Hello lovely RRs,

There is no blog today.

I’m having a Sunday night shutdown, and have nothing in the archives to share.  It seems school holidays provide an unanticipated distraction from blogging.

Have a lovely day,

I shall see you tomorrow.

Here they are, the hits of the week:

1.  Medical knowledge.  Sometimes, you know, it just comes in handy.  All those lists of differential diagnoses?  I guess you learn them for a reason, mainly in the hope that you’ll never have to use them, especially the ones at the top end of the list.  The scary end.  I had a reason to use one such list today, and I’m thankful for knowing all the high-points.  Turns out that sometimes the human brain, if it listens, and knows its lists well, can be just as good as a CT or an MRI.   Thanks Alan Terrett.

2.  These shoes:

They’ve had most fluids you can think of spilt on them, and I hope they will again..

They’ve done some K’s these shoes and I, since we made our acquaintance in 1988.  They didn’t get to go to Dan Sultan last night, but I reckon they might be good for a few more gigs* yet.  Good onya Doctor Marten.  You give good sole.

3.  This park:

Speaking of giving good, Newcastle, you give good park.  Sunset over the massive slide and the very fast flying fox, among other things, equals Kid Heaven.  The Evil Geniuses want to go back to Newy next holidays just to go there again.

4.  This kid:

Apparently she got “brave” blood this time.  I’m not convinced this is strictly true, but hey, she did go down the massive slide by herself, which is a feat.  Go you good thing.  And thanks for the courageous claret, anonymous donor.  You rock.

5.  School holidays.  How good?  They’ve brought me my mate back, given me an excuse to spam about all day, chasing spots of sunshine in the house, and tomorrow the Genuises are having a friend over each- two of my faves are coming over for a play (No, I’m not calling it a play-date.  It’s just a play people.)… I bet we will bake and laugh and play some music and some Wii, and I won’t have to do one single Pokemon battle as numbers will be sufficient.  I might not even do my hair for the whole day.

*I am stopping calling events where you see a live band “gigs” from now on.  Sounds like I’m trying to be 24 again.  Henceforth I shall refer to them as concerts.

How are your holidays going?  

Do you have some Docs?  Send me a pic…

…From The Ashers xx

A while ago we had an anniversary and it coincided with Dan Sultan and Scott Wilson playing at Joe’s Waterhole.  I didn’t want to go because I knew only one song, and I did not like it, Sam I Am.  But it was our anniversary, and seeing as most other things around this place seem to go my way, I thought it maybe it was time for Nath to have an opinion.  Don’t freak out, it was a one-off, no habits were formed.

So I got that boy some tickets and we were away.

We dressed ourselves young again, and turned the music up loud in the car, tricking the years away.  We even stood up at the bar for a bit, despite there being perfectly good seats available.  I still didn’t want to see the band, but I loved the feeling of the years fizzing away, dissolving into my stubby like an Aspro Clear.  Without the bitterness.

And then the boys got playing.  I was transfixed.  Dan Sultan has a raspy, morning-after voice, and the stories in the songs can take you on a trip to   away.  Scott plays his guitar like it’s his mistress, so you can’t help but wish he’d written the songs for you.  The whole show was cheeky and funny and sensual and transporting.  The boys were just that, boys, having a fine time, and acting like they couldn’t quite believe their luck that they were there and we were there and we knew the words to Sorrowbound and Dingo and Come Home Tonight.  I’ve lived that night many times since, catching a whiff of the exuberance of it all every time I hear the songs.  So I got us tickets to see Dan again. This time without Scott.  This time on a Wednseday night.  This time in the middle of Winter.  This time when we have had a big week, with more to come.  This time when I’ve just given blood.  This time when the babysitter cancelled, and another couldn’t do it.  This time when it all seemed too much effort.

Somewhere there, between then and now, we caught old.  We weighed up the pros and cons and decided it was too much trouble.  To find another sitter, to go out on a work night, to drive all the way down south and out of the Shire, to learn the new songs, to get off the couch.

So we gave the tickets to some young people, and sat on the couch with a blankie and reflected on times gone by- bands seen, comedy shows laughed at, drinks spilled.

I don’t know if this old that we’ve caught is just a virus, something that will pass with appropriate rest and a nice lie down, or if it will settle in our marrow and constrict us until we become fused and immobile.

I hope it will pass.  And that if we tweak and stretch ourselves in just the right way, we can shake it off.  Because I suspect this is exactly how it begins.  The new things seem like too much effort, so you make a decision to stay right here.  To miss the gig, not do the update, wear last-year’s fashion, turn down the music, refuse the newest social medium, complain about how the town used to look.  And the old that you’ve caught, eventually infests and kills you.

So please excuse me, I’m off for my Milo and a lie down.  But I may just listen to THIS first.  See if I can shake it off.

Do you go out on a school night? 

How much do you love Sorrowbound?

And how much am I now spewing that I didn’t just GO?  Answer: A LOT.

…From The Ashers

**Strong language warning.  (For something different.)**

She was a 40 year old woman.

A wife, and a mother.

She had a mortgage, a nice car and a career.

She didn’t get out much any more, at least not without some kind of time limitation, so when she did, she liked to dance and dance.  To feel the beat of the music deep in her solar plexus, rubbing off the years and making her young again.  She liked to dance like a loon, jumping up and down, singing into a pretend microphone, gyrating to the songs of her golden years, the years before gravity had begun the everlasting pull.

She was out with friends, a mixed group of men and women she had known for years, and whom she had been drunk with many times.  They knew she’d be signing into a mic before too long, as she knew one of them would abruptly leave when she was ‘done’, they knew each other’s quirks well.  She was in her home town, at the surf club where she was a social member, so she couldn’t have felt more secure.  She had paid special attention to her make up and her underwear, so she knew she was oozing the confident sexuality that seems to only come for women once they are beyond their pick-up years.

They had all drunk expensive champagne and eaten well, and it was finally time for the dancing.  Slightly provocative dancing, yes, but not directed at anyone other than her friends and her husband.  She didn’t even notice the group of men, boys really, standing on the verge of the dance-floor, until her husband pointed them out.  They were blokes from the local footy club, out after the game, ripe with testosterone and tattoos and ready for a fuck or a fight.  Her husband pointed them out again, but she ignored him.  They were young enough to be her children.  Sure, they would leer at her from behind as she wiggled her tightly clad bum to Push It, but they were harmless.  She and they were mutually exclusive, in that their worlds or their bodies would never collide.  And they all knew that.

When the singer started on Better Man she grabbed her imaginary microphone, singing and pointing past the rugby lads to her husband, now scowling into his schooner.  She saw the boys grinning at her gesticulations, seeing her for who she was- a slightly pissed old gal who might have been fit in her prime, now ten years past it, but still a bit of a laugh.  Some of them probably thought her husband was a lucky guy, having a wife who still looked a bit of all right.  Others just looked beyond her to the dance floor, checking the flesh of the girls their own age.

The song finished, and she flitted past the boys, invisible to them now, as women her age usually were, to plant a big kiss on her brooding husband’s lips. He pulled back.  “Be careful how you’re dancing, those footy blokes are watching you.”

What?

And so began the age-old argument.  Steeped in years of indoctrination and attempts to shame.  This time though, it was different, it was in her own circle, in fact as close as it could be.  If a man is ogling a women, then the woman should modify her behaviour.  If a woman is behaving provocatively, then she can expect to get looks and maybe even more, regardless of her age, social standing or inclination.  If a man thinks a woman is sexy, and if she doesn’t want sex, she should turn it down a notch.  Be careful.  Be invisible.  Be demure.  Be good.  Don’t attract unwanted attention.  Sit with your knees together.  Cover yourself up.  Carry some pepper spray.  Don’t get too drunk.  Don’t walk by yourself at night.  Lock the door, lock the door, lock the door.  The rage and the suppression and the indignation of lifetimes erupted forth.

It was like the biblical story of Adam and his first wife, the headstrong Lillith.  A woman whom Adam couldn’t control or subdue, so he went whining back to God and asked for a do-over, and so God said, yeah mate, that Lillith is a feisty bitch, and pretty out-there, here, have Eve, she’ll do what you say.  She’s a good girl.  Eve, who would walk behind him, not by his side.  And so the story goes. On.

The rage of Lillith, sick to bloody death of being stifled and repressed came screaming up from her liver and beneath, surprising her, and finding voice in her yell,  “I’ll bloody well dance how ever I like. I’ll go and felate this stubby in front of the whole team if I feel like it, and NOT.ONE.SINGLE.FUCK.WILL.BE.GIVEN.”

The music had stopped.  There was relative silence for a beat, until some drunk old fella in the corner clapped.  Some woman yelled out, “You go, girlfriend.”

And the rugby boys?  They didn’t even look up from the Keno game they were playing.  Not s single fuck was given.

…From The Ashers xx

As you know, I’m a student of the world, always learning (!) and I love a list, so here are the things I have learned this week:

1.  No matter when you get to the airport, your law-abiding kid will ask you more than seventy-thousand times if it is time to go through to the gate yet.

2.  No matter when you get to the airport, you can almost miss your plane.  Even with a kid like that.

3.  Regardless of how much you despise craft, and how much you avoid it, you will have at least one child who loves craft, but can’t do it themselves (and so requires your assistance.  Constantly.)

Looking innocent… The crafty crafter, with craft

4.  Even after you think the craze has passed, you will ask the musical question: “What does the fox say?” in your head, eleventy-billion times per day.

And this is why…

5.  It does not take three minutes to heat up a beanie heat pack thingy in your microwave.

6.  And if you try, you will find your whole house stinks for seventy-five times that three minutes.

Overdone?

7.  Stephen King is the greatest modern author.  Still.  And you will be by turns both jealous, and in awe of him.  Like nothing you have ever experienced.

8.  You can still get pimples after The Menopause.  Especially if you drink several Coopers.

9.  Even though you think you are prepared in your mind, when you arrive at your friend’s house months after she has died, you will still feel like someone just stuck a tack in your lungs and punched out all of your air.

10.  You will sit in her chair, where she was supposed to be convalescing and wish for a different reality.  Again.  Your throat will hurt and your eyes will sting with brine kept back, and still, still you won’t hear her laugh again.

11.  But you will be glad, still, that you had the chance to have that laugh in your life.  And you will be glad you came.  To sit.

I learned some things this week.  But none of them are really new.

…From The Ashers xx

1. I am in Newy.

2. It’s too cold to type.

3. I have no wifi.

4. I have imbibed many Coopers Pale Ales.

5. Did I mention it’s too cold to type?

5. I feel really, really sorry for the dude who finds everything he touches turns to Skittles (TM)

6. Nathan just gave me another Coopers.

7. 60 Minutes is engrossing*

8. I’m pretty lazy.

9. It’s hard to type on an iPad.

10. This is taking AGES to upload.

etc.

So I’ll see you tomoz**

*not really

**probably

…From The Ashers xx