The Power of Valuing People

Scotto and I have been down here on the Gold Coast for three (and a bit) months and although I was worried about securing a job, I’ve actually managed to work for almost the entire of second term. 

The first school, where I spent a month teaching drama, was lovely (albeit stressful), but the second school where I’ve been teaching a grade 6 class for the last month has been positively amazing.

Despite having to hide the fact I was suffering the agony of shingles in the neck and head (of which I think I’m finally at the end of that dark tunnel of hell by the way), the entire experience has been absolutely wonderful.

The school had me sitting in professional development training workshops for twelve hours (during school time) while a relief teacher relieved the relief teacher (me).

How amazing is that? They were paying me to learn.

The teachers are friendly, the students are intelligent, capable and caring and the tuckshop food is indisputably the best I’ve encountered.

There’s a coffee shop in the carpark that sells real cappuccinos. I could get a take-away if I wanted for my drive back up the mountain. 

I have a multi-million dollar view from my classroom. 

Instead of a dusty old car park which I would previously have stared wistfully at, seeking out my car, wishing I was in it driving home at high speed, I now look out at a lake with swans and pelicans and other water loving birdies gliding over its pristine surface. I feel like I’m in a fairy tale princess palace set on a verdant and majestic hillock (whatever a hillock is).

There’s something VERY different about this school.

Not only do they seem to have a strong sense of value and respect for their students’ mental, physical and academic welfare, they also seem to deeply care about their teachers, even the scabby old relief teacher who’s staggered in from North Queensland with her piece of paper from Yokel's 'R Us University* and a handful of dodgy references**.

It was because I felt so appreciated right from the very first day at this school that I suffered through the torture of errant, shooting nerve pain and turned up every day with a twisted, agonised smile on my face. 

It was because I felt respected as a professional that I didn’t just call in sick and be done with it. It was because of the faith my employer had put in me that I didn’t let them down.

I believe this school follows the philosophy that if you value people, they will live up to your expectations.

It makes me wonder what else I can do for my students to show them how much they’re respected and what results it might produce.

Thoughts?

*Actually a normal university I was just being silly.

** References are not at all dodgy except for maybe one.

Mingling with Shingles

Whenever I’d thought about shingles (the illness, not the chalet-style roof tiles), I’d picture Albert Steptoe and his raggedy, grubby, fingerless gloves. I thought it was an older person’s disease; the type of older person who was a rag and bone man and lived in festering filth and had various, named rats as pets.

The nurse from the medical practice just rang and said that according to the results of the swab, that excruciating pain in my neck, head and ear and the itchy rash across the right side my chest, neck and back is most definitely the result of the shingles virus.

Enter… filthy, old, festering woman.

I cried when the nurse told me on the phone because my head was hurting so badly at the time. I cried when I walked in the door yesterday after work because I’d been barely surviving a living hell, all day. I’d take some painkillers and they’d dull the unbearably vicious stabbing for an hour, but then I have to wait for three more hours before I could take any more.

I cried again last night because even three glasses of red wine and two Mersyndols couldn’t completely settle the rogue ganglion of nerves on my right upper torso.

I’m actually conversing with the pain… abusing it in fact. “Fudge off!” I yell at it every time I get a particularly brutal spasm. “Fudge off, ashmole! Nobody asked you to chime in!”

Scotto just came home with some ointment.

I’m spreading ointment on my shingles. How attractive does that sound, Harold?

The ointment contains capsaicin which works by burning the nerve endings and somehow tricking them into not hurting. The trouble is I can’t put it on my scalp because of that stuff on my scalp called hair. Oh bugger it. I’m rubbing it in anyway. But the label says it will take four weeks to work anyway. I’ll be in the nut house by then for sure.

It could be worse, I know. I could have a tummy bug. There’s nothing worse than feeling nauseous. Or I could have the flu. I hate having a fever and that feeling of not being able to breathe. Or I could have something terminal.

What’s a bit of vice-like agony between friends, eh?

You can get a needle to prevent shingles.

If I’d only known about it.

Anyone who’s had chicken pox can develop shingles and it’s especially likely if you’re over 50 years of age. My advice is to go and have the vaccine because it’s a bloody horrible thing.

Plus, I just found a new red lump on my chin. Soon it will creep insidiously onto my face and people will think I have leprosy or just plain old school sores.

Things ain’t cooking in my kitchen, a strange affliction has come over me (told you I was going nuts).

Feel free to send flowers.



Have you ever had shingles or do you know someone who had them and survived?

In the Neck of Timing.

The neck.

Since Friday morning until now, I’ve been in excruciating pain.

It’s felt as if I have a knife, gleefully twisting in my jugular region, every ten seconds, just for the spite of it.

Via Google I self-diagnosed shingles after a bubbly, red rash appeared on my collar bone… but then I realised that the rash was where I’d burned myself after over-exuberance with the heating pad I’d had permanently attached to me all weekend.

By Tuesday (this morning), the pain had crept up to the back of my head and behind my ear. It was unrelenting. Every ten seconds I’d get a savage stab of pain that would cause me to twitch in an unattractive fashion akin to a convulsing, box jelly fish victim.

“Are you alright, Mrs Poinker?” my grade six students kept asking when I repeatedly jerked and winked at them like an unco-ordinated drunken pirate.

It’s been a nightmare. Even driving to school with a painful pulsating throb in my neck was a trial. I was yelling at myself in the rear vision mirror I was so cranky.

So today I went to a proper physiotherapist and now the acute, intense and piercing sensations are only occurring every half hour and easing. It’s such a relief. I bloody love physios.

One thing I was really looking forward to when I arrived home today at 6 o'clock, was a hot shower and the sensation of scalding water beating down hard on the compacted muscular constriction that is the isthmus between my shivering torso and my pin-sized head.

Imagine my horror when Scotto (who’d had a day working from home), informed me that he’d lovingly replaced my shower faucet in order to bring me into the twenty-first century. 

He’d installed a fudging fancy one.

It takes me at least three weeks to acclimatise to a new shower faucet. 

It takes me at least three weeks to work out how to stand in exactly the correct position to maximise the benefit of the stream, how to adjust the taps to achieve the ultimate temperature and at least three weeks to get to know how the balance of temperature control and pressure works in order to be able to have a shower that makes me feel like a fudging Mother of Dragons, not a cold, bedraggled rat chasing around the intermittent drips endeavouring to get a bit wet.

If I have a bung neck, the last thing I want is a new shower faucet that looks like a model of an alien spaceship from the movie set of Independence Day.

But, I had to be nice because it’s the thought that counts.

It was sweet of him to think of me but… TIMING!!!

Hot showers and baths are a religious experience when you’re in pain.

How about you? Do you get to know your shower faucet intimately?

No rude comments, thank you very much.

What the Fortune Teller Said...

As it was Scotto’s birthday, we’ve spent the entire weekend celebrating. Yesterday Mum and Dad took us to the Fox and Hound, a pub which was transported (like the convicts) all the way from England to Australia because some fella missed his local pub in England. 

I’m not even fibbing. Read about it here.

Outside the Fox and Hound

Half the pub is done up in the English tradition and the other half is Irish. There was a wedding happening in the Irish half so we dined with the Queen. I had beer-battered cod and chips served on newspaper.

The fox must have suffered a bit on the journey over I think because it barely moved the entire time.

Poor little sick fox.

Today, Scotto and I went to a winery on the mountain for lunch which was lovely, and then we went meandering down the street to seek out an adventure.

Tamborine Mountain Winery

 

Because I’ve had a vicious spasm in my neck for the last three days, I suggested we stop at a massage place I’d spotted on the way. Normally I buck up about strange people touching me, but my neck has been soooo painful, I was desperate.

We entered the establishment but there was no-one about, except that we could hear someone giving a Tarot card reading in a curtained off room just past the door. 

We waited patiently, scanning the books about angel visitations, chakras and admiring the dream catchers whilst eavesdropping on the boring love prospects of the person having the reading behind the curtain.

I noticed a trashy detective novel, a pack of ciggies and a lighter on the counter and hoped they belonged to the massage person who might have slipped off to the loo or something. My neck was killing me.

Finally the curtain drew back and a frightened looking person scuttled out, paid their bill and suddenly we were left facing the fortune teller.

“Any chance of a massage?” I asked hopefully.

“No. The massage guy didn’t turn up today. Would you like a Tarot card reading instead?” the lady rasped.

I looked at Scotto who just shrugged non-committedly. He always leaves the big decisions to me.

“Okay,” I sighed. “But feel free to have a ciggie first.” 

I’m nice like that.

She looked at me with a knowing smile and a wink.

After her ciggie break, we sat opposite her in the small room and she asked me to shuffle the cards.

Naturally I dropped them all over the floor.

“Did you get them all?” Scotto asked in an urgent tone, worried I could initiate an entirely bogus reading by accidentally missing a card under our feet which could possibly reveal a potential billion dollar windfall from Lotto.

The Tarot card reader laid the cards out in neat piles.

“Is there anything you don’t want me to tell you?” she asked, cocking her milky, glass eye at me in a diabolical fashion. (That’s made up.)

“Yes,” I said. “Please don’t tell me when I’m going to die.”

She picked up THE FIRST TWO CARDS, looked at them closely. “Okay,” she said and then hurriedly threw the cards aside.

What the actual fudge? It seemed this whole reading was a farce. If I’m about to die so soon then why was I spending twenty-five bucks to have my bloody fortune read?

Then she said that either Scotto or I have a psychic ability. She said that one of us is the type who answers all the questions on quiz shows and doesn’t know where they get the answers from.

Well that would be Scotto, but that’s only because when we watch The Chase, he shouts out the answers before I have a chance, he’s often wrong, and the answers he does get correct are from pop culture knowledge he’s acquired from watching the bloody Simpsons.

I reckon she really meant that I was the psychic one because I suggested she go have a smoke and how did I know that she smoked? (I could smell it on her as well actually).

Anyway, then she started telling me some very strange things.

1. One of my son’s girlfriends is about to have a white-haired baby. (Not entirely impossible.)

2. A middle-aged freeloading man is going to come and live with us soon. (Who? Please don't, whoever you are. I don't like freeloaders or random middle-aged men.)

3. I’m soon to be awarded with glory and recognition for all my hard work over the last thirty years. (About bloody time.)

4. And then she told us something else is going to happen that is really terrible and it made me cry and Scotto had to hold my hand and pass me the tissues.

She made us tape the whole session and gave us her phone number and said if all the stuff doesn’t come true we’re to ring her and get a full refund.


I don’t like fortune tellers anymore. And my neck still hurts.

Do you believe in fortune tellers?

Ice Ice Baby

Sometimes, before I make my way up the mountain after work, I call in to the local Coles. It’s a colourful locale, full of a diverse cross section of the general society.

That’s code for, I think it’s full of people on ice.

I’m not a snob, you know that. I’m as rough as guts. I wear Ugg boots for God's sake.

But some of the people who frequent the shopping centre frighten even me. I don’t know if it’s the seventy year old ladies with full body tattoos, the men dressed in weeny shorts and nothing else except a pink, fluorescent beanie or maybe it’s the nine months pregnant teenagers walking around with no shoes on and a ciggie hanging out their mouths, swearing obscenities as they push the eight month old toddler in its stroller… but something unnerves me about the place.

Today, as I was buying my four dogs their three thousand dollars’ worth of weekly dog food, I saw a lady swaggering around the dog food aisle wearing a t-shirt with “ALL PEDOFILES SHOULD BE TORTURED” printed on it, right across her alarmingly swinging, massive boozookas.

I stood behind her later at the checkout, quietly pondering on whether I should politely inform her that ‘pedophiles’ was spelt incorrectly, but I thought better of it. She could have felled me with one vicious thrust of her upper torso.

Besides, maybe she actually meant ‘pedofiles’, as in, people who keep files on feet, or something.

Why she would want them to be tortured is a puzzle though.

Last week, after I’d just packed my groceries in the back of my car and had slithered into my seat, relieved I’d survived another shopping expedition in downtown Scaryville and was starting to back out of the park, I noticed there was a car which had pulled up behind me and parked, rudely blocking my exit.

“Here we go,” I thought in disappointment, “This is my first experience with road rage. This person is getting out of the car and will punch me through the window and I’ll be a vegetable for the rest of my life. I hope it’s quick and painless. I hope they’re not actually on ice and try to eat my face because that would definitely hurt.”

But the lady getting out of the car and coming towards me looked normal. Very normal actually, and she was smiling.

“Hello!” she grinned. “I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Linda!”

It took me about five seconds of idiotic blinking with my mouth open before I realised who it was.

Linda!

I’ve been in contact via blogging and social media with Linda for about three years but we’d never met in real life. She’d spotted my car, Golden Boy!

Wow. How miraculous!

She’s gorgeous. Just like I thought she’d be.

I knew we’d meet one day.

This is why I love blogging. I have friends all over the world and that world is getting smaller every day.

But tell me, are you frightened by the ice epidemic? I see weird, unpredictable people around a lot more. Or am I just being an old lady?

The Footy Files

I took the grade six boys to the school boy’s footy fixtures, last Friday.

I’m sure my colleagues at my previous school would be rocked off their socks to hear this little fact, me being such a precious pernickety poof about standing in the sun for extended periods and all.

As a drama teacher (not a fudging footy coach) it was paramount I wear the correct costume on the day, so naturally I wore my one and only Cowboy’s supporter’s shirt in order to underline the fact that I am, in fact, a solid footy chick. It was the same shirt I purchased six months ago to bullshit to my former colleagues that I follow the footy. I’ve worn it twice now.

Me and the lads got on fine on the bus. I adopted the footy macho vernacular very well I thought.

I promised them if they won their game, I’d perform a ‘dab’.

I didn’t know what the fudge they were talking about but they promised me that a ‘dab’ wasn’t rude or humiliating, so I reluctantly agreed.

Before we left on the bus trip, I showed them a photo of me with the NRL grand final trophy the North Queensland Cowboys won last year and took on a progressive tour of local schools. 

Me and the NRL trophy.

One young man peered at the photograph and cautiously commented, “Noice one, Mrs Poinker. Is that a dancing trophy or something?”

“Look again, buddy boy,” I drawled. “That ain’t no fancy dancin’ schmancin’ trophy. What do ya think I am? A pansy or something?”

“Coooor!” he exclaimed when he finally realised. “It’s the NRL trophy!”

Why he thought I’d be showing him a dancing trophy is anyone’s guess.

When we arrived at the footy field I was relieved to see one of the Dads had turned up to do the warm ups because I would have had to demonstrate yoga or interpretive dance as a warm up and I don’t think it would have gelled with the young guns.

I was also extremely pleased to see that the other team we were playing were half the size of our boys. “Get on there and slaughter ‘em,” I hissed. “Throttle the little sooks.”

Anyway, our team won 46 to 10.

Their team was comprised of about 40 tiny ingénues whereas we only had 13 kids (albeit huge), so it wasn’t entirely unfair.

I did the ‘dab’ (in front of all the parents as well) since they’d won the game but I still don’t know what it bloody means. The boys all laughed their heads off so I’m a bit worried.


Any enlightenment? Will I be struck off the teacher’s registration board?

How to Save Time in the Morning

I’m typing this out in my flannelette, sparrow-inspired pjs, snuggled under the downy quilt with the Chihuahua nestled at my feet because it’s 15 degrees on the mountain and I’m a tad chilly.

I’m very annoyed actually, because I just washed my hair and I used the shampoo twice instead of using the conditioner because I can’t read small print without my glasses. I wish they’d make ‘conditioner’ a much longer word like ‘conditionifieriser’ so I could discern the difference in my myopic state.

There you go, that’s a bloody brilliant marketing tactic for you Pantene! Someone should do it. Or maybe the shampoo companies could just use a larger fudging font. Now my hair will be even more witch-like than usual tomorrow.

It’s a bit like in the morning when I take my iron tablet. Is this my iron tablet or the dog worming tablet? I wonder as I squint at the packet, too lazy to walk three steps into the bedroom to retrieve my glasses.

I know I shouldn’t wash my hair at 9 o’clock in the evening and go to bed with wet hair anyway, because;

1. It can cause one to catch the Bubonic plague.

2. It makes your hair stand up on its roots like a cocky’s comb the next day.

3. A wet lock of hair flicked in Scotto’s eye/face in the middle of the night usually inspires the wrath of Khan.



It does cut down time in the morning though. There’s no blow drying rubbish, no combing out vicious knots created from the menopausal tossing and turning of the sweaty, discouraged head and no panicked situations with my long hair inescapably tangled in a blow drying brush and me hysterically screaming out to Scotto to come into the bathroom with a sharp pair of scissors at 6:30 in the morning.

No, instead it’s just me staring into the mirror thinking, “Oh well. I look like Donald Trump. It’s not that bad. I’ll just put a bit more eyeliner on.”

I have other time-saving, morning short cut routines which allow me a bit more shut eye.

I neatly lay out the Glad Wrap for my sandwich the night before which saves at least 3 seconds, I gargle my mouthwash at the same time I perform my morning ablutions, plus I have a list of things I need to remember to take to work on a piece of bright, orange paper which I check before I walk out the door so I’m not flustered and swearing, running back inside the front door fifty thousand times after I’ve already locked it and kissed the dogs goodbye.

The list says: Nicorettes, phone, lunch, keys, laptop, reading glasses, sunglasses, snack, extra snack, water bottle, diary, blue thing.

Scotto noticed it one day in his bleary eyed state and asked, “What’s the blue thing on your list, Pinky?”
I didn’t tell him because I like to keep our marriage in a romantic state of ‘mysterious adventure’. You know, keeping it alive and sexy after ten years of imprisonment.

Go on. What do you reckon the blue thing is?

Now that I've milked this silly riddle for as long as I can I will tell you it's one of those frozen bricks you use to keep your lunch from giving you food poisoning. I don't even know if they have names.

Help Me, Wayne Bennett!

Hey guys!

I started my new contract teaching Grade Six last week and I think I’ll bloody love it. These kids are so smart they could even recognise Bill Shorten on BTN as he swept by on the telly screen. I can hardly recognise him to tell the truth. I keep thinking he’s Stanley Laurel.

Come on! There’s a definite resemblance. He lacks the distinctive eyebrows necessary to be a proper Prime Minister but he has that comedic look about him don’t you think?

Not only are the kids at this school (most probably) a bit cleverer than I, they’re also very nice and placid. I dearly hope I don’t ruin the calm ambience their awesome teacher has created in the classroom. I’m going to try my hardest not to anyway.

One disturbing thing I have to do over the next four weeks is to chaperone a dozen boys to football every week. 

I attempted a trial run last Friday.

What do I know about footy? I know that when you chuck a fake ball at someone it’s called a dummy pass. That was my only legitimate comment at the end of the game.

“Hey buddy! Great dummy pass!” I limply enthused at the biggest boy in the sweaty enclave of eleven year old behemoths after the game.

All of the little ingrates pointedly ignored me.

I patted a few of the boys on the back and mumbled stupid things like, “You were awesome, buddy!” But they just shrugged me off.

I stood on the sideline with the coach for the entire game asking mummy questions, like,

“What happens if someone gets hurt?”, “Is it safe to tackle around the throat like that?”, “What exactly does ‘offside’ mean?” and “When do they do the Haka?”

My entire footy knowledge comes from having a boyfriend when I was 19 years of age who played rugby league and from owning a North Queensland Cowboys supporter’s t-shirt and complimentary bread and butter plate with the Cowboys emblem on it.

That’s it.

Not exactly Wayne Bennett, am I?

At least I know who Wayne Bennett is, I suppose. That’s got to be worth something.

Anyway, I sent off a frantic message to my old buddy teacher, JB, who used to do all the footy stuff at my old school and he’s sent me some great stuff for training the team. 

Lol.

I just need to harden the fudge up, hey matey buddy.

And in the words of the great Wayne Bennett, “I’ve always been able to live with failure but I’ve never been able to live with not doing the best that I could.”



Fudge. HELP ME RHONDA!!!!!!!!!!

Would you be up for the challenge? Any tips?

Happy Mother's Day to All Neglected Mothers

My darling Mum at about 5 years of age.

I love mother’s day now that my five kids are all in their early twenties.

Back when they were little, they’d fight about whose embroidered face towel/secondhand Beatrix Potter statue/Engelbert Humperdink CD/ avocado soap/ toxic, fluorescent bath salts, was the best present… but now there’s no fighting at all.

Mainly because there are no presents to speak of.

But that’s okay.

I know. It’s my own fault because I left my all kids back in Townsville. I abandoned them for a new life on the mountain, so why should they bother with me anymore?

There is one son working in Brisvegas at the moment, so Scotto and I made the onerous trip up on a train to that hideous place yesterday so I could shout my son lunch for Mother’s Day.

God I hate Brisbane. I don’t think there’s a worse place on Earth (aside from Bowen). The only good thing about Brisbane is the bus drivers. I know this because the train line was under repair so all the cranky commuters from the Gold Coast had to disembark the train halfway through the journey and catch a succession of fudging buses to get to Southbank.

It was very confusing but the bus drivers took pity on us and one driver even let us on for free. It may have been due to my limping what with the blisters from all the walking and everything.

But despite the irritating bother of travelling that inconvenient distance, it was okay because I was so looking forward to seeing my bonny baby son.

My last born babe promised to let us buy him lunch to celebrate my special day at 1:00 pm, you see, and I was quite excited. But as Scotto and I sat patiently drinking our wine at 2:15 with rumbling tummies and he still hadn’t turned up, I sent him a text enquiring as to his whereabouts.

“No sorry,” he texted back very politely. "No buses until 3:10pm, mother. Can’t make it.”

But that’s okay because it meant I didn’t have to pay for his lunch and saved myself some money. It’s all good. Please don’t feel sorry for me.

I thought it was odd that the buses from his location in Brisbane were so infrequent, but never mind. I’m sure he tried his hardest. It was a mother’s day celebration after all and I knew he’d attempted everything in his power to get there.

It probably had nothing to do with hangovers or apathy or anything. I shouldn’t let my imagination get the better of me.

So I decided, after my bittersweet disappointment, that instead of worrying about myself this mother’s day, I would enjoy spoiling my own dear mother. We have to grow up and realise it’s not always about us some time, I suppose.

Scotto took portraits of Mum’s beloved spaniels and we had canvas prints made of them to give to her. Plus, for the first time in years I can have her around for lunch since she just lives down the road now.

I think it’s time I allowed my chicks to flutter from the nest and time for me to spend more time with my own parents. It’s the circle of life really. I just hope my kids are there for me when I get older. 

Like when I’m on my deathbed... I’d really like them to show up.

As long as there are no buses involved it should be okay.

Happy Mother’s Day.



P.S. Thank you to Thaddeus for the surprise parcel and the salt and pepper shakers in the shape of terriers and the dog shampoo. They are very lovely. You are still in the will. xxx

Strange Things Said in My Drama Classroom

John Cena
 Image Credit

Teacher: Right. Does everyone remember which fruit they’re supposed to be?

Students: Yeeeeeesssss, Mrs Poinker!

Teacher: Good, let’s start the game.

Teacher: Wait! Stop! You’re supposed to be a mango, young man. Why are you being a nectarine?

Boy Student: John Cena!

Teacher: What did you just say?

Boy Student: John Cena! John Cena!

Teacher: Why do you keep shouting, John Cena?

Boy Student: Because he’s a WWE champion.

Teacher: So what? Don’t yell out silly things in class. Now be sensible and act like a mango like I told you to.

Boy Student: I WANNA BE JOHN CENA!

Teacher: Well you have to do well in school, be respectful and get good marks to be a WWE champion, so for now you have to be a mango.

Boy Student: (wrestling another student to the floor) Can I be an orange instead?

Teacher: No. Get off the floor. I’m writing your name on the board. You can stay with me at lunch time.

Boy Student: That’s not my name.

Teacher: (confused as not quite au fait with all 700 children’s names yet and pauses with whiteboard marker in mid-air)

Well, what is your name?

Boy Student: John Cena!

Other students: His name is Rasputin, Mrs Poinker.

Teacher: (finishes writing ‘Rasputin’ on board then turns back to the class)

Why do you have a tissue sticking out of both of your ears, Lillith?

Lillith: (shrugs).

Teacher: Take them out and put them in the bin.

Lillith: (coming back from the bin and wailing loudly) Rasputin just called me an idiot.

Rasputin: No, I didn’t. She called me a loser first!

Lillith: You took my chair!

Teacher: Go back to your seat and I’ll talk to him at lunch time. Are you supposed to be a banana or a watermelon, Lillith?

Lillith: (Picks leftover tissue from ear) I fink I’m an apricot.


Teacher: We didn’t have any apricots. Does anyone remember which fruit Lillith is supposed to be?

Students: Nooooooo, Mrs Poinker.

Teacher: Does anyone remember what fruit they are?

Silence.

Teacher: Okay. Forget the fruit. We’ll start again and be vegetables, and this time, try to concentrate. If I tell you you’re a cabbage then try to remember that you’re a cabbage.

Rasputin: This game’s boring. Can we play WWE Championships instead?

Teacher: It’s only BORING because you keep interrupting and we can’t get started, Rasputin. Go and sit in the corner. I've had enough.

Rasputin retires to the corner of the room and wrestles happily with himself until the end of the lesson.

The rest of us play the game of Fruit Salad in the guise of vegetables.

Literally.

Could someone please send me a large sum of money so I can give this game away? If not, why?

Pinky and the Penii

Sorry about the photo.

It was too hard to resist. We went for a walk from Kirra to Greenmount yesterday and the path was resplendent with glorious penis trees. One can’t merely walk past a penis tree without capturing the beauty. They’re circumcised and everything. Penises galore! Or is it ‘penii’?

I’m not sure, but Scotto became so sick of me gushing over the penises, he threw me over the railings and if it wasn’t for my superior upper body strength I’d have fallen to my death on the rocks below.

Sometimes on Mondays, I ask the kids at school what they did on the weekend.


“Aw… went to Dreamworld… Seaworld, Wet and Wild, Movieworld,” they reply in a blasé manner, as if going to a magical theme park is becoming a boring activity for them.

The kids on the Gold Coast are spoiled for choice but so are the big kids.

Scotto and I have embarked on a weekly luncheon date, touring the surf lifesaving clubs down here. So far we’ve been to Burleigh, Kurrawa, Coolangatta and Kirra. That’s four out of about seventeen. The meals are cheap, tasty and generously proportioned and the views are undeniably spectacular as the surf clubs are built on prime real estate. 

I love watching the surfers and wind kiters burning off the calories I’m eating, the delicious surf club chips which are crispy on the outside and mushy and salty inside.



Scotto likes the thin, crunchy ones but I prefer to get my mouth around the big, meatier type with a decent circumference. (Chips that is. Not talking about penises anymore, guys.)


Once we’ve eaten our way through the surf clubs we’ll start on the fifty million restaurants down here.

Back in Townsville, we mainly went to the same places. Actually, we mainly went to the one same place, the Yacht Club. The staff would watch us swanning in and roll their eyes, exchanging furtive glances and stuffing a few extra bottles of Chardonnay in the fridge.

Nobody knows us here which is an excellent state of affairs.

Two travel blogger friends, hello Kathy and Jan, suggested I do review type blogs of all the surf clubs on the Gold Coast and it sounds like a good idea what with me being an ex-Surf Girl and everything. I think I owe it to the life saving association, really.

Grilled Haloumi and salad.

So far Burleigh is my favourite because the fried Haloumi melted in my mouth but Coolangatta was nice because of the great shops close by. 

Coolangatta SLSC view

We picked up this beauty at an antique shop in Coolangatta. Ideal for the guest bedroom!

I really enjoyed my calamari and chips with aioli at Kurrawa, but Kirra gained extra stars due to the random penises around the place.

View from Kurrawa SLSC

Kirra SLSC (Yep, we drove the tractor down from the mountain)

Stay tuned for more in the series of Pinky and the Penii  Surf Club Reviews, next week.

What's your favourite pub style meal and what's your ideal chip?

W, X, Y and Z

I’m pretty sure that kid is drunk.

That’s what I sound like when I’m drunk, anyway, like a baby who can’t talk proper.

So guys, in typical Pinky Poinker fashion, I have failed to complete the April A-Z challenge of writing a post every day and have condensed W, X, Y and Z into one post because… well, what’s going to happen? It’s not like I’ll be arrested or sued or anything. *

Besides, it means instead of annoying you for four days in a row it’s only once.

So…

W stands for Weird.

I think it’s very weird that “The letter ‘I’ comes before ‘E’ except after C”, except in the fudging word ‘weird’. What the hell? It’s very cruel for immigrants and new English speakers that they can’t even know how to spell ‘weird’ properly because of the stupid rules they’ve learned.

X is for why don’t more words start with X? It’s bloody racism that’s what it is. It’s Xenephobia, actually.

Y is for Yuk.

I felt yuk today when I watched my German Shepherd spew in the garden then return to his recently regurgitated chunks of Meaty Bites minutes later and gobble them down. What the actual yuk? Who eats their own vomit? Sometimes I hate my dogs.

Z is for Zealots

I hate zealots. Those annoying people who tell you how to live your life.

I was teaching a drama lesson today and the kids had to mime out a scene in a particular nominated room in a house.

I told one group of ten year olds to act out a scene in a dining room.

“What’s a dining room?” asked one rough-haired individual.

“It’s where you eat dinner,” I replied.

“You mean the lounge room?” he asked, eyeing me in confusion.

I felt no Judgy McJudgement outrage when he said it, more relief really. My kids spent most of their family dinners hunched around a coffee table, slurping up their dinner watching Seinfeld, so I’m in no position to sit on my high horse.

Personally, I think family dinner table time is hugely overrated. My memories include being in trouble for slouching like a leper, being chastised for feeding the poodle my brussel sprouts and gagging on the cold choko when everyone else had left the table and I was being forced to finish my dinner.

There was never any “catching up on our day in a civilised and jovial fashion” happening.

It’s all bullshit. Family dinners at the table are a formidable experience.

What do you think?


· If I am to be sued this was written by Pinky Smith.

Vapid Learning

V is for Vapid Learning

April A-Z Challenge

So... I was teaching the preps (4 to 5 year olds) a new game today during their drama lesson.

It’s a challenge teaching preps anything, let alone drama, because they haven’t quite realised they’re alive yet. They just seem to float around the place in an external bubble of weird, amniotic fluid, seemingly oblivious to their true surroundings.

In the game, one student has to be the detective and suss out which child in the circle is hiding a ball on their person (in their knickers or under their shirt, preferably the latter).

“You all need to trick the detective by looking really guilty,” I laboriously explained. “Make the detective think it’s YOU that’s hiding the ball.”

“What’s a guilty?” asked one little blonde thing with fatty cheeks begging to be squeezed.

I groaned inwardly.

“Who here knows what guilty means?” I asked the class.

Not one of them knew, so I explained via an allegory about a dog that chewed up a shoe and was ashamed of what he’d done. I even acted like the dog with a mopey, guilty expression on my face and received a round of laughter from the room. 

They’re a tough crowd so I was chuffed.

“Or you could try to look innocent,” I added in a rash moment of over-confidence.

“What’s innocent?” Blondey lisped, cocking his head to the side in a fetching manner.

So then I enacted an entire scene where a dog is guilty of chewing up shoes and a cat (who was actually the culprit) acts all innocent and has an innocuous, but smug expression on its face, because it's secretly glad the dog is in trouble. 

There was more hysterical laughter from the peanut gallery.

I love preps but it’s almost as if they deliberately try to be dull-witted imbeciles just to annoy teachers. How can you NOT KNOW what innocent means? 

 Are they freakin, four years old or something?

I’ll teach the class of preps for a whole fricking hour and they see me, literally five minutes after the lesson, and come up to me when I’m on playground duty and say, “Do I know you?”

“Yep,” I sigh. “I saw you five minutes ago.”

Goldfish. That’s what they are.

I made the mistake of asking them today at the end of the lesson, “So, what have you learned in the last three weeks I’ve been teaching you drama?”

Five hands shot up.

“I learned how to swim to the side of the pool all by myself,” stammered the first respondent.

“No. I mean, what have you learned about in DRAMA?” I emphasised. “You know! All the stuff we’ve been doing here in this room!”

“I yearned dat dogs chew up shoes and they're very norty and cats are good,” whispered another one.



Yep. My work here is done.

Uncensored

U is for Uncensored

April A-Z Challenge

It’s my last week fulfilling a three week relief contract at the school and I’m starting to panic about getting more work. I was thinking about what else I could do to support myself and it occurred to me I could open a Fudge Shop. I can make fudge I think. I could give all my culinary inventions funny names.

I think I’d call the shop, It’s a Fudging Miracle.

I could include products such as the following on display,

Extra chewy fudge called, Harden the Fudge Up.

Fudge to take along to comedy movies, called, It’s Funny as Fudge.

Fudge to serve at funeral wakes, called, Fudge Me Dead.

Fudge to send to friends you haven’t seen for a while, called, How the Fudge Are You?

Fudge for weddings, called, Congratufudginglations!

Fudge for graduations, called, You’re a Fudging Genius, Son!

Fudge for people in hospital, called, Fudge, that Hurt!

Fudge for annoying kids called, Shut the Fudge Up.

Fudge to keep in your glove box on road trips, called, Where the Fudge Are We?

Fudge especially for telephone salesmen and the like, who knock on your door at 7:00am on Sunday morning, called, Why Don’t You Go Fudge Yourself?

Fudge for those times like when your phone drops out mid-sentence, called, What the Fudge Just Happened?

Mother’s day Fudge called, Motherfudger.

Fudge to eat when your laptop bluescreens, called, It’s Fudged.

Fudge to eat when after your laptop dies, then you lose your phone, called, Unbefudginglievable.

And yes, I had absofudginluterly NOTHING to write about tonight for the letter fudging “U”.

But I think there’s definitely a market for my concept.

Any other ideas?

Trail Walking and Witch Spotting

T is for Trail Walking

April A-Z Challenge

Lately, every time I look in the mirror, I see a spongy silhouette of cottage cheese staring back at me in bulgy-eyed confusion. “How did this happen?” the face in the mirror implores. “Why?”

I suggested to Scotto that we should attempt the infamous “Witches Falls” circuit trail walk on Sunday afternoon in order to burn off some excess calories.

The trail is only 3.2 kilometres long BUT, the final 1.7 kilometres are up hill and I thought it might sort out whether or not I have blocked arteries and angina or not.

(As it turned out, I wheezed and coughed on the way back up, but there was no chest/jaw pain and I recovered from my puffing after a minute or two so I must be in moderate health at least.
That’s my medical check for the year done anyway.)

After walking for a kilometre or so, stressing about what would happen if one of us was bitten by a snake or twisted our ankle and the logistics of seeking out critical assistance, it dawned on me that the bloody highway was a mere three metres above us and that if we needed urgent medical help, we pretty much just had to hop over a fence. The aroma of families cooking sausages in the parkland directly above should have alerted me earlier.

It was a walk of delicious spicy smells and cool breezes; majestic trees, a litter of leaves and juicy, green moss.

Can you spot any witches?

“How much further to go?” I whined to some returning, energetic kids as we picked our way down to the waterfall.

“Not much further!” they replied cheerily.

It struck me that I’d done the reverse of the, “Are we nearly there?” that kids are famous for.

They lied of course, just like we do to them. Bastards.

But shortly after that, the trail took us even deeper into the rainforest and I began to fear for my life.

It began to rain.

I remembered the sign at the top of the trail stating, “Do not attempt trail in wet weather”. There was something about potential, unstable landslides… I think.

I thought my main concern on the walk would be looking out for errant witches lurking behind trees, but no, it was a fear of slipping down a greasy slope and toppling over a 552 metre cliff that had me in its grasp.

This must be what the witch cooks for her dinner.

I probably would have been thrilled to see a witch at that stage, actually. We were very alone in the forest as no doubt other more canny walkers had finished the walk BEFORE the rain set in.

“Well, this is a bit crap,” I complained to Scotto when we finally reached the falls. “All that climbing for this pathetic puddle? What a bloody rip off! Plus, I haven't seen a single damn witch!”

Hmmmf! Witches Puddle more like it!

“Keep going, Pinky,” Scotto replied with a patient sigh. “That’s not the waterfall.”

We went around a bend and I spotted the real lookout.

Sorry about the slack photograph but I was too scared to walk out on the platform because… it was like looking down the Moon Door on Game of Thrones.

Which leads me to the true purpose of this post.


Who is excited that Game of Thrones Season Six starts tonight? Blearrrrrggghhhhh!

Singing on the Mountain

S is for Singing on the Mountain

April A-Z Challenge

Last night we went to a birthday party on the mountain, with real life mountain folk in attendance and it was an excellent opportunity for us to make some friends up here.

Scotto’s business colleague, Drew, invited us to celebrate his wife’s birthday at the local bowls club.

“It’s karaoke,” Scotto added cautiously when he told me about the invitation.

This immediately set off a piercing siren of panic in my head. Flashbacks of remorseful mornings after disastrous karaoke nights flickered across my field of vision.

“It sounds great,” I tentatively commented. “But under no circumstances allow me to get up and sing because you know that will ensure we never have any friends on the mountain and I will be so regretful and embarrassed after I sober up I won’t be able to leave the house for months.”

“Absolutely,” Scotto agreed.

There’s only one cab driver on the mountain and we met him last night. Walking into a party where you don’t know anyone at all necessitates the guzzling of fizzy-feel-good beverages for Dutch courage so we needed to be chauffeured.

We sneaked in and Scotto went straight to the bar whilst I loitered in a corner and scanned the room. We were the only people wearing coats. The locals were getting around in summer frocks and short sleeved shirts while Scotto and I looked like Roald Amundsen and his dodgy sidekick setting off for the South Pole.

I slithered out of my jacket unobtrusively. No need to look like a weirdo at the outset.

Scotto returned grasping two glasses and sporting a huge grin. “Ten dollars fifty a shout!” he beamed. “I bloody love the mountain!”

Before long we were mingling with the lovely birthday girl, Nic, and her guests.

Normally, back in Townsville, whenever we’d go to a karaoke night I’d end up with a headache from listening to drunken pisspots screaming out the lyrics to Jimmy Barnes songs. 

People would only sing in groups of five or ten because no one could actually sing a note in tune. In the same way that ducks fly in flocks and wildebeest travel in herds for safety reasons, I suppose if there are a lot of people singing off key you’re less likely to be singled out and booed off the stage.

When the first mountain person stood up to sing, I desperately hoped they’d be terrible just in case my steely resolve not to sing was smashed by fizzy-feel-good beverages.

“Don’t be intimidated by her,” Drew said to us as we looked on incredulously at a girl performing a gutsy, perfect rendition of a Pink song. “She used to sing professionally.”

But as each mountain person took to the stage, the standard seemed to get higher and higher until eventually even the girl serving drinks behind the bar slid up on stage and belted out a couple of numbers garnering herself a standing fudging ovation.

Clearly, mountain air is good for the lungs and vocal cords.

“Are you guys all punking us?” I asked Drew. “Do all of you belong to a bloody choral society or something?”
“What’s a choral society?” he frowned.

Suddenly, like a horrifying dream, our names flashed up on the screen and we were being shepherded on to the stage. Thank God for fizzy-feel-good beverages which dulled the humiliation to a bearable level. 

Neither of us can sing at all but I think we made up for it with Scotto’s air guitar and my interpretive dancing.

People cheered us. Well, one person did. And somebody wrote on Facebook that we really are part of the mountain now. Wooohhhooooo!

There is video evidence of our performance but it's best we don't watch it, eh.

What's your favourite song to sing at Karaoke?

Recycled Water can Cause Death!

R is for Recycled Water

April A-Z Challenge

Up here on the mountain we exist on rainwater tanks for our water.

That means our drinking water has to run across the Colourbond roof which is covered with gecko poo, flying fox urine (think Hendra virus), bird shit, asbestos, lead paint and fudge knows whatever else decides to excrete its bodily fluids inside our guttering. Not to mention whatever insidious creature chooses to reside in the water tanks.

There’s an advertisement in the local rag that states, “We clean water tanks! Dead rats at the bottom of your tank? Toads? Possums? Whatever! We can get rid of it for you!”

It’s mainly the ‘Whatever’, I worry about.

What the hell can be worse than a rotting possum decaying in the bottom of the reservoir you use to collect the water you clean your fudging teeth with?

Literally five seconds after we arrived on the mountain, it wasn’t a cup of tea my mother offered me, but a filtered water jug.

“Make sure you use this,” she whispered in hushed tones, pressing it into my hands with a sense of urgency. “The water must be filtered . Always filter your water or bad things will happen.”

Where the fudge are we? I thought. A third world fudging country?

I must say, the filtered water tastes lovely. It’s clean and pure rainwater. I used to love the glass of water I left beside my bed back in Townsville (which I’d grope around for at 2 in the morning suffering from the dry horrors) because it was ionised, but the filtered water tastes like that all the time. I’m drinking water like never before.

The only trouble is, if it doesn’t rain on the mountain, the water runs out.

We don’t have a problem at our place because we have three  water tanks (possibly housing dead, rancid marsupials), but other people seem to be running out lately and I keep running into water trucks driving down the mountain as I’m driving to work.

These humungous trucks, on their way back down from delivering town water to needy locals, drive in first gear all the way down the hill and if you get stuck behind one… well… say goodbye to your brake pads. 

That’s not good on an 18% gradient. Especially if you’re enjoying your life at the present time and don’t fancy the idea of dying an excruciating death via a fiery crash over a craggy mountain peak.

Sometimes the truck driver puts on their indicator to let you know you’re safe to overtake. That’s fun; speeding past a big truck on a steep slope in third gear trying not to get up to too high a speed because of the 90 degree turn on a cliff face coming up and all.

Plus, I’m always suspicious the truck driver is playing a stupid trick on me because he’s bored with carting water up and down the hill and just wants to liven up his day by initiating a blazing accident he can tell his wife about after work.

Anyway, I like to look at the bright side of things and I suppose it’s all good exercise for my blood pressure. A bit of stress at seven o’clock in the morning careening down a treacherously inclined death trap has to be good for the reflexes.



Do you have a dangerous commute to work or is it boring?

Quantifying my Attributes as a Teacher

Q is for Quantifying my Attributes as a Teacher…

April A-Z Challenge

For the first time (in the last ten years) I’ve had to write myself a resume in order to sell myself to schools on the Gold Coast.

The trouble is I haven’t really done anything notable… as far as joining committees and getting on the latest bandwagon “trendy crap in education” thing goes.

I’ve been a bit of a lone wolf during my teaching career, apart from teaming up with an excellent music teacher who I partnered up with to produce three musical productions for the school I worked at. 

Aside from that I’ve just done my own thing.

Mostly it’s stuff I can’t put on a curriculum vitae.

For example, these are the things I’m most proud of but can't put on my resume:

For every ten years I worked at the school, at LEAST one child would forget to bring five bucks for the Mother’s Day craft stall and in order to put a stop to the ear-piercing relentless sobbing, I would dig into my own pocket to buy someone’s Mum a mother’s day present.

Every year it happened.

I never received any acknowledgement for it, but what the hell. It was mother’s day and that’s special to kids until they become arsehole teenagers, isn't it?



I mothered and cuddled at least five children whose actual mothers were in prison, listened to their heart wrenching cries of abandonment and hid my tears as best I could.



Bought shoelaces for a child who’d come to school for two weeks with no laces because his Mum was going through a rough divorce and was too busy drinking herself into a stupor to go out and buy new shoelaces.



Petitioned (a very kind) school principal to fork out for uniform shirts for the boys from the family above because they were wearing shirts two sizes too small, their buttons were popping and they were getting teased and lashing out… then getting into trouble in the playground.



Visited students in hospital, taking up letters from the class and buying carefully selected presents in order to cheer the sick student up.



Gave multitudes of students my lunch because they’d come to school with nothing in their bag. Not that missing a meal or two hurt my waistline.



Visited a dying mother at home who was too sick to come to a parent/teacher interview, attempted to comfort her that her son would be fine and not to worry whilst all the time blubbering, snotty tears inside.



Held the devastated child of the mother above during the weeks after the funeral and tried to find the right words to say. Struggled a lot.



Grieved for the Mum and the whole family all the while thinking about my own five children and how they’d feel if it had happened to our family.

I won't carry on too much, you get the drift.


The thing is, I’m not alone. Every teacher does this sort of thing every day.

We just take it on as part of our job. Most of us do anyway.

But how do you write, “I really care” on a resume?


I don’t even know how a teacher can write a bloody resume really.