While I should be folding the washing…

Hello all you people directed here by your google searches for ‘Nicole Cornes’. And my goodness what a lot of you there are. Welcome.

So, since you asked, my gripe is not a personal one with Nicole Cornes. I think I’ve pointed that out. I don’t know her from a bar of soap except via the columns I can no longer bear to read. No, it’s not personal.

My gripe is with a political party that has so little respect for the punters that it will put up someone because they think she has a profile (I really do think we should lose this ‘celebrity’ tag – Susan Sarandon is a celebrity), rather than someone who thinks about political things. For example, my interpretation of her answer to the tariffs question in the paper yesterday is that she isn’t entirely sure what a tariff is. Which is something I picked up in year eleven economics and the average student would surely stumble across it over the course of a law degree.

I feel that Nicole has been let down by the ALP as has the electorate. Why on earth was she spoken to on Friday morning then splashed across the papers on Sunday? Induction and training, peeps. Successful HR tools.

Apparently, Mr Rudd is now too embarrassed to come and visit us this week! And I can just hear the phone conversation between the Kevins right now ‘Kevin? It’s Kevin here. Yeah, the one who masterminded such candidates as Maxine McKew in John Howard’s electorate. A word in your shell-like if you’ve got a moment…’. (can’t find the article online, you’ll have to look in the hard copy of the paper).
Nicole, if that’s you, I won’t think any less of you if you change your mind and decide not to run. Bloody hell, I would have changed my mind by now. I’ve had ideas which I thought were good and ended up being quite shit. The repurcussions weren’t so public, but there you go.

I wish I could introduce you to my mum. She’d have some very wise words for you, I’m sure. Anyhoo, that is all I have to say on the matter. For now.

Youse with the gov.au ISP addresses should get back to work now. But before you do, do have a bit more of a look around the blog, – just down there a bit, you’ll see I’m looking for a phone charger with specific requirements. If you know where I can find one, you will let me know, won’t you?

A brief break in transmission

I know this is completely irrelevant to most of you, and I don’t really do straight politics here, but I have to just every now and then.

Did you listen to the broadcast of Nicole Cornes first press conference? You can hear it here. It really isn’t easy to listen to though. Let’s forget the fact that she tells us she has voted for John Howard in the past. Let’s forget the fact that I’d hardly call her a celebrity or even ‘glamorous’ candidate. Let’s forget that dodgey stuff she wrote about David Hookes and the women in his life. I like her mostly. And yes, I listen to Graham Cornes on 5AA (judge me as harshly as you like, but you can’t judge me as harshly as I judge myself), and I like him even more now that I read in the paper this morning that at the last election he voted for the Greens. And as we often say as we sit on the couch at the end of the day…’who is the best, Kane or Chad‘?

Of course, all of those people have nothing to do with Nicole’s running for the ALP, but I’m just trying to show you that my basic sympathies lie with her.

So, listening to the broadcast this morning, I thought could someone not have clued her in to the details on the new ALP uranium mining policy before she spoke? And maybe a couple of other things. It wouldn’t have been that hard.

Anyhoo, makes my voting decision easier, because I was thinking I might have to switch my first preference vote from the Greens to the ALP and it was kind of gonna hurt. But really, if the ALP is putting up people who voted for John Howard…says it all, doesn’t it?

And right now, I can’t tell you just how much I’m missing my mobile, because the witty texts between me and my friends would be flying right now.

Inevitability

If you need to ring me, please use my normal phone, because a replacement charger for one of these costs about $80 and seems to be unavailable anywhere in Adelaide. I have it switched to the function that uses the least amount of power (so can’t make calls or receive text messages) just in case the mister is able to find one at one of the shops he hasn’t yet visited.

Soon I will lose all of the numbers I haven’t transferred from the phone’s memory to the SIM card. And I will lose the last six months of text messages. I already lost the previous two year’s when it went flat sometime last year.

I know no one sends cards or letters anymore, but now we can send messages back and forth from the top of a London bus. Updates from the hospital when we’re too exhausted to speak. Good lucks to people before they walk on stage. How are yous because we want to know, but there’s still the dishes to do and a load of washing to hang.

When I walk past the phone, which I often do, because it is on the bench which is between the rest of the house and the kitchen sink, I take a look at it. I am watching the charge bar drop lower and lower, and thinking about the loss I’m about to have.

A sadness of the 21st century.

Around and about ANZAC Day

The day before and the day before and the day before that
The man who lives in the room next door never closes his door. He has jars of lollies for his neighbour’s visitors and he keeps track of who likes what. He holds the children’s hands and says ‘let me look at your eyes’. The children do.

The day

The man we are visiting lies in bed. I’ve been warned, but still I am shocked. He cries because it takes him a moment to recognise me and we have known each other for twenty years. He will cry again when we leave. His television is big and loud, but it’s not like being there.

I watch for the man I am related to and think I hope he remembered to go. I don’t know which sign he would march behind.

Televised or live, The Last Post always chills.

The man who lives in the room next door is at the service down the street. He is strong enough to march. He joined the army looking for guaranteed meals, but I’m old enough to know it wasn’t as simple as that. He’ll be back in the afternoon, but we’ll be gone by then.

We will fill the space with a three hour drive and a family barbecue.

Watching the Royals

With hippie left wing parents, it can be hard finding a way to rebel. And so, when I was around twelve, I developed a bit of a thing for the Royals. Because I knew it would give my mum the shits. Cut out pictures of Lady, then Princess, Diana and stuck them on my bedroom door. Stole money from my mother’s purse to buy the Women’s Weekly (these were the days before Maxine McKew came on the news to tell us it would come out monthly, but still be called weekly – you don’t remember that, do you, but I do). That kind of thing. I tell you, it was all change the world with me.

Anyhoo, old habits do die hard, and so, despite the metres of ‘Vote Yes for a Republic’ bunting which is stored in our attic and studio (these are, as I think I have explained, fancy names for rather ordinary things) I’ve never been able to quite stop watching the Royals. And so, I was as fascinated as anyone* else when Willsy and Kate called it off. I must admit, I approached it with a bit of a ‘oh, two young people have decided they don’t want to pash anymore, not so surprising that’, but I do sympathise with Kate because when I used to stay with cousins or friends, my father, as he drove away from the curb would call out (and he has a loud voice) ‘and don’t forget to go to the toilet to pick your nose’. And I can still hear the mothers of my friends as they turned their heads, sniffed and said lavatory, it’s not a toilet, it’s a lavatory.

How I got to be the well-balanced success you see today I’ll never know.

Like I say, tiara recommended.

*You might need to scroll down a bit, I can’t work out how to do the links to individual posts in blogger anymore.

Music memories

When I were a young thing, I had the standard music tastes of a country town girl: INXS, Midnight Oil, Prince (and yes, that was before he was formerly known as), Eurythmics and maybe one or two others. All right, I admit, I had a Dire Straits album. On cassette. Love Over Gold. Also, I knew the words to a lot of Phil Collins, but that’s not my fault. There was only one radio station and I had to listen to that so I knew my day’s horoscope. I couldn’t go to school without hearing my day’s horoscope.

I also very much liked Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Rattlesnakes. Very, very much. So much that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to buy it on CD now (that Frankie Goes to Hollywood I recently bought on CD I do feel a bit…well, you know, like it wasn’t the best money I ever spent). And look. But I put the notification email into a spiffy ‘for later attention’ folder and forgot all about it and now all the tix have probably gone. I’ll let you know.

Gee I loved that album. Just thinking about it makes me go ‘you know being fifteen really wasn’t that bad’. Except that of course being fifteen was otherwise I wouldn’t have such vivid memories of being under my bed while I listened to it with my headphones on.