Have you got a friend like mine? If you haven’t, you need to go out and get yourself one post-haste, and pandemic be damned. Let me tell you why..

When I first met Jools we had both showed up to the first day at a new uni in skimpy clothes and big hair (it was the early 90s and we were still attached to the hair, goddamn it). We would have been wearing scrunchies to match our tans.

The grade of any uni student back then could be read in the depth of the tans, and by the looks, Jools and I were solid Cs. Lots of time in the sun with our books, trying to convince ourselves that we were furthering our edumacation, when really we were just exciting our melanocytes.

The difference between us, was that Jools had swagger. You know that thing? When you meet someone and they are really comfy in more than just their Le Tanned skin, but in their own good self. And not in a showy or flamboyant way (although, by the look of Jools in that crop-top, she probably was pretty buoyant #boobenvy) but in that way that you just know that they know who they are- their strengths and foibles and the whole caboodle- and they are okay with that.

Yes, this is about my Glittery Cheer Leader

So it won’t come as a surprise to know that pretty soon Jools had a little crop of butterflies drawn to her shine. And rightly so. Because the thing about Jools, is that one of her gifts is that she embraces the truth of who she is so effortlessly, that it somehow rubs off, and settles on your own skin like so much disco glitter. And pretty soon you can’t help but feel like maybe, just maybe, you are okay to be who you are.

As you look at your arms in fascination, turning them this way and that in the sun, watching the glitter catch the light, you start to think that some of the things you’ve been carrying around, that you are toofattoolazytoodumbtoouglytooloudtoomuch are not too at all. They are just you.

And you is a pretty okay thing to be.

My glittery friend turned fifty yesterday, and still she shines like the sun. With a bit of moon-dust wisdom thrown in as well. She was the first person to show me that I could be all of me without the need for apologies. And that is glitter that is worth the riches of all the world.

Happy birthday, Old Luv. Thanks for cheering us all on, for all those times, when you were just being you. You sure do bring meaning to the word cheers.

Capricorn: Loyal, career focussed, pragmatic, bloody minded and stubborn. Just climbing, climbing, climbing that craggy, stony mountainside. For ever.

And she hated mountains. There was something about the air up there, a heaviness that stopped her lungs from expanding properly. A constriction in her chest. Much the same as the density of her star-sign. She wanted to dismiss astrology completely, in order to be free of the shackles of a personality that she never wanted to have, but when she voiced her rejection, people would titter, “Oh, that’s such a Capricorn thing to say.” She could neither win, or be liberated.

After a time, the ideas and expectations of those around her became self-fulfilling- the pygmalion effect to the extreme- and she sat in her practical home, with her sensible things and smiled a wry smile of contented disgust. She was proud of the things: they were to be revered, weren’t they? They made sense. They were functional. Each thing served a purpose, and each one was precisely placed.

At various times, things and people that didn’t make sense would bubble into her life. They would arrive in a colourful flurry of noise and excitement and for a moment she would feel her tear ducts tingling with the pure beauty of the impractical and frivolous. And then the moment would skitter away on the 10am sea-breeze, like the dust-bunnies under the couch, and she would look at the person, the thing, the idea, and think it silly, and think herself foolish for entertaining the idea that such frothy nonsense was of any use in her life.

And she would dismiss it all.

Then one day something happened.

Someone secretly delivered a bag of illogical things to her front door. Worse, they were placed there in the moment between her husband taking out the rubbish and the children taking out the dogs for a walk. How did they not see the anonymous courier? Was it some puckish sprite, poking fun at her with the promise of self-centred time to bathe in exploding bath crystals, and slather her skin in thick lavender body butter? Surely they must know that baths were for babies and a waste of water to boot, and body butter? It would make her bed sheets oily and pungent, requiring extra washing. What nonsense.

So she planned on how she could give the pretty little things away to someone who would use them. Someone who would relish the nonsense of it all. Someone who valued such things. Someone who valued themselves.

Wait.

What?

All these years she had eschewed all of the fizzy, delightful things, convincing herself that they were dizty and wasteful, when perhaps she just didn’t feel worthy of receiving them. Could it be that she didn’t see herself as being deserving enough to warrant the waste-of-time that items such as this implied? Or did she (remember, she was a capricorn) simply not like things that made her soften? She didn’t know.

And in the unknowing, something magical uncoiled.

Perhaps it was the unfurling of her caprine horns. Or just some secluded desire that had been tucked away for forty-five years, too shy to show up, lest it be seen as daft.

She realised there are far worse things than a little frivolity.

In fact, one far worse thing might even be, the denial of self-nurturing and expression of private truth… One of the very things she was always banging on about.

So she set the floating candles free in a simple bowl of water, and instead of bobbing around with the gentle flickering worthy of a Vogue Living cover, they melted together like a blobby Mer-Angel. And that made her giggle. (She never giggled. Laugh perhaps, but not giggle.)

She lavished the body butter on her sun-kissed birthday skin, and yes, it did make her clothes feel a little sticky, in the muggy Queensland evening air, but beyond that, there was something delicious in the faint whisper of lavender, and the silken feeling on her skin.

Perhaps she was really a Cancerian.

…From The Ashers

I was all over the place today.  Crying and not crying.  A throat full of burning lumps like held-back vomit.  Eyes hot and sandpapery.  And that feeling, the heavy-tight feeling, clenching the suboccipital muscles into bundles of gristle, with that impending sense of doom.  But the doom wasn’t impending.  The thing of dreadful fear had already happened.  Still, it was hard to fully inflate my lungs.

I called on BabyMac to find a perfect birthday cake to bake for my friend, ‘cos BabyMac knows a thing or two about sucking the good stuff outa life.

The cake is called Anne.  She’s big and sweet and full of goodness.  Four eggs from happy chooks.  Lashings of magnificent butter worth it’s weight in gold (no, really, it costs the same as gold).  And a shit load of sugar.  My mate would have loved Anne.  Anne has quite a heft about her.  She’s not for the faint of heart.  And my friend was not faint-hearted.  She was a tough bugger.  And she didn’t mind a cake.

So I baked Anne, and I shared her around.  I gave some to my family, some to my neighbours and some to a gorgeous friend.  I didn’t tell them why I’d given them some Anne to feast on, but they sent me back loving messages, and pictures, just the same.  Anne is that kind of cake.  She makes an impact, and I think she likes to get around a bit.  Anne likes making people smile, making them rub their bellies, and push back their chairs as they lick her last crumbs off their plate.  Anne reminds us of what it’s like to be alive, and nourished, under this big wide sky of potential.  Anne reminds us to savour all of the flavours of life, to taste as many different things as we can, and to devour every last morsel.

Turns out, Anne is a lot like my friend.  I think they would have liked each other.

Happy Birthday Hayls.  I saved you a bit of Anne. Bon Apps.

…From The Ashers xx

Thinking of my big hearted friend, today.

Happy Birthday Hayls.

I will play Green Spandex thirty seven times, and probably have a cry.  (I’m already crying.)

Things I would rather be doing:

Choosing you a present.

Talking to you on the phone, or even better, in person.

Discussing what the birthday celebrations are gonna be.

Doing some Jump Dancing.

Teasing your husband because he got you something weird (That of course, you loved. Because: also weird.).

Agreeing with you that your best gift would be to have Ricki here to share the day with you.  If only you could have that.

Shit, I’d even give you a cuddle.

I don’t like this game.

I didn’t like the cancer game either.  I kept on wishing for it to be over so we could get on with our real plans.  I think John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”  The same goes for death, I guess.  I remember you saying once, about someone who had died, and who’s loved ones were consoling themselves with the stories about how they had “had a good life” and that they “died on their own terms”, that they were still dead, and dead for a long time.

It is long.

And yet it’s not even a year.

It feels like a lifetime and a minute.

I don’t know what is worse.

I just bloody miss ya.

…From The Ashers xx

Sunday the 15th of September would be the 40th Birthday of my friend Ricki.

She died at the end of 2006 from breast cancer, which by then had ravaged her body.  She was an amazing chick, and she amazed me, right ’til the end.  She had a loving husband Greg, and two gorgeous, kids, who are still the strongest, coolest, most lovely children around.  The following is a little something I wrote, about a week after she died.

Painting by Ricki

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower,

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief.

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

I first met Rick when she bounced into work looking for a job.  She was all froth and bubble, and filled a room completely.  I had my reservations, but our manager had the foresight to let her join the team, and so our learning began.  Over time, I found that Ricki was an artist, and lived that way, so rules were less important to her than connection, or passion.  Or beauty.  Or the search for truth.

Later, observing Rick and her sister Hayley working together to open a cafe, I saw another side to her: her organisation, her creativity and her ability to stay on purpose.  I also saw how that big hearted, big sister just gave and gave unconditionally.

Of course she was always giving.  Little gifts for me every Monday night when I’d visit her at her home, when she was too fragile to come into the office for her care; home cooked food, or a present for Liam.  And even more valuable, were the gifts she gave of herself, always in that courageous way she had, without fear or reservation.

In writing about death, Stephen King once said there’s a lot we aren’t told about death.  Of how it is secret, how difficult the letting go part is, because none of us would ever want to get close to another if we knew we’d feel like this, for even a second.  But I think Ricki would.  She’d risk it.  Because she was so brave.

Someone once said that “books read us”, that we see things not as they are, but as we are, and maybe it’s the same for people.  At least I hope so.   For if each of us has even a little of what we loved and admired about Ricki within us, then we are truly blessed.

Monday just gone, Greg said to me that “Rick always felt better when you’d been around”, and I felt honoured to think, that especially in those last few weeks, I have been able to help her a little, because I know I always felt better.  Like somehow just being in Rick’s glow made me a better person, or a least want to be better.  Somehow stronger, or closer to my truth.

This week her kids and I had a play in the house that is somehow still so full of Rick, (she still fills a room), and I had a fun time learning from those amazing two.  The Boy was the ever practical one, wanting to take down Ricki’s Christmas stocking because “She’s not going to be here for Christmas you know”, and The Girl shared with me how, if you go and put your whole face in Ricki’s clothes, you can still smell her.

And so it is for all of us.  We all carry things within us that remind us of Rick.  It might be a smell, or the taste of good chocolate, or a snippet of a song we know she loved, or the emotion from a great piece of art, or a big irreverent belly laugh, or just a bloody-minded stubborn desire to face challenges head on.

We carry these memories within us, because Rick was a chick who made markings on people’s souls.

So nothing gold can stay?  Maybe not physically, but with the brush strokes she left on our hearts, Ricki our artist, will always stay.  Golden.

Still miss ya Ricki.  Happy 40th.  

RIP.

Ah, AHEM, it’s my birthday this month too you know.  It came and went without even a purr this year.  That was noted, my lovely family, oh yes, it was noted.  I am not happy.  Not that this is news.  I am pretty much always at least marginally pissed off.  I don’t like, well, anything much really.

The four things I do like:

• Peeing right on the edge of the path, so when I dig it in, a bit of soil goes on to that path- it gives the Woman something to sweep up.
• Rubbing against the Woman’s legs when she is wearing black pants- the fluffy bits that stay on her leg are very pretty.  I try to make patterns.
• Scratching on the bedroom doors at night until I hear the Boy and the Girl stir a little- such a satisfying noise (Both the scratching and the waking.  Zing.)
• Staying awake most of the night and making things mysteriously fall from spots on high, then sleeping on the Man’s pillow most of the day.

That’s about it I think.

The Man and the Woman really don’t like me much, and that’s fine, I don’t like them either, but they are warm.  So I usually try to sleep on either one’s legs most nights.  I used to sleep on the Man’s chest, until he launched me right into the full-length mirror one night.  I got just one glimpse of my own startled eyes before I whacked into it.  So I’m more cautious these days.  More stealthy too.  It’s good for my instincts, because God knows I’m bloody hopeless at catching wildlife.  So far all I’ve managed are a few geckos and cockroaches.  I can take or leave the geckos, stupid clickity-slimy things they are, but the ‘roaches are bloody lovely.  All crunchy on the outside, with a gooey centre.  I can’t come at the wings though, so I leave them lying around for the Woman to clean up.  Reminds her of what a useful pet I am, in case she is getting ideas, if you get my meaning.

So, about the birthday celebration, or lack thereof.  I heard the Girl ask if she could get me something, and the Woman said no, I wouldn’t even know it was my birthday, I was “just” a cat.  The Girl secretly took me off into her room and gave me a tea-party anyway.  It was a bit shit really, no actual tea, or party, for that matter, but at least she didn’t dress me up in that ridiculous pink hat and make me sit in the doll’s pram. (I’m too big for that thing.)

I started my vengeance last night: knocked over an ornament and climbed back onto the bed every time the Man kicked me off. You should’ve seen me, I was relentless.

And this is just the beginning, dear friends, just the beginning….

Tonight: my bum and the kitchen bench have a meeting.

I’ll keep you updated.

You.Just.Wait.

Do you have an evil pet?