What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)
Lunch class? Pah.
How about smoking behind the newsagents across the road class?
Or bunking off and going to Drummonds class?
Or maybe those free periods either side of lunch when my friend would drive us to the Dome on the Kings Road and I'd drink gin and tonics before returning to my A Level English Literature class?
Lunch class, schmunch class.
Hello internets. Just thought I'd pop by to let you know that:
(a) the PGCE is going great guns (though I haven't actually been allowed near a child yet, so this may well be the calm before the storm)
and
(b) well, I think this one deserves a picture:
Bridesmaid gig on the weekend again, my fourth trip down the aisle. I love, love, love being a bridesmaid – being primped, pampered, photographed and drinking champagne until in comes out my ears, then having a big ol’ sook because the bride is beeeyoootiful and I love you soooo much and you desherve to be ha-ha-happy...uh oh, where the hell is my uvver shoe? Hic.
But most of all I loved this:
This is the reason I didn’t wake up on Sunday with a sizzling hangover. I alternated my tequila shots with surreptitious gulps from the chocolate fountain, which is clearly the sensible thing to do on a night out. In fact by the end of the night I found myself sober* enough to be babysitting the other two bridesmaids, the best man, and one random Phillippino guy who introduced himself as Arnie. I shoved everyone into a taxi, directed it to the closest 7-11, fed everyone microwave chicken rolls and convinced Best Man to keep his hands off one of the bridesmaids because dude, she’s REALLY not interested. Plus you’re married and have a child, you jerk. Then bridesmaid vomited out the side of the taxi and Best Man suddenly lost interest. Ah, young love.
I don’t think I’m too keen on being a bride. They’re unfailingly tense, weepy and strung out. Cheer up girls, it’s a husband, not breast cancer. Husbands are a lot easier to dispatch.
*According to the Rye Pub breathalyser, I had a healthy blood alcohol level of 0.07. Another bridesmaid blew 0.18 then cried because she’d wasted $2 on a breathalyser.
Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?
I have an ice pack in the freezer in case there's a volcano. or I'll just run whatever it is under cold water, I reckon.
I also have my Cave Plans ongoing - including who's in and who's out. Plus the tent that Big Boy won't let me get rid of (we haven't camped since 2005) 'just in case there's a nuclear holocaust' and we need to escape the city for the woods.
Day 2 in Turkeyland began with a trip to the ‘beach’. There was no sand, which I can’t say is an entirely bad thing. I never enjoyed coming home after a trip to Gunnamata and dumping 3 kilos of sand out of my undies and sweeping the sand dunes out of my car. There were also no sharks, stingrays, rip tides, stonefish, poison cone shells or irukandji jellyfish. None of that beachy stuff, just sunbeds and umbrellas and a cute cafe owner who scurries around to serve you chips and beer while you’re sunbaking. Gunnamatta can kiss my Mediterranean suntanned ass, thank you.
Once we’d roasted ourselves to perfection (apologies to 50 year old Inga – I know you’re going to wind up wrinkled and melanoma riddled, but bugger it, this mocha skin is worth it!), we went in search of food and found ourselves at the Bay Bay Cafe Bar.
Let me say this about Melbourne: yes, there is an extraordinary range of bars, clubs, cafes and restaurants in Melbourne. It’s our fair city’s drawcard. There’s something for everyone. Chinese, Japanese, cosy, pumping, jumping, bohemian, singles, swingers, younger, older, decrepit – there’s something for every taste and budget. However, if your something is nice ambience, nice decor and great hospitality, expect to pay an arm and a leg for it. Heaven help you if you want a smile as well. For my entire stay in Kaş, I didn’t walk into a single place that wasn’t oozing with atmosphere, friendliness and amazing customer service – regardless of menu prices. Bay Bay is no exception; it consists of three landscaped levels built into a hill overlooking the marina. Taking the lushness of my surroundings into account, I scanned the menu with my Melbourne brain – pizza toast, 5 Turkish lira. In a place like this, at that price, it must be miniscule, therefore I’ll order two of them. Mistake. Pizza toast in Turkish apparently means massive toasted sandwich the size of my head, overflowing with every kind of smoked meat and grilled vegetable imaginable. I ended up feeding most of them to some random kitties that clearly sensed my distress.
(Apologies in advance for any neck problems, I really don't know how to turn photos around on here)
Feeling a tad bloated, Fi, Mandy and I set off for walkies up the hill. Mandy and I are both suckers for fuzzy creatures, so when we found a herd of cats hanging out under a picnic table we leapt in cooing and stroking - scabies, rabies and fleas notwithstanding. Shortly a very fat, sweaty man came jiggling up to us. “Hello ladies! You like cats, yes? This my cats!” He then grabbed Fi’s wrist and fastened a bracelet to it. “This help feed cat – I look after, you give me ten Turkish lira, I feed this cats!” Before we knew what had happened, we each had a bracelet around our wrist and found ourselves relieved of 10 lira. Luckily Mandy was on the ball:
“This money goes towards feeding these cats, is that right?”
“Yes, yes! See, I give them food, water, they happy cat!” (they did have food and water, and looked inarguably content)
“And you also de-sex them, so they’re not producing more strays?”
“Yes, yes! Why not!” (clearly skirting the language barrier)
“No, do you use the money to have them DE-SEXED?” (here Mandy performed an amazing mime of a cat getting its bits chopped off)
“Ah, of course! No kittens!”
At which point one of the ginger cats turned around to display a stunning set of feline testicles. The Cat Man was unperturbed:
“No no no, I only do lady cats!”
Mandy rolled her eyes and we all stormed up the road. Examining the bracelets later, we realised they were actually quite pretty and decided not to return in the morning to thrash Cat Man into liquid.
It’s been precisely a month since I came back from Turkey, and the memories are fading distressingly fast. Somewhat like my ability to demolish an entire box of Whitman’s Samplers without it going straight to my thighs. Damn you, disappearing youth. Damn you to hell.
Anyway, Day 1 in Turkeyland began with an incessant yodelling at 5.30am. Bloody muslims. Don’t get me wrong, I believe people should be allowed to worship in whatever fashion and to whichever spiritual entity they please - so long as it doesn’t wake me at some ungodly hour when I’m already so confused, jetlagged and hungry that I think I’m a hummingbird. Fortunately my father had the presence of mind to text me shortly afterwards with “TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION YOURE IN TURKEY” (sure, he can fly a plane, build a house and design a hydro-electric generator, but he’s only capable of texting in capital letters. FFS.) After yelling some rather culturally insensitive abuse at the mosque next door, I dragged myself up to the terrace for a buffet breakfast.
‘Breakfast’ was fruit, cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, boiled eggs, yoghurt, honeycomb and big hunks of bread. Now I like most of these items, just usually not prior to 10am and certainly not mixed together in one meal. Neither my brain nor my stomach could really fathom any sort of game plan for attacking the buffet, so I went back to my room and ate the Snakatas I’d smuggled in for emergencies.
A bit later on, two of the other five ‘Budgies’ arrived. We called ourselves Budgies because about three days into our stay someone referred to us as baçi, and explained it means ‘sister’ in the colloquial sense. It’s pronounced somewhat like budgie, so we adopted it and used it ad hoc, ad nauseum and ad misericordiam. We were overjoyed when we found out the Turkish for ‘five’ is beş, prounounced “besh”. Five Sistas = Beş Baçi’s...which sounds like Best Buddies! Check us out with our totally awesome multilingual play on words! Don’t worry, none of the Turks thought it was particularly spectacular either.
So Fi, Mandy and I hit the town. Kaş is a gorgeous little cobblestoned village – bear in mind I’ve never been anywhere near the European continent before, so I was fairly gobsmacked by the culture, the cute little houses and the general atmosphere. Inevitably, we wound up in a rug shop, owned by a bizarre fellow called Shonel – “Is like Chanel, but not Number 5 ok? Hahaha!” He completely fell in love with Fi, and proceeded to dress her up like a Turkish bride.
We got his entire life story, which included his short stint in Melbourne after marrying an Aussie girl purely for a visa. He gave us apple tea, chatted with us for a good hour, and became inordinately excited when we told him we had two more friends joining us later in the week, one of whom is blonde. It was immensely surreal for me, and it was the first time a sleazy wanker has filled me with such goodwill.
Feeling a bit hungry after the rug shop experience, we wandered into a quiet restaurant after the chef beckoned us in with a smile and some garbled English. This turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Not only was the food brilliant and the chef gorgeous, they served us several dishes on the house. (Partly because Fi ordered dolmades, and landed us with domates instead – that is, an entire platter of sliced tomato. Travel tip: if you’re ever in Turkey wanting dolmades, ask for dolma). This was also where I discovered helva – a dessert which is basically just raw cookie dough. I must have visibly peed myself, because every time we returned the chef brought us several kilos to devour. The swooning, hugging and cleavage probably encouraged him too.
What's the worst vacation you've ever taken?
A holiday's a holiday. Even I'm not one to complain about a holiday.
God I miss the days when I had time to blog at work. Or at home. Or even just in my head. Ever feel like somebody’s just pressed a NOS button in your brain and you’re rocketing through each day in a whorl of blue flame, burning rubber and bad movie cliches? Then you blow the welds on your intake manifold, fry your piston rings and realise you’ve seen Fast and the Furious waaaaay too many times. Mmm, Vin Diesel in an RX7.
Anyway, today I snuck out of work early and skipped the gym in order to cook myself a proper meal and sit down and do sweet, sweeeet FA. Check me out with my fully mad culinary skilllz:
That’s mushrooms, prawns, chilli, garlic, bok choy, corn and some other random vegetation.
Please don’t tell my mother or my best mate that I can cook. For years, both of these wonderful ladies have taken every opportunity to cook me the most delicious, nourishing meals in the belief that I’m on the verge of dying from beriberi. Which I probably am, but the culprit is bone laziness rather than any real deficiency in the kitchen. I hate cooking from scratch, but sometimes the occasion calls for it – like when you’ve had a f***er of a week and need some antioxidants. But more on that another time.
Who would you most like to be stuck in an elevator with? Least like?
(this presumably isn't a glass lift?)
Most like: the two hot doctors off TV - the "Medicine Men Go Wild". or Louis Theroux. or Big Boy - can't forget to include Big Boy (in case he reads this)
Least like: Any of my fellow commuters. I hate the lot of them.
is having some sort of crisis and refusing to work, so I thought I'd just come along here and see how we're all doing. Hey you guys! How are you? I am fine thank you.
So, stuff that is happening, firstly and most excitingly we are pretty much moved in to our new place. It is odd what you will put up with when you are renting, certainly when you are renting in London. The new place is like some sort of magical fabulous dream. Here are some of the things that I can't actually believe about it:
The hot tap runs hot.
The cold tap runs cold.
The taps all turn in an intuitive direction (three years I lived in the old place and I still got soaked everytime I turned the kitchen tap on.)
The lights all work.
The outside light works.
There are curtains! In each room!
There is no 'knack' to opening the front door. Or any of the doors, for that matter.
There are pictures on the wall. Hideous pictures, but they are steadily being replaced by our own pictures.
The shower works.
The clicker on the oven works.
The light in the oven works.
The radiators all work.
There is an airing cupboard.
There are window boxes and a teeny teeny raised bed by the front door.
There are stairs. STAIRS!! To the two double bedrooms. TWO BEDROOMS!
Other stuff that is happening:
Oscar is still not well, I think he really is asthmatic and won't grow out of it, but the docs still don't want to say when he is so small. Thinking of taking him to a proper asthma drop in clinic.
I have wasted a hell of a lot of money on myself this month (a hell of a lot) and now I am in a stress about money. But I guess as long as I don't buy anything at all for the next couple of months it'll even up.
I am doing stuff at work that is really interesting and in fact quite good fun but... BUT... I am only a Grade Three and this is going way out of my payscale. But how else would I get the experience? And they did mention it in the interview and I did say it was okay. And anyway I'm not going to stick at this forever. And I'm enjoying myself. So why am I moaning? I don't know! I'm not really moaning. I'm more saying 'look how clever and trusted I am.' I think. I am really really unconfident at work for some weird reason. Oh well. i am just generally feeling a bit uncertain of my own abilities at the moment.
