That’s that then

Did you see me? Last night? On the tele? Performing in the final at the Melbourne Town Hall? There was a card in the letterbox this morning from my neighbour, so I guess they were watching. I reckon my two best jokes (I think we call them gags) didn’t make it to the telecast. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

I tell you, watching that was worser than the actual perfomance. Am I really that fat? I said to the mister. Do I really look that fat? I really have put on weight, haven’t I? And so on. Stopped short of saying ‘I really should stop drinking so much’.

So that’s that. One of the most surprising experiences of my life finished with. I remember watching the Raw final on the tele last year and even then doing stand up hadn’t even crossed my mind. I never said you know, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do…I should do that, I mean I could do that, I’m as funny as that. Never thought it once.

Overall, I would say my best performance was the one I gave in the state grand final, but going to Melbourne and standing on that beautiful stage in front of 1400 people who laughed at my jokes (and applauded three of them)…my goodness, that was something.

In another big move, I started teaching myself cross-stitch last night.

feng shui, but not

Because the sound – which is a short, dulled tap on reinforced glass made by the beaks of piping shrikes come one at a time to sit on the window sill and peck at the insects into which said shrikes have put no personal harvesting effort beyond that required to balance on the window sill which, despite being part of the contemporary extension and not of the bluestone original, is not a particularly narrow or unstable one – is, even now, after three years of living here, the kind of sound which makes me jump and wonder but what was that and so is the kind of sound I would forget were I not reminded of it every day, because of that, I will leave the cobwebs on the outside window frames.

Making a difference one day at a time

You know that eight things meme? The one where you have to tell the interwebs eight things about yourself?

Well, I’m not doing that. But I’ve been overcome with the urge to let you know that I really used to love Knot’s Landing. I feel it is the most underrated of all the eighties soaps. It was heeeaaaps better than Dallas ever was. Especially when it was on at eleven o’clock on Sunday night and I had nothing to get up for on Monday morning except Chinese lectures and I’d already missed so many of those that missing another one wouldn’t hurt. I got a lot of knitting done in those days. And no, knitting wasn’t funky then.

Did I ever tell you that my first trip overseas was to China? From Port Pirie to China via Adelaide. The person in charge of us introduced us to some people who did the dubbing of television shows and that’s how I came to meet the woman who was the Chinese voice of Alexis Carrington-Colby. And that was good. But I would have preferred to meet the voice of Valene. Me and my mum used to say ‘va’alene’ a lot and then roll on the floor in fits of laughter. Sometimes we discussed politics and that, but it was more fun to say va’alene.

One good thing about a blog, it gives you a place to vent

It is pointless sending me an email me asking me to comment on an agenda for a meeting I already missed because you informed me about said meeting by leaving me a message on my mobile on which I have left a fairly clear message which says ‘if you need to contact me, please ring me on my home phone because not only is it cheaper to leave a message there, but my phone charger is lost and I can’t check the messages on this phone so if you leave me a message on this mobile phone I will not get it and I will likely miss any meetings in which you are asking me to be involved’.

You are a goose.

The gift that keeps on giving.

When I was eleven (or possibly eight, it feels like those were the years when I was at my most unbearable), I told my mother we would no longer celebrate Mother’s Day as it was a commercial conspiracy and isn’t that why we didn’t have a dishwasher and wasn’t that the reason she wouldn’t convince my father to join Rotary so that she could be a Rotary-ann. As you can see, I had a broad but unsophisticated understanding of my mother’s politics.

In hindsight, that was a short-sighted decision on my part.

And in hindsight, I can see my mother’s inward grin.

So, Happy Mother’s Day Mum. I’ll think of you while I’m not unwrapping my new dressing gown.

And, of course, your phone charger would not be lost.

I have always wanted to live in the kind of house where, when you thought to yourself I need scissors and I need them now, you would be able to lay your hands on a pair.

In such a house, before putting the lasagne in, you would not first have to clean out the smoking crumbs from the toast you must grill because every time the toaster pops the power shorts, and no-one dares go to Harris Scarfe to replace the toaster in case that’s not the problem, because: can we really afford to get the wiring done.

The dishwasher would not have leaked so often that now the floor is warped.

If you lived in such a house, you would know how to breed children who did not cheat at connect 4 and whose creativity extended to also cleaning up the mud.

The career that you had intended to have would, at some point, have taken off. You would look at your CV and see a sensible whole, rather than a cobble of frayed strings which you can not possibly hope to explain to an employer because you can’t explain it to yourself.