Public Address - Heat (Home)

"L" is for loser | May 28, 2003 14:54

I've spent the last week waiting. Sometimes sitting alone huddled over my beer, watching my mobile on the bar. Waiting. Other times I kept it in my shirt pocket, as you can often miss a call when it's in your jacket. My diary was clear. I'd cleared it the week before, on the off-chance.

You know.

You know how it is. When you're waiting.

I've found it hard to concentrate.

I was never one of the cool guys at school, you see. When I left and got a job I went through a cool phase, but it didn't last. Still, it's more than some get.

There have been a few calls, but not one that mattered. I was terse on the phone, trying to clear the line quickly in case I missed the call. The call I was waiting for.

Sometimes I'd boot up the computer and check the email again. Just to make sure. Or go online and check the dates. Just to make sure. Girlie noticed I was dark and distracted and took to her room, cheesecake in hand.

My clothes dryer has broken down. It spins but it doesn't heat up. The oven doesn't work either. Well, it does, but only at one temperature (220C) and the grill doesn't work at all. One of our toilets leaks and the other is blocked. Girlie's got stitches in her mouth that need to be taken out. There are reminder messages from her dentist on the answer-phone.

But I can't seem to get anything together. As I say, I find it hard to concentrate.

I check call register on my phone in case I've missed something.

I mean, it was just an off-the-cuff email exchange and he's been busy, I know. And you can't really say we're mates or anything. He said we should get together and I sent my mobile number. End of story. Happens all the time. Doesn't mean anything.

CK was in town too. He didn't call either, but I never expected him to. He's never heard of me, so it would be a little out of the blue. Also I wrote a story a few years ago in which my cat threw up on one of his books, Villa Vittoria from memory. So even if he had heard of me he'd probably be nursing a grudge.

Writers are so sensitive. I imagine.

Anyway, it's all over now. Situation normal.

You might say I should have just gone along, sauntered up and said g'day. What's so hard about that? But I've never been to a writers' fest before and it doesn't really attract. It would have been out of character, you see, and therefore a bit brown-nosey. Don't you think?

And he was busy. Three sessions in three days, all that whisky to drink, Birmo, the Random girls to entertain.

Still. Nevermind.

I'd better call that dentist.

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Total victory | May 15, 2003 19:33

After a concerted campaign of shock and awe the Girlie has totally capitulated on the kitchen front and my forces are about to march on the last bastion of resistance.

Her bedroom is my Baghdad.

While timid appeasers claim my "coalition of the appalled" will be bogged in a quagmire of old Michel's Pattiserie cheesecake, make no mistake, victory will be mine. Intelligence sources say the enemy is in total disarray, morale is low, she hasn't eaten for weeks.

Actually, I made her a pizza last night as the kitchen has been relatively clean for a week or so. I think the threat of docking her pocket money was what really did the trick.

Now, I've been extraordinarily busy of late so I apologise for the slow-down in my postings. But there is something that has been on my mind that I wanted to share with you, my public. It's not something I do very often but last week I got totally fed up and decided to go and buy some new undies. The old ones were even offending me!

So I head down to Gowings, which is like Farmers but better – actually more like Rendells for you oldies. You remember? The great one up on K Rd with the little man in the manual lift?

Anyway down to Gowings I go, straight to the undie department. Clearly it had been a while since I last shopped for such personal items. Imagine my shock and awe on discovering everything has changed.

No longer do you buy your undies in a range of sizes and styles (small, medium, large, obese; G-string, Y-front, sports brief). You have a range of brands, of course, and a range of colours too. But now, drum-roll, you can specify your "pouch size". Yes, some dastardly marketing bastard has decided to play on men's legendary insecurity about the size of their tackle.

So now you can buy "full front" and "double front" undies, specially designed for the manly man, the XYY man, the donkey-boy. So what do you do? What can you do? You pick the biggest damn pouch you can find! A pouch the size of a fucking football for the man who usually wheels his testicles around in a barrow! Find the sexiest little checkout chicky there, sidle up with a smile and a wink …

Alternatively you could go all sheepish and embarrassed. Take ten minutes to approach the same checkout chick and ask, in subdued tones, if they have anything in a slightly smaller size, you know, pouch-wise… Something for the man with a micro-penis.

Just for the reaction of course. Ahh, life's such fun.

I've also discovered a foul-tasting soft-drink that goes by the name of SARS, believe it or not. I bought the last three cans at our local super-market, so obviously there's a few of us with the same sense of humour. Buy some and give them to your friends.

Anyway, all that has precious little to do with Sydney. It's been raining heavily for a week. I try and grab gaps in the weather to go ouside but as soon as I do it buckets down again. When I was a kid it was always the other way around. My rain luck has gone.

Unfortunately, the rain, solid though it is, has unaccountably missed Sydney's main water reserve, the Waragamba Dam where water levels have actually fallen. Unbelievably water restrictions are still likely. I'm convinced there's some sort of Chinatown thing going on. Might head up there at the weekend and investigate.

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Top teen tips (for the parent in a hurry) | May 07, 2003 00:05

Girlie's in a mood. I asked her to clean up the mess in the kitchen from her dinner on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. Somehow she finds this unreasonable, even though her one and only chore, the one I pay her pocket money for, is to keep the kitchen tidy.

Anyway, I've now gone on strike. I'm not cooking or making her lunch until she cleans it up. Or paying her pocket money until she gets her act in order. That's it. Out brothers out!

Which all reminds me I've been asked for some teen parenting tips by Wendy, who happens to be the Girlie's aunt. So here goes, Rob's Top 5 tips for the modern parent of surly teenagers.

1. Getting them to clean up the kitchen: see above.

2. Getting them out of bed: There are number of methods here but my favourite is to play music really loudly, especially if any of you have a copy of Sweet's Ballroom Blitz, the sirens are a killer. Alternatively you can always throw cold water over them.

3. Keeping them out of your stash: Well you could keep it better hidden, but they usually find it anyway. You could increase their allowance so they can go buy their own, or just buy some for them and take it out of their allowance. Hell, if you do this you could even start raiding their stash! I was around a mate's place a few years ago when he rolled into the lounge furious and shouted at his kids: "Will you little bastards stay out of my drugs! Go and buy your fuckin' own." Truly admirable, I think.

4. Dealing with the boyfriend: this one's easy – embarrass the hell out of them and you won't have them hanging around. I did this with my elder daughter's boyfriend (yes there are really two Girlies, just the other one's a Sneebles). He waltzed in with his pants hanging way down low to share his buttcrack with me. Sneebs was obviously pretty proud of him, but, just as they were about to head out, I offered him the loan of a belt. They were aghast. "No, seriously, I've got a spare one." Never saw Mr Buttcrack around ours again.

Now you might say it's better to have them round so at least you know they're safe and comfortable. Fuck that new age horse shit! Kick 'em out and let them do it all the old-fashioned shameful way, same as we did. Never did us any harm. Alternatively you can always throw cold water over them.

5. Keeping them out of your whisky. This one is closely related to point 3 but a different strategy offers itself. In the 50s and 60s if kids were sly grogging, they would top up their parents' whisky with tea to stave off discovery. These days it pays to be proactive in your parenting. Keep a spare empty bottle of whisky and fill it full of tea to start with. Then when they come looking... You could add laxatives if they're persistent – or just for the hell of it.

Now another correspondent, a certain C J Bell, has pointed out that the term "mid-Atlantic" is often a term of mild abuse in Europe: "It was most often used ironically in the 1980s to describe those Radio One DJs of the Smashey and Nicey ilk who spoke with a painfully adopted American accent when they were actually from Epping or Ongar. Speaking as a bi (almost tri)-lingual European who's spent quite a bit of time in the States, man (and who has never done a lodda work for charriddy), I take exception at the notion that being mid-Atlantic is anything other than a big smelly blob of sargasso."

Fair cop. You can't argue with such obvious sophistication. I've heard the term used in that way as well. This usage seems most common among nationalists of one form or another. I've read it used by Quebec French, for instance, when arguing for a more indigenous Quebecish theatre. Ipso facto, if you'll pardon my French, Quebec French, good; mid-Atlantic French (that is harking back to or hankering after European Frenchness), bad.

But I've also heard it used in a positive way too. So there.

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