Surfing lessons

As you know Possums, my New Years Resolution was to learn to surf. I’ve managed to stand up quite a few times now and I have also managed to turn a few heads! Now, this is either because I look stupid or because of the glam bathers I had on. Later I was told that black, low-cut, halter neck one-piece suits really weren’t the surfy style. I was a bit offended at this remark, Possums. As if I didn’t know that! I’m too old to go for a surfy look so I just replied, Get-real-banana-peel. (I find that people rarely think of a come-back to this line).

But I did start to feel self-conscious. A young man who was body surfing near me stopped to watch me struggling to balance on the board and he may have smiled at me, but I was concentrating so hard on what I was doing that I can’t be sure. Later, I saw him on the beach pointing me out to his mates. I decided then that I must look hilarious. I admit that some of the earlier stacks would have for sure.

My daughters have had one surfing lesson and they can all do it easily. On my new mini-malabu, they can all stand without any forwards movement. This is because of an unfair advantage they have over me. I need speed, otherwise I just sink, being almost two or three times their weight (my ten year-old is only 20 kg).

This ten year-old of mine, Emma, took responsibility for teaching me while her older sisters left us for dead to do their own surf’n thing. She ran through the action on the beach with me the first time and had a little mantra to help me remember what to do: Paddle, Chicken Wings, Kneel, Push up. She was pretty bossy too. For example: Mum, you forgot the chicken wings, was all she said one time while I was spitting salt water out of my mouth and disentangling seaweed after a massive stack.

After moderate success with Emma as my coach, I decided eventually to have a surfing lesson. I was the only adult in the group. My teacher’s name was Ash, and he was a bit of a spunk. When he introduced himself, Hi I’m Ash, I resisted the impulse to ask him, Where’s Pikachu? (That would have been a very uncool thing to say, Possums).

The other people in the lesson would have been between nine and thirteen years of age, and they all knew eachother. I did make friends with them by the end of the lesson, though. Elliot, who was about nine years-old, said to me after we’d been catching the white wash for awhile with varying levels of success, Hey, lets catch a wave and hold hands! So we did, and we managed it just before our boards crashed into eachother and we fell in a tangle of leg ropes!

But guess what, Possums? I can now ’spring start’ and ‘drop in’ on a wave !!! (Thank you Ash).

Dropping in was a bit scary, but also a bit of a thrill. I was exhausted after the two hour lesson, but I am very excited to be able to report that I’m well on my way to achieving my New Years Resolution. How about you, Possums?

P.S. I solved my conspicuousness problem. I forgot that I had a Roxy top because my 12 year-old stole it from me a couple of summers ago. But I stole it back and now I slip it on over the halter-neck when I go surfing to cover the cleavage. It’s much better. Instead of stares, I’m now having conversations: Have you been surfing long? No, I’m a beginner, my kids are teaching me! Yeah, whatever, well you’ve got the right board for it… etc.

Maternal instincts

Possums, I’ve been having a lot of fun with young men. I was at a night spot in Melbourne recently on a warm evening. With two girlfriends I was partying on after Oaks Day. There was a crowd at the bar and I was just about to negotiate my way through with a glass of water in my hand when I was confronted by a young man in a suit who began talking to me as though we were already in mid-conversation. His mate rolled his eyes, as though to say, here we go again. And part of me agreed, but the approach was innovative and he had a mischievous grin, so I couldn’t resist.

Throwing his arms out in exasperation he says, So what do you do? Hopeless case: still living at home with his parents; never cooks his own meal; doesn’t wash his own clothes!

I say, so who are we talking about here, your friend or yourself? (I gesture to his friend with sort of a ‘hi’ look but he seems reticent. Possibly embarrassed by his friend’s effort).

The original guy replies, Well both really. The friend just casts his eyes downwards; it is quite clear that he wants nothing to do with this conversation.

So I take it up with the original guy and I say, Oh so still living at home?

He nods and inclines his head forlornly with a sheepish expression on his face. Possibly he thinks he’s playing on my maternal instincts, who knows?

I say, and can’t cook for yourself?

He nods.

I say, and don’t even wash your own clothes?

With puppy-dog eyes he says, Sad isn’t it?

I agree and then add momentarily, And you probably don’t know your way around a woman’s body either! I shrug and glance across to the friend with raised eyebrows.

He stammers his reply then, and comes out with, Oh um, I think I’d be OK. His voice was high pitched and failing with sheer shock. Truly, an actor could never capture that voice, it was priceless. But he squared himself up and his eyes widened hopefully.

I just crack up, and his friend does too (I think he appreciated it). We clink drinks and I walk off still laughing to find my girlfriends.

Wish you were there Possums!

The End of the World

 

Possums, I have a tale of woe.

During Melbourne’s recent heatwave, sadly, two of our guinea pigs succumbed to heat stroke, despite desperate rescue efforts to cool them down. On the day of this tragedy, bushfires raged across Victoria’s alpine regions. The smoke reached Melbourne, reducing visibility to about a kilometer for about three days, and tainting everything with the smell of a burnt potato.

I spent the morning making a lemon tart to take to a dinner party that afternoon. The recipe from the River Cafe blue book (I had been told) is to-die-for and I laboured in the kitchen for hours with carefully selected ingredients including fresh eggs laid by our own chickens and lemons picked from my father’s Meyer lemon tree. My concentration in the kitchen was punctuated with advice for the children around my feet applying first aid to guinnea pigs: Get an ice cream container with water and put Lyle in it. Sponge him down. Is Silver still breathing? Oh no, I think Nub Nub looks stiff…

Despite this, the tart looked magnificent. (I licked the bowl after making the filling and it tasted magnificent).

Nub Nub and Lyle passed away. The burial ceremony was brief. Silver’s condition stabilized.

The dinner party was in Warrandyte. For those of you who don’t know Melbourne, Warrandyte is a bushy suburb that attracts artists and people hankering for an alternative lifestyle still within reach of the city. The road to Warrandyte from our place is windy and hilly.

We left Silver, contained our grief, grabbed the tart out of the fridge and hopped into the car. The interior of the car was like an oven. The reading on my dash showed the outside temperature at 44 degrees celcius.

We had only been driving for a short while when, to my horror, I noticed the filling of the tart lurching everytime I turned, stopped, accelerated or went up or down a hill. It had melted in the hot car. My eldest daughter lept into the passanger seat, grabbed the tart off the floor and began tipping it to counteract the momentum of the filling as best she could. I called out warnings to her so she wouldn’t have to take her eyes off the tart: Hair-pin bend to the right; Big down-hill coming up… I felt sick.

I couldn’t work out if I felt more despairing about the tart or the guinea pigs. Both tragedies seemed to blend and magnify eachother.

The smoke from the bushfires had an eerie effect as we drove the hills to Warrandyte. The smell of burnt potatoes was everywhere.

The kids and I agreed that this is what it would feel like at the end of the world.

No Fat Chicks

Hello Possums. I’ve been jogging along the beach over summer and on one night just before sunset I was prompted to speak my mind to two teenage boys.

They were way up the beach, close to where I turn around, and working together to put the finishing touches on an impressive sand castle – a pyramid that stood about shoulder height. These boys would have been no more than sixteen. They were both wearing their boardies with the classic undie-line showing above the waistband. They had tanned, strong shoulders, and sunbleached hair that looked matted from a day in the surf.

As I jogged closer to them, I noticed they were writing an inscription on the front of their pyramid. I turned my head to read it. ‘NO FAT CHICKS’ it said.

They were still there when I came past again on my way back. This time one of them straightened up and turned to look at me. He noticed I had been checking out their handywork, and his tanned face strained with anticipation for my reaction.

A second or two passed before I smiled and said, I didn’t know they made arse-holes that young.

I didn’t stop jogging, and my back was already to him when he replied with a slow, deliberate clap, very funny, oh yes that’s a good one. So I turned and bowed, said Thank you, Thank you, without really stopping.

What would you have done, Possums?

Men in Kilts

Now Possums, does it sometimes happen to you that aspects of your life seem to follow a theme? …unrelated incidents suddenly become connected by a common thread.

A theme for me currently is men in kilts. It’s astonishing! It started on Oaks Day last November. For those of you who are not from Melbourne, Oaks Day is part of the Melbourne Cup horse racing carnival. It’s the official Ladies Day. A chance to don your heels and get out the bling-bling. On this particular Oaks Day I did just that.

I haven’t worn high heels since my teenage days, when I wore 11cm velvet stilettos and went to blue-light discos. I used to be able to dance all night in those ridiculous shoes. The ones I wore on Oaks Day were a comparatively modest 8cm, but by the end of the day I had pressure sores on the balls of my feet and the pain had to be experienced to be believed. But despite the pain, I ventured onwards to the The Bar in central Melbourne after the days racing.

The Bar was crowded with race goers and the atmosphere was friendly and chatty. It was here that I noticed a man in a kilt standing talking with a large group of his mates who all wore traditional suits. In my high heels I was almost as tall as him. He had a lovely face and friendly eyes. I stopped, momentarily transfixed by his gaze, then recovered myself. Glancing downwards to his kilted regions I said, so is it true? He followed my gaze then and with a cheeky grin just started to roll part of the kilt up his thigh, until it was obvious to me and all others who had stopped to watch that there was no undie-line there, no sign at all!

I hadn’t expected this! The thought of it all just hanging there in the breeze caught me off guard, and I exclaimed, What! Nothing? in rather an astonished, high pitched voice. Very uncool, possums, I know, but I was a bit beside myself at this stage and still in pain. He replied in a thick Scottish accent, Noo not Nothing! There’s dick and balls there lassy! I gaped at him (only for a split second) then recovered myself enough to laugh and make a lame remark like, Well, Thanks I always did wonder… before heading off to join my girlfriends.

A friend has since told me that I got what I deserved, asking a pissed up Scotsman what was under his kilt…

I was at a conference in Adelaide later that month. It was a five day conference and the schmoozing wears me out, so I have a policy these days of having a break alone in a peaceful place to recoup, text friends and put in a call home. In Adelaide I found a beautiful spot under a tree on the banks of the river. The first day I was on the phone to my cosmopolitan friend, D, who now lives in Sydney, when I was struck by the most astonishing vision. A man with a beautiful torso and long flowing hair sped by me on roller blades, wearing nothing but a kilt! Now you know possums that I now know all about kilts! I stopped mid conversation to watch him approach, pass me and then skate out of sight with rhythmic motion and fluid, athletic movements. Let your imagination linger there for a moment, possums…

On each of the five days I returned to the same spot, and at exactly the same time on every day, this beautiful man returned to skate… skate… skate… past me wearing nothing but a kilt.

But that’s not all! Driving home from The Jazz Club the night I mentioned previously in ‘Seeking Older Women‘, we picked up two girlfriends who had been to an Irish pub around the corner and the four of us shared the taxi fare. These two women had met a kilted man at Paddy McGee’s and proceeded to tell us about their encounter. They had asked him the question directly.

This particular Scotsman did not have the decorum of my one at the The Bar, because he raised his kilt and held it there for the women, who stood there like roos in headlights aghast at his full frontal exposure. The women had recovered completely of course by the time they recounted the story to us. The lingering fascination they had was with the size of his schlong. Honestly, it hung down to his knees. Have you ever seen a flaccid one that long? they asked us. No we hadn’t. So now we’re all wondering if there is such a thing as prosthetic extensions, or whether he was the genuine article… Men in Kilts.

Body Art

Now possums, I noticed the young man who took off his shirt this morning whilst walking along Bridge Road in Richmond (just as the heat of the day was really setting in). Nice bod, but the thing that actually caught my eye this time was his body art – large paisley design on the entirety of his back.

My almost-a-teenager daughter noticed it too. I always wanted to get a small rose tatoo on my shoulder, she said. I sighed and was silent for awhile, wondering what to say, whether to disapprove or try to put her off or to just let it be. Then my mind started to wander a bit and quite spontaneously I said to her, well you know the only tatoo that I would like to get is one on my tummy that traces the shape of my womb and shows a picture of a baby curled up the way they are before they are born.

I love the shape of the little bodies and the way they fold their legs and feet up to fit inside like a ball. I used to fold my new babies up that way and stare at them in sheer fascination, just marvelling that they were once inside me and that I’d given birth to them (all four). My body is fit, but little stretch marks and slight squishiness that I can’t get rid off on my lower tummy could be covered by this tatoo!

My daughter laughed.

The picture could say it all!

conference mania

Hello possums. Is there something about conferences that make people revert back to teenage behaviour? Or, is there something about human nature that we suppress in order to function as respectable citizens in our day-to-day lives that starts to ooze between the cracks when we are outside our normal social circumstances. Or is it just natural to fall in love at any stage of your life and when you least expect it?

Possums, have you ever experienced the feeling of being “stripped till you were bare of any bindings from the world outside that room” (as Missy Higgens wrote in ‘They Weren’t There‘)? At my first interstate conference last July, I was disarmed by a charming young man at pre-dinner drinks on the last night. Mid-conversation, he suddenly turned from a ‘nice boy’ to a ‘desirable man’, and it knocked me for a six because I thought that I had given up on men forever. We spent the evening in each others company on and off, and at one stage I thought he hinted about coming up to my room at the hotel. I didn’t act on this (I basically ignored it because that sort of thing isn’t really in my repertoire), but it sent me into a spin.

When I got home my husband and friends noticed a change in me. I wasn’t sleeping, started jogging everyday for stress relief, I appeared super alert sometimes and super vague others, for example my husband accused me, whilst I was sitting at my desk:

You were staring wistfully out of the window!

Was not! I replied.

But I was… I also experienced an increase in libido… I basically went hyper. Only just coming down from it now. Phew.

Colleagues of mine who were at a conference together experienced it too. But they ended up having the baby and leaving their respective partners! One had grown up children and the other had a young family of three. What pushes people over the edge to take this irreversible, life-changing step?

I put this question to another colleague of mine who said she understood it completely. She had left her family when her children were young to follow a man around Australia. If I had my time again, I wouldn’t have done it, she said, because of the affect it had on my children and my relationship with them, but at the time I’d have done anything for him.

My friend Ita’s comments on the situation reveal there could even be more at stake. Ita is a person I have enduring respect for because she is very stable and family-orientated. I generally feel very focussed and at piece after spending time with her.

One of Ita’s long term friends left her husband and family for a UK guy met at a conference. By way of explanation she said to Ita,

I wondered if I should have waited until the kids grew up before leaving my husband, but if I left it too long I would reduce my chances of repartnering.

Ita’s remark to me was,

How selfish of her! When you have a family, it’s not just about you anymore! We’ve been friends for twenty years, but now I feel like I don’t know her.

That’s one written-off friend if you ask me!

I was put onto a book by Dr. Rosie King entitled ‘Good Loving, Great Sex’. Btw, I highly recommend this book to any married couple or anyone who is thinking of a long term relationship, gay or straight. One chapter is devoted to the state of ‘limerance’. It seems that we humans are programmed for the condition of infatuation, which is analogous to being on speed…

But are conferences catalysts for this sort of thing? Would it happen if the same two people were just at a dinner party with their usual acquaintances, for example?