best laid plans

Yes well see that's the problem with leaving a sizeable gap between posts.

I was planning to write about all manner of cheersome frolics and mad capers but instead I shall be spending tonight wiping the spew off Tricky's face (and surrounding soft furnishings as well as myself) every...oh... hour on the hour it's been so far. Brand new tummy bug, gotta love 'em.

Of course my last post was a big whinge about ill health too so now I just sound pathetic.

Yup. Lesson learned Mr Blogger, lesson learned.

The Cough Of The Just

So we've been sick, both Tricky and I, and I really don't want to point a finger at anyone in particular but YOU C, YOU WITH YOUR TRIPS TO FREEZING COLD TASMANIA AND YOUR INSOUCIANT ATTITUDE TOWARDS VITAMIN C AND ECHINACEA, YOU BROUGHT THIS SICKNESS HOME AND SCATTERED YOUR MICROBES UNTO US AND YOU NEED TO PAY.

Sorry where was I? 

Yes, that's right, the VIRUS OF HACKING HORROR. 

Night times have been the worst of course, one minute I am comfortably settling down to read the most boring novel in the world (a direct result of writers' block) and the next I am threatening to cough up my small intestine except I'm pretty sure I lost that the last time C brought a hacking virus home. (Although to be fair he also brought home a very nice necklace for me, so...you know, swings and roundabouts.)

For a while I lie in bed with my face jammed amongst the pillows, trying to muffle the sounds of misery, but eventually I drag myself out and gargle something or swig something and sit upright until the coughing fit stops and I can crawl back beneath the doona. 

I'm not sure if this is a male habit or even a 40plus male habit or just one of C's own adorable pecadillos but whereas I, at the first hint of a sneeze, will start mainlining garlic and horseradish and drink gallons of water, C seems perfectly comfortable hurling his phlegm around the room and would not even think of sucking on a Vitamin C. 

Wouldn't cross his mind. 

So then I have to drag myself out to the shops, knowing all the time those microbe things are festering in my system and I am a marked woman and it's all just a matter of time, and buy bags of vitamins and zinc things and chesty cough mixtures. 

Even then it's not enough to clink them on the kitchen table and heave a great sigh of martyrdom and mutter about if only he'd thought to take this stuff before he came home and passed his lurgy amongst the family. 

I have to make up little bowls of tablets and vitamins and actually hand them to C with a frigging glass of water before he will actually take them.

Tricky has also been coughing like a fiend, albeit a tinier version, and initially there was also a bit of fever and general sickiness. The last time he had this sort of coughing virus the doctor prescribed him a puffer which came with an elaborate mask and spacer type thing. 

He wouldn't have a bar of it and the only way I could get him to use it was when he was asleep. I would hold the mask over his face and press the ventolin and count to ten. It felt vaguely creepy and wrong and so I was glad that this time, a few months after the last virus, Tricky was keen as mustard to use the mask. He presses the button himself and counts to ten - I think it's the echoey booming way his voice sounds in the spacer that holds all the appeal. That and the button of course. Kid loves a good button.

But all this night coughing and palaver has caused a bit of havoc in the sleep stakes. All the mummy attention at night during the early stages has registered with Tricky and now, as his coughing subsides, the demands, and the volume with which the demands are made, have increased.

Last night we were woken by shouts for water, mummy, doona and Charlie&Lola. Since I had done several of the earlier night calls, I nudged C into action and started drifting back to sleep.

Moments later I was woken more decisively by the sound of Tricky kicking his feet against the back of the bookshelf that makes up one wall of his "bedroom". 

DOONA! Thump thump thump. MUMMA! Thump thump thump. NO WATER, I DON'T NEEEEEEED IT. Thump thump thump. I WANT MY MUMMY.

Somewhere in the darkness C, half asleep, was lumbering about with a sippy cup of water in hand, feebly muttering shhhh shhhh. 

At some point he must have made actual physical contact with our child because then Tricky sternly and quite cruelly shouted:

NO DADDY, GO AWAY, GO BACK TO BED.

It was terribly harsh, this rejection by one's child, I thought. 

I settled myself comfortably upright against the mountain of pillows I had built in a bid to stave off coughing.

But frankly, terribly fair.

hunting stories

It is time once again for the Hunting Of  The Chocolate Eggs or at least it was last Saturday which coincided nicely with yet another visit north to see my family. 

This time my second sister T, the surfing hippie doing a Masters in Acupuncture joined us, as did my third sister Nurse K. 

K brought her husband with her which was jolly, not just because we don't get to see him that often but because a few days prior to that he managed to save one of his fishing mates with a bucket.

When I say 'fishing' I mean 'rock fishing' which started at dawn and finished abruptly an hour later when a freak wave washed over the rock and washed said fellow down into the water, and when I say 'mate' I mean 'friend who had never been rock fishing before and wasn't a great swimmer and indeed had only been in Australia a short wee while (Scotsman)' but when I say 'bucket' I think we can leave it at that. 

Although, sister's hubby hastened to add, it did have a lid on it the bucket, which made it a flotation aid. Also there was a rope tied to one end which didn't seem too useful since Scotsman was washed out to sea. 

Sister's hubby points out that in fact this is the safest option, the swimming out to sea bit, most deaths happening because washed off fishermen tried to climb back up the rocks where crashing waves did them in. And Scotsman did not manage the bucket first go and bucket had to be thrown to him again and when it landed nearby and he called that he couldn't reach it and he was done for, they had to shout that yes he could, yes he could SWIM FOR THE BUCKET.

Scotsman swam and held on for dear life and floated (despite his steel capped boots, inappropriate for being washed off a rock yet paradoxically quite sensible for standing about in one spot on craggy rocks for the previously planned several hours). In the meantime sister's hubby ran up to the highest ground he could find (naturally they were in some remote place that required an hour walking out in the dark through the bush carrying extensive tuna fishing gear which would be washed away in aforementioned freak wave) and rang emergency assistance. Luckily the local surf life saving club was contacted and an intrepid soul dashed out on a jet ski to haul in Scotsman And Bucket.

Sister's hubby who fishes from a boat on the lake most weeks and has done since he was a little tacker has married into a family of landlubbers who love eating fish and many a time have partaken of his catch. We listen to his story and grimace and wince at the right bits and some of us scream when we hear the additional information that the last time they fished in that spot a whopping great big tiger shark had been prowling around after the bait fish.

It gives the whole easter egg hunt a little extra frisson of excitement which is probably good since there's not much in the way of tension or real competition. There are after all only two children who participate and one is a six month old who has just started on solid foods. 

Tricky solemnly carries his basket from potplant to potplant and collects his righteous bounty while his mother, father, two aunts, two uncles and grandparents troop after him, crowding to watch him earnestly gather his eggs or hissing that he missed one, over there, over there. 

Last year he collected eggs with his cousins and had no idea they were there to be eaten, preferring to roll them like marbles and throw them about the yard, marveling at the shiny papers and bright colours. I was happy to forgo the chocolate experience and redistributed them among the naughty nephews. But this year, Tricky knows about easter eggs, he knows about chocolate and by george those eggs aint going anywhere else. 

Baby L, meanwhile, lifted up to find one egg after another simply laughs and pats at them and then turns away for a glimpse of her doting parents.

Sister's hubby is a quietly spoken fella, he loves fishing and he loves my sister and their baby. He says he'll never fish at that point again and he won't be rock fishing for a long time if at all. Hippie sister later suggests we all chip in to buy him a lightweight flotation vest, just in case.

When he brought his mate home from the hospital, the media were waiting outside his home, for comments, for interviews, for pictures of the bucket. Sister's hubby wasn't keen, he's a shy man, the quiet sort. 

They kept after him though, during the day and eventually he had his photo taken and his words recorded. As we watched the babies, he added in a surprised tone, the reporter kept asking him if he was planning another fishing trip and he kept saying no until eventually he clarified - not rock fishing no, but beach fishing, sure. His comment didn't make the television interview but hers ended the report...and he's already planning another fishing trip!

My sister's face is set as she listens to him tell his story again and again. Relief, pride, love and resignation play out across her features. Most dangerous sport in Australia, she mutters. He squeezes her hand.

And baby daughter, safe in her mother's arms, dimples and laughs and reaches for her daddy's face. All smiles and gurgles and love.

in the family

My grandfather is back in hospital. 

A couple of days ago when I intended to write this I was going to say I thought it was the end. Let the record state that I think it is grossly unfair and seven sorts of complete shit that having gone through the diabetic horrors of having his leg amputation it has just been one ghastly ailment after another, from infected testicles to phantom leg pain to catheter issues and now to enormous mystery weeping blisters. The man should be able to perch atop his enormous wheeled chair shouting orders to lackeys, arguing over what sport gets watched on the communal plasma screen and swigging back plastic tumblers of his semi illicit rum. He's probably only got a few years at best why can the man not be comfortable?

Instead, he looked horribly bloated and was covered from neck to toes in this god-awful rash, we're talking bubbling blisters some of which were the size of my palm. Skin samples had been taken from one arm and so in addition to the blisters the skin was bright purple. And he was wheezing and gasping for breath and slumped to one side and so very very uncomfortable.

My youngest sister K, the nurse, was with me. We stood by the side of the bed, rubbing the hospital disinfectant into our hands. Then my sister swung into action. 

There are moments when it's a bit shitty having a nurse in the family, like the time my sister AJ stepped on a pin that broke off in her foot and my mother attempted to excavate it herself with a home scalpel and a pair of tweezers, because she was a nurse and so she could. 

But there are excellent times too -  and this was one of them. K snatched up a pair of bright blue latex gloves from the box on the sidetable and whipped them on. HOW ARE YOU GRANDIS? She shouted at his ear as she peered beneath the sheets. This was not cruel, this was sort of comforting, Grandad's hearing aid, like the Tasmanian tiger - much discussed but never reappearing, had disappeared "in the move" and he had reverted to his customary shouting.

He rallied a little and yelled his hellos back to us. I leaned in to kiss his face. DO THEY HURT GRANDIS? I asked him and he shrugged his cheeks a little. THEY ITCH  and as if to illustrate he suddenly swatted at his chest and underarms.

WE'RE GOING TO MAKE YOU MORE COMFORTABLE GRANDIS, my sister announced and in a few seconds the pillows had been readjusted, the bed lifted and my grandfather hoisted into position. My sister is a small girl, my grandfather is a big man and I was no help at all really but it was done. 

AHHH CAN YOU JUST, OW UNDER MY ARM...

I reached across for the buzzer but K scooped up a handful of some sort of ointment from the table by his bed and matter of factly rubbed it into his torso.

THAT'S BETTER, THANKYOU LOVE...

Next my sister snooped at the drip, scanned his notes - showing me the photocopied pages describing various horrible blistering ailments and their possible remedies (boil ye a toad and stir it thrice widdershins under a cresent moon) and examined the canula in the back of his hand. 

A couple of nurses came in and my sister drifted into the background as they checked his blood sugar levels and made reassuring noises. There was some small talk with my sister, she works at this hospital too although currently on maternity leave.

Have you had a good look at these, one of the nurses said, I've never seen anything like it, and she whipped off the sheet to expose the raw weeping groin and thighs. My sister's face was a tight, professional mask. She nodded shortly and made little mmm hmmm noises, then she said in a seemingly casual manner: I was thinking, he sounded a bit...overloaded.

Yes, the nurse nodded back, I was just thinking that myself...we'll have a look at that drip, because he is drinking fluids after all...

...and with his cardio problems, K said, and I was just wondering how those bedsores were going...

They're so busy, my sister told me afterwards when we had said our goodbyes and re-disinfected our hands and headed toward the lift. And he's such a big man...it takes 2 or 3 people just to move him, and things get missed or get postponed because other stuff happens on the ward, but I did think they needed to do something about the overloading, that's way too much fluid...

That afternoon the dermatologist called our father and told him that they were pursuing an aggressive treatment for these mysterious blisters and rash. There could be sudden reactions. And then later the doctor in charge of  the second team, monitoring the diabetes and heart and kidneys and bladder infection rang too and they both asked about the same thing. The NFR sign, Not For Resuscitation. K took the second phone call, our parents were out and she was still at the house with me watching vampire movies.

We haven't broached that conversation yet, I heard her say and then the hmm mmm noise again. She asked about the medications he was on and then replied that yes she was a nurse too, at the hospital. And then I heard her say...well of course he's surprised everyone before...quite a few times actually.

The next day, after nearly 24 hours of the treatment we saw Grandis again and he was like a new person. The swelling was down, the wheezing was gone, the blisters were still there but less angry and he was much more animated, flinging his arms about and grilling C, and K's husband T, about football results and the view from his window. In fact he was almost a little too animated, I felt, like he was over compensating for my tears of relief or... maybe even...high. But whether it was the sensitivity to blubbering granddaughters or the heavy duty drugs coursing through his bloodstream, he seemed much more comfortable.

The new regime involved heavy duty antibiotics and steroids and cortizone creams rubbed into his body three times a day, being wrapped in dressings and warm wet sheeting and then covered in space blankets. That's three nurses three times a day. Extra staff were put on to the ward to ensure the treatment took place.

Extra staff? I exclaimed when my sister told me this later.

Yup, she said. The doctor told me she was very impressed with the care of nursing and I have to say...I am too.

Was it because he was your grandad?

Well in theory, she said, everyone should get that level of care, but I don't see it happen all that often. Maybe him being Grandis was just icing on the cake.

He's very lucky, I said. And I meant it in so many ways.

Mmmm hmmm my sister agreed.

Crushed Beneath My Mental Block

Ack. It's a new month and so many many days since i last posted. I have no actual excuse except I am so blocked up at the moment. It's the mental equivalent of that hideous two week period after Tricky was born when i became the constipation queen and found myself crying to my father-in-law for his stash of laxatives. 

I'm hoping there's some new significant work on its way because I have been huffing and straining over my laptop for the past few weeks and it's not a pretty sight. I keep pathetically googling such things as "How to write my book" and "great new play idea". 

And it's not even like I've got bulk eons of time to do stupid googling and idle research. I have three days of childcare a week and when C is away working like he has been on and off over the past few weeks, those three days are it. 

Except of course as soon as Tricky is whisked away (either by myself or his live in uncle or aunt) then I start to do laundry, or perhaps clean the bathroom which is so festy a colony of sea monkeys has taken up residency. Then I must have a coffee, do some stupid googling, phone another writer friend about procrastinating and mental blockage, make lunch... ok, I do actually manage to scratch a few feeble words onto a slate each day but basically I am an idiot and I should have got a proper job all those years ago when my father told me to.

Also i have just this minute given up wine and sugar. This is based on me reading a newspaper article that said two glasses of wine a night were enough to increase a woman's chances of contracting breast cancer. Nice one, science heads. Those two glasses got me through the day. I'm sure you're right but God, is there no fucking fun to be had?

The sugar thing was even more indisputable. I overheard a shelf packer at Coles supermarket talking to another shelf packer and saying that the weight just fell off her when she stopped eating sugar. I couldn't see these people, i just heard their voices floating vaguely from the next aisle while I was perusing tins of baked beans. 

Unfortunately it took about five minutes of anecdotal evidence about Shelfpacker One's horrid blimpishness and her nasty unsympathetic relatives who had been trying to tell her for months that she had to give it up (what? what? Just say it you cow). 

But then, miracle, the new fabulous svelteness, the putting on of clothes that previously no longer fitted (here I nearly fell face first into the tinned Heinz spaghetti shapes, so sharp was the prick of recognition that accompanied these words) and so i was forced to examine in minute detail those baked beans; the ham flavour, the reduced salt, the generic brands, before I finally heard the culprit named...evil evil fat-inducing sugar.

Two and a half years ago, it took me half a box of medically prescribed laxatives, gallons of water, a coffee meringue and a brisk promenade along Bondi Beach before I could get any kind of movement at the station. I'm not in need of the first (yet), I've just ruled out the second and I don't have the time to do the third. Interestingly, and quite unconsciously, the last few mornings i have found myself drinking loads of water and dosing my breakfast cereal with extra fibre. Almost as if, instinctively, I'm making the connection between brain and bum (most of my friends would of course point out that in my case this was patently obvious).

Letter To A 32 Month Old Wanted Man

Darling Tricky

It's March already which means I have completely missed over February in my efforts to record your own fabulous self in its ever changing, ever growing real life drama. Never mind, sometimes I also forget to put a banana in your daycare bag. And while we're on true confessions here's another little something that I need to get off my chest:

There are no "Broccoli Police".

This all sort of started last month around the time you loudly insisted that the big orange highchair was for wuss pussies and also that icecream was your birthright. 

Broccoli, which you had previously loved and devoured had suddenly become hated and loathsome and no matter how many colourful little side bowls I use to decant the poor rejected vegetable you were adamant that no no no pankyou none of its little green trees would enter your lips. Once again you reckoned without Aunty N who lifted you up and plopped you in your chair mid protest and then told you that indeed you must not eat your broccoli trees because if you did, the Broccoli Police Would Come.

Cut to Naughty Nephews around the table all nodding solemnly at this surprising news and to me, mouth open, at this obviously ridiculous bit of reverse psychology, and then to you reaching out slyly for a broccoli tree, waving it about in the air and then shoving it in your mouth.

Mine eat bockli tee, you confessed smugly.

Oh no! The Nephews were aghast. You ate your broccoli tree! Now the broccoli police will come!

You nodded, laughing dangerously, and then without anymore fuss finished the contents of the little pink plastic bowl.

Honestly. Strap me to a pack rat and call me squeaky, I have never seen such a blatant yet effective lie (although there was that weapons of mass destruction porky a while back). 

Aunty N then told me (under cover of icecream) that this lie had been passed down from some wise and obviously highly creative friends and used very effectively on all the nephews...at least for a short window. We're well in that short window now and I'm clinging to the teeny weeny flyscreen for as long as I can. 

Because you can be, there's no denying it, a little picky with your food. If you notice something suspicious in your bowl (and it's pointless to really list these things because this list will change like the wind and also they call the wind Mariah and how confusing is that?) you will peer at said object, then carefully extricate it from surrounding, and acceptable, baked beans or rice, and then you will fling said object over the table or perhaps, if you're feeling particularly revolted, over the side of the verandah.

If by some chance you are distracted, by your cousins practising the Tumpit or surreptitiously sliding their bowls of pudding onto the table because as well as being picky you are slooow, and Said Object finds it way into your mouth you will suddenly stop chewing and then, expressionless, you will delicately tilt your head and let the previous, now horribly tainted, mouthful plop back into your bowl. It is a gesture as graceful as it is contemptuous.

These past two months have seen your language skills go skipping and leaping forward, no broccoli police needed here to encourage your chit chat. 

There you go Mummy, you say as you hand me a train or your Charlie & Lola dvd or the slipper I asked you to pick up. And you tell us about your friends and family; We are driving Mummy's car and Daddy is having a shower and Papa has a beard but Grandma has a chin. Toby was a bit rough, Ruby went to Sweden...

And you love to run and shout and whoop and dump dump dump on the trampoline. You rough and tumble with your cousins. And you sing. In the bath, at the dinner table, in the car, even in the aeroplane as we began to land in Perth and you let rip with Tinkle Tinkle Little Stah.

(Compared to our last plane trip this is a joyride - another development)

But for all that I realise, you're a shy child.

In the park at Fremantle you rush to climb the slippery slide but you pull up short when you see another child loitering at the top of the slide. I watch your face as the gleam of excitement suddenly melds into a polite, expressionless mask of sudden indifference.

Iss another little boy, you run back to tell me and I nod and smile and say yes that's ok, just say Hello my Name Is Tricky and ask if you can have a turn on the slide. 

But I feel like a hypocrite telling you this because the truth is, I was a shy child too and a shy adult and it is only in the past few years of my life that I have felt more confident, more able to strike up a conversation with a stranger. There have been times I have hung back or turned away because I was unable to say hello. And this is not something I wish upon you.

I had younger sisters, much more feisty, much more confident than me. And at school they dealt with bullies and meanies on my behalf. They did the shouting and the loud negotiating. And you have your older cousins who are all like brothers to you and if you go to school with the youngest he will still be in Grade Six when you are in Grade One. But you have something more valuable still and that is your father's side; optimistic, gregarious, confident and sociable - all things I can be when I try really hard or, alternatively, drink.

You go back to the slide and you say, wavering a little, hello... and I hover nervously on your behalf and suddenly you are laughing and sliding and climbing up again. And later when we are back in the same park and your father takes you over to the slide the same thing happens again. But this time you know what to do and it's all a bit easier but also this time you suddenly know all the kids names and their mothers and where we can contact a babysitter last minute - and that's your dad in action. 

As we leave the park you pick up feathers, soft and white. They've been shed by the huge flock of noisy corellas that perch in the magnificent Norfolk pine trees. You catch these feathers, skimming the grass, with glee and wave them triumphantly and I make an effort to supress my immediate response - drop them, they're dirty/covered in lice/allergenic blah blah blah and instead watch as you delight in the texture, the light flimsy fly away essence that is feather.

You are growing so quickly our darling little boy. And your silly, loving, fallible parents watch you grow and we wonder and we marvel and we fear and we hope. And we love.

So forgive us our games and our falsehoods. We so want you to have all the things that we know are good for you, the exploration and courage, the sensitivity and compassion, the confidence and the optimism. 

And the broccoli.

Your very own

OvaGirl

xxxxxx

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

In fact we're over on the other side of the country because I have a play opening tomorrow night. When I say "a play" it is basically "the play" and if you casually peruse the photos on my side bar of various productions it's the name that comes up a few times. Just to add to the excitement I am typing this on someone's computer in the theatre office while the director gives the actors their notes. This is cutting edge, seat of your pants blogging my friends because I told the administrator I was just going to check my emails. Not only that, i wasn't in Kansas to begin with.
We're like that, us Sydney blogging theatre types. Dirty liars.

This scalp's not big enough for the thirty billion of us

It seems that for now, Tricky is nit free. 

His Aunty N is quite the Headlouse Wrangler and armed with a fine tooth comb and a bottle of tea tree oil conditioner she let loose a flurry of splodging and combing that wreaked havoc and dismay in the follicle settlements.

As she combed she wiped the residue conditioner upon a neatly folded paper towel and showed me the body count. 

I saw adults, nymphettes(which I believe are the 'sullen teen' variety), eggs and assorted scalp debris that was left from Tricky's babyhood. The adults were the real problem (as ever), eggs and nymphettes never done no one no harm but those dirty big adults were whooping it up; leaping from head to head, sucking blood, fornicatin', and spittin' eggs aplenty. 

Just another day in Deadwood really.

The Naughty Nephews also went under the comb and a pleasant and jolly sight it was to have them lined neatly up on their barstools, hair slicked back, eyes bright and fixed on the mini-dvd player where Charlie and Lola were up to usual hijinks. 

Memo to BBC: Charlie and Lola. Possible episode (with book, plush toy and plastic lunchbox tie in) where Lola gets nits from her friend Lotta and passes them onto her big brother. "I have this little sister Lola. She is small and constantly scratches her head. My friend Marv says she's doing a lot of hard thinking but I say she has been possessed by Beelzebub...." etc etc) 

Mini dvd player/C&L combination worked a treat for all of them, ensuring stillness and quietness with little to no whinging that the comb huuuuurts.

But this was Thursday and the lifecycle of the nit rolls merrily on.

On Sunday they were all back up on the stools for further inspection. 

This time, they also underwent a herbal treatment, a sort of natural napalm for headlice, except it was foam not flame and also had a pleasant aniseed-y scent. 

Amongst the Nephews a couple of adult headlice were retrieved, unsurprising since the Nephews had been back at school- that great big headlice melting pot- since Thursday's teatree conditioner massacre. Tricky who did not have daycare on Friday, boasted little more in his coiffure than a couple of eggs and a swaggering nymphette. 

Following this treatment and more pitiless combing, they are all now pronounced CLEAN. 

At least, until the next time a child has head to head contact with another child and a high leapin', gun totin', baccy chewin' louse rides into town. Which will probably be... today.

In our suburb there exists a person whom I like to think of as The Secret Nit Lady. I have never seen her advertised, nor her name spoken aloud but she is whispered about amongst tidy people who don't like to talk about nits. (Which is not me, obviously.) The Secret Nit Lady comes to your house and de-nits your entire family. She carries her own comb. She drives an unmarked car. She charges seventy bucks an hour.

I realise how lucky I am to share a house with my comb wielding sister-in-law when two of my friends try to tell me that they think the Secret Nit Lady is good value for money. That's ridiculous I tell them, it's just headlice. It's not a disease. You just have to accept that you can't truly get rid of them because it's too easy to catch them and buy yourself a heavy duty comb. 

One of my friends made the universal wincing gesture for Can't No Yuck. Would rather pay someone else to do it than eat.

The other shook her head sadly.

It wasn't the nits, she explained. It wasn't the kids squirming when she tried to do their hair. It wasn't even the endless washing. It was trying to get her husband to comb nit treatment through her own hair.

As soon as he runs his fingers through my hair he wants to have sex.  

I'll see if I can get hold of that number I told her promptly.

Even by Deadwood standards, that's just plain wrong.

A Milestone

When I was in Year Six my best friend's name was Julie. She had beautiful long blonde hair and I remember one day combing it with her little red plastic comb as we sat in the classroom. Her hair looked so pretty, shining under the fluorescent lights, almost hypnotic, and I absent mindedly twirled it round and round the comb, as one does with spaghetti on a fork, say.

Later, as I watched my teacher doggedly sawing through the little red plastic comb with a hacksaw and Julie wincing and holding onto her scalp in a vain attempt to stop the pulling, I realised that long hair, although pretty, was at times, also a heavy burden. 

Tricky's hair is long and bouncy with soft baby curls framing his face. I love it and although I have trimmed a couple of wispy straight bits from the back that detracted from the general curly goodness, there has been no actual "haircut". This, despite the subtle encouragement of grandmother and even carer, who make comments like...ooh your hair's getting a bit long isn't it?

When Tricky ran his fingers through his locks one day and said to me: My hair Too Long, mine need hair cut, I had to fight fire with fire. After a little coaching he was able to shake his head fetchingly and shoot back Mine have bootiful curls.

Last month we went to a birthday party for twin three year olds and as part of those celebrations the little boy had his hair ritually cut. They are a Jewish family and it was beautiful to be there at this important milestone for their child and to be invited by the rabbi to join in and bless our own children. 

I can't help but think it must have been an odd moment for the three year old, with his huge mob of abundant blonde curls, when first his parents and then friends and family in the crowd grabbed the scissors and snipped away but then, life for the toddler is full of odd moments. 

In fact life for the forty year old is full of odd moments too.

This morning I ran a fine toothed comb through Tricky's hair. I was pretty sure of what I would find. He's been scratching at his head for a couple of weeks, not manically, just every now and then. Just enough for me to shrug it off as being a debilitating scalp disease or a mild case of galloping shingles. But finally, I could put it off no longer and I reached for the 'Nad's Nit Comb' (with bonus magnifying glass) that I had thrown into the shopping trolley the week before.

As Tricky flicked his Thomas Tank Engine snap cards (there's Gordon! There's james, ooh there's two Jameses) I methodically combed and wiped the debris onto a piece of paper towelling - just as I had seen my sister in law do with the Naughty Nephews time after time. 

Outside, the sun was rising, the garbage trucks were rumbling. Black cockatoos swooped and dived. It was not an entirely unpleasant way to spend an early morning. 

Just me, my son and the small six legged friends who have taken up residence amongst his follicles.

trying to see the world another way

and now I understand why we see the grace in small things...

in my toddler's weetbix smeared grin

in the exotic flavour of crushed coriander seeds mixed with dry roasted macadamia nuts

in the way my body feels grateful and virtuous after yoga

in the satisfaction that comes from giving a birthday present I bought in plenty of time

in the giddy sensation of  nausea mixed with anticipation that permeates a spanking new Word doc.

sift the ashes

I had a meeting with a director last week and when he asked how I was, I said; well, you know...these fires, I'm really disturbed by them.  He looked at me strangely and I said, trying to explain, well you know...it's throwing me off kilter, I'm out of whack.

And then he laughed, but kind of to himself. And the thing is, I wasn't making a joke.

The news of those Victorian bushfires has completely whipped my ass. 

Thankfully our tv reception is up the shit so I couldn't watch the news but I sure as hell surfed the net every chance I got. I couldn't read anything except about the fires and God knows I couldn't write, except stuff about the fires or emails to friends who were involved in the fires or emails to other friends about what they thought about the fires.

And every night I would lie in bed thinking about my family and I dying in a burning car or house. 

And then, mid week, a shark attacked a navy diver in Sydney harbour (last shark attack five billion centuries previously or similar) and he lost a hand, and another shark attacked a surfer on BONDI BEACH for fuck's sake, leapt from the water and tried to knock him off his board I heard, whereas everyone knows you're more likely to be knocked over by some dickhead in a hoon car racing up Campbell parade. Bondi is like two beaches around from where C takes Tricky swimming every morning, so now those half sleep burning dreams were alternating with seeing my husband and baby mauled by sharks, and then there was the plane crash in Buffalo killing everyone including the widow of a guy who died in 9/11 and we're back to the burning again.

I don't know what it is, I emailed one friend, but it's really bad. i can't do anything, I can't write anything, I'm incapable of cleaning or doing anything practical and I'm eating heaps and heaps of sugar.

And then she reminded me how after the Bali Bombings I was afraid to drive through the Sydney Harbour Tunnel (not the bridge for some reason, bridge was ok) but I had a tv writing job at the time which meant I had to drive through that damn tunnel twice a day and the stress it caused me...

And also after 9/11, glued to the tv (we had reception at that house), existing in this sort of suspended horror, permanent hand clasped to face, but even beyond that natural and widespread reaction there was the same post trauma-from-afar paralysis, the same but what is the point in doing anything?

Another writer friend, embroiled in Producer Shit, has friends in Victoria who were among the lucky -  who felt the wind change and saw the fire front, their certain death, turn away from their house. My friend shrugged when I asked How The Writing's Going, meaning How's The Shit Fight Going and simply said: It makes all that seem fairly meaningless.

It's the random violence I tried to work it out with my friend who reminded me of the Bali Bombing reaction, I think I'm freaked by how Bad Shit Happens and there's nothing you can do to stop it happening to you.

There's no real ending to this because the way I respond to what happens around me is part of who I am. I remember kids (boys, two) in my English class used to tease me about the overly emotional in my Creative Writing assignments, quoting back to me innumerable ghastly sentences that i had written, inevitably involving a tear making its way down some child's grimy face. Maybe even then the Empathy Glands were secreting overtime.  I dunno, thinking back, it didn't seem such a fearful time but I guess I was only about 14 and my mother was still alive.

Is it realising how much you have to lose? Life? Those you love most? 

With Tricky, having wanted and wished and hungered for a baby so long, is it fear that he could be taken, as randomly or as seemingly capriciously as he (and any other potential sibling) was withheld?

Is it knowing grief; deep scarring, heart breaking, gut wrenching, for one person and then imagining that multiplied again and again and again, hearing not just the cries of the dying but those of the people they leave behind?

And is it all that, and the fact that last week and then again this morning  I had the first of the pre IVF screenings, my forty first birthday on the horizon, my clock ticking again but my mind not made up properly, not sure that this truly is what I want..to be trying again, am i only doing this because i feel time running away from me, and i don't want to be left without a choice?

and am i not properly appreciating what i actually do have? 

when so many others have nothing?

when all that Random Violence roams the universe?

me, rubbed raw, stilled by other people's pain

and

still

eating way too much sugar.

and then there's this

Alongside the terrible loss of human life has been the devastating effects on the animals - livestock and especially native animals like the slow moving koala. Friends have forwarded on emails describing the harrowing sight of koalas falling from the trees, as they drove through the fires.

This photograph, of the firefighter and the koala, was sent to me today.

Click here for the clip.

burning and drowning

We went to Newcastle on the weekend to escape the heat. 

Just writing that makes me feel sick. 

The death toll for the fires in Victoria has passed 170, they're expecting it to top 200. 

I can't stop thinking about it, people dying in cars trying to get away, people dying in their houses trying to shelter from the flames, people dying with hoses in their hand trying to fight the fires. 

What happened to the preparations? 

How could so many people get it wrong? 

What about building bunkers or cellars to shelter in? 

We talk about it, shocked, unable to comprehend. 

There are always bushfires, everyone knows that, everyone knows...so how could this happen?

And then we hear 

about the ferocity of the flames, the speed, some people had ninety seconds warning, the black smoke that engulfed the roads everything went pitchblack, you couldn't see and people were panicking, the car crashes and the ember attacks -  showers of sparks and embers blowing against the house and windows, blown into every crack and crevice and then the windows exploded and the dying pets the children listening to their cats dying and the family who were well prepared who did everything right and built a cellar and everything 

and the fire came right over the top

and the neighbour watched as the house exploded

and we found them all dead in the cellar

and the couple who took their kids to the grandparents place and went back to their house to try and save it - and were killed, and the man who took his kids to their grandparents and lost them all...

we learn of escapes, the brother who went on his tractor to get his sister and seven kids and how it took two trips to race them back to safety, a family who sheltered in a wombat hole, a mother and her kids who stayed until the house was on fire then ran through the flames wrapped in wet towels and jumped into their dam, the people who ran from house to hose as one after another caught fire, a man and a woman losing everything and everything around them but their two children and they hold each other and stroke each other and smile

and we hold onto these stories, we cling to them, these bright spots of hope, these lucky escapes, because the dreadful finality of the other is incomprehensible

and one state above, the floodwaters are starting to recede and people there are saying but we're lucky because we're not in Victoria, we're lucky

we're lucky

Mummy Is A Work In Progress

Yeah, so apparantly something else I need to add to the list of Things I Shouldn't Say To My Child is:

Everytime you run away from me like that another fairy falls down dead.

Letter to a 30 Month Old Yes You Can Man

My darling Tricky

 This month you have managed to get quite an impressive handle on politely passive negatives (inherited from your mother I would guess)…

I don’t pink so…instead of: No. 

Let’s see how we go…instead of: Not Now

Mine don’t need it…instead of: actually I don’t want to do it at all, not one bit.

 Rather more worrying is another phrase you picked up this month, much worse than Daddy Is A Plonker and far less amusing. I don’t know where you first learned I can’t but it’s appearing quite frequently, delivered in a sort of frustrated whine, es

pecially when attempting to do something vaguely challenging like threading buttons or pushing playdough through the noodle extruder.  Yes you can, I chant back like some deranged Bob the Builder worshipper, and I help your little fingers to thread the button or extrude the noodles. I try to respond quickly to this because your next action is usually to fling to the floor whatever it is you can’t do. Yet another genetic trait inherited from your father along with hobbit feet and cheeky grins.

Most of all, we hear it in the bathroom because January has not only been the month of Ridiculous Heat it has also been the month of Big Boy Underpants.

Yes, for the record, toilet training has properly begun, with lots of urgent calls of  Mumma Wee Wee! interrupting  a game of trains or cars and ending, mostly, quite happily. The potty has been reinstated as an alternative to the toilet, the garden and the shower (when in tearing hurry). You are the king of Number Ones but so far Number Twos have whipped your butt so to speak, hence your polite refusals to perform on the toilet I can’t, no, no pank you, mine don’t need to do poos…

How it makes me chuckle to think back to a conversation I had last year with another mother of a toddler, where I told her I thought we would “get the toilet training done in the week before Christmas.” Haw Haw. Your mother is a prat.

This morning you started daycare again after several weeks of being with either Mummy or Daddy or some other close family member like Aphwa or Aunty N. And so perhaps it should not have come as such a surprise when, after dawdling over your Weet-bix, you said rather nonchalantly: Mine don’t need to go to daycare today.

Yes, we said, smiling at each other, but we need you to go.

Mine don’t need to go to daycare, you said again, a little louder this time in case we’d failed to understand and then in a cheerful tone: where we go today Mumma? Mooseum?

We go to daycare today, I told you but there were no mor

e smiles. We buckled on your new sandals, we packed a spare pair of big boy undies and we bundled you and the two youngest Naughty Nephews into the car.

Off we go, we chirped in that maddening We Grown Ups Always Know Best tone as you frowned and tugged at your hair and refused to sing the National Anthem with me. (Have discovered it to be excellent lullaby and quite successful in sending you off to sleepy bobos.) And then, once at daycare, the waterworks began in earnest, the pouting lips and the angry screwed up eyes and buckets of tears cascading down from your cheeks and onto mine.  Your carer very sensibly took you by the hand and sent us packing, although I do admit to hovering outside the gate and peering through the slats of the fence to make sure you were ok. The tears had gone before we managed to close the gate but to be fair that gate has a very fiddly latching mechanism that takes all of …oh…ten seconds to complete.

January has seen you swimming at the beach with your Dadda, often beyond the waves much to your mother’s discomfort, suspended on your Noodle (not the play dough variety.) You kickaboo your legs and do your paddle hands and push the water away and you could do that all day, so much do you love the water and your dada and the sensation of floating self propulsion. You never say I can’t in the water. Although you do protest It’s Cold at times.

 You say: lie on my tummy Mumma and you giggle to yourself as I nod and yawn and say: ooh I’m so tired, is there a nice soft pillow somewhere? I position myself on your tummy and start to snore very loudly but before I can do the raspberry exhalation you laugh and squirm and bat at my head and then we laugh together for a while until I slyly manage to sneak the raspberry onto a bare patch of soft brown skin.

We go to the supermarket and you sit in the trolley with sultana bribes and help lob potatoes and miniature tins of baked beans over your shoulder. Once, you promised you would just walk…and instead you bolted from one aisle to the next with me in hot, embarrassed pursuit. And another time, carrying you against my chest, you wrapped your arms about my neck and held your cheek to my mouth and I whispered in your ear. And no actual shopping was done that day but the kisses were nourishing.

He’s still a baby, one of my friends gently noted the other day and I opened my mouth to protest, oh no he’s a big boy , to say how much you’ve grown and changed over the past months, but instead, seeing at your soft round cheeks and your wispy curling hair, I just nodded and smiled.

This afternoon, after daycare, all smiles again, we went to the beach and I looked with a sort of wonder at your footprints in the sand as you shrieked and ran to and fro from the waves.

Mine can run Mummy, round and round, mine can run!

And I thought yes you can, my big boy baby, running round and round, yes you can.

 

Love love love to infinity 

Your very own

OvaGirl

Cool Change

Sometimes, being a writer is the coolest job in the world but lots of times it's just hard slog. Writing under commission is one thing but writing on spec, just to have something on paper, to practise your craft, to tell a story that needs to be told, is challenging. I'm trying to write a new play, I'm trying to keep a journal, I'm trying to blog and I'm trying to write a new tv show and I'm not doing any of it very well just now.

Particularly this month, with Tricky not back at daycare and C face to the grindstone on reports and presentations. I am scratching for time. Everyday is another outing, another trip to the park or museum. These outings must be finely calibrated to ensure that an afternoon nap is also to be had, thus ensuring the chance of two hours of work.

But this must also be juggled with the heat. And in the loft apartment of The Big House the heat has been aggressively anti-inspiration. Temperatures have been soaring, along with tempers. If i don't write, I don't feel like a writer. Instead I feel like a bit of a failure.

Last week boasted weather so hot and stinky even the beach was rancid. 

We have had horrendous nights of unbeatable heat, nights where the air never becomes cool, the much anticipated sea breeze never eventuates and I have to get up in the middle of the night to have a cold shower.

On one delightful day we decided to overcome the heat by picnicking with friends and accompanying toddler in a park overlooking a beach. To reach said beach/park combo we thought it would be a marvelous idea to drive miles through traffic, crawl slowly the last mile or so, cruising for a car space, and then park the car several suburbs away because every man and his dog had come up with the same idea. 

As soon as we got out of the car Tricky started to whine. He did not want to swim, no, what made us think that was a good idea? No he did not want to put on his swimmers 'just in case'. He did not want to see his little friend swimming, no, yet another stupid parents' idea. He did not want a sandwich, or a drink, he did not want to sit quietly with Mumma under a tree, AND HE CERTAINLY DID NOT WANT TO LOWER HIS VOICE. 

In the end, and in the classic tradition of We Are The Parents And Hence You Will Love This, C and I struggled to peel his clothing from his screaming, writhing little body and slide on his swimmers (Too hot! Too tight!) and then wrestle him three metres down to the water (NOOOOOOO!) where....miracle....he was instantly transformed into Perfect Baby, all smiles and giggles and kickaboo feet.

Greatly refreshed we all stepped forth from the ocean and within ten steps were overheating again. It was now the turn of the four adults to start bickering and whining. 

We have to go, we wailed to ourselves. 

This is horrible. It's too hot! 

This was a stupid idea! There's too many people. There's not enough space for our towels. We'll get dirt in our chicken.

We glared, we spat, we mumbled and Sighed Heavily. It was H's idea to come to the beach but it was my idea to move the towels into this loathsome site. I had thought it better situated to catch a cool breeze. This was proved to be faulty reasoning. There was no cool breeze, only baking hot wafts of other cranky parents' B.O.

C had left the stroller at the previous less-loathsome site because the hot wind had made him shitty, and blind apparently, and he had to stomp back to retrieve it. B had chosen the first site, on the far side of the beach, out of boring predictable habit, which had started the whole chain of item movement and exacerbated stress levels. 

And another thing, how dare you call me a martyr? 

Why did you only tell me those pants made me look fat after I'd been wearing them for a week? 

When are you going to stop biting your nails? 

Recriminations flew.

What saved our marriages was the enormous old fashioned shower blocks, set back from the beach; heritage listed pavilions, cool and sheltered from the gritty dry wind that was biting at our bodies and faces. If we could have picnicked right there on the tiles under a shower head, we would have. Instead we decamped to the grass on the opposite side.

There under a fig tree we could at least pretend to be cool, we were walking on grass instead of boiling dirt and sand. We could be adults again, and speak cordially to each other and the children could frolic in the nicky noo-nah. How I wished we could frolic in the nicky noo-nah too but frankly it wasn't really the suburb for those sort of hijinks.

It got hotter and hotter. H started hallucinating about us all pitching in and getting a suite at the Sheridan. Room service, she moaned. And cable tv. And...air conditioning. There would be room for all of us... it's a good idea isn't it? Isn't it? 

Once we had managed to slap down her hysteria we drove to the shopping centre, still in our swimmers and beach wraps, where, in the air con, the toddlers fell asleep in their strollers. 

And now we will go to Borders, announced H. And the kids will sleep and we will read books and have coffees if we want and it will be cool.

She was right. 

For the first time ever, I actually managed to see the top floor of Borders. Usually Tricky is with us when we duck in to buy a card or a birthday present, and he ensures that there is no extraneous browsing. 

Now, with him gently snoring in his stroller, there was browsing akimbo. There was skimming of magazines, there was perusal of pages. 

C selected a photography book and H collected a small pile of chick-lit and sat down in the comfy chair beside her equally zonked out toddler with an audible sigh. Her husband was running riot in the History section.  We smiled gently at each other, waved, nodded our approval at each other's reading material.

The drop in temperature was restoring our humanity.

Next picnic, H muttered, is either the library or the freezer section of Coles.

As I rounded one of the aisles, I had a quick peek and caught sight of...my book, Legs Up & Laughing. It was sitting up properly, amongst all the other books. I hadn't checked a bookshop in months and was scared that maybe all copies had disappeared and gone to the Bookclub In The Sky.

But there it was in Borders. 

And as I picked it up and ran my hand over the cover I realised it was not just the heat that had been bothering me. 

And sometimes, you can write something, on spec, because you have a story that has to be told. And it is hard, and it is a leap of faith, and it is scary but it can be done. And it's worth the juggle and the struggle and the heat...

Because one day it could be sitting on someone's shelf.

And that was very, very cool.

Scraps

In the interests of mentally stimulated toddlers and sane mothers, OperaSingingMummy and I take our kids to the museum.

Here we can ooh and ahhh and marvel at the trains and cars - and that's just on the walk from the parking station, we're not even in the building yet.

Obviously if i am taking my toddler on a four hour outing i must pack as if I am a normal person spending a weekend in the wilderness.

Into the faithful Kapoochi bag go the nappies and wipes and hand sanitizer (in case, i don't know, there is a display of cholera at the museum and Tricky tries to stick a petri dish in his mouth) and hat with strings and two kinds of sunscreen because I have forgotten there's already one in there. I will also have to throw in a variety of toys (why? We're going to the frigging museum you idiot, the place is full of toys) and a drink bottle and then several little plastic boxes that contain his sandwiches, two baby cheeses, two boxes of sultanas, two pieces of fruit etc etc.

Obviously I must take two of every conceivable treat just in case the other toddler wants one too. This is a strict rule of joint outings with other toddlers. There are also extra trousers, shirt and jacket just in case he a) falls into the bubbler and b)there is a sudden cold snap (true, we're in the middle of a near heat wave BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.)

OperaSinging Mummy packs in a similar manner and thus, laden with snacks and spare clothes, we lumber about the museum with our tiny, tyrannical offspring baying at our heels. Obviously ten minutes after arrival we must break for snacks ( two boxes of sultanas, two lollipops, two cookies) before spending another twenty minutes riding up and down in the glass lifts and waving to the people on each floor.

When proper lunch time occurs we make our way to the lounge area and in a piece of excellent timing, manage to snaffle a set of comfy chairs. We gratefully collapse as the children sit down to their three course sandwiches/fruit/more cookies lunch which is when we realise that neither OperaSinging Mummy nor I have actually prepared lunch for ourselves.

We could go outside and buy a sandwich, OperaSinging Mummy muses but I say no because it will take us a week to pack everyone up again and it's really hot outside and we shall have to fight the midgets to make them keep their hats on. And i'm tiiiiiiired.

So we slump in our seats and eye off Tricky and Sebastian's lunchboxes until finally they are done with gnawing out the soft centres of their cream cheese sandwiches and we are thrown a few crusts.

Crusts, i say to OperaSinging Mummy. Look at how low we have fallen. We are having crusts for lunch.

Yes, she says. And the great tragedy is...I had crusts for breakfast too.

Summer Pudding The Second

In Newcastle I catch up with Blob of the Summer Pudding.

Although now living on the opposite side of the country in Perth, he, his partner and their smiling baby with the (oddly enough) pudding bowl haircut, are spending the uni holidays on the east coast. We exchange post New Year greetings and I hold up my forearm and show him the brown peeling patch where I scalded myself with the Exploding Coffee Plunger on New Year's day.

Blob instantly counters with his third degree burn scar, also on the forearm, a small neat scar exactly the shape and thickness of the grill bar at the top of his oven. The flesh was perfectly cooked, he tells me. It even smelled good.

He goes on to applaud my meagre summer pudding efforts but hastens to amend my mental recipe.

After poaching the fruit you dip the spongy biscuits into the juice, he tells me. And that makes it easier to fit in the bowl. How did you make the dry biscuits fit together?

I tell him that I laboured for many moments, trimming them neatly into shape. This makes him chortle.

I ask him to clarify his stance on the sugar syrup. Could it really be a whole cup of sugar to a cup of water?

Blob waves his hand airily at me. His scar flashes in the air.
It could and it is.

We are staying at my parents’ new house. It is smart and modern. It reflects their changing lifestyle, as older people who are looking to their twilight years and so forth and so on.

This means they have basically moved from a sleepy university suburb to the one where the prostitutes and bikies live. Here, they are closer to the beach, they can walk to their favourite café, and they know where to get their amphetamines. They have a white tile floor downstairs and a shiny red glass splashback in kitchen. In their tiny back yard they have eschewed lawn for paved courtyard and a spa - or at least the hole which will accomodate a spa.

Also, they have a kickarse big fence so they can hang out their washing in the nicky noo-nah.
It is quite jolly and feels very cool and modern and all my friends whish they had one the same. The upstairs bit has a little sewing room and computer room but also two whopping big bedrooms for guests, and a lounge area too so that if we all have an argument we can separate and cool off, or alternatively one group of people can have scintillating conversation downstairs and other group can loll upstairs and eat chocolates and play Wii sport.

In Newcastle, I also catch up with grumpy granddad.

After leaving the main hospital he spent a couple of weeks just before Christmas in a sort of hospital holding pattern. He was transferred to a hospital out in the sticks; along with various other old, disabled and chronically ill people who have to hang around and wait until someone dies so that they can get their room. We were warned that he could be transferred around the region, from ward to ward until a room in the aged care facility he had requested (ie. paid for) became available. He was lucky. The Someone died fairly swiftly. This room is just across the car park from where Grandis was living before his leg was amputated.

At Christmas the family gather in his new room with gifts and babies and photos. We perch on chairs and on his bed and loiter about in doorways. We nibble on platters of dried fruit and cheese and nuts brought from home and my stepmum gives Grandis a container of diabetic friendly fruit cake.

Grandis accepts his gifts and hugs and kisses graciously. He has a chair to sit in but it is huge, an enormous high armchair on wheels, too heavy and bulky for him to push himself around. It is as if he is riding on a cargo ship.

How are you finding it? We ask him, hoping it’s all fabulous.
He nods, ok ok. BUT THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE GLOVE OF WATER.

Story of glove and errant testicles has to be explained to newly visiting relatives and also stepsister’s brand new boyfriend who refuses to be alarmed at the image.

THE NURSES HERE ARE VERY RELUCTANT, Grandis concludes.

I pour Grandis a whiskey in his plastic sippy mug. My sister T and I give him our matching presents. We both bought books for him, bought them together, both squabbling in the bookshop over the best looking crime/spy thriller in the largest possible print.

My younger sister Nurse K, ever practical, gives him what he really wants; a large bottle of whiskey. This we tuck away in a drawer. When Grandis lived across the carpark, he was allowed to have his night time cup of whiskey, they overlooked it as long as he didn’t burst out of his room trouserless and singing I Did It My Way. But here, where the patients are wheeled around a massive plasma screen to watch Mary Poppins of an afternoon, we realise we are not entirely sure of the new rules.

And indeed, the next time I visit, his fruitcake has been thrown out and his whiskey confiscated.

My stepmother is greatly annoyed. That fruitcake was for diabetics! Grandis shrugs a little. I suspect the fruitcake is secondary to the loss of his whiskey. Not all of it, he hastens to tell me. The other bottle is in his wardrobe. The problem is, he can’t get out of bed on his own. My stepmother has Words with the management. Confiscate! Can they really just take away his food and alcohol like that?

Management is slightly contrite about the fruitcake but can only allow the whiskey if the doctor agrees. They will hold the bottle and return it when doctor gives the ok.

This time when C and Tricky and I visit, I bring along a bottle of medically approved whiskey which my dad has given to me. There is a little sticker on the side, stamped and dated.

Except, it’s actually rum which was another of his Christmas presents, the original bottle of whiskey having been emptied. Grandis has requested this decanting just in case he is only allowed to drink whiskey. Such is the life of the rebel Aged care patient.

When I show him the dodgy bottle he nods his head slightly and slides his eyes from side to side in case anyone is watching. There are twenty people around us in chairs and wheelchairs. They are all, to a man, either asleep or glued to the screen watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…

THINGS ARE OK, Grandis tells me as we watch Tricky wind his way through the room, gazing from one crumpled old face to another. One or two gaze back, soft smiles, sad eyes.

Grandis has ordered some custom made shirts that are easier to slide over his head, and they come in a range of colours. He has ordered “pillar box red, royal blue, bottle green, and a champagne or beige colour”. It makes him cheerful, buying clothes. The lady who makes them comes in nearly every day.

Oh, does she work here?
HER MUM'S IN THE DEMENTIA WARD.

He tells me that the problem “down below”, the one that needed the glove of water to begin with isn’t getting better. And it seems to have fascinated the nurses.
THE OTHER DAY I HAD FIVE OF THEM DOWN THERE, ALL HAVING A LOOK, he booms.
I glance around but frankly nothing can distract these people from Truly Scrumptious.
I SAID TO THEM: IF WE GET ANY MORE COMING I’LL BE CHARGING ADMISSION.
I snort at this but Grandis shakes his head in sorrow.
WENT RIGHT OVER THEIR HEADS. NO ONE SAID A WORD.


I realize he misses the main hospital. Even though he lost his leg and almost died there he had an appreciative audience.

You’d have got a laugh at the ‘John, I say sympathetically.

When we leave I ask Tricky to say goodbye. Grandis is high up in his chair and unable to lean himself forward very far. I hold Tricky up and he obligingly makes himself as stiff as a board so that he can reach him. Grandis says: KISS GOODBYE? and Tricky turns his face a little so that his cheek is suddenly mashed against Grandis’s mouth.

Back at my parents place I make Summer Pudding the 2nd. With Blob’s words ringing in my ears, I soak my spongy fingers in the juice. Having learned from my last attempt I have found the bowl and appropriate squashing plate well ahead of time. With my sister K jiggling Baby L in her arms I swiftly assemble the pudding. We discuss perhaps using such things as chocolate custard. K says she dreams about making deserts with sponges and chocolate custard – the kind you buy from a supermarket.

Yum yum I say. Supermarket chocolate custard.

K suddenly beams at this. Her husband says it sounds horrible and won’t let her make it.
I secretly agree with him but I am trying to be supportive here – I remember what it was like having a 10 week baby, so if she thinks supermarket chocolate custard works, I'm with you sweetie.

Several hours later, SP2 plops easily from the basin. Like some swollen internal organ. Something vulnerable about it.

It sits, gleaming darkly under the kitchen lights. The berries I suppose. Not an attractive colour but it might be the reflection from the red splashback.

I cut quickly.