Category Archives: Uncategorized

aren’t i cool?
this is me when i’m between 4 and 7 years old. probably at the 4 end. we lived in fiji during that time, and we were hippies. well, sort of. that van covered in hindi advertising was our family car. it was eventually painted red, and was notoriously unreliable. it was small and had brown seats. i’d like one now.
note my blonde hair. i haven’t been blonde since puberty hit.

we were in fiji because dad took a contract at USP, and we left england to go there for three years. mum was a social worker, but there weren’t jobs for her in suva. so she was a housewife til she went nuts with boredom and started running playgroups, teaching people to ride horsies and so on.
i have quite clear memories of fiji, aided by photos like this one. my uncle ziggy was in fiji, visiting from england for a while when this one was taken.
that fence in the foreground was built by my dad to keep my brother in the garden. he was 3 when we left fiji, and for the first 3 years of his life he was an escape artist.
he had to be caged in because he’d escape, go wandering all over the neighbourhood by himself. not so safe. increasingly unsafe for a white kid between 1980 and 82.

Here we are together, on a beach in fiji, a bit older. i remember that day – we were on a little island with The Mother and a photographer/graphic design friend of the family. just a day trip for a bit of beach time. i loved those green togs.
this last photo is of us in brisbane. i was somewhere between 11 and 13. probably at the 11 end of things. he was between 7 and 9. it was a school photo day – why else would we be wearing our uniforms?
that’s all i’ve got to say – just showing some photos…

i love it. but i’m very particular. i love only 100% all natural soap. no artificial colours or perfumes. only the very best essential oils. no ti tree, or other melalucas (allergies, man).
i love this stuff more than anything. i like it that the perfumes are only strong enough to surround you in the shower and then to linger only for a moment once you’re dried off.
i love good soap so much.
i always only used perfect potion for a great many years. then i experimented with sorbolene soap, and some local hippy stuff when i moved away from brisvegas and perfect potion. but now The Mother ships it to me by the tonne. she sends local, hippy soap from tasmania to me in the mail. she secretes it about her person when she comes to visit. she stocks the downstairs bathroom with it for my bathing pleasure. oh, remember the cinnamon one? do i. i loved it so much i stole it. i took it home to melbourne with me. i really did.

i love good soap. i really do.

it was only recently that i discovered that the bit in your ear that gets blocked up is not ‘yer station tube’ but the ‘Eustachian tube’.
i’m only mildly disappointed that there are no trains involved.

nearly 30 years of ear infections from swimming too much and living in tropical climates and suddenly things change. it was truly a revelation. thanks, dr flowers, thanks.

you might also care to know that my father and his mother (the nanna) refer to their ears (or anyone’s ears, really), as ‘yers’. i don’t know if it’s a Welsh thing, or a trying-to-be-a-toff thing, or just a weirdo family thing. but i know i’ll be surveying welshies when i’m there for the wedding in july. my readers need to know.

to make a page that’s static – it’s time for me to learn how to do websites properly… and of course, this in no way coincides with the need to start the next chapter, or to plan the research trip fully

yesterday was surprisingly productive (after all that belly-aching), but i’m not sure about today. a trip to the gym might be in order (it makes me feel stretchier and tougher and pleasantly tired).
i think it’s the allergies… i’m so full of goob. in a kind of not-going-anywhere way. or maybe i slept too hot? well, i certainly had odd dreams. i was in england, and i was swimming in a big, very clear lake just outside the side door of a house i was staying in, which was actually a house on brunswick street in new farm, just near where the thai restaurant and the video shop were, before you get to the merthyr road intersection. anyhoo, i was swimming in this lake because i had to sake a gangly adolescent german shepherd dog who was drowning. seems his owners (who were two gay men) had decided they didn’t like him anymore, so they were doing away with him.

i’m never talking about dogs, watching ads for that new 2 dads tv show or planning the research trip before bed ever again. i end up being far too busy at night.

The Mother and i went to the aquarium yesterday, and wandered around quite happily for a couple of hours. i surprised myself with some utterly amazing photos. i’m really getting into this whole digital camera thing – instant gratification = go.

Continue reading “jellies”

And once again I’ve written too many words.
The paper has grown to 5820 words. For a paper I’d intended to be 30 mins long max. oh well.
I am editing. It’s pretty much my main job. I can write a million words, really quickly, but I need to edit and edit and edit to make the thing worth reading

oh, lovely mess.

Continue reading “wish i was sewi”

it’s made of fleece and is very warm.
part of being cool is not caring about whether you’re cool or not. that’s what makes you cool.

as soon as you start fussing about whether or not you’re cool, or you start hassling other people about not being cool, you compromise your own coolness.

same goes for masculinity. only those with deep-seated anxieties about their own masculinity hassle other blokes about theirs. blokes who’re comfortable with their own masculinity feel no need to wave their tool about in other people’s faces, either actually or metaphorically.

unless it’s for the sake of a particularly Witty and Clever practical joke. then it’s a different matter.

i’m just obsessed.
i keep looking at that horrid girl’s blog. i don’t know why. i just can’t understand my own masochism. maybe it’s because i know her and she posts a lot, so i get to read a lot of bits of crap about her daily life. i mean, it’s not like she writes particularly well (although she’s readable), or does anything particularly interesting. in fact, she does one lame thing after another, has one stupid thought after another.

i just can’t understand that type of melbourne uni pgrad. god, are they all this stupid? seems there’s a pattern: pgrads who’ve done all their prior degrees at unimelb, are very young (under 25 is pretty damn young) and haven’t really been living out of home long, all of them are utterly clueless when it comes to recognising their own privileged status. all spoilt brats. all tosser middleclass kiddies with no clue, who can’t understand why working mother students should be at uni,let alone need flexible class timetables. all absolute fukks (in the unimelb english department, anyway) who’re contributing to cultural studies’ rep as depoliticised and ultimately contributing to Evil.

but i can’t stop reading this horrid thing. this is not sympathy i feel, nor pity. just a deep, cringing embarassment.