here, I'd like to thank you for being such an interactive reader of my blog this year. You make it all worthwhile, I mean it. I hope with all my heart that you and your family have a very happy and safe Christmas.

Best wishes and love,

Pinky xxx

Christmas Conspiracy Theories!

I’ve been a bit bored this weekend and have resorted to reading conspiracy theories on the Internet.

Stuff about Osama Bin Laden still being alive and living in disguise as an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas as a cover for working with the CIA who are planning to take down the Illuminati who’ve managed to communicate with aliens on the planet Nibiru which is hiding behind the sun but is in a direct collision course with Earth. In the meantime the Catholic Church is hiding documents which prove the Hadron Collider will destroy the Earth by creating a gigantic black hole and the only person who can stop it is JFK who is also still alive and living in a secret location on Mt Ararat in, you guessed it, Noah’s Ark.

Stuff like that.

F-A-C-T-U-A-L stuff, guys.

Read more stuff on the Internet and learn something through research guys.

As a matter of fact, I’ve come up with a few conspiracy theories of my own.

1. The government is forcing the medical profession to tell us that alcohol is bad for us (lol) because we have our most creative ideas and can see the bigger truths when we’re pissed. Why, just the other afternoon Scotto and I came up with a brilliant invention while we were in the swimming pool drinking wine. We were hooting and high-fiving like crazy it was such a brilliant concept. I’d tell you what that freakin fantastic invention was but it’s not patented yet and I don’t want you nicking our million dollar idea. Plus, I don’t really remember what it actually was… but I’m sure it’ll come back to me soon.

2. Santa is not real. I saw him in Kmart, then I drove really quickly to Target and he was there as well and it wasn’t the SAME SANTA! Not only that but the Santa in Target was really tall and the Santa in Kmart looked like he’d be able to ride Makybe Diva in the Melbourne Cup. Santa is invented by the New World Order and all those Santas are really just a bunch of disguised Rothschild cousins trying to stimulate the economy by making us buy presents ensuring that we stay poor while they get even richer.

3. Stone fruit is available all year round but it’s only available to us poor people at Christmas for $25 a kilogram. Meanwhile, the Rothschilds feed nectarines and lychees to their chickens every day of the year. Well… the Rothschild’s slaves feed the chickens, I mean, not the actual Rothschilds… because they’re too busy having secret naked meetings in the woods around pentagons and stuff.

4. There is a conspiracy theory about poo babies. Some people say the spare tyres on your belly are just poo accumulated from eating too many rum balls and mince pies. Believe me. I’ve tested it out and the spare tyre is not full of poo. The same thing goes with a ‘wind baby’. Even though you feel 2 kilos lighter when you let Fluffy off the chain, wind doesn’t weigh that much unfortunately.

5. There is a theory that Turduckens are clandestinely made from a chicken stuffed inside a duck which is stuffed inside a turkey. Personally, I find this to be ridiculous.
I know in my heart it’s just a turkey with a really big poo baby and who the hell would eat that?

Any theories of your own?

The Force Awakens Review: No Spoilers

   

NB: If viewing on phone turn phone to landscape.

                                                          

In a galaxy
 just down the road
 in a nice cinema where you 
are allowed to take a glass of 
wine in with you, I saw the latest 
episode of Star Wars. I’d been dragged 
there by my husband who giggled in excitement 
as the opening credits rolled onto the screen and I 
knew it was probably going to be a very long two hours, twenty 
minutes with a lot of anxious, whispered interrogation from myself as to 
which sister, mother, brother, cousin, robot, hairy creature each character 

represented. I knew there’d be a lot of jokes I didn’t get and that the only actor I’d 
recognise was Harrison Ford because the last Star Wars movie I watched was way back in 1977 when episode four had just been released which doesn’t make any bloody sense no matter how many times I have it explained to me. So, all in all it was pretty good especially the part where I got to watch every single man in the theatre sprint to the toilet and back because they didn’t want to miss one second including my husband who I’ve never seen move so fast in my life. Go and see it because the new robot is quite cute, the lead actress is great and there is no sign whatsoever of Jar Jar Binks in the entire movie which can only be a good thing. 4/5...

I Met God Tonight

Scotto and I are on a budget since we’ve both resigned and are waiting to sell the house, so when we’d arranged to meet some friends in the city for dinner we thought we’d save on cab fares and catch the bus there and back. It seems a bit pedestrian… but what can you do when you don’t have an income?

It all went well on the trip in, but when we left the restaurant at 8:00pm the buses in town travelling to the suburbs were far and few between. A menacing tumbleweed flew past me in the deserted street.

“Let’s go and sit at the bus stop outside the cop station,” I suggested, looking around at the dim lighting and uninhabited streets. “It should be safe there.”

There was a skinny, puny guy with a shaved head, wearing no shoes and patrolling the pavement at the bus stop. He looked fairly harmless, I thought. Slightly psychotic but not in a meat head sort of way. One whack with my handbag if he tried anything funny and he’d be prostrate on the pavement within seconds. My handbag is pretty fudging lethal.

We sat on the bus stop seat and naturally, the weird guy immediately made a beeline for us, goosestepping up and down in front of us, listening to the doof doof on his headphones and staring at us with a glassy, zombie-like expression.

After a few minutes of awkward, blank staring, Scotto smiled at him and said kindly, “Gidday mate. How’s it going?”

The man continued to glare at us in the same unfocussed fashion. He smirked at us and hissed something under his breath as if he was Voldemort on a particularly bad ice trip.

“Are you okay?” I stammered, watching the poor guy’s face twitching in spasms at us and rolling his eyes in a not very gracious fashion.

“Gay!” he shrieked, his cold eyes piercing mine . “I’m not GAY!”

“Nooo,” I replied in hushed, mortified tones. “I said, are you… OKAY?”

“I’m not GAY!” he howled at us. “I’m GA-BRI-EL! The Archangel! I’m GOD!”

Now I know this might sound silly, but for a fleeting second, it crossed my mind that perhaps he was God. I mean it is Christmas time and you know how in the Bible it was always the poorest of the poor and all that stuff. Maybe this was a test… I tried to stop giggling.

“Look!” God shrieked, lifting up his ragged t-shirt. “What’s missing here?”

I was mystified. All I could see was the tattoo of a snake on his cadaverous belly. (Scotto told me later he was looking for a belly button because if he didn't have a bellybutton then he was definitely God.)

“A rib!” shouted Scotto after a few seconds of discomfort.

“Yes!” screamed our new friend. “It’s the missing rib! I’m Adam!”

I could see he had a bit of a dent in one side of his ribcage. Maybe he was God. Who am I to judge?

“Look out behind you!” he suddenly cried out as he cringed in horror. “It’s STEVE!!!!”

Scotto and I both jumped out of our skin in panic and whipped our heads behind us, but there was nothing but the masonry block, brick wall of the cop shop.

“Who’s Steve?” I asked in terror, wondering what the fudging cops were doing right now… having a fudging cup of tea I supposed while we were sitting three metres away about to be murdered.

“STEVE, is my boarding house roommate! He’s the DEVIL! He’s SATAN! Steve follows me everywhere the bastard! ”

“Well, that’s not very nice,” I nodded in sympathy. “What did he do to you?”
“HE TURNS THE AIR CONDITIONING OFF IN OUR ROOM!” Adam/God/Gabriel shouted. "HE'S SATAN!"

“I’m GOD!” he shrieked again, scaring the pigeons in the eaves of the cop shop. “I’m fu#$ing BULLETPROOF! Someone fired a shot gun at me and it didn’t leave a f#@ing mark on me! See these shadows behind me??”

We squinted through fully dilated pupils at the space behind him and nodded in terror.

“They disappear when I turn around because they can’t LOOK ME IN THE FAAAACEEE!”

Then he got a bit carried away after that, "I gave Moses the commandments! I don't care if he dropped them!" he ranted.

It was at that stage, we both started thinking this was turning into the "Life of Brian: Part Two" and I turned to Scotto, “Can we really not afford a fudging taxi fare? I really think we might have a bit of a splurge. What do you reckon?”

And so we did.

Romantic Picnic Fail

Scotto and I went for a swim and a romantic picnic at a local waterhole called Alligator Creek, yesterday. We haven't been on a romantic picnic for years. 

I had visions of water droplets cascading from my transcendent, sleek body and shaking them off as he watched the crystal dewdrops splatter gloriously from my tanned and non-cellulite ridden thighs as I performed a non-awkward, triple pirouette underneath the waterfall.

While it seems like asking for trouble to deliberately place ourselves within snapping distance of an alligator, I can assure you there aren’t any alligators there… plenty of those saltwater crocodile things, but thankfully no alligators.

When we arrived we discovered the creek and waterholes were completely dried up anyway. 

No cascading water Elle McPherson-type erotic scenes for me it seemed.

But in truth, I was more concerned about the deadly snakes in the area. Fortunately, the grass in the picnic grounds was so parched and dead it was really just dirt and you’d be able to spot an Eastern Brown slithering towards you from fifty metres away. Especially if he was wearing a hat (which he should have been on the sweltering 35 degree day). 

Even if the snake tried to camouflage himself with a hat, you’d be able to hear the crunching of desiccated leaves as he slithered… unless the snake had learned to make curlew noises to disguise the crackling of course. Then we’d be dead within five minutes of the bite, if he gave us a good one. 

Still, Eastern Browns are only the second deadliest snakes on land and the Inland Taipan, which is the deadliest snake, prefers to keep to itself so… meh. Eastern Brown is a loser.

We hadn’t been to Alligator Creek for ages because last time we went on a romantic picnic; Scotto was attacked by a goanna and savagely bitten on the finger. It was his own fault for trying to feed it a piece of marinated steak after I’d energetically pointed out the warning signs but as soon as Scotto gets a whiff of the bush, he starts thinking he's a cross between Steve Irwin and Bear Grylls and mistakenly believes he has an affinity with all creatures great and toothy.

Cooking without oil: I use my own urine instead.

I frantically reiterated my warnings about delusions of grandeur when we arrived at the creek and Scotto promised not to feed anything except me. 

Imagine his surprise when, as he was cooking some fat sausages on the barbecue, this little mongrel flew down and snatched a sausage off a plate then landed on a low branch smirking at us as if to say, 

“You never expected that from a merry, little, fudging kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree did you, ya bloody unsuspecting tourists?”.

The little mongrel's gloating didn’t last long though because another kookaburra swooped in and started a vicious pecking match over the sausage. Within seconds, a scrub turkey was in on the action and it was like a scene from a zombie movie where all the zombies are wearing feather boas and fighting over someone’s severed head. 

 It gave Scotto such a fright he burnt his hand on the barbecue.

The entire time we sat eating our lunch, we were conscious of two pairs of eyes boring holes in our skulls as we shovelled the sausage and bread down before Satan’s evil, winged creatures could snatch it from our hands. 

The scrub turkey malevolently circled our table as I wielded a blunt bread knife in its direction and reminded it of what the favourite poultry treat for the festive season is.

“Look!” I pointed at the sign on the picnic table. “We’re not allowed to give you anything, you bastards. Can't you read?"

There were no laughing kookaburras to be seen that day, just a couple of deranged, voracious feathered fiends with pointy beaks who wanted our lunch.

Mind you, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t laugh because legend has it, if you hear a kookaburra laugh it means someone in the vicinity is pregnant and we were the only people there that day... what with the lack of swimming facilities, murderous heat and fanatical, rabid wildlife running amok in the place.

I'll fudging take what I fudging want!

We slowly packed up the esky when we finished, keeping a cautious eye on the sadistic sentinels in the gum tree.

“When I give the signal, make a run for the car, Pinky,” Scotto hissed out of the corner of his mouth, trying not to alert the sinister bird life on what was about to go down.

He reminded me of Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity and I got a bit turned on to tell the truth.

Anyway, I almost tripped in the skirmish because my shoes were slippery with sweat and frightened slobber, but we managed to escape with our lives and drove away leaving a cloud of dust and two disappointed, psychotic birds in our wake.


I’d call that a romantic picnic fail, wouldn’t you?

Life without a Penis

On Thursday I went to coffee with the Buzz Club (my teacher besties).

There’d been a long flurry of FB messages on Wednesday night because one of our group had to be flown down to Brisbane for emergency surgery on Tuesday. It was serious. None of us had been able to sleep we were so worried about her. She’s doing okay, thank God.

The decision of where we were going for coffee took up another long bustle of inane and pointless messaging. Finally we agreed on a time and destination and the next day I arrived 5 minutes early at the cafe and sat waiting for about fifteen minutes, twiddling my thumbs, cursing their tardiness under my breath and silently tut-tutting teenagers with their arses hanging out of their shorts walk past.

Finally, in a fit of impatient fury, I rang Kyles.



“Where the hell are you bitches?” I hissed into the phone. “I’ve been sitting here by myself for half an hour! The waitress thinks I’m a homeless person. She’s taken the packets of sugar off the table!”

Naturally, I’d gone to the wrong cafe in confusion because of the countless places that had been suggested the previous night.

“It’s your own fault, Pinky!” they all screeched when I stalked in, wild-eyed and cranky. 

"You're going senile," Kazzy quipped.

Coffee with the girls transpired as it usually did with smutty reflections on how the silhouettes painted on the wall resembled penises and Shazza volunteering to pose for a prank photo with one of the said penises. We snorted and giggled in our usual infantile camaraderie.

“I’m going to lunch with my old friends I haven’t been out with for fifteen years, tomorrow,” I chimed. “I’ll have to act classier than I am with you lot. Those ladies are from the other side of town. The good side of town. They’re more refined and stylish. There’ll be no joking about penises.”

“Ah garn!” the trouble-making element of the Buzz Club slurped her skinny latte. “We’re classy, Pinky!”



I was a bit nervous meeting up with my friends from another life, yesterday. We’d all belonged to a playgroup together when our kids were toddlers. I’d followed their children’s progress over the years, often seeing them in the newspaper, winning awards or graduating with medical degrees and other highly successful endeavours.

I was immediately in trouble the minute I arrived because I was supposed to make the restaurant booking and typically, I hadn’t… so we had to lug uneven tables together. It’s always my fault, it seems, even after fifteen years, always the scapegoat.

Despite not having sat down to a wine and lunch with these ladies for so long, the conversation still managed to rapidly degenerate into subjects such as; unexpected but thrilling orgasms in middle-age, the particular preferences for how we all groom our squish mittens, and what laser surgery we’d all had over the years. 

To be honest, it was as if we hadn’t seen each other for a week. I'm positive they would have loved my penis observations.

Some bonds can’t be broken.

I thought about it and I realised it’s not a coincidence I have the same familiarity and connection with this group of women as I have with the Buzz Club.

I just have bloody good taste in friends.

Lisa, Pinky, Jill-Anne, Sally and Penny.

How to be Unorganised this Christmas!

Have you heard about those weirdo people who buy fudging Christmas presents at the New Year sales and save them to give them to their loved ones the following Christmas?

Oh, how organised and economonistic they are!

WRONG!

Who wants to get a horrible, dusty, mildewed, creased, present that's been squashed in someone's closet for twelve months?

Who keeps stuff festering in their cupboards for twelve months anyway?

Imagine the vermin and bacteria breeding in those out of date products!

Where do they store them for twelve months anyway? Their underwear drawers? Shudder.

Let’s face it; almost everything becomes passé after a couple of months. Fashionable colours change, fads alter and children’s preferred superheroes are stripped of their relevance and reverence. People are going to know you’ve taken the bargain-basement route. People aren’t stupid.

One year, pineapples are the go, they’re everywhere. There are pineapple ashtrays, pineapple seafood trays, pineapple tampon holders. Pineapples are so NOW! The next year the spurned and disgraceful pineapple is sent to the warehouses in shame and suddenly the pomegranate is all the go. 

Nobody is seen dead with a fudging pineapple in their house, and there you are on Christmas day, presenting Nana McDonough with a set of pineapple cheese knives and everyone KNOWS you bought them in January.

And kids can sniff out a twelve month old present from 200 metres.

Imagine if I turned up with a 2014 Minion doll I’d purchased for 75% off last year for my nephew, Henry, this Christmas? Sure, he’d have liked it last year but Minions are so over in 2015.

He’d be scowling at me with his screwed up ten year old face, “What the FUDGE is this Aunty Pinky? I asked for this LAST year! This is so YESTERDAY! I fudging HATE you. You’re a fudging CHEAPSKATE, Aunty Pinky!” He’d toss it in the swimming pool in a fit of rage and curse me while embracing the far more up to date Star Wars, RT D2 toy his other aunty had gifted him.

And I wouldn’t blame him.

Besides, the last thing I want to think about on Boxing Day or the New Year is going to the bloody shops. I’d rather gnaw off my own arm… and believe me, my teeth aren’t that sharp anymore so it would be painful to do it.

As far as some people go, the annoying wankers who go out in June and do all their Christmas shopping… well, perhaps they should start living their life in the present and stop being over-achieving dickheads, because it’s Winter in June and they should be home snorting hot chocolate, wearing fluffy slippers and listening to Michael Buble instead of snuffling around the junk aisle at Kmart looking for cheap bath towels and novelty pineapple soap holders to offload on their alleged loved ones.

As far as I’m concerned, Christmas is about spontaneity. Leave it until a few days before Christmas so at least your gammy gifts aren’t infested with weevils and wood lice. It might be more stressful but at least you’ll be there with the rest of humanity; red-faced, blood pressure rising to dangerous levels and listening to that dreadful piped music along with the hordes of other desperates.

That’s the real spirit of Christmas. Suffering. (Or is that Easter?...  I’m confused.)

Are you an organised pineapple or an unorganised pineapple?

An Open Letter from a Teacher to the Parents of Primary Schoolers.

I have one and a half days left of the school year at the college I spent the last ten years teaching at.

(*Never end a sentence with a preposition!)


I just saw the grade three class I taught in my first year of teaching at the school, graduating in grade 12. Wow! What a bookend to my ten years of teaching at this school!

It’s a sentimental moment for me and as a parting gift, I want to let the parents in on some truisms…

1. We teachers genuinely like your children. Adore them actually. In point of fact, your children often appear in my dreams. I’ll say to one of them, “Hey Darius! I dreamed I was a chicken last night and you were my egg!”

Darius will eye me suspiciously and reply, “You’re really weird Mrs. Poinker.”

That will be the end of the conversation and Darius will avoid me for a week, but we really do think about your kids all the time. It’s a thing.

2. We spend a lot of our personal money on your kids. Rewards such as stickers, lollies and random prizes, such as $3 tuckshop vouchers, come out of our own pockets. Multiply that by twenty-five and it does add up. At one stage I was spending more on my students than I did on my own five kids. (I only brought up the $3 tuckshop voucher because I just remembered I owe one of the tough kids in the class a voucher and I better pay up tomorrow or I’ll find a bloodied horse torso on my pillow in the school holidays.)



3. We suck up the rewards we receive from your offhand praise.

When you, the parent, make a blasé comment that little Malvolio has begun reading fiction novels because me, the teacher, read the entire seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia, OUT LOUD, in my MOST expressive voice… after morning tea… every single day, my heart sings like the bluebirds encircling Cinderella in the Disney movie. My vision goes all cloudy and I want to hug myself.

4. We will remember your child for the rest of our lives. I taught speech and drama to hundreds of students for fifteen years before starting as a primary teacher, so all up I’ve been teaching for 25 years. I remember every single kid.

5. Teachers are humans and sometimes we have bad days, for example… I’ve just received a phone call advising me of a mammogram recall because of a suspicious shadow, or the pool man just rang to say my filter has self-immolated and it’s going to cost me $1500 minimum for repairs, or my teenage son has just written off his uninsured car and he still owes me $7000 on it but doesn’t have a proper job or any sense of obligation.

Sometimes we may raise our voice a bit louder than normal. Sometimes we might be a bit mean. But the fact is, your kids are going out into a world where their boss is going to have a bad day and kids need to learn that life is about ups and downs and they better get used to it.

6. We will look for your children in years to come. We’ll scan the newspapers to check if any of our protégés have won the Nobel Prize or won a fashion design competition or an Oscar and if they do we’ll nudge our sleepy husbands in the ribs and take full credit when we see it on the telly. We wish success for your kids just as much as you do. Really.



7. The honest thing is, we chose to be teachers. We truly love your children and have their true interests in our hearts. We’ll never forget them and we secretly hope they’ll never forget us.

8. My favourite teacher at school was my French teacher, Dr. Crispin. I loved him because he taught through anecdotes and treated his students with respect. I've always tried to be that sort of teacher.

Who was your favourite teacher and why? I'd love to hear.

My Top Tips for Smuggling Contraband

The Claw

Why is it so much more irritating and itchy when a mosquito bites you on your foot compared to other parts of your body? 

You can’t scratch it as hard and when you do you get scum under your fingernails and it tickles so you’re actually torturing yourself whilst relieving yourself. I don’t like it.

Only a few things put me in a vicious mood, for example, when I’m all dressed up and my hair blows into my lipstick, or when I spill the sugar container all over the floor and no matter how thoroughly I clean it up I can still feel it underfoot and mostly, when mosquitoes bite me on the fudging foot.

There are a lot of mozzies around because of the muggy conditions here in the dry tropics. When I say ‘dry tropics,’ I mean ‘oppressive, desert-like, apocalyptic, hell hole’.

Today, our bloody internet went down and our pool turned green which meant no swims for us and no entertainment, just sweltering in the 35 degree heat and watching the boring telly.

Why do broadcasters think all day golf is even remotely interesting television viewing?

I switched over to ‘Border Patrol’, (the most xenophobic, bogan show ever) and wondered why people who get caught by the federal police don’t watch the show to get tips on how to smuggle more effectively? The old lining on the suitcase thing is getting a bit tired and I’m sure the Feds would appreciate more of a challenge. What ARE they teaching kids in schools these days?

My top tips for smuggling would be:

1. Sweating is a dead giveaway. Don’t sweat.

2. Don’t stuff things up your botty or swallow things because it can explode inside you and make you sweat quite profusely alerting the authorities to some sort of mischief afoot.

3. A bunch of bananas and a bag of grapes are NOT worth a $300 fine. You can buy bananas and grapes in most countries, so why?

4. If your hands are shaking and your eyes are darting around the place, you’ll be detained for an internal examination. Try to act natural or they’ll find those bananas before you can say ‘Yes, I have no bananas in my toiletries bag.’

5. Don’t have neck tattoos because it makes you look highly suspicious. People who have neck tattoos are obviously tough, impervious to pain and wouldn’t flinch at swallowing thirty condoms full of cocaine. Plus they’re probably the type of person silly enough to do it. (No offence to anyone with a neck tattoo. Really. I think they look lovely.)



6. Smuggling drugs in lava lamps is a recognisable ploy because lava lamps went out in the eighties. So did oversized wigs.



7. Ignorance is no excuse for the law so when you fail to declare the raw fish and exotic bean sprouts in your luggage, cocking your head to one side in a fetching manner and saying, “Que?” will fail to get you out of a fine.



If I was going to smuggle anything into the country, I’d dress as an unnaturally fat nun. But I wouldn’t hide things under my voluminous habit. Oh no. I’d have Scotto dressed as an old aged, crippled, visually challenged person and I’d have all the contraband stuffed inside his artificial leg. They’d check under my habit then be so embarrassed when I came up clean, they wouldn’t dare to touch poor, blind Scotto.

Now back to those mosquitoes. Why does the foot hurt so much compared to the other bits?

Sex After Fifty

I’m fifty-five. Yeah, I know, I don’t look it or act it… but I freakin am. Jaysus! 

(I totally look it.) Fifty-five is almost fudging SIXTY.

So what happens to women as far as sex goes when they get past fifty? It’s an interesting question because ,let’s face it, we aren’t all Olivia Newton John.

(She’s my role model and I reckon she goes for it like a fudging rabbit.)

Well… this is my take anyway…

1. You’ll probably get a whole lot of extra urinary tract infections because the distance between your who’syourfather and your boombalishus becomes a lot fudging closer due to the thinning of certain infuriating soft tissues. Urinary tract infections are moderately tolerable if you're having sex in multiple positions in various dangerous locations, thirty-five times a day. 

But if you have a normal bonk once a week and you still get them... then it's a travesty.

2. Even though you’ve finally realised what pops your cork at the age of whatever, it doesn’t matter because you’ve lost the taste a bit because of other temptations such as; sleep ins, clean, unsullied sheets, and over-indulged dogs who refuse to get off the bed.

3. Sometimes it can hurt because of the friction and the thinning of the before-mentioned, infuriating soft tissues. You can grit your teeth and bear it but… God, really?

4. You’ll feel uninspired and unsexy because when you look down at the boobs which fed five ravenous babies, they’re now dangling like a pair of golf balls in football socks (the boobs not the babies) and your stomach fold is encompassing your caesarean scar. If you don’t feel sexy in yourself, then honestly... it’s all gone to hell in a washing basket.

5. The thought of the extra energy needed to get yourself in the mood and the exercise required during the ‘act’, doesn’t quite balance up with the pitiful amount of calories which will probably be burnt. Seriously? All that effort has got to have some benefit or why bother?

6. Imaginative positions such as ‘the wheelbarrow’ or the 'reverse cowboy' are completely ruled out due to back, knee, ankle, groin and jaw strains.

I could go on but I fear I may be over-sharing, and I'd hate to do that. All I can say is, enjoy it while you can and that if you don’t use it you lose it.

Interested in hearing thoughts from the over forties?

Don’t Bother with the Diet Crap!

So guys, the sheriff is back in Dodge City.

Remember how my husband, Scotto, left town to start a new job and I wasn’t going to see him again until we sold the house?

Well, we haven’t sold the house... despite dropping the price by fifty grand as a red spot special. And it was unfeasible financially for the husband to stay away… or for me to move down what with all the dogs, so... he’s back.

Sans job.

I too, will be sans job until 2017. Fortunately, we both have a combined 9 months long service leave between us, so we’ll be okay.

But the thing is, while he was away for the last month, I thought I’d surprise him with a modelesque physique when I next saw him. I thought I’d have him dribbling in lust at my Kate Moss body after weeks of self-imposed starvation and physical torture when he next saw me.

I’ve been living on 800 calories a day and power walking for an hour a day at 5am before work.

Every damn day.

In the meantime, he’s been skyping me as his cheesy pizza sits heating in the oven, or his 500gram steak sizzles on the stove with garlic bread on the side with a family block of chocolate set aside for before bed, tucked into his pillow case.

When I finally saw my husband today, after an entire month of estrangement and deprivation on my part, he laughingly joked, “Don’t look at my big gut, Pinky. I might have put on a kilo.”

I replied politely, “What gut, silly? You don’t look any different to me sweetheart.”

Then he replied with the most soul destroying words I’ve ever heard.

“Neither do you, sweetie!”

FUDGE THE FUDGING UNIVERSE!



(Sorry for swearing.)

What the hell? Are you like me and are just starting to think, I'm just going to let it all go to hell in a hand basket?