I first met Billy Bragg in the late 80s I think.  He was a bit preoccupied, being on stage and all, and I was a black dot of a face about ninety seven rows back, but I know he saw me and knew me, for he sang to me all concert.  It was like I had him over to mine, and he did a show in my lounge-dining area, but without the usual self-conscious discomfort that comes when someone performs in your face, such was the intimate manner he had.  He chatted to us, made us laugh, made us want to change.

He sang Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards and There is Power in a Union and Ideology and we rallied along with him, our hearts fit to burst with the things we would do when we got home.  He was clever and funny and charismatic and we wanted to be just like, him, hell, we wanted to BE him.  He changed the lyrics seamlessly to fit the current politics and our Australian situation.  It made us feel special that we knew that he’d changed them, for US.  It was like a reward for showing up and singing along, and that is how we knew we would be best friends forever.

But like so many BFFs we found that forever was a very long time.  And we fell pregnant, fell into a home loan and fell out of love with staying up late arguing about ideology over cheap port and cigarettes.

So when Twitter told me he spoke at March in March I was jealous and sad that I wasn’t there, wasn’t demonstrating.  That in fact, I didn’t even live in a city.  What was I doing when they were marching?  Sitting on the beach in Noosa watching this:

Oscar the dog

Which was vaguely interesting, but not really of any social import.

The thing is, I don’t think I’m active enough to be an activist these days.  I don’t have an old suit jacket with clever badges on it.  I still have my original Docs, but you can get a pair that look the same from Big W that are made in China and come with that weird paint smell, so I can’t even look the part any more.  Plus, I don’t have a clue what is going on.  Not really.  Not enough to get all riled up and shouty and fist pumping the clouds.  The last time I did a fist pump was on a girls’ night at the Surf Club, as we danced around our handbags and the DJ played ‘Jump Around’.

Sunshine and salt air and humidity have made me indolent and complacent and in need of a rest, rather than an arrest.  I have to say, that when I belt out Billy in the car these days it’s Little Time Bomb and The Price I Pay and Must I Paint you a Picture that I most resonate with.

Twitter tells me Billy is about to be on Q and A and I’m half covering my ears and my eyes are slitted, in case I see or hear something that might make me uncomfortable.  And I don’t like discomfort.

You can be active with the activists, 

Or sleep in with the sleepers,

While you’re waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

-Billy Bragg

Did you March in March?  

Do you love Billy Bragg?

…..From The Ashers xx

I didn’t have a blog post ready for you, and I just watched the Morcombe thing on tv, and I’m feeling kind of wrung out.  I don’t want to be yet another person who writes about that situation, so I’ll spare you my insights.  They are probably similar to yours. I’ve been sitting here for a good five minutes, with nothing to write and only that ridiculous Downton Abbey to distract me- and there’s not a post in that.  Nathan wants me to write about what a great lover he is.  Yes, he said lover.  It could be to pay me back for when I told him to look over “at nine o’clock and check out those knockers” today at the beach.  Seems we are living in a Benny Hill sketch.  I said, “I don’t do Mummy porn.”  He said you’d love it…

She removed her hooker heels at the front door and slunk up the stairs so as not to wake the children.  The plans she had for the rest of the evening were best executed without interruption.  Her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the flickering of the candles he had left to welcome her home.  The warmth of their glow stirred a warmth in her, and she smiled knowingly to herself, in secret anticipation.

Silently she went to the kitchen drawer and took out a little implement.  An aid, if you will.  For later.  For her love.

She approached the bedroom, her breath quickening, her blood surging.  Her body was softening as she prepared for what would come next.  She caught herself swallowing, as if she was about to devour a delicious treat.  To prolong the sweet pleasure she went to the ensuite, slowly removing her dress, feeling the fabric slip from her shoulders, tickling and tingling her skin.  Her senses acutely awake.  She was ready.

Emerging from the ensuite, she allowed her eyes to feast upon the object of her desire for the first time.  Glistening, in a luscious shade of brown, it seemed to shimmer slightly in the light of the full moon, that was peeping through the blinds.  It looked firm and turgid, yet somehow yielding.  Smooth and silky to the touch.  Strong, and with a sweet, heady scent that could not be resisted.

She slithered into the bed, her breath now coming in faster bursts.  She could hardly contain herself.

Nathan seemed to sense her presence in the bed, and her desire.  He rolled over, scratched his left knacker, farted and mumbled something incomprehensible.

She reached over to the tub of Nutella inserted the spoon into its rich, sticky contents and slowly devoured her one true love.

(Ahhhhh Nutella.  We always say yes to Nutella)

Goodnight my loves. xx

….From the Ashers

Here’s my latest Flash Fiction for the prompt “The blue ones were her favourite” from Anna Spargo-Ryan

**Trigger Warning**

Every Tuesday morning her Mummy had to go to work early and NewDaddy took her to school.

It meant that she didn’t sleep very well on Monday nights.  Mostly she didn’t sleep at all.  She just lay there, waiting.  She liked to imagine that Tuesday morning was already over, and she was safe and sound at school with Mrs Fletcher and all the other kids, and the only thing she had to worry about was whether to play on the oval or the sandpit at big lunch.

She tried lots of things to get away from NewDaddy and the things he said she had to do, but it didn’t make any difference.  Or, it did make a little difference: NewDaddy just got madder and when he got madder he got rougher, and he still ended up doing the same thing anyway.  So it was better just to wait in her bedroom and get it over with.

After a while she developed a little game.  She lined up all the crystals that OldDaddy had bought her before he called Mummy a stupidfatbitch and went away and didn’t come back no more.  She liked the crystals, they were cool in her hands and they were real pretty.  All the crystals had different meanings, they were supposed to bring you special powers, or something like that.  She always mixed up which one was which, and that was probably because she was a dumdumidiot and couldn’t keep things straight in her head.  But she could make the crystals go in a straight line.

When they were in a straight line she knew she would be alright once NewDaddy finished his grunting and she wouldn’t get into trouble from Mummy for making her bedhead bash against the wall, making a mark on the rentalwalls.

She always stared at the crystals in their straight straight line until NewDaddy left her room, and then she picked them up carefully and put them back in her jewellery box.  The rose quartz and the hematite and the jasper and the blue turquoise.  Sometimes she held the turquoise ones for a while.  The blue ones were her favourite.

So International Women’s Day has been and gone, and predictably, I re-posted and re-tweeted some things, got into a Twitter fight with some man, and then swanned about the rest of the day, culminating in a lunch with some girlfriends.  I didn’t realise it was IWD when we planned our catch-up, but I chose to see it as synchronous.

To be honest, I’ve never taken much notice of IWD, being in a profession where I get paid the same amount as my male counterparts, and living in a home where we share the domestic tasks evenly.  So most of the inequality applies to other women isn’t apparent inside my little bubble world.  Sure, I had to pop out and then suckle the two parasites, but I was able to work around that without too much of a detour in my career path.  The things that happened later with Coco’s diagnosis and re-structuring, were of my own choosing.  Nath could (and would have) just as easily been the parent shuffling things.

This whole IWD thing has got me to thinking though, and there is one thing that I can’t shake off about the inequality between the genders, and that is something that isn’t really talked about very often, other than when some atrocity is committed, and that is the safety of women.

I suspect it’s not spoken about, because fear of men, usually unknown men (even though statistics tell us, women are more likely to be harmed in their own homes), is something that many females carry within themselves, subconsciously, and without even realising.  It is endemic, and we no more examine it, than stare at our finger-tips and wonder why are fingerprints are shaped just so.

From a very young age, girls are told to be careful, keep away from strangers, and be home before dark.  Girls of my vintage were told to sit with our “knees together” because it was “ladylike”.  (Not to be confused with those Grade Three sluts who sat legs comfortably akimbo, clearly ‘asking’ for the boys to come and have a squiz.)

All of this because men can’t control themselves.

As a girl, and then young woman, I was what would be considered reasonably attractive, with a okay figure.  This meant that I often attracted the unwelcome attentions of men.  Taxi drivers would make lewd gestures from the the safety of their cabs, men would yell things from construction sites, blokes would grab my bum or my boobs as I passed them in crowded bars.  Once I even had a man grab me by my long hair and force a disgusting slobbery kiss on me, holding me hostage with my tresses (I now have short hair, because I felt like the very hair on my hair was a liability).  Every single time, these comments and whistles would make my heart race, flooding me with fear, and later, much later when I felt safe again, my blood boil.  I usually reacted with a stony-faced snub, which would be followed up with the call, “stuck up snob”, or, if I did react, “shut up, bitch”.  I’m sure none of these men saw themselves as menacing or dangerous, or woke up thinking, “I’ll go and abuse and frighten some chick today”, but that is exactly how it felt.  And it felt that way because I knew I was weaker than them.  It felt that way, because I felt vulnerable.

I am now forty-three years old, and I don’t put up with much shit, but then I don’t get the wolf-whistles or hang out in clubs any more, so maybe I think the problem is solved when it is just diverted.

A few weeks ago I was sun-baking at a fairly quiet beach in my sleepy town, and a man came and sat quite close to me.  It felt too close, too creepy, but I convinced myself that I was being silly, turned up my iPod and tried to ignore him (Which is what women do first: ignore their instincts).  I stayed a little longer, but I couldn’t shake the feeling, so decided to leave.  As I was folding my towel the man caught my eye, gave me a slimy wink and said, “Nice box”.  At first I just stared at him, not comprehending.  He gestured to his pelvic region, “Nice bikini bridge. I could almost see the tunnel.”  Words escaped me for a moment, as they always do when I’m confronted with a sub-human, then, in a flurry I told him he was a pervert, a weirdo and a few other choice things, peppering the tirade with some pretty good swears.  He looked at me nonplussed throughout and said, “I was just giving you a compliment.  If you don’t want me to look, then you shouldn’t wear stuff like that.”

Stuff you shouldn’t wear to the beach

 Weeks later, and I’m still a thinking about the whole thing.  The look on his face, the fact that he thought I should be pleased some freak was trying to look down my jocks, and the way I felt afterwards.  The shaky, scared, vulnerable, weak, small, slutty, angry, violated way I felt.  Simply because I am a woman.  And the superior, justified, sleazy, unapologising attitude of his.  Simply because he is a man.

Like I said, I’m forty three.  I have a husband and two children.  I run my own business.  I am capable, assured, confident, bossy, independent and successful.  And yet a dude on the beach with half a mongrel in his speedos can say a few words, and I allowed myself to feel the opposite of all those things.

International Womens Day?  Wage equality would be good.  And so would a kick-arse Wonder Woman suit.

So I’ve done it once and then I just did it again, and I can’t say I like it at all.  Not even a little.  I ran on the treadmill for twentyfuckingminutes and then walked for ten, and all I can say is Thanks Be and Amen to Richard Fidler, for without his podcasts, all would be lost.

It started out well, the new slippers runners were strangely comfortable, and of course treadmills are the friend of the unfit and the uncoordinated, so I did a Clayton’s Run on one of those.  In my garage.  In Queensland.  Three things:  1. It’s bloody hot.  2. Our garage is a tip and a dumping ground for all things that will be useful one day, and  3. It’s bloody hot.

So not only did I purchase special shoes for running, (because clearly my actual feet can’t manage that by themselves) that were potentially made by small brown fingers in places I will never go, I decided that this running had to be done inside, on a treadmill.  Clearly, outside where there is fresh air, and nature-y things will not do.  The problem is, running in my garage with only the detritus of a family-of-four to look at is uninspiring.  Especially when I am reminded of those clever little fingers with every cushioned step.  So a podcast of distraction was in order, which required Apps and downloading and iCloud and headphones and an arm band to hold it all.  Finally I was away, off on my journey of a thousand steps with the soothing rounded tones of Richard and friends, Baz, Jee Hyun Kim, David Gillespie, Peter Cosgrove to keep me company.  An endless dinner party of interesting.

I ran and ran and ran in big, bounding steps, for I had decided to mark my progress in kilometres, and the treadmill clocks them up regardless of whether you are actually on it or not.  BoundBoundJumpBoundBoundSide equals two hundred metres.  And so it went, for at least seven hundred metres, when I found the next obstacle: hot.  And sweat.  Not sweet, glistening-pretty sweat, but big, gross drops of stink.

So I opened the bar fridge (which contained enticingly crisp-looking bottles of golden reward) and set up a fan right nearby, as a remedy.  It worked a bit, so I ran along on my mouse-wheel for twenty minutes and then walked until the sweat dried into wiggly salty lines on my clothes.  My big spongy shoes making a big carbon footprint.

Now it is all done, all I can think (other than “Would anyone notice if I drank one of those beers for lunch?”) is this: IS THIS IT?  I feel like shit.  The exercise people are all liars.  This is NOT fun.  This is NOT energising.  I’m all shaky and muzzy in the head and grumpy and WHERE ARE MY ENDORPHINS?  I was DEFINITELY promised endorphins.

I need a good lie down.  Someone bring me one of those beers.

“I feel like I have thrived here, not because of who I am, but because of who I have come to know.”  -Sherlock Holmes (on the tv show no less.. I have no idea if the original Arthur Conan Doyle ever said such a thing.)

I like it though.

It’s a lot like life isn’t it really?  When I think about my life in the day to day, I tend to consider the smaller stuff.  The doing and the having and the wanting and the needing.  The business of going hither and thither.  The things that relate to me and my Big Three: The Silverback and the Evil Geniuses, in that, it’s all about who I am, who we are.  What we need to get done.  What makes us comfortable, happy, safe.  An introspective look, I suppose.  Based on the “I”.  It can take up a shitload of time.

When I step back a little, and take a moment outside of the minutiae of ME, I realise that it really is the connections we make, the things we get to give in this fleeting “mortal coil”  that really makes us grow, and even more, bloom, like big happy-faced gerberas.  Yelling with colour, stretching their heads up.

I guess I’m getting old, cos over here on the other side of forty, this is a thing we (I) think about.  I think about what my life is going to be about, who will miss me when I’m gone, what connections I’ve made, what differences I’ve made to the lives of people around me, what legacy will I leave.  I think less about the stuff I have (plenty) and more about the time I have left (who knows) and what I want to spend that time doing.

And for me, a big part of that is about spending time with people I love, and who love me back.

Laughing,

Connecting with the heart,

Sitting in contented silence,

And getting the best of out of each other, and hence, our own selves.

Perhaps Sherlock has solved the mystery of life.

So c’mon, share, what makes you thrive?