The Occasional Adventures of Betty

A Neolithic Adventure

2011-12-31T18:38:00.001+11:00

Stonehenge

As 2011 ends and we look ahead to the future, Betty has been busy exploring the distant past - having a bit of a neolithic adventure with Ann.

On Friday we looked at the grey sky, shrugged, packed warm clothes and headed to Wiltshire, through the sorts of places that I always think of as the Real England: tumbledown ramshackle villages with narrow streets and thatched-roof cottages; hedgerows and woodlands where you expect to see Tom Bombadil or Bilbo Baggins, and rolling swathes of green fields full of standing stones and barrows.

First stop: Stonehenge. It was a wee bit chilly and there was a very light sprinkle of rather cold rain - but it couldn''t extinguish the excitement I felt at finally seeing Stonehenge in the flesh. Pity there were all those barrier ropes. And tourists. ;-)

Back in the car, we drove through increasingly crappy weather. Bruce the GPS refused to find our next destination, so I was given the task of navigating. I know some people will be laughing at that, but I'll have you know I can read a road map very well. We did not get lost. Not even once. The next stop was the West Kennet Long Barrow, a neolithic communal tomb, just a short walk through slippery mud next to the A4, and I got us there with no problems at all.

On the way we had a couple of brief photo stops. I had a bit of a Wind in the Willows moment when I spied these riverboats moored at Upavon (at least, I think that's where it was),

and when I saw (on my trusty road-map) that there was a village called Huish up ahead, we just had to do a little detour (Huish is my daughter-in-law's maiden name).

Eventually we got to where we wanted to go:

It's just on the other side of the A4 from Silbury Hill, which is another neolithic construction. In Wiltshire you fall over a henge or a barrow every five minutes!

After checking out the barrow we pressed on, in even worse weather, to Avebury, a little village that has sprouted in the very midst of a henge and a cluster of standing stones, and which is one of England's most important sites for modern pagans.

We were very fortunate to have the company and expertise of Gordon, who is the Wiccan high priest of Avebury, explaining the stones to us. We were very unfortunate that the weather was so disgusting - that steady soaking rain that you think isn't too bad until you realise you're drenched - so we didn't get to walk around all the stones. We did, however, get to 'debrief' at the Red Lion afterwards!

The journey so far.

2011-12-31T17:10:00.002+11:00

Picking up the thread from Abu Dhabi...

We are delayed by thick fog, and when we finally leave, it's through a surreal landscape of desert sand and white mist. I hope to get a better look at Abu Dhabi on the way back.

The second leg of the flight is an odd one. I can't sleep and can't watch telly (the in-flight entertainment system is dead). By the time I arrive at Heathrow I’ve done half a dozen cryptic crosswords, read 50 pages of When God was a Rabbit, and am well and truly ready to put my feet on solid ground, breathe some proper non-pressurised air and meet (dramatic music) The Family. I have no trouble recognising cousin Helen at the airport, and off we go to Epsom.

It’s been almost 30 years since I last saw Auntie Min, but the years have just melted away. My cousins – even the ones I’ve never met, like Helen – don’t feel like strangers, and it's lovely to reacquaint myself with those I’ve met already. We spend hours looking at old photos of ourselves (and taking some new ones).

Alan & I used to be best buddies when we were little, and got up to all sorts of mischief. It was Ally who taught me to play Knock Down Ginger (sssssh, don't tell Auntie Min!)

Steve is my Epsom tour guide and shopping buddy. I have to run to keep up with him. He has an amazing memory for dates and events, and knows heaps about the history of the local area.

Ah, my lovely Auntie Min. A wicked sense of humour and a heart the size of Phar Lap's!

These precious days of just being family run into one another. We’re not doing anything special, but every minute feels special. There’s no pressure. The daily rhythms and routines are soothing – and of course, once I’ve organised a SIM card and a dongle, life is complete!

Waitrose, Sainsburys, Poundland… call me weird, but I really like poking around supermarkets in foreign places. Leave me in the main shopping precinct, and while I won’t exactly shop till I drop, I’ll certainly browse for hours - it's all about getting a feel for local tastes and habits, I suppose, and exploring the similarities and differences between home and here.

Early in the year my friend Lucy’s mum, Ann, came to Australia and we did a girly road trip to the chocolate factory and ghost house at Junee. At that time (and occasionally during our online Scrabble games as well) Ann had said to be sure to contact her when I come to the UK – so of course I make sure I do - besides, I am delivering Lucy's Christmas mail to her family!)

Lunch at the pub in Worcester Park

Ann and I take Auntie Min to the pub for lunch on Thursday, and then Ann whisks me away to Wokingham. My head is in a whirl – I don’t know what’s where or what – things seem familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. I really do feel like a stranger in the land of my birth! The traffic is chaotic (‘this is nothing!’ says Ann) and fast, on such narrow streets. I can’t get used to darkness falling around 4pm. It feels like the middle of the night by about 6pm!

I'm waking between 3 and 4am most days, which is around the time I often wake at home, so I think I’m pretty much over my jetlag. I use the wee hours to get started on a new novel (and, today, to catch up on blogging!) I’m having a ball.

(Next: a Neolithic Adventure)

Waving from Abu Dhabi

2011-12-26T14:16:00.000+11:00

Yoohoooo! Here I am in Abu Dhabi awaiting the leg leg of the trip. Boarding is in 20 mins, so this'll be quick.

Survived the flight! Survived the obnoxious twat in the seat in front of me, who had the =extra leg-room seat, but still needed to keep his seat reclined for the entire 14 hour flight. My little telly screen was almost up my nose, and in the squishiness of it all, my meals had to trace a tortuous path from the tray table to my mouth (sometimes via my clothes. This shirt is going to be a wonderful record of "what I ate on my trip".)

Sleeping pills are a wonderful thing. Half a Stilnox knocked me out for 4 hours - that's 3 hours and 20 minutes longer than I managed to sleep on the last long-haul flight I attempted, Stilnox notwithstanding - so I see it as a big improvement. I'm quite sure that I smell, but I suppose everybody else does too.

Lots of crying babies, lots of people coughing and sneezing (aaaaargh, GERMZZZZZ!) but overall a reasonable trip. Decent food, but a second glass of wine at dinner would've been nice!

Abu Dhabi is currently shrouded in fog - can't see a damned thing, so it's really hard to get a sense of the place. Maybe on the way back...

Nearly boarding time - gotta go - 10 hours in the air (maybe some more sleep if I can, or is that just downright greedy???) Bye all!

In which Betty embarks upon a New Adventure

2011-12-25T16:57:00.000+11:00

I haven’t seen my Auntie Min since 1982 – but I’ll see her tomorrow! I just have to get through the ordeal of flying to the other side of the world. I have my aisle seat booked and some sleeping pills in my bag. Wish me luck!

I’m not a fan of flying – it’s that closed-in, trapped feeling that triggers all sorts of anxiety nasties. To short-circuit the possibility of a mid-air incident (wouldn't that be embarrassing?), I have a cryptic crossword book, a notebook, something to read and something to write with. I may grab a Womens Weekly for Auntie Min as well.

I’m currently at the airport in Sydney, hideously early. That was my stuff-up. I booked my bus ticket from Canberra months ago. I’d actually booked a 3pm bus, but for some reason I had it in my head that I was to depart at midday. Oops. The nice man from Murrays let me on the midday bus instead (thank you!) and now I’m wafting about the airport with a few hours to kill before check-in, and a few more hours till it’s time for Etihad Airlines to take me up, up and away!

In the meantime I'm blogging, people-watching, eavesdropping on a group of airport cops talking about bikies and complaining about being bored (overheard: "Some days you just do a lot of wandering aimlessly"); watching a group of Malaysian tourists admiring(?) the airport's Nativity display, and wondering what the heck to do next. A cryptic crossword, perhaps, or should I head to the bar for a glass of Christmas cheer?

Oh yes, Christmas - Merry Christmas everybody! More when I get to the Other Side. Onwards and upwards - let the adventure begin!

In which Betty seeks (and finds) Equilibrium

2011-12-21T07:58:00.000+11:00

Marking and reporting hell seems to hit harder each semester. It lasted for half a term this time – that’s some serious hell-time, and I wasn't the only one who struggled. In combination with everything else going on around me I suppose it’s little wonder that I fell in a heap.

After almost 2 weeks of doctor-ordered rest I had to go back to school – and what a shaky old time I had of it. Exams had to be marked, there was an Everest of paperwork to do, and the end-of-year activities were full-on. It was ugly, and I drifted through the days like a ghost, mostly, trying to keep my head down. One big panic attack, bucketloads of misery and (a bright spot!) a very successful Morris Dancing workshop, run by ME (yes you read that right) later, I’m pleased to report that I limped – ok, crawled – to the finish line, horribly battered and bruised, but still breathing.

In amongst all of that there was a lovely visit from Dad & Diana, who came over from Christchurch for Boomerang Boy’s wedding; the wedding itself and the purchase of Chez Betty in Mallacoota; the relocation of much of my furniture to the aforementioned Chez Betty and the acquisition of a new housemate in Canberra.

Mr & Mrs Boomerang Boy - beaut day, beaut location, sterling weather, stellar company!

The Groom, with Mummy & Grandies (Mummy is the one in green)

Two new housemates, actually.

My daughter Kate (the Tetris Queen) and her evil sidekick Aldwyn Grandkitty have taken up residence with me – a mutually beneficial arrangement that should save us both some money. Aldwyn has made the place his own, and entertains us by climbing doors and curtains. As a cat lady who has been without cats for several months now, I am amused by this, in the same way that grandparents are amused by the antics of children when they no longer have to raise them. The Tetris Queen is finding the challenge of fitting her stuff into my house, um, challenging. Surrounded by boxes, we bumble along one day at a time and drink a lot of cider. It’s nice.

I’ve spent the last 2 days in Mallacoota doing a lot of nothing. Very Good Medicine. My modest little house is just about set up for holidaymakers, and I’ve spent plenty of time enjoying the outlook from the back yard (and the front yard, which is lovely) and the antics of the wildlife. I’ve been feeling the school-induced stress just evaporating, the way it always does in this magical place – ah, Equilibrium, there you are!

Meltdown

2011-11-29T10:11:00.000+11:00

There probably isn’t much in this world that’s more embarrassing than sitting in a classroom full of teenagers and being utterly unable to stop tears from pouring down your face. Except perhaps doing it twice.

What triggered it? Who knows? Sleeplessness, exhaustion and relentless overwork, more than likely. Whatever the cause, the descent into marking and reporting hell put me over the edge this semester. My brain, over-tired, decided that if I wasn’t going to give it a break, it was going to take a break of its own.

When I couldn’t stop crying, my head of faculty sent me home via the doctor. The doctor put me off work.
I didn’t cook a single meal for myself. I rarely ate. I slept a bit. I babbled inanely on Facebook, just to have some communication with the outside world, to prove to myself that I was still compos mentis (because everybody knows how much brainpower Facebook demands, right?)

I decluttered the house, but couldn’t declutter my mind.

I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think straight. I still had to get my reports written. It took me about four days to churn out some embarrassingly bad reports (wonder if I can get four days of sick leave restored? Hmmm, probably not. And unfortunately I now have no sick leave left.)

I’ve been back at school for 5 days now and I’ve cried almost every day. I feel like a ghost, drifting through the days and trying to hold it together. Some days I manage better than others, but I have to show up for work every day for the next 3 weeks; have to supervise and mark exams, proofread reports, go to meetings; have to listen to the very public digs of a bullying boss. What the hell am I doing to myself? A job is not supposed to reduce a person to this, to strip a person of their sense of self worth and turn them into a gibbering and inadequate wreck. I’m better than this.

An hour ago I marked my last essay for the year. Can I have my brain back now, please?

Fully Sic - gone, just like that.

2011-10-23T22:12:00.002+11:00

A friend posted this pic on Facebook. I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm hoping it's in the public domain.

I can’t stop crying. A couple of hours ago it was announced that Marco Simoncelli – he of the crazy hair and the wild, give-it-everything-you’ve-got riding style, had ‘succumbed to his injuries’ after a dreadful, dreadful crash at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia. The image of his helmet bouncing across the track will stay with me for a long, long time.

I feel as if I’ve lost a friend, even though I’ve never met him. Marco, aka Hair Bear, Fully Sic, Super Sic and probably a host of other names, was a regular visitor to my lounge room throughout the motoGP season, via the magic of television. Last weekend my friend Tali was his grid girl at Phillip Island. I felt a vicarious connection with him because of that. Tali’s feeling pretty gutted right now – as are all my motorcycling friends - as am I.

We all know that motorcycling is dangerous, but we love it anyway. And even knowing how dangerous it is, we are still shattered – and, I think, kind of surprised - when we lose someone. Especially someone like Marco, who was one of the young gods of motorcycling. When they are on the track, they seem protected somehow. High speed 'offs' that would kill lesser mortals seem to have little effect on them. These young blokes achieve the impossible, race after race. They crash at horrendous speeds. They slide, they get up and more often than not, they walk away.

But not today.

Marco Simoncelli, you crazy charismatic gutsy young man - you will be fondly remembered by more people than you could imagine, and you will be sadly missed.

My heartfelt thoughts go out to Marco’s family – and to Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi, who were drawn into this awful, awful accident of Fate through no fault of their own, and who will be burdened with the memory of it forever. Hugs all round.

If you haven't yet, but would like to leave a condolence message, or read the tributes of other fans, here's a link (thanks Andrew).

Spring - and a young bird's thoughts turn to love.

2011-10-07T12:11:00.000+11:00

Pretty in pink - the inlet just before sunrise

Seems to me I have to revise my statements about birds every day that I am here. Yesterday I said something about birds of a feather sticking together – lorikeet with lorikeet, rosella with rosella and so on. Well… I’ve just watched what I can only assume is a very confused brush wattlebird courting a kookaburra! This is the same kookaburra, I believe, that has been hanging around the flat for the past week. The one who took the sausage.

So - I'm making a big assumption here, given how wrong the birds keep proving me, but it appears this curmudgeonly kookaburra is a girl bird, and she's been receiving lots of attention from a randy brush wattlebird

This morning the magpies tried to exact revenge for Wednesday’s indignity, and the kookaburra flew away momentarily. When it returned, it sat on the feeder box and fixed me with a beady stare – I was sitting inside the flat at the time – and then flew into the window with a clunk that sent it plopping to the ground. It picked itself up and laughed a self-deprecating kookaburra laugh (“Aw crap, can’t believe I just did that, heh heh”) before hopping back into the tree.

And that’s when the wattlebird started doing its courting dance, fanning its tail feathers, prancing and bowing and bobbing its head, and trying to move itself into a position to, er, consummate the relationship. Imagine a Jack Russell terrier trying to lurve a Labrador, or Charlie Chaplin and Xena, Warrior Princess – that’s what it was like. When the kookaburra spurned his advances and flew away, he followed close behind, trying to mount her during flight (positively scandalous!) The pair of them have been back to my tree since then and repeated the performance, so I know it wasn’t a one off. Is this inter-species lurve commonplace in the bird world, I wonder?

A more conventional couple yesterday – a pair of rainbow lorikeets – had me blushing while I was outside feeding the king parrot. Kingy & I have become good mates now – he cosied up to me as he nibbled sunflower seeds from my hand, and the rainbow lorikeets, not game to get close enough to steal the seeds, decided to bonk each other instead, right in front of me. I felt I should avert my eyes, but it was all over in about 5 seconds anyway. Ain’t spring grand?

I put the SOLD sign there myself!

While the birds have been courting and bonking, I’ve been sorting out my entry into capitalist pigdom, and can make the following report: so far, so good! My modest 2 bedroom cottage with massive shed and lovely gardens, overlooking farmland and bushland, now sports a SOLD sign out the front - I helped put it there myself yesterday. As it’s an investment property, I can’t actually 'live the dream' in it for 12 months, so I’ll be looking to rent it to holidaymakers over the next year. Set well back from the road 3kms out of Mallacoota, it’ll be a quiet place to stay, even at peak times of the year, and with heaps of parking space, Mr Fisherman will even have room to park the boat. I’m in the process of getting a managing agent to take care of that side of things for me. Settlement is on 9 December, so I’m going to have to work fast to get it set up to receive guests over Christmas. What an adventure!

The Birds, the Birds!

2011-10-06T08:23:00.001+11:00

I learn a lot about birds every time I visit Mallacoota. My first silly misconception, long ago, was that, parrots being parrots, they’d all get on. Not so. They’re like people. They stick with their own kind. The rainbow lorikeets hang with the other rainbow lorikeets. The crimson rosellas stick with other crimson rosellas. Same with the king parrots. They’re like colour gangs. Mallacoota is a sort of feathered West Side Story. A bird eat bird world. A jungle.

I formed the opinion early on that the gorgeous rainbow lorikeets are the thugs of the parrot world. They bully each other and every other bird that tries to share the feeder box, parrot or not. They even chase other rainbow lorikeets out of the feeder box, like naughty kids who refuse to share the sandpit. Remember the Tweety cartoon where Tweety gets hold of the Jekyll and Hyde potion? Rainbow lorikeets remind me of the Hyde-Tweety. They drop their heads, raise their shoulders and hunch themselves up like monster birds, then hop threateningly at one another, peering down their hooky little beaks. It seems to work. I might try it on my Year 10s, next time they misbehave.

King parrots, on the other hand, are gentle giants. (late observation: I learned, 5 minutes ago, that the gang mentality is alive and well in this species too - they're shy when they're all alone, but surround them with a few friends, and bang, they can bully with the best of them! Bugger - now I need to edit what I said yesterday.) Stunningly beautiful and very good natured, they’re quite shy on their own, and don’t stand a chance ~~against the~~ when outnumbered by lorikeets. This lovely boy is quite tame.

When he gets over his initial fear, he will sit on your head or your arm, and take food from your hand. Curiosity gets the better of the rainbow lorikeets then, who see a potential source of food in your hand, and want a piece of the action. They sneak or flutter closer, not quite brave enough to hop on the hand, bobbing their heads to get a better look at whatever the king parrot is eating, and trying to calculate how they can get some too.

Cor, wotcha got there mate? Can I have some?

No, bugger off!

Feeder box rules don’t apply here. Here on The Hand, the lone king parrot will fight back.

So yesterday, with all this attention from my little feathered friends, I felt quite popular. While I was hangin’ with ma homies – feeding the king parrot and fending off the lorikeets - my sausage-eating magpies spied me, and decided it must be sausage-time. They’re in the habit of peering through the window to find me. They even jump up and down at the back door, beaks clacking and sometimes warbling to demand food!

Madam Magpie: Oi! That parrot's not eating my sausages, is it?

Madam, suspecting human treachery, and fearful for her sausages, was clearly disgruntled, and actually swooped me when I had my back turned! Beastly, feathered ingrate! Her wing slapped me on the back of the head and the ‘clack’ of her beak on my ear gave me quite a jolt.

That’s the thing with birds – one minute it’s all sunflower seeds and sausages,

and the next, it’s a Hitchcock movie!

The magpies don’t have it all their own way though. Earlier in the day, Madam Magpie was industriously thrashing a piece of sausage on the ground, when a brown and cream bomb hurtled out of the blue at her, bowling her clean over and nicking the sausage. A kookaburra. It took up a seat on the seedbox and cackled a bit – and made threatening noises at Madam when she approached to remonstrate. I had no idea that birds could ‘growl’ - I told you I learn a lot about birds here!

The Kookaburra - not as cuddly as you'd think! And a bit of a curmudgeon to boot!

Kookaburras may look like lovely cuddly plush toys, but that long snappy beak, with the little hook on the end, is pretty lethal. To appease my growling kookaburra friend, I offered him some sausage of his own, and he accepted! I was grateful he didn’t snap a hole in my hand (the kookaburra method is to divebomb and grab, which often snaps its prey's back or neck, if it happens to be a hapless lizard or snake) – but this bloke's aim was true, and he left not a mark on me as he swooped the sausage and headed off for a safe perch on which to enjoy it. Phew.

So – that was my eventful day. Oh, and I bought a house.

The Dance of the Lyrebird

2011-10-04T17:07:00.000+11:00

The lyrebirds of Karbeethong are a lovely bunch. This morning I came across a youngster strutting his stuff in the undergrowth. I'm pretty sure he was a youngster because his tail feathers weren't very big. I shot a video of him on my mobile phone, but the quality was too abysmal to upload here.

Anyway - I did a couple of voice recordings (again. on my phone - aren't telephones amazing things these days?) and identified a heap of different bird calls (all produced by the lyrebird) - a kookaburra, a currawong or magpie, a golden whistler, a south-eastern whipbird, a satin bowerbird, and several other calls I couldn't identify. The clearly identifiable lyrebird sound, though, is the sound that's reminiscent of a camera shutter - a sort of metallic chyoo chyoo chyoo followed by a squawky chirrup. Upon the squawk, the bird does a funny sort of sideways hop, and bobs the 'lyre' shape of his tail feathers forward over his back and head. I wish my video had worked out! The little fellow let me watch him for about 10 minutes, and then my knees gave out, ha ha, and I had to move. Startled, the bird skedaddled.

I'm not sure yet how to upload sound files so you can hear the variety of his calls, and the genius of his mimcry. Watch this space.

Lyrebird-chasing is one of my fav pursuits whenever I come to Mallacoota - that, and feeding the dozens of birds that come to the door of my flat. I have a new magpie who must have young to feed, as she keeps coming back for more, and leaving with a beakful of food, presumably for the babies. She was so eager to see me this afternoon that she came running, and I thought she was going to come inside!

Of my latest pursuit - house-hunting - on this perfect Mallacoota day of blue sky, bluer water, sparkling views and balmy weather - I can't give you any updates - but I have been back for a second look at a house I rather like. Stay tuned!

A New Mallacoota Adventure

2011-10-03T17:41:00.001+11:00

White-out in Mallacoota - the inlet has disappeared into the rain!

To everyone who was wondering whether I was dead or alive - I'm alive, although another killer term has taken its toll. I couldn't even contemplate blogging last term (and I'm sure everyone's sick of my moaning anyway!) So - the term is O-V-E-R. I'm older, crankier, more stressed... The wrinkles are deepening with every new parent-teacher night and every after-school meeting - but it's holiday time now and I've brought my battle-fatigue (and my Year 12 references) to beautiful Mallacoota to destress - and to embark on what might be a massively Huge adventure with a capital HUGE!

New aftermarket screen

This was Piglet’s first ride to Mallacoota, and we came via Bombala and Cann River, dodging echidnas and foxes on the road. It was cold and wet, but Piglet was a real trouper. I loaded him up with a couple of Andy Strapz AA bags that Pisshead Pete let me borrow. They didn't hold as much as I'd hoped, so I had to leave some stuff behind (note to self: buy an Andy Strapz A Bag.)

The aftermarket screen I fitted has made a world of difference - no buffeting! - although I found my shoulders and thighs sore by the time I got here. I really need to build up some ride-fitness. Well, fitness of any sort, really - I did my walk into town, wandered around some of the residential areas having a stickybeak, and back to Adobe yesterday. My first proper walk since my accident in March, and 12kms may have been a little excessive - pelvis and knees were fine, but Oh My Aching Feet! They just wanted to drop off and limp away, except they didn't have the energy...

At the moment, outside the flat, there’s total white-out. The lake has disappeared into the rain. It’s been like that, on and off, since Saturday, so I haven't been bushwalking or bird-watching. I have, however, been looking at other things. Houses.

I’ve been coming here once or twice a year for the last five years now. Every time I arrive it takes my breath away, and every time I leave it breaks my heart. So this time I’m on a mission - I'm looking for a house to buy.

Yep, ol’ Betty’s looking for a sea-change, or a tree-change (you can have both in Mallacoota) – and you know what? I’m really kind of scared! Scared of the mega financial commitment; scared of change; scared of leaping into what could be an abyss. I’m a single woman of 52 with a mortgage, a motorcycle and a job that’s killing me. I want Something Else, and that something is, I think, here in Mallacoota – a daggy little fishing town that has barely changed in 40 years, teeming with birdlife and wildlife, with stunning beach and inlet views, fertile, grow-anything soil, and not a traffic light for about 70kms. (No McDonalds, no movies, no shopping malls… wow). I’m a little nervous about the whole thing.

But I’m going to do it. What’s the worst that can happen?

My chair - finished at last!

2011-07-31T14:07:00.000+10:00

Almost done...

Finished at last!

Piglet's Big Day Out

2011-07-30T21:15:00.000+10:00

In which Betty and Piglet go for a Real Ride

Piglet, all excited at the prospect of a real ride

‘Oh bother,’ said Betty. ‘It’s been such ghastly weather since I picked up Piglet from the Harley shop, I fear we haven’t really bonded yet.’

That was an understatement. Piglet’s very first ride from the showroom in Fyshwick was in horrid rain. Poor Piglet (so named because he/she/it is a baby Hog) sat in Betty’s shed through nearly a week of shitty weather, and Harley ventured out at all until the beginning of school.

‘A commute is to riding as Mcdonalds is to fine dining’, said Betty grumpily. She felt a certain disturbing ambivalence towards Piglet, although riding to school in temperatures of minus 5 and minus 6 was rather bracing. By about Tuesday Betty was feeling quite fond of Piglet, and was also delighted, the following Saturday, to note that she still had all her fingers, despite the freezing weather and the lack of heated grips.

It was important, because Saturday was to be a Very Special Day.

After Stupidball, Betty and Piglet sallied forth on their first proper ride. It was a little ride by anybody’s standards – only about a hundred kilometres all up – but it covered urban roads, highway and some sort of countryish roads.

What a fabulous ride it was, too. Piglet had plenty of grunt (or should that be ‘squeal’?) Very torquey down low, and Betty was very excited to actually get into top gear for the first time! On the run to school, poor Piglet is lucky to make it into third gear!

Piglet waits patiently in Bungendore while Betty has a hot chocolate

Piglet looks so tiny - but packs a punch!


Piglet waits patiently outside friend Trace's place, back in Canberra after a fab first ride

For the first time, Betty felt truly comfortable on Piglet – the week of commuting had given her a bit of practice with the ride position and the controls, so that today she was far more confident, and actually rode Piglet like a motorcycle should be ridden. It was lovely.

On the on-ramp to Parkes Way from Northbourne Avenue, on the way home, Betty laughed maniacally inside her beautiful new Arai helmet as she twisted Piglet's throttle. Piglet responded beautifully, making Betty shriek her head off with delight, and they went home the very best of friends.

You can't see the grin inside my fab new helmet, but it goes from ear to ear!

Chairbodgers R Us

2011-07-19T10:41:00.000+10:00

From this:

To this:

in 10 days - what an adventure!

My beautiful double bow Windsor chair began its life on the woodpile of Rare Chairs, at Moonan Brook in the Upper Hunter (NSW). It was hand made (by me, with a little help from my friends) using traditional tools and methods that involved no electricity, under the tutelage of Howard Archbold, and in the company of some truly fabulous people with levels of woodworking/tool-wielding experience that ranged from zero (me) to extensive (Karl, Ed and Rusty are builders, Michael's a keen hobbyist, Mark has a machine workshop and Fiona has done some silversmithing). Chairmaking the traditional way, however, sans power tools - was new to all of us except Rusty. The 10 days absolutely flew by - and apart from chairs, great friendships and memories were also made.

Here’s a pictorial and a bit of bush poetry to go with it.


The workshop

The Forestry Cottage at Moonan Brook - our home for 10 days

Fifty five kilometres from Scone in New South Wales

There's a sleepy little valley full of trees

With a woodpile and a workshop where you make a chair by hand,

And it's strictly people-powered if you please!

A hardy group of chairmakers withstood the winter chill

With gloves on hands and beanies on our heads

We brought sleeping bags and pillows and a vast supply of food,

And some booze to stop us freezing in our beds

There was Kiwi Rusty, who had come to make his seventh chair,

There were Ed and Karl, who knew a thing or two

And Michael and Fiona, making Dad and Daughter chairs,

And Mark with his enormous 'Yeeeeaaah!' and Sue.

Mark on the shave-horse, with his trusty drawknife

The support troops at the cottage, Marjorie and sleepy Liam

Kept the fires alight and brought us daily treats

And the scent of baking 'Ed-bread' and the nightly Happy Hour

Kept us going, even though dead on our feet


Guess which lucky chairmaker had a birthday - thanks heaps for the surprise celebration, folks!

'Ed-bread', baked fresh daily

Every morning there was groaning as we nursed our swollen hands,

Aching shoulders, tired feet and creaking bones

And the plaintive cry of Michael - 'I need mothering!' - each night

Rang throughout the valley on our journey home

But the lovely chairs we crafted with our blood and sweat and tears

And the pole-lathe and the adze, the scorp and saw

Will remain long after all the niggly aches and pains have gone

To be precious heirloom chairs forever more

To our host and teacher, Howard, we extend a hearty thanks

Even though he worked our fingers to the bone

We will leave the place far richer than we were when we arrived

At Moonan Brook, just fifty five from Scone.

The results of more than a day's hard work - robinia wood, shaped by drawknife and destined to become chair legs and arm posts

Turning the legs on the pole lathe - great leg exercise - who needs gyms?

The scorp - most of us declared this to be our favourite tool, used to sculpt the seat from slabs of deliciously-scented camphor laurel

A shy baby echidna who lives under the workshop and who visited us occasionally. Wildlife in the valley includes dingoes, wallabies galore and an abundance of feathered critters.


L-R: Windsor chairs by Fiona, Sue, Mark, Michael.

Delicious Chairmakers' dinner - a final-night tradition at Rare Chairs

Getting ready to take our precious artisan chairs home on Sunday morning. Nobody wanted to say goodbye!

The Cruiser Quest - an unexpected twist

2011-06-28T18:04:00.001+10:00

I went to the GP (that's the doctor GP, not the motoGP) this morning, to get my xray results. The good news is that my bone has mended. The bad news is that it's going to be pretty fragile for a while yet, so I need to be careful. I was given the heads-up about that by my lovely GP a while ago anyway, along with the exhortation to 'get thee a cruiser' - so, no surprises there.

Next stop was Eurotune, the Triumph dealership in Queanbeyan. Helen & Anders were really helpful. I sat on an America - HUGELY imposing and very heavy. It was parked on a very slight slope, but I couldn't haul it upright off the side-stand, so that was that. Bye Bye America. Next - the lovely Bonneville. The T100 was, alas, too tall. The SE was a much better fit, although I still couldn't get my feet flat, possibly because of the position of the pegs. Who on earth put them right where I would put my feet in order to get them flat on the ground? I wonder whether the pegs can actually be moved? Straddle-walking the bike would be pretty much an impossibility, coz my little legs won't touch the ground if I stretch out past the end of those bloody pegs. Sheesh, I hate being this short! I booked a test ride anyway, for next Monday.

That sweet Harley Sportster 883 Superlow has really taken my fancy, so I headed to Robbo's Motorcycles back in Canberra to have another sit on it and to book a test ride. Lo and behold, Blake, the sales guy, said I could have a ride on it this arv. I fanged home to get my gear and fanged back to Fyshwick in record time.

And then I couldn't do it. (This is the bad bit. Look away if you don't want to see a grown woman cry.) I sat on that nice, low, easy-to-ride, beaut little bike and the last 6 years of riding just evaporated. I was back at Stay Upright with my heart thumping out of my chest and tears in my eyes, so terrified that I couldn't move. WTF?

Blake was brilliant. I would've been fine once I actually got out on the road, and I think he knew that. Another few minutes and all would've been ok, I think (maybe). The boss, though, told him to pull the pin on the test ride. How farking embarrassing. Blake was an absolute champion:

"Don't beat yourself up over it - the last time you were on a bike you fell off and broke your pelvis. And this is an unfamiliar bike, unfamiliar riding style. Why wouldn't you be nervous? Be kind to yourself."

I still felt like the world's biggest loser. I'm giving myself tonight to be a big sook, then tomorrow I'm going to give myself a very stern talking-to. I wonder whether it would be useful to get out on the road on something more familiar, just for my first ride, post-accident? A little GPX or something small like that? Despite the sporty ride position, it'd get me out there in the traffic on two wheels, juggling levers etc.

The other thing that I guess has bothered me is this - I've never taken a bike for a test ride in my life. I've never ridden anybody else's bike. I've never test-driven a car. I'm so nervous about the possibility of damaging someone else's ride that I just can't do it. Maybe THAT's the problem (in which case the previous paragraph about test-riding a little GPX is rendered null and void!)

I think if I were to just buy the bloody bike I'd be able to ride it out of the showroom, no probs - but then, what if I hated it after 50kms? That has never happened with any of my other bikes - I've fallen in love with each one (especially my last SV) almost instantly - but what if??? What if this horrible fear means I've lost my nerve altogether? Wouldn't I know it already? Wouldn't that have manifested as a "Hmmm, don't think I'll bother getting another bike" mindset? Surely my desperate need to get back on a bike means that I haven't lost my nerve, right? That this is a temporary setback, yes?

Okay, so tonight - perhaps some self-indulgent snivelling, maybe even a pizza - and definitely a Wild Turkey while I feel sorry for myself... Tomorrow, a big bowl of HTFU for breakfast, and it'll be a new day. Thank goodness.

Betty's Cruiser Quest

2011-06-28T06:18:00.000+10:00

Bikers are a clannish lot. If you ride a sportsbike, it’s the only sort of bike worth riding. Cruisers are for fat old men or outlaw bikie gangs, and don’t get me started on girly scooters! And then there’s the marque loyalty and stereotyping. BMWs are for old people and accountants, Harleys are for outlaws or weekend warrior accountants, Ducatis are for poseurs and speed freaks with too much money (but probably not accountants).

I’ve always ridden Jap bikes, mostly Suzukis of the sporty type. I’ve never wanted to ride anything else. And I'm just as prejudiced and clannish as the next sportsbike rider.

There was something a bit karmic, then, in my doctor’s suggestion that I get a cruiser. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. You need to be sitting on your arse (that’s a medical term), and not your pubic bone, he said. The bottom line, then: cruiser or nothing, for the foreseeable future. It’s surprising how attractive the concept of a cruiser suddenly became.

And then I sat on some.

Japanese cruisers have taken the essence of the cruiser motorcycle and vamped it up to make it more muscular than its American inspiration, and that, I think, was a mistake. Even on Suzuki’s entry-level M50 (with chrome-painted plastic!) I felt like a pimple on a pumpkin. If motorcycles were horses, sportsbikes would be thoroughbreds and cruisers would be Clydesdales. (I suppose that would make scooters those little Shetland ponies you ride at school fetes. Ooh-er, slap my wrist, tee hee!)

My latest quest, then, is to find the perfect Betty-sized cruiser. After sitting on (but not test-riding – yet!) millions of the things, I have refined my wish-list.

It can’t be a 250cc jobbie. Tiny tank, no guts – and they feel like a postie bike (which is fine if you’re a postie). I want a bit more road-presence than that. And a decent-sized fuel tank.

It can’t have footboards – I find them uncomfortable. Let’s face it, I find that whole feet-forward thing weird anyway – and what I’ve noticed is that the bikes with footboards tend to be the biggest, most muscular cruisers, made for people with feet the size of New Zealand. Footpegs for me, thanks.

And while we’re on the subject of footpegs, I’d like them not too far forward. The long wheelbase of a cruiser and the shortness of me means that in order to sit with legs stretched forward to reach the pegs, and arms stretched out to reach the bars, I’m not going to cruise comfortably – I’m going to be bent like a paperclip.

No chrome! Okay okay, we're talking cruisers, and that's going too far. How about 'as little chrome as I can get away with'?

Is anybody else hearing the strains of The Impossible Dream right now?

My quest has taken me to just about every bike dealership in Canberra, whenever I could steal out of Marking Hell for an hour. What an adventure. Even being a pimple on a pumpkin is preferable to huddling over piles of exams. Sitting on a motorcycle, even one that doesn’t fit, puts a grin on my face like nothing else can.

Watch this space.

Mental Hellth Pt II

2011-06-25T02:23:00.000+10:00

Betty claws her way out of the Pit of Despair and peers around, blinking like an owl in the sunlight – and twitching, definitely twitching. A nervous tic above her right eye, yes. She looks around furtively and checks over her shoulder, then lays a finger to quivering lips.

Sssssshhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone I’m here, she says.

The blog sits impassively. Betty throws caution to the wind and flings herself at it, squealing with delight.

Oh, little blog! How I have missed you! It feels like forever – I’m so so sorry! It’s been just dreadful.

The blog stares blankly. Betty looks hurt.

Oh, come on, don’t be like that – I don’t have long. I have to be back in Reporting Hell soon. I just snuck out for a quick visit – I’ve been so desperate. Couldn’t get out any earlier coz I was stuck in Marking Hell, and that’s one level deeper than Reporting Hell.

She looks at the clock on the wall and grimaces, then starts babbling.

I’ve been doing the numbers. Listen to these –

The number of 12-hour days I’ve worked in the last few weekends - 3
The number of days last weekend that I was too sick to do any exam marking at all - 3
The number of exams I marked between 4.30am Tuesday and 1pm Wednesday of this week - 3
The number of days I got to school at 7.30am and didn’t leave before 6pm - 13
The number of days I got to school before 7.30am and didn’t leave till after 6.30pm - 2
The number of Year 10 reports I wrote - 50+
The number of Year 11/12 reports I wrote - 50+
The number of other people’s reports I proofread/edited - 100+
The number of tutor group reports I have yet to write - 20+
The number of times I thought about walking out and never going back - 20+

The blog’s upper lip starts quivering. It’s only human, after all. Betty flings her arms around it again.

Yes, it’s been horrible – horrible! But guess what? There have been some bright spots in there – like diamonds twinkling in a bucket of shit. I haven’t got time to tell you about them, but as soon as I get out of Reporting Hell I will. Here’s a hint: motorbikes!

On hearing the word motorbikes, the blog relaxes. Betty is still carrying her walking stick everywhere, but only using it for minimal support these days, and is booked in for another xray.
That stubborn bone will surely be mended by now, thinks the blog. Perhaps then, Madwoman Betty will calm down, cheer up, chill out.

Betty seems to read its mind, and laughs maniacally. An unseen force begins pulling her backwards. She scrabbles for balance, but is drawn, almost magnetically, kicking and screaming, towards the bleak, swirling vortex that will drag her back down to Reporting Hell for another week.

The blog pricks up its ears. It’s sure it hears Betty’s voice piping through the swirling miasma:

I’ll be baaaaaaaaaack!

Mental Hellth - living the dream

2011-05-29T18:44:00.000+10:00

You know those nightmares you have when you are heading inexorably towards your doom (falling from a cliff, driving an out-of-control car, that sort of thing) and you can’t do a damned thing about it? You can’t even scream out because for some reason your voice won’t work. You can’t breathe, you can’t move, you can’t do anything to help yourself – you just watch everything unfolding, a sense of silent desperate helpless hopeless frustration gripping you. There is no escape.

That’s my life right now. It’s why I’m blogging, instead of marking the 60-odd essays, writing the 120 reports, and creating the two exams – Herculean tasks, all of them - that are due this week. Blog and be damned, because you can't do all that other stuff - there’s simply no way.

I managed to mark 30 essays today, after starting at 5am. Yes, it is Sunday. Somewhere in there I managed to cook 2 vats of soup so at least I will have easy-to-prepare, no-fuss food this week, rather than opening a bag of potato chips.

I give up. It can’t be done. My head hurts. I’ve cried this week, several times, out of sheer exhaustion and frustration. I teach such a full load that I barely have any free periods during the day. So - just about all my planning and marking has to be done outside school hours. Oh, but school manages to eat into that time as well. There's a meeting every Monday till 5pm and basketball training every Thursday after school. There’s a basketball game every Saturday, and last week there was one 7.30-6pm day and one 7.30-7.30pm day at school, so I didn’t really have much time outside school hours to do any of my school work then either. I can't run on adrenalin any more, coz I used it all up.

I am so tired by the end of the day that I can’t think straight. Mindless, I can’t even enjoy reading a good book before bed. Besides, if I had any mental energy left I would have to spend it on marking, not reading a book for pleasure. My eyeballs are full of sand. I wake at 5am with lead in my veins, and organise my lessons for the day so I can at least survive one day at a time. Still no time to do my marking. Did I mention my head hurts?

Shopping? I try to sneak in a bit of time for grocery shopping. A zombie shuffle along the supermarket aisles is almost therapeutic, except for the guilt induced by the fact that it's eating into my marking time. Last Friday, having run out of food and energy, I bought breakfast from *gasp* the McDonalds drive-through, on the way to school at 7am. Nice one.

My house is a pig-sty. My garden is overgrown and neglected. I spend my days and nights paralysed with tiredness and frustration, and have to conserve all my strength to get myself through the days at school, teaching one class after another in a relentless bloody grind. Mark your essays, I tell myself. Fuck off, says my overcooked brain, fighting for its life by retreating into avoidance mode – because that's all it can do - and the problem is compounded. My life is an endless vortex of overwork and guilt. It's hell on earth.

I’m living the dream all right. The one where I am heading inexorably towards my doom (falling from a cliff, driving an out-of-control car, that sort of thing) and I can’t do a damned thing about it. I just watch everything unfolding, a sense of silent desperate helpless hopeless frustration gripping me. There is no escape.

Too Busy to Blog - feels like the world is ending!

2011-05-23T20:26:00.001+10:00

School has eaten my life
My inferior pubic ramus refuses to knit
I am battling bikelessness and the depression that naturally follows that state
I don’t know how long I can keep this up
I miss my blog, dammit!

The less said about my lack of healing, the better. No idea when I’ll be able to get back on a bike, and this is causing me massive distress. Don’t even ask, coz I’ll bite. Or cry. Crying is more likely…

So, to distract myself, I’ve been thinking about toilet paper – as you do.

I buy an ‘eco-friendly’ brand. Apparently it’s recycled (eeeew, I hope it’s not recycled from Other People’s toilet paper! YUK….)

My toilet paper has little green frogs printed on it. This is supposed to show that it’s frog-friendly toilet paper, I suppose – but I find that peculiar. If someone wiped their bum on pictures of ME, I wouldn’t assume they were using Betty-friendly toilet paper… I would assume they were – oh, come ON – if somebody wiped their arse on YOU, would you think they were respecting you or caring about you???

Why do toilet paper manufacturers put cutesy pics on toilet paper? The other day at my daughter's house I had to wipe my bum on cute little puppy paw prints. Awwwwww..... And wtf have sea-shells ever done to deserve the ol' arse-wiping treatment?

Here’s a message to the manufacturers of the eco-friendly toilet paper – I would rather be wiping my bum on images of nasty environmental ravagers and destroyers – images of Exxon execs, for example – than poor innocent little green frogs/sea shells/puppies...

Just saying…

Oh. My. God. I need to be riding a motorcycle again.

A Bike Weekend - with a twist...

2011-05-01T22:15:00.001+10:00

I love going away for weekends on the bike, except I don’t actually have a bike at the moment. That is a bit of a spanner in the works!

Before my accident, plans were in the pipeline for a bike weekend to Bright, in Victoria. I decided that I would still go, even though I’d be on 4 wheels rather than two. Turns out Bright was a bit far for a cripple in a car, just for an overnight stay, so my lovely bike friends made some last minute changes and bookings, and we ventured to Wyndham, NSW, instead.

View Larger Map

Wyndham is a tiny little town a bit in from Pambula on the far south coast of NSW. It’s in a communications Black Hole. The TV ads there are for businesses in Alice Springs, (?!? Hello? That's in Central Australia!) and Darwin, which makes you feel as if you’ve somehow arrived in an alternate universe. There’s no mobile phone reception there, and no internet, and there was a Monty Pythonesque feel to dinner at the Robbie Burns Pub (established 1848), which was one of the most memorable dinners I’ve had in a long time.

There were six of us. Mark the Miffy Friend and I went in my little car, which was designated the Support Vehicle for the trip. My biker mates Pen, Pris, Peaches and Deb put panniers and petrol in the boot of my car, and off we went. The petrol was a sort of security blanket for Peaches, who wasn’t sure how far his Ducati Monster could get on a tank of fuel.

The weekend went something like this:

Nimmitabel Bakery (the one with the anatomically correct bull-elephant in the back yard) was the scene of an animated conversation about Pippa Middleton’s underwear (or lack thereof) over coffee and pepper steak pies.

Lizzy’s Settlers Cottage in Wyndham was our ultimate destination. We took the Darragh Mountain Road from Bombala. It was lovely, but showed signs of recent flood damage (like much of eastern Australia at the moment!) – lots of land slips and plenty of gravel on the road.

Lizzy's Settler's Cottage, Wyndham NSW

We enjoyed fish & chips on the wharf at Eden (and sausages and chips for me, coz I don’t like seafood). Yummo.

Almost every night last week I dreamed – quite literally – of riding a bike, so I’d expected driving the car to be a right royal pain in the bum. It wasn’t. Yes, I would’ve preferred to be on a bike, but going in the car was a whole lot better than not going at all!

After fish and chips in Eden, we returned to our cabin, and the Big Fun began there. We all sat out on the back deck, enjoying the rural views, the enormously fat horses (who liked salt & vinegar chips!) a couple of bottles of red and the company of good mates, before we headed up the street about a hundred metres to the pub, for dinner.

Hello Monty Python! We had the most fabulous night there! Due to things like libel laws, and good old-fashioned decency, I can only give you a brief pencil sketch of the high points of the night – but believe me, it was magnificent!

*The local characters were straight out of – of – actually, I’m not sure, but it seemed a combination of Little Britain, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the film version of The Name of the Rose. I say this with great affection, because they were lovely and friendly – but there was a slightly surreal quality to the whole evening.

*There was a child chasing a dog around in the pub. Nobody thought this was odd. The dog ended up wearing a green t-shirt. Nobody thought this was odd either.

*There was a Potato Crisis and the meals were severely delayed until potatoes were sourced (from Tasmania, apparently, given how long it took our meals to arrive) Eventually, said potatoes appeared on plates next to a series of identical heart-shaped (in honour of the Royal Wedding?) chicken schnitzels.

*Pen played the stringless guitar in the pub. This sterling performance was later topped by her performance, back at the cabin, of ‘listening to whale music’ with a lampshade on her head. Virtuoso stuff! She's a very talented performer.

*Pris entertained us with high-decibel snoring for much of the night. No wonder we needed to drink so much wine!

Miraculously, we all awoke to the beautiful country morning on Sunday with clear heads, and had a spirited ride to Candelo, along winding rainforesty roads that glittered with sunshine and dew. We spent a couple of hours sampling the delights of Candelo Markets, where Peaches broke a tooth on a killer quesadilla(!)

At Bemboka Bakery

At Bemboka Bakery we ate MORE stuff, including this little fellow – in celebration of Pen’s birthday last week, before heading up Brown Mountain.

Brown Mountain is probably my favourite road to ride on a bike, but my poor little car didn’t like it one bit. It struggled to get up the steep, winding road that still showed evidence of severe weather about a month ago. Fallen rocks (about the size of a small car!), fallen trees, land slips… It was a relief to get to the Piper's Lookout, near the top, without having my engine explode.

Mark, Deb, Pen at the lookout.

I fully expected to find poor Peaches of the Broken Tooth by the side of the road somewhere, on a de-fuelled Ducati – but it didn’t happen. He actually made it to Polo Flat servo at Cooma, and refilled his weeny tank there.

Our final stop – the place at which we had a parting of the ways – was Williamsdale, back in the ACT (Google Maps lists it as being in NSW for some reason...) We hung around there, talking and laughing the way you do when you want to prolong the time you’ve spent together. The car boot was emptied and the bikes were re-loaded. Pen & Pris ate ice creams. We finished the salt and vinegar chips. We talked about organising another ride. It was sad, and nobody was in a hurry to head home.

Weekends spent with good friends are priceless. I hope we do another one soon – and I hope I won’t be driving the Support Vehicle!

End of Term Madness

2011-04-17T15:29:00.000+10:00

Remember my ‘off’ three weeks ago on Macquarie Pass? Well… the doctor in Accident & Emergency back in Canberra – the one who sent me home with Nurofen, a pat on the head, 3 days off work and a diagnosis of a ‘pulled muscle’ was WRONG. What I actually have is a stable, undisplaced fracture (yes, fracture) of the superior & inferior pubic rami. A minor pelvic fracture, certainly, but something a little more serious than a pulled muscle. Still gobsmacked that a person can show up in A&E after a motorcycle accident FFS, complaining of severe groin pain, and the bloody doc doesn’t bother to have the pelvis x-rayed! Am I wrong to be a bit worried about the standard of A&E doctors? Thank goodness for a switched-on GP!

So – I had a whole week off school. And what a shitty week it was. During that time I had my poor old cat euthanased. I cried buckets, tried to get as much rest as I could, borrowed an automatic car from Mrs Boomerang Boy, to get myself to x-ray & CT appointments, and felt pretty sorry for myself. My bike was officially written off by the insurance company. I went back to school for the very busy final 2 weeks of term, on crutches, unable to do stairs, and set up camp in my downstairs classroom.

The school, the staff and the kids were brilliant. A small and evil, but essentially, rational part of me says “well so they should be – it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for me to spend the remainder of term on sick leave!”, BUT – I'm also incredibly grateful for the way people were able to shuffle things around and step up to help me out. While bits of my body may have been a little bit broken, my brain wasn’t, and typing up lesson plans to send to school for someone else to teach, when I felt mentally capable of teaching the lessons myself, was driving me batty. I wanted to be at school with my students, dammit! Things like playground duty, however, were out of the question - and my busy colleagues covered my duties and swapped classrooms with me, and were absolutely wonderful.

It’s true what they say about adversity often bringing out the best in people - and I learned a LOT in the last fortnight!

Apart from having it reinforced that I work with a wonderful bunch of people, I also learned that:

Year 10 boys get a big kick out of taking a turn around the room on the teacher’s crutches – and will queue up for the privilege!
It makes students feel important if you ask them for help – whether it’s carrying stuff or scribing on the board for you – and they actually worry about their spelling when they’re writing it up in public!
Ex-students and students you don’t even know very well are keen to touch base and make sure you’re ok after something like a bike crash. I seriously felt so ‘cared-about’, there were times when I struggled not to get all teary!
Photocopying makes us lazy, and you don’t realise it until you can’t get to the photocopier and have to resort to low-tech or no-tech!

Having said all that – the last two weeks have been difficult, and the last week, with Basketball Presentation night, a Parent-Teacher evening and three full days of marking Yr11-12 Oral presentations was actually a sort of hell. There were times that I didn’t think I’d manage to hobble to the end of term – but I did! And now - thank goodness for school holidays! And thank goodness for Mallacoota – my equilibrium is in severe need of equilibrating (is that even a word???)

Vale Miffy

2011-03-31T20:52:00.001+11:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas --

My dear, feisty, cranky, demented old cat, Miffy – whose name was really the splendidly Welsh Myfanwy – did the good Dylan Thomas thing today, and raged against the dying of the light.

Who was I kidding with my wishy-washy dreams of a peaceful, dignified end for a grand old lady who has terrified vets in her long, cranky lifetime? Miffy died as she had lived – with a snarl on her lips, and a fight on her paws. That’s probably how she’d have wanted it if she’d had enough of her mind left to know what she actually wanted.

Dear, dear Miffy. When Pete the Vet made a very kind house-call to enable her to exit this life from a comfortable spot in her own home, she demanded a blood price. There was a brief moment when I thought I must’ve made a terrible mistake – and that Miffy was not ready to go – and that will probably niggle at me for a long time.

The bowels that no longer hung on, even as far as ‘Poo Corner’, behind the armchair; the complete lack of customary catty toileting fastidiousness; the late night confused yowling; the daytime confused yowling; the weird behavioural loops… as I cuddled my growling cat in her last moments, and said choked words of farewell to her, I tried to keep those things in my mind.

But I still felt like shit.

I'm sorry, Miffy. Deep down, I think we both knew it was time. Goodbye, my dear old friend.

Jamberoo Hoodoo

2011-03-28T09:52:00.003+11:00

A few years ago I went to Jamberoo with some bike friends. We were caught in a severe thunderstorm along the way. It was terrifying. The next morning, the ride on slippery, skinny Jamberoo Mountain Rd was shrouded in thick fog – and terrifying. We also got word that our friend Deb had had a nasty off on her big BMW 1150GS on dirt, and was in a bad way.

This weekend, Deb and I, and some other friends, decided to give Jamberoo another go. It’s a beaut little town, after all; very picturesque, and with a great pub.

Photo source: http://www.coast-accommodation.com.au/images/property_images/4702_1.jpg

I should’ve taken notice of the ‘signs’ though. I reckon there’s a bit of a Jamberoo ‘hoodoo’ going on.

The previous weekend, the weather was bad enough for the treacherous Jamberoo Mtn Rd to be closed by a fallen tree and a road washaway

3 other riders pulled out during the week.

On Saturday my basketball game started nearly 15 minutes late – that’s a first!!! – and I’d forgotten to pack my reading glasses and toiletries - so much for leaving on time.

How many more ways could the universe have said “maybe you shouldn’t go on this ride”?

We’d agreed beforehand, because of the road closure, that we would go via Kangaroo Valley – a beaut road. HOWEVER, Brian phoned our destination pub and was told the Jamberoo Mtn Rd was actually open – so hey, we rejoiced and decided to go that way after all.

Except it wasn’t open, and we only discovered that when it was well and truly too late to go any other way. We were stuck with the Macquarie Pass – the road I had said “I would prefer to avoid”.

Authorities have branded Macquarie Pass a motorcycle black spot after 144 accidents and six deaths in the past five years. (Illawarra Mercury, 28 Aug, 2008)

Motorcyclist survives Macquarie Pass plunge (Illawarra Mercury, 16 March 2009)

Four survive after car rolls off cliff (ABC news, 10 May, 2009)

I’ve heard horror-stories about buses/trucks having to do three-point turns to get around a couple of the corners. I’ve heard of people simply going over the edge. I’m not that much of a ‘corners’ fan, to be honest…

So.

WTF happened? I don’t know. Mark doesn’t know either, and he was riding right behind me.

On the second hairpin from the top – a steep, decreasing radius turn, I was probably doing 15kmh. A small group of Harleys rumbled and spat uphill in the opposite direction.

Here are some pics to show you how heavily trafficked this deadly bloody turn is.

Next thing I knew, my bike was almost on its side , heading downhill and for the opposite side of the road, the concrete lip barrier and the million-foot drop. I hung on for dear life, but when the bike hit the barrier I was dumped, hit the back of my head on the ground and came to rest a couple of feet away, past the beginning of the Armco barrier beyond the tree. The bike must’ve bounced up, headed over the concrete barrier, caught the tree (see pic) with the front left side of the screen, and bounced off. It flipped back onto the concrete barrier and lay there suspended, trickling radiator coolant onto the concrete barrier. The front wheel dangled over the drop, while the rear wheel dangled above the road.

Here’s why I’m the luckiest motorcyclist in the universe:

Neither my bike nor myself went over the edge.

Total strangers Russell and Jamie – a young pair of trail-bikers – appeared a moment later with a trailer.

At the same time, the tail-end Charlie of the Harley riders – an OMCG on a club ride, by the way – pulled over and rendered assistance. Four strong blokes recovered my poor dead bike from the brink, bent forks, bent frame, smashed fairing – but miraculously, NO BROKEN LEVERS – and securely strapped it between Russell & Jamie’s bikes on their trailer. Our OMCG friends continued on their way, and Russell and Jamie delivered me and my bike to a service station at Albion Park, about 10kms downhill (thanks heaps, guys). It would spend the night there.

Maureen in the ‘support vehicle’ collected bruised and battered Betty from the servo and we limped to our accommodation, while

Mark rode back up the bloody Pass and back to Canberra to pick up his van, which he then rode back down the bloody Pass to Jamberoo for the night.

My Ventura Bag, which was ripped off the rack by the impact of the crash, contained, amongst other things, 56 Year 10 essays, which I had optimistically taken away with me. They could so easily have ended up hundreds of feet below, at the bottom of Macquarie pass, never to be seen again (come to think of it, so could’ve I).

By Sunday morning every part of my body had seized up, and every step hurt. I wasn’t much help collecting the bike from the servo. In fact, I was no help at all. Apart from that, I was starting to feel the need to pee, and it was a long, slow, painful 100m or so hobble to the toilet.

The TOILETS OUT OF ORDER sign brought me undone in a way that a near-death altercation with a tree, a concrete barrier and several hundred feet of long drop hadn’t. The cleaning lady, seeing my distress – I was howling in a dreadfully pathetic and desperate way: “But I can’t walk any more and I need to peeeeeeeee” retracted her “There’s a Macca's about 5 minutes down the road, you’ll have to go there” and instead handed me a wad of loo paper and pointed me in the direction of the men's urinal.

‘Maybe you can squat over the trough, love – it’s flushing ok.’

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my injuries were such that I couldn’t have squatted for a million dollars. How the hell does one pee standing up when one can barely stand anyway?

I did it. I managed not to pee all over myself or make my injuries worse, and found myself very close to the hysterical giggles that inevitably follow hysterical sobbing in such a bizarre situation. What an adventure.

Fast-forward to Goulburn police station, where I reported the accident, and then Calvary Hospital, where I was given some painkillers and a pat on the head. My middle-aged bones remain sound, my kneecap is attached and unbroken, and apparently the pain in my groin is nothing more serious than a strained muscle. I will be very colourful in a couple of days.

Crutches hired, I was home sweet home by about 5.30.

In one sense it was one of the crappiest weekends ever. Weirdly enough, though, it was also very life-affirming. I’m a lucky, lucky woman.

But I think I’ll give any future rides to Jamberoo a miss.

A (shaky) Tale of Two Countries

2011-03-13T18:46:00.000+11:00

On 22 February, Christchurch, that most English of New Zealand cities, behaved most un-Englishly. It did a shake, rattle and roll routine that left scores of people dead, and thousands homeless.

Here in Australia the horror was metaphorically and literally a bit close to home. Aussies and Kiwis, while we poke fun at each other all the time when things are going well, are really pretty close. Some of us, like me, even have family over there on the other side of the Tasman Sea.

Even though, like me, he’s a Pommie by birth, my dad, who’s in his 70s now, has spent more of his life in Christchurch than anywhere else on earth. He’s officially a Kiwi citizen, a Cantabrian, and a resident of that grand old lady city, Christchurch – she who has so recently been brought to her knees by the greater power of Mother Earth (and that’s been one helluva mother-daughter stoush, I have to say!)

I’ve avoided blogging the whole Christchurch earthquake thing, probably because I have felt it from such a personal angle, despite being across the Tasman. Besides, I’ve been part of the chain that’s been busily passing messages between family members here and in the UK.

But now it’s time. Over the last few weeks I’ve made many phone calls to my dad. He and Diana were rendered ‘earthquake refugees’, without power or water, not knowing whether their home would stand, be condemned-but-habitable, or condemned-and-get-out-now-coz-it’s-unsafe. They still don’t know. At the height of the awfulness, they had to abandon their home - and their traumatised cats - for a while. They’ve stayed with my youngest brother and his lovely wife in another part of town, and also with Diana’s family in faraway Nelson (which sounds like a lovely spot) but are now back home and sleeping in their own bed , despite continuing aftershocks, while they await the engineers’ pronouncement upon the stability and habitability of their home.

“Come back to Oz, Dad,” I’ve said, more than once since the first very nasty Chch earthquake back in September 2010, and about a hundred times since the latest shake-up. “You have family here – and no earthquakes.” His response?

"Canberra? Bah! Too many bushfires! Brisbane? Floods! And then there are snakes and poisonous spiders! No way, Australia’s too bloody dangerous!"

Ah, Kiwis – shaken but not stirred.

There have been some amazingly heartening developments in amongst all the doom and gloom. Armies of uni student cleaner-uppers have been working around Christchurch, digging tonnes and tonnes of silt from people’s homes, gardens, streets etc. Random people from all over the place have converged on Christchurch, shovels in hand, keen to help wherever they can (many many thanks to the wonderful-but-anonymous people who, out of the blue, helped my brother and a mate of his clear the liquefaction damage from Dad & Diana’s house).

New Zealand is an amazing place. It has a disproportionately massive heart, perhaps because it’s really so small in international, as well as geographical terms. It still has an enviable 'community' feel.

Despite Christchurch’s own straitened circumstances, New Zealand was one of the first countries to offer help to Japan after the devastating earthquake & tsunami that hit Japan's east coast on Friday. That selfless response made me a bit teary.

You see, I have a Japanese connection, too. I spent 1977 living and going to high school in Mito-shi – in Ibaraki Prefecture – as an exchange student. My host families and old school friends are all there, in a place that copped a hiding on Friday from that bloody tsunami. As I have gradually and foolishly managed to lose touch with my Japanese friends and families over the last 30-odd years, I have no way of contacting them, or knowing whether (or how badly) any of them were affected by Friday’s unimaginably awful disaster. It’s a feeling that niggles at me and makes me feel uneasy, unsettled – guilty, even, because of the lack of contact.

Something in particular that’s stuck in my craw, though, since then, is this:

Only two days after the Japanese quake disaster (and OMG, that news footage is bloody terrifying) I am getting streams of jokes about it on my mobile phone. I’ve yet to get one about the Chch quake. I’m still trying to think it all through – why do people feel that it’s ok to make jokes about the Japanese situation, but not the Christchurch one? If, as so many people say, humour is such wonderful medicine, why are we leaving our Christchurch cousins out of these bleak, 'healing' earthquake jokes, hmmm?

Oh, maybe that sort of humour isn’t quite so funny after all, when you’re talking about something close to home. Maybe it’s only jokeworthy when it happens to people who don’t look like us; to people who don’t speak our language; to people who were our enemy in a fucking war that finished a couple of generations ago.

Oh dear, I’m having a rant, aren’t I? Maybe I'm being oversensitive about it, I don't know. Am I? The more I think about it, the crankier I get *sigh*.

Japan, my thoughts are with you.

Oh Miffy...

2011-02-17T06:34:00.000+11:00

I think I’m opening the pages of Miffy’s final chapter.

The cranky little kitten came to me in Goulburn back in 1995. Her feisty temperament wasn’t mellowed by a vicious dog attack in the first year of her life, and she grew into a cranky cat. She used to torment Spike, the cat next door, who wasn’t allowed outside, by wandering along outside his windows and pulling faces at him.

The pages of her life have been punctuated by hissy fits and tiger growls, and yet she showed great tenderness to a kitten she adopted for a while, grooming it, curling up with it, teaching it to hunt beetles in the back yard, and bopping it on the head when it was distracted by falling leaves or waving grass. She has slashed vets and frightened vet nurses. She hated Ollie the Wondercat and Oscar Bin Laden the Terrorkitty. The only human she has ever loved is Boomerang Boy. She survived a stroke last year, and is now a cranky, crazy old lady. It’s nearly time to close the book.

I keep holding off turning that final page, though. I watch her closely, to monitor changes in behaviour that might signal a decline in her quality of life. I keep thinking that I will somehow know when the time has come, but I don’t know what I am looking for.

Her appetite is bigger than ever. The dementia seems to have removed the ‘off’ switch. I leave food out for her in the evening, and by 2am she is yowling for more. I leave the bath tap dripping so she can help herself to water from the tap, but it’s not enough. (Thank goodness the drought’s over, but oh God, my water bill!)

The nightly battles – mine, to sleep, and hers, to make me do whatever it is she thinks she wants (and sometimes she doesn’t know that herself) – have increased in number and intensity. Last night I fell asleep exhausted at 8.30, having been awake since 4am (thanks Miffy!) She woke me with desperate yowling at 10.30pm. And again at 12.30. And then again, finally, at 2.57am – and here I am, crying over my blog and desperate for some unbroken sleep. She is snoring next to me on the bed, and I am wondering how the hell I’m going to drag myself through 5 senior English classes today.

Her mournful meowing sessions are loud enough for my neighbours to hear (I’ve asked) and they aren’t confined to the wee hours, either. It’s driving me nuts.

The bottom line, I suppose, is that I don’t want to have to make that hard decision to end her life – and yet I don’t want to be a martyr to a demented cat either, living a zombie existence as she becomes more querulous and demanding, and less in control of her faculties, travelling through the days and nights in confused loops.

Why can’t her heart just give up? Why can’t she just die peacefully like Oscar did, curled up in a cosy armchair? I don’t want to think about her crying in the car on her last trip to the vet, or being afraid in the waiting room, or afraid of the bloke with the needle. I want her last moments to be, well, nice. Dignified. Befitting a grand old lady who has been, in her youth, a proud hunter of beetles, with a temper to terrify the toughest vet.

Most People Don't Suck

2011-01-30T15:58:00.000+11:00

The summer heat has become oppressive, and the whole of next week is going to be a scorcher – relentless heat in the mid to high 30s every day. I thought yesterday was going to be my last chance to go for a decent ride in bearable weather for a little while, so headed out to lovely Wyangala Dam for a look at it in sunny weather. It was supposed to be an easy 450km round trip, just me and the Crow and the big wide world.

View Larger Map

I had a fabulous ride, cutting a swathe through clouds of white butterflies. The Crow handled beautifully, hugging the road like a best friend and chewing up the kilometres. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, the sky was blue, the landscape beautiful through a bit of heat haze. Life doesn’t get much better.

The dam was awesome at 92% full. I was surprised by the number of people who, just like me, travel out there just to look at the water levels and shake their heads in delighted disbelief.

Then I stopped to refuel at Cowra on the way home. Put $12 of fuel in the Crow. Took everything out of my tail-bag three times before having to admit MY WALLET WAS NOT THERE!

My heart fell through the bottom of my Rossi boots. My entire life was in that bloody wallet – credit card, drivers licence, Medicare card, a little cash, and membership cards galore – Health fund, Ulysses Club, Garden Club… . My brain raced faster than the Crow on a straight road and gave me a memory of carefully placing the wallet on top of the loo paper dispenser in the ladies loo at – get this – the massive, ludicrously busy Service Centre just outside Yass. 2 or 3 hours earlier. Senior moment? Rank stupidity? Bloody disaster!

Just when you’re at that point in your life when the daily news is so depressing, so hate- and crime-filled, that your faith in human nature is approaching rock bottom, something like this happens.

Pete, the bloke behind the counter at the Mobil servo in Cowra, went through a long and involved process to find the phone number of the Yass service centre (the Cowra phone directory doesn’t extend to Yass), and paid for my petrol out of his own pocket while I spoke to the people at Yass.

Pete, you’re a star – thank you!

Also a star is the very honest stranger who found my wallet where I left it and handed it in at the counter in Yass. Thank you so much! My battered faith in human nature is now restored – it’s true that some people suck, but most people just don’t. Most people are lovely, and that is easily forgotten in the day-to-day bad news world we live in. Thank goodness for the occasional reminder, cunningly disguised as a disaster.

I made an unscheduled trip back to Cowra today to pay Pete back and to thank him again for having helped me out. My mate, Mrs Humble, accompanied me as far as Boorowa, and we rode home together as well, in 35 degree heat, pouring huge volumes of cold water inside our jackets, only to have the home-made ‘evaporative cooling’ system evaporate within ten kilometres. Crikey, it was hot! It’s a sad fact of motorcycling that one simply cannot get cool, riding at the speed limit – so we arrived back at my house exhausted and dry-roasted in our bike gear.

What a day. I think I need a little nap.

Girly Road Trip

2011-01-29T08:00:00.001+11:00

View Larger Map

The girly road trip has been in the pipeline for a while, ever since my friend Lucy & I put our heads together to plot a day trip for her mum’s visit from the frozen UK.

We picked a stinking hot day to drive to a hot country town in NSW for our adventure, just to make sure Ann got an authentic Australian experience, and an opportunity to thaw out.

Here they are: three generations, ready for adventure.

Only Lucy & I knew the destination (and even we weren’t 100% sure how to get there, although we knew the general direction!

Our first stop was the lovely town of Harden for coffee, then, inevitably, a wee at Wallendbeen. Back in the car again, we headed through Cootamundra to Junee, with Jenna earbashing us all the way. I swear that girl could talk underwater!

At the Golden Grove licorice & chocolate factory at Junee, we signed up for the Freckle-making tour. A freckle is a chocolate disc coated with hundreds and thousands, and full of about a million calories. Yum. They made us wear these incredibly glamorous hairnets in the freckle-making room, coz after all, nobody wants a hairy freckle. (I can’t believe I said that!)

Jenna, multi-tasking: pouring chocolate, licking fingers AND talking!

Freckles duly made, and hardening in the coolroom, Jenna was quiet while we listened to the talk where they explain the history of the factory, and played a game called licorice bowling. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… This is how is works (in theory):

You chuck a big lump of hard licorice up into the top of a flour bag chute and see how many skittles it knocks over when it comes out the bottom, and you make a proper goose of yourself by trying to catch the skittles as they fly out the bottom. Perfectly sane grown-ups engage in this embarrassing pursuit, in the quest for a free bag of licorice. Ann had a lovely time chucking the licorice ball up in the air, again and again, over-arm, under-arm, sending it everywhere except where it was supposed to go. We did not win the bag of licorice.

Onwards and upwards, Jenna talked all the way to Junee’s other main tourist attraction – Monte Cristo, Australia’s most haunted homestead.

Even during daylight (I suppose ghosts don’t sleep) this beautifully restored home has spots that make the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. The temperature had nudged up past 30C by this time, proving that ghosts aren’t affected by the heat either.

Jenna was still talking, so we went back into town for lunch to find a sandwich. Opposite the RSL there’s an Historical Society café/museum, which was air-conditioned and perfect. The grown-ups finally got a word in while Jenna ate her toasted sandwich.

The whole trip was a big loop, nearly 500kms long, and the return drive took us along some picturesque country roads, through the tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Nangus and into Gundagai, where of course we had to visit that Aussie icon, the dog on the tuckerbox.

Jenna dozed off for about twenty silent seconds, then woke up and resumed her chatter. We had realised by this time that as long as she was awake, she would never stop talking, so we adopted the ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ approach. The silliest game of ‘I Spy’ followed, (Lucy – KNEES does not begin with an ‘N’!) and brought us almost all the way back to Canberra, laughing our heads off.

A glass of chilled white wine awaited us back at my house, then Ann and Lucy took chatterbox Jenna home, and I sat in my silent house, blinds down to keep out the baking evening sun. What a great day - thanks, ladies!

The Veteran Vintage & Classic Motorcycle Club of ACT - Annual Rally - what a blast!

2011-01-24T17:56:00.001+11:00

Note: this is being written in a David Attenborough nature documentary semi-whisper, so you need to read it the same way.

1914 Monarch - yes, it goes! Magnificent!

In the genus Motorcyclista there exists a somewhat peculiar species of enthusiast known as the motorcyclo aficionado superretro. Often (but not always) characterised by grey hair and an ingenious emergency toolkit, individuals of this species are solitary creatures, often spending months – even years - secreted in large backyard sheds and garages with their ancient machines, performing fascinating rituals with spanners and oxy-torches, paints and polishes, and pistons, plugs and points, or scouring eBay for spare parts.

Once a year, at the height of summer, the individuals heed a mysterious visceral Call to Assembly with others of the species, and Nature pulls them inexorably to a meeting place like the Carotel motel in Canberra. They come from all over, and in large numbers, in cars or vans, towing trailers loaded with precious cargo. A hardy few even risk riding their lovingly-restored motorcycles - if they don’t have to go too far.

Once there, they indulge in time-honoured rituals like beer-drinking and bike-judging, and they tell restoration sagas and breakdown stories in the lost and lyrical language of imperial measurement. Iconic names trip from their tongues - Rudge, BSA, Ariel, Indian, Vincent, AJS Matchless, Triumph, Harley Davidson, Ducati...

They go for short rides that culminate in magnificent morning teas. (A keen eye can identify their feeding places by the spots of engine oil that speckle the car parks where they have congregated).

They have a Presentation Dinner that honours the most perfect and noble among their number.

Individuals of the species trailerus breakdownii exist in happy symbiosis with the aficionado superretros, and can often be seen retrieving those unfortunate superretros whose ancient machines have broken down in ways that will not be remedied easily by the roadside. Nobody sneers or scoffs. Instead, they applaud the pluckiness of the individual and the bike, and thank the Powers That Be that it wasn't them.

On our journey this weekend, one fortunate BSA devotee had his sidestand returned to him from whence it had fallen off on the Cotter Road, but the owner of the lost Triumph footpeg cover remained elusive, as Triumph devotees often do.

1923 Rudge - the King of the Rally.

Yes, that is carpet on the footboards - carpet your great gran would be proud of!

Thank you to the VVCMCC for a lovely weekend. Great bunch of people, a great event. I had a lovely time tagging along on my brand new Suzuki SV650S, and nobody made me feel like a fraud, ha ha! Here’s their website – enjoy!

Think about Ink: a cautionary tale

2011-01-18T07:13:00.000+11:00

It isn’t true that we regret our tattoos – well, not all of them, anyway. I'm very fond of the tasteful one on my left arm, but the big one on my right arm was a mistake. I think I knew it several years ago - on the day I got it, in fact.

About 10cm long, a Celtic design in which a dog and a bird entwine, it was originally all in black, but the lines leached into each other after a couple of years, and it became an unsightly black blob. The solution? Oh, add some more ink to it, of course! Some glorious living colour! Silly cow, that was Mistake #2!** (see below)

And the result? A muddy, multi-coloured blob. Bugger. Even worse, a muddy, multi-coloured blob that I would carry with me forever. I could kiss sleeveless shirts goodbye at work. Teaching is a fairly conservative profession, us being role models and all for the yoof of today. Young, hip, tattooed bloke teachers seem to get away with it. Middle-aged ex-Navy men get away with it. Middle-aged lady teachers - even 'big bad biker' ones - raise eyebrows, and, I suspect, sympathy levels. The fact that I wasn't middle-aged when I got it is now completely irrelevant.

Every trip to buy something nice to wear to a special occasion involves a certain amount of embarrassment as shop ladies, especially those under 25, look askance at my upper arm - sometimes horrified, sometimes curious, sometimes smugly superior. I can hear their thoughts:

What the hell is THAT supposed to be?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

I've tried to make myself feel better by telling myself no woman over 50 should wear sleeveless things anyway. I shouldn’t inflict my bingo wings, nanna flaps, tuckshop arms (and my personal favourite, although I couldn’t find its spelling anywhere- fladoobidas) – on anybody.

And then I had an epiphany, and used my friend Google to find Laser X Tattoo Removals. They come down to Canberra every month –and there’s no shortage of people keen to remove bits of ink from their flesh.

My journey began yesterday. Realistically, with one treatment every 8 weeks, it could take a couple of years. I may be seriously old before it's gone. So, is it worth it? It remains to be seen, but I'll give it a go. If there's no appreciable difference in 6 months, I may abandon the idea.

It hurt my hip pocket - it's going to cost about 10 times what the original work did. It also hurt my arm more than the original tattooing. The laser makes a crackly noise, and stings like mad, but there's no smell of singed flesh or anything horrible like that, and it's really quick. One treatment took less than about 3 minutes. The swelling will take a few days to go down, and the area still feels hot, 18 hours later.

**On the downside - if you can possibly consider pain, swelling and potential bankruptcy an 'up'side, that is - there’s no guarantee that the blues and greens will actually come out. Red and black respond well to the laser, but blues and greens don't - something about colour wavelength. Anyway, watch this space… Perhaps they'll develop a new laser that can get those tricky blues and greens out one day. In the meantime, if the best I can hope for is something faded enough to cover easily with that make-up people use on birthmarks, well...

Invasion of the Martians

2011-01-05T21:55:00.001+11:00

I'm not one for recipes, really. Apart from soup-making in winter, I'm a fairly utilitarian cook. I only do it when I have to, and I like to keep it simple. There's one recipe, though, that has been a family favourite since my kids were little – and which they still love to this day, despite being in their late 20s.

It was how I could get my kids to eat their greens. Dished up with a side-serve of drama -(alien voice) “Take me to your leader” - the kids loved it, and I didn't have to resort to plonking a vitamin C tablet next to their chicken nuggets in lieu of vegies, and telling them "eat your vegetable substitute pill, children, so Mummy won't have to worry about malnutrition and scurvy, and you will grow big and strong."

To make Martian Sausages, you need Martians, although they're kind of hard to get, out of season. And sausages. Or, more accurately, sausage skins. You squish the little Martians into them and tie off the ends. Then you boil them in oil, ignoring their little Martian screams. Muwahahahaha!

Ok, just kidding. No Martians are harmed in my recipe, which should, more correctly, be called 'Faux Martian Sausages' – but I didn't want to make my children appear pretentious by giving them the odd French word to throw into their kindergarten conversations. Also, the little fiends probably quite liked thinking they were eating Martians, and telling them they weren't would have been akin to telling them there was no Santa.

So – what are these faux Martian Sausages?

Make a giant pot of delicious, creamy, mashed potato (not too soft and creamy – the antennae need to stand in it). Stir into it some finely chopped cooked silverbeet - organic from your own garden if possible, like this stuff:

That will give it a lovely green Martian tinge.

Add a handful of grated cheese and some cracked black pepper, and stir it all up. Put a big blob of it in a bowl, and add sausage antennae and cherry tomato eyeballs.

"Take me to your leader".
Noms!

Wyangala - Third Time Lucky!

2011-01-03T21:47:00.006+11:00

NERD ALERT!!! Yes, it's true. Sometimes I am a big nerd. While other people are getting excited about overseas holidays, sunning themselves on faraway beaches, or shopping in Hong Kong, I am all excited about riding about 170kms to Wyangala Dam and taking photos of the current water levels. For fun.

Before you (a) get out the violins, or (b) laugh derisively – oh, forget it... Chortle away if you must – but check out these pics:

These were all taken from the same place, believe it or not. Now, as soon as I can figure out how to retrieve/copy MY photos that I uploaded to Facebook (yeah, good luck with that) I should have a few more to show you!

After 2 failed attempts in the last couple of weeks, I almost despaired of seeing the dam so full – I rode to Boorowa last week and found a sign on the way to Wyangala that said the road was closed somewhere or other, so I rode home. I googled. I rang the local copper.

“I'd like to ride to Wyangala Dam. Is the Frogmore Rd open?”

“God no! After the recent floods, there's a dirty big hole in the road. You need to go via Cowra. It's only about an extra 45 minutes.”

After the disgustingly hot and humid weather of the last few days, this morning dawned cool – chilly, even – and with some fairly threatening cloud cover. I thought I'd make a third attempt. I texted my mate Deb. Coincidentally, she was engaged in the completion of a jigsaw puzzle (a 1000-piece beach scene that sounds far harder than the 1000-piece Top Gear Vietnam puzzle that has been on MY kitchen table since New Years Eve) and reluctantly dragged herself away from it to come to see the dam with me. Heh heh, does this mean you're a nerd too, Deb?

Deb & I have Wyangala History – but haven't ridden together for ages now. We were part of the “Mud-Wrestling Biker Chicks” tour (an 'in-joke' – there was no mud-wrestling, honest!) that braved 42C heat to go to the dam – twice – and therefore have a personal interest in the place.

The comparative pics of the dam speak for themselves – here's what you don't get from the pics, though...

The Superb Bakery at Boorowa is just that.

Roadkill smells horrible.

There's a divine scent reminiscent of orange blossom hanging over the road in various spots where the roadkill isn't – I'm such a horticultural numpty that I have no idea where it came from, but it was beautiful.

Clouds of white butterflies rose from mauve roadside flowers in a bizarre sort of Mexican Wave as we rode past them. Some of the silly little buggers splattered themselves on my helmet. One even managed to get inside my visor – how the heck did that happen?

Just as we got to the dam, thunder rumbled, and we spied forked lightning as well. We spent enough time at the dam to take a couple of pics (thanks, by the way, to the elderly gent who took pics of us in the rain) and then, mission accomplished, we headed for home via a huge goss session at a lovely cafe in Boorowa (a cafe that makes potato scallops from REAL potato!)

Water water all around.... including coming from above!

It was almost 7.30pm when I got home. What a splendid, splendid day!

Digging in the Dirt

2010-12-29T21:53:00.003+11:00

What is it that's so satisfying about watering tomato plants? Is it the tangy scent that arises with the addition of water? – a mood-lifting 'thank you' from the plants themselves? Or is it the promise of mega-delicious, juicy tomatoes down the track? I have no idea. It's one of those ponderables that I like to, well, ponder, on a summer's evening when I'm too knackered to do anything else.

I spent almost all of today in my garden. It's been sadly neglected during term time.

A few years ago, I realised I'd become middle-aged, when I realised how much pleasure was to be had making a garden. Sure, I'd chucked in the odd tomato or pansy in my life, but actually trying to make a garden from scratch, with limited funds, limited time and shitty soil... A whole new exciting/frustrating/infuriating/rewarding world emerged.

The best (and worst) thing about it is that it's a perpetual Work In Progress. It's NEVER FINISHED! For someone who likes to have closure of a project this is, um, tricky. And yet somehow, it works.

I love how I can pick up my yoke (or spade) and continue the Good Fight, no matter what. Like today. Holy crap, I was out there before 7am. I was digging, mattocking, manuring, mulching, transplanting, planting.... all before lots of people had managed to have their first cuppa. Admittedly, I was making up for lost time.

Then, when I got tired, I went to the Mall. And when I came back, refreshed, I got back into the garden.

I FILLED the TRASH-PAK. Many times over. I squished and compressed and squished again. The Trash-Pak is probably 95% full now. I didn't call it a day until around 5.30 this arv. That's not a bad day's work.

When I started writing this post I thought I had a reasonable amount of residual energy stored somewhere (clearly not in my nose... after clearing all the ivy/dead leaves/leaf-litter from that bit of my yard this arv, I'm still blowing stuff out of my nose that scares me. I'm convinced it's full of earwig turds.) I was wrong. There is no residual energy. I'm all done in. Now that I've sat down and relaxed a bit, I realise 'done in' doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm knackered, stuffed, absolutely buggered - and I suspect I will ache all over tomorrow. Night night!

Life with Miffy - feline dementia

2010-12-28T06:08:00.008+11:00

After another 3.30am wake-up, courtesy of Miffy the Geriatric Cat, and yet another toileting disaster - hers, not mine! - I'm running out of humour, bicarb of soda - and incense.

Things are getting difficult - and a bit smelly. I wonder whether Miffy finds it as distressing as I do? As her poor old brain deteriorates, she becomes increasingly stuck in weird behavioural loops, and is often confused.

Like this morning. At 3.30am. Picture this:

Loud yowling wakes me (and probably half the neighbourhood) again. The kitty body-clock is seriously out of whack. I get out of bed and turn on the light. Miffy is sitting in the bathroom, waiting to go through the routine. This is how it's supposed to go:

Human turns on tap in bath. Cat jumps into bath, drinks water from tap. Cat jumps out. Human turns off tap. Life goes on.

Holes are starting to form in even this simple and well-worn routine. I turn on the tap. Miffy hauls herself up and into the bath. She sits in front of the trickle of water and looks at it.

'Um, I know there's something I'm supposed to do now...' Sometimes she remembers, sometimes she doesn't.

We go through this at least ten times a day now. At least. It used to be a once or twice thing, back in the day.

It's starting to be the same with the feeding routine, which is supposed to work like this:

I rattle the bicky jar. Miffy comes running. I put food in the bowl and she eats it. Alternatively, Miffy yowls for food. I put food in the bowl. Miffy eats it. It's a simple process, right?

Not any more. Miffy instinctively initiates or responds to the first part of the process, but can't complete it. She looks at the bickies in the bowl, then wanders off – usually back to the bathroom, where she starts the 'Turn on the tap for me' loop again.

Her brain starts things that it can't remember how to complete. So she starts them again. She does the familiar bits that she can remember. Over and over. And over. Sometimes she just yowls.

I'm not sure what the yowls mean. Frustration? Fear? Simple selfish feline demands? I don't know, and I don't think Miffy does either. Half the time, I think that whatever it was she wanted when she started yowling has flown out of her head by the time I turn on the light. We look at each other.

'Um.'

She follows me around because. Just because. If there ever was a reason, she's forgotten it, but if she follows me around, she might remember it. Confusion radiates from her at these times.

And then there's the toilet thing. The hastily-bought litter tray, which lives behind the armchair, is only a partial success. For Miffy, it's a bit of a hit-and-miss thing. If her feet are in the litter, that's evidently close enough, and she pees with gay abandon. Her bum may well be hanging over the side of the tray, but her paws are in the litter, and as far as Miffy is concerned, that is the important thing. Wee finished, she gets out of the litter tray and poops about a foot away. On the carpet. She's also forgotten that peculiarly, fastidiously feline part of the process – you know, the bit where they bury their business? She just drops a few cat nuggets onto the carpet and wanders off.

I wonder whether she's happy, or content, or whether she's struggling through an unpleasant and impenetrable soup, in which jumbled fragments of a lifetime of routines float and bobble. Her increasingly loud vocalisations are carefully articulated, but in a language I don't understand, and I'm not sure what to do. Her mental deterioration has escalated quite markedly since (a) her stroke, in July of this year, and (b) Oscar's death in October.

I think my dear old cat and I are journeying towards a horrible inevitablility that I don't like thinking about - and if I'm honest, when I bring up the 'quality of life' argument, whose life am I talking about? Mine or Miffy's? Boomerang Boy accuses me of wanting to murder his cat whenever I bring up the possibility that euthanasia might be the kindest thing. Boomerang Boy, it must be said, sleeps through the worst of Miffy's weird behaviour.

As I write this, Miffy is curled up next to me, fast asleep. After the early start this morning, I think I'll put questions of life, death and feline dementia into the too-hard basket, and join her for a little nap.

Beanz - now with meatballs

2010-12-22T17:21:00.006+11:00

The title of this post is a quote from Dave at Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs. He calls me Miss Beanz (coz Beanz Meanz Heinz, remember?) And those meatballs he's talking about? They're not just meatballs - they're red hot Cajun meatballs.

The boys at Bruce's gave the Crow his 1000km service today - and installed a Yoshimura muffler. Here's a before & after shot:

Before, with stock muffler

After, with carbon-fibre oval Yoshi slip-on

How hot does this look? (Hint: the correct answer is 'red hot Cajun hot').

And if you think it looks hot, you ought to hear it! It's not that it's loud, as such, because it isn't - it has its baffle securely bolted in. But the note of the exhaust has changed completely. The Yoshi grabs that lovely natural V-twin double-throb by the goolies and gives it a giant hit of testosterone. The Crow's voice dropped an octave today and turned into a deep, throaty growl. My new bike is now the two-wheeled equivalent of a full-on hairy-chested alpha male.

I'm in love.

A Journey of a Thousand kilometres...

2010-12-22T05:35:00.005+11:00

The Old Hume Cafe, Gunning

Well, it took a while - four weeks, in fact! It was a struggle, but I managed to clock up that 1000kms – just. 1007, actually.

It finally stopped raining and snowing[1] long enough for me to get out on some of the local roads yesterday – Canberra to Sutton-Gundaroo-Gunning, for a start. I stopped at the Old Hume Cafe for a Gunning Lamb Burger, which was yummo. Your lamb patty is served on a bun with lettuce, tomato, Spanish onion, AND a big whack of mint jelly and Greek yoghurt! Seriously delicious!

I headed back towards Canberra via Murrumbateman and the Nanima Road. Nothing to report, apart from a cranky bird of prey whose roadkill bunny-feast I interrupted. It rose in the air with much cranky flapping, and hovered above its lunch at a respectable distance until I had passed.

Recent rain has made a bit of a mess of the roads – potholes everywhere - some of them big enough to lose your bike in - and plenty of gravel and assorted debris washed onto the roads. I'm seeing water where I've never seen water before – I had no idea there were so many ponds and dams on local properties – and now they're all full!

So anyway, after this very pleasant ride, I'd still only managed to crank up a bit over 900kms. I strapped a box of beer to the Ventura rack and ventured out to Dahlitz Motorcycles with it. They've always looked after me out there – and it is Christmas. Oh gawd – Christmas!

[1] Yes, snowing (not exactly in Canberra, but not far off.) In December. This has been the weirdest wettest coldest summer ever, and there was snow on the Brindabellas on Monday! Imagine that - a taste of winter, with soup and flannie jammies and everything!

Meet the Crow

2010-12-17T22:49:00.004+11:00

Last time I bought a new bike, back in April 2008, I picked it up from Dahlitz Motorcycles on the Friday and booked it in for its 1000km service – for the following Monday.

It hasn't been so easy this time. Getting the all-important 1000km service next week is essential, before Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs closes down for a well-earned Christmas holiday.

I've been wanting to write about my NEW new bike, but it's been shut in the shed for the last three weeks, and has hardly come out. Record-breaking rain in the wettest December I've ever seen in Canberra, and the presence of the Yak (my car), have turned me into (I can hardly bring myself to say it) a fairweather rider! Nooooooooooo!

In more than three weeks I've only managed to put 700kms on it (and 200 of those were today). Last week I went from home (Marked A on the map) to the Kippax shops (marked E) via Gungahlin and Watson, turning an 8km round trip into a desperate 40km one, just to warm up the tyres and blow some cobwebs out of my head!

View Larger Map

It's no wonder my mood's been somewhere between “a bit down” and “subterranean”.

But – today – the Crow got a proper airing. Here he is.

He's a 2010 SV650S (the Bomber was the 2008 model). He's called the Crow, or Crowie, because of his glossy blackness. Also because when he goes fast, I will make one of the famous crow-calls that got Graham Kennedy taken off TV back in the 70s (remember those?)

F a a a a a a a a a a r k !

Handsome beastie, isn't he?

Today we (the Crow and I) went to Yass to get fuel, and continued to Boorowa before coming home – a little over 200kms altogether. I was very tempted to keep going to Wyangala Dam, to see what it looks like at 89% of capacity (wow! In the drought it got down to about 6%!) Note to self: that might be a nice ride between Christmas and New Year...

The Crow handles better than the poor old Bomber did. Maybe the Bomber had had too many mishaps. Maybe, after 68,000kms, his steering head bearings were tired. Who knows? The Crow, though, tips neatly and effortlessly into turns, and the front end seems to hug the road better. From the very beginning with the Bomber I thought he felt a bit strange, and put it down to the change in bikes from the trusty, solid GS500F to the nimbler, more waspish SV. After the Unaugural splat back in May of this year, though, I never felt particularly safe when cornering – but I put that down to me being a chickenshit, and having lost confidence... I'm starting to think it was the bike, because there's none of that feeling on the Crow. It's a nice bike!

I see adventures ahead! And now that the school holidays are here, what am I waiting for? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The Rise of the Tyrant Miffy

2010-12-02T04:39:00.004+11:00

It's 4am. I am wide awake. Why am I awake, and why have I given up on the idea of getting back to sleep?

[Dramatic music]

The Tyrant Miffy is on the warpath. I am blogging in order to resist doing her evil bidding at this ungodly hour, and also to avoid strangling her.

I know now why the dear, late Oscar Bin Laden used to wallop her, every chance he got. And I always thought he was picking on her. (Sorry, Oscar I misunderstood. Mea culpa.) He was merely keeping her in line.

Miffy, it has emerged, doesn't have an OFF switch when it comes to food. And she can't tell the time. She also gets stuck in petulant, querulous geriatric mode, yowling at odd and unreasonable hours of the night, like 3.27am. Like this morning.

FEED ME.

No, Miffy, I will not feed you. You were fed at 5pm. You will be fed again at 5am. You already look like a small planet.

Besides, I know that after she has had a few nibbles of breakfast, she will stalk down the hallway and sit in the bathroom doorway. She will yowl loudly and angrily and repeatedly. And, being in the bathroom, it will have a bit of an echo.

GET ME A DRINK.

This means “Turn on the tap in the bath so I can haul my arthritic arse in there and drink the tastiest water in the house, even though there's a bowl of fresh water right next to my food bowl. Do it, and DO IT NOW, MINION!”

See, it isn't about water. It's about power. Miffy is absolutely relishing her 'only child' status since the demise of poor Oscar. She's loving it. After 16 years of 'Omega Cat' status, she is in the Power Seat. I am the new Omega Cat.

After the water will come the most humiliating (for me) flexing of her feline muscle. She will yowl in the middle of the hallway, loudly and querulously. And non-stop. Her pointy little nose will point meaningfully in the direction of the armchair in the corner of the living room. Behind that chair is the litter tray I hurriedly bought because a certain geriatric cat had decided it was a good place to pee, rather than outdoors where she had spent a lifetime peeing.

She will be saying, very clearly,

CLEAN OUT MY LITTER TRAY, BIATCH!

After I move the armchair out of the way and haul my arthritic arse into the small space behind it, and scratch about in the kitty litter with my trusty pooper scooper, she will mosey on over, inspect the tray, then smugly wander off.

It's no wonder Oscar used to bash her.

And it's why I'm blogging at 4am.

2010-12-01T20:01:00.002+11:00

It's happened! (Actually, it happened a couple of weeks ago, but I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to blog it, so let me try and drum up an air of spontaneity anyway, ok?)

It's happened – wheeeeeeeeeee! I have a new job! (It's not strictly a new job, coz it's where I worked for 8 years before I took a break from teaching – but it's sort of new, so let me pretend, ok?)

My return to teaching has been a bit of a mixed bag. The biggest change has been trying to get used to the ACT college system, and while it certainly has its good points, things like the BSSS website have done my head in.

Canberra is a Public Service city, and the BSSS is a kick-in-the-guts reminder of that. The bureaucracy that underpins the college system, and the website that is its government-to-teacher interface, is the most user-unfriendly, totally unintuitive, faceless, soulless juggernaut in the whole of the National Capital.

The school where I currently teach began as a small community school. It's now a lot bigger than that, but it still has a warm fuzzy small-community-school feel that is at odds with the hard-edged bureaucratic bullshit that it has to work within. (sorry – “within which it has to work”.) Its clientele isn't sure whether it wants to be 'small-town' or 'big city' – but, trust me, the two make uncomfortable bedfellows.

So I'm moving on. Or rather, moving back. Going back to the place where I taught for eight years. Back to a system I know and feel comfortable with (with which I feel comfortable. I know proper grammar lol).

Am I going round in circles? Is it ever really possible to 'go back'? Well - I'm about to find out, and I'm quite excited in a sort of bittersweet way. One of my lovely students gave me choccies and a card yesterday. It read "Thank you for being such an awesome, down to earth, friendly teacher. I will miss you heaps but I wish you the very best in your new school."

Watch this space.