All posts by Princess Sparkle

Road Trip Hume Highway

COLUMNS

I love town slogans. On a trip to Bland to visit the Bland Museum a few years back (don’t ask), the ones I remember were: Albury – A Proud Seat Belt Wearing Community; Gympie – Free Regulated Parking; and Narrandera – Home Of The World’s Largest Playable Guitar. It’s no wonder they call this place the lucky country.

I love travel. Just thinking about my suitcase makes my heart race. Airports make me incredibly frisky. Don’t pretend like I’m the only person who requests a cavity search at Tullamarine. After dropping off a friend. For a domestic flight. To Mildura. Stuff it. I pay my taxes.

Mile-high club? I’m just happy if I’m on tip-toes, my head’s thrown back, my knees are trembling and a bloke called Glen from Diggers Rest is flicking his rubber gloves.

”Ask me what flight I just arrived on. And where I’ll be disembarking. Do I have anything to declare? Actually I do. You smell like Brut 33 and dim sims. Ask me if I packed my bag myself. And where I’m travelling to. Yes! Yes! I’m almost there. Don’t stop …”

The smell of my passport makes me vibrate with excitement. When I die I want to be reincarnated as Catriona Rowntree.

Just without the ersatz warmth, fake bubbliness and that ”my life is a dream come true!” look I want to slap right off her smug, self-satisfied face.

I love travel, but I’m not that keen on holidays. My favourite holiday is work. Which any parent will understand.

Last week’s drag up the Hume found me trawling for a place to break up the 800 kilometres. Sussing out the possibilities it dawned on me the term ”gateway” is code for ”it’s a hole”. Basically we’re shit, but we’re close to a place that isn’t.

I thought about stopping in Holbrook! Premier Driver Reviver Town! Halfway on the Hume! (We have a submarine! Please stay! Or take us with you. Come back. Please! We’ll do anything.) Or Tarcutta: Home Of The Nation’s Only Truck Driver Memorial. The evening we drown through there was ‘stew’ on in the ‘bistro’ for ‘tea’. Grouse!

We ended up staying in Gundagai. Why? Because it’s not every day you give your kids an unforgettable forgetfulness experience. ”That’s the dog on the tuckerbox, boys; don’t worry if you miss it, you won’t remember it anyway.”

Which was preceded by the once-in-a-lifetime experience of eating the worst toasted sandwich on earth served by the saddest people in the universe. We ended the night with dinner (dinner as in tea) at the Gundagai restaurant (restaurant as in roadhouse), the only place in the world where fish and chips is under the heading ”light meals”. It was very Wolf Creek.

The motel had an exterior festooned with wagon wheels and an interior with a nautical theme. With ”ironing board”, ”ashtray” and ”kettle” listed under luxury features, and toast arriving in small white waxed bags, its slogan should be ”Australia’s favourite crime scene”.

We’re holidaying in a place called Manyana, which is Spanish for tomorrow. Which is of no use because I don’t even know what today is. So basically we’re time travelling.

”Wait until you go back to school and tell your mates you holidayed in THE FUTURE. An ice-cream from the shop? Tomorrow. What do you mean we’re already in tomorrow. Someone’s been overdosing on mummy’s smart-arse pills.”

Just in case you were wondering, in Manyana (aka THE FUTURE) there are chenille bedspreads, washing machines that attempt to walk out the door when they agitate, grillers that burn your eyebrows off when you light them, board games with missing pieces, no decent cutting knives but 10 shit ones, and wood panelling peeling off the kitchen cabinets.

It’s like a student house, just without a bong. But near a beach.

Wish you were here.

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Pushy Women April 2015 part of Melbourne Comedy Festival

Media, Pushy_Women_Item

unnamedJust when you thought  Pushy Women could not get any better not only is our FIFTH Pushy Women speaking event part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival BUT it’s also part of The Women’s Ride. I know. Long sentence. It will be held at The Ballroom Trades Hall April 12 at 4pm. It’s Sunday afternoon.

Julia Morris, Clare Bowditch, Fiona O’Loughlin and Rachel Berger, Alicia Sometimes, Fiona Patten. Will sell out. Book now!

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50 Shades Of Mango

COLUMNS

OH MY GOD!

Did you hear that?

It’s mango season o’clock!

I know. Shake out the sarong, grab those cheap and cheerful sunglasses and slap on your holiday hat! Golden fever has arrived! Hallelujah!

Bright, sunny, yellowy, silky, luscious goodness. It’s enough to make an atheist like me feel as if there really is a god. Intelligent design? Mangos are exotic pleasure incarnate. When I see a mango, I have an overwhelming urge to tear off my clothes and run around in the nude. Frequently I ovulate. And occasionally I lactate. (Sorry I should have put a trigger warning before that.)

We’ve worked hard all year and now it’s time to MANGO UP. We’ve endured the dull grapes, predictable apples, tedious bananas, pedestrian oranges, obvious pears and frumpy apricots and disappointment in a bowl known as fruit salad. And you know what that means? Now it’s time for the king of fruits! So get your mango on bitches!

Chilled mango daiquiris, comforting mango lassies, tangy mango sorbets and the mouth explosion, the piece de resistance, MangoChicken! A tastegasm, artwork and cultural revolution all in one! No! I’m not exaggerating. That’s why they call this place The Lucky Country. Mangos.

Perhaps your moment of mango communion is simpler than a recipe. More pure. More honest. More intimate.

Selecting your perfect mango, you cast your eyes across the plump, juicy shameless harlots. You slip your hand into the box ofmangos, slide your finger beneath the weighty pregnant fruit, gently molesting the ripe lush flesh encased in a confident yet vulnerable skin.

You trail your fingernail across, feeling the flesh quiver in expectation beneath. You exhale with relief; your heart beats with desire. You’ve found her. She’s your’s. She belongs to you.

You choose your perfect mango knife. Your mouth waters. Your nostrils flare hungrily sniffing the air for that intoxicating sweet smell of the sea, the summer and all that is right and good.

Your knife of choice is fine, commanding and perfectly weighted. You position your mango on the chopping board holding it with your strong confident hand. You pierce the skin of this flirting, wanton tease and you almost climax as she yields to you as you slide through the flesh gently but firmly skimming the seed. The cheek is helpless to your desire and succumbs like the fruity wench it is. You continue your reign of seduction and slice through the other cheek. You gently draw your implement across the shameless deliciousness despite her protests. You take your time to make a perfect thatch pattern across her. Not too deep that you break the skin but deliberate enough for the mango to know who’s boss.

Then comes the moment. You raise the fragrant mango to your hungry mouth, caress it, tease it you’re your lips, penetrate it with your tongue and when you can’t contain yourself any longer you submit to your lust. You moan, you groan, you growl it out. You growl out the mango as you devour something more than a fruit. Mango is a tantric taste nirvana.

You do know the collective noun for mangos is orgy. As in an orgy of mangos. Google it (no don’t).

What makes mangos and the few other fruits that are still seasonal (like cherries, mandarins,  and peaches) so special is their brief season and it’s collision with the weather, the celebration, yearly markers. You just can’t get mango on any street corner whenever it takes your fancy. When I travelled to Afghanistan I saw oranges everywhere. And no offence to this noble and loyal fruit I thought ‘If I can get oranges in Kabul in the middle of winter I don’t want ‘em’. Familiarity breeds contempt. Oranges are dead to me now.

These days everything is so available. Convenience 24/7. Sometimes it feels, particularly with food that used to be seasonal as if their specialness is gone. As much as we love having special things, what makes them special is not being about to have them all the time.

I love mango season and everything it signifies. It is one of the few fruits we can only get at a certain time of year for a limited period. It says work is over, holidays are here, summer reigns. Yay party!

But you know what? I fucking hate mangos. They’re slimy, sticky and they taste weird. And they’ve got these gross hairs, like anchovies. Blergh. Give me a carrot any day.

Sure mangos look like a sculpture you want to make love to and smell like a place you never want to leave but they’re sickly sweet, taste as if they’re on the turn and make me feel funny in the pants.

And they are a nightmare to eat. You only choices are changing your clothes after you eat one or growling one out in the bath.

Sure, mangos, I get it. I get you. But I just don’t like it. But I love what you bring.  Summer. But don’t you think you should tone it down a bit?

Fuck you mango. You slut.

 

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Man’s best friend-Sheree Cairney

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time, there was a huge gumboot that was as tall as a boy.  Or was the boy just short, nobody will ever know. The boy had known the gumboot all his life, it had been loved and used for all special occasions by his father.  This was no ordinary gumboot.  It was purely made of rubber, sure – but it was the most graceful and stylish gumboot ever known for man to wear.  What was even more special about this gumboot was that there was no other like it, anywhere in the world.  In fact there was only one.  Every day when the boy’s father would wear the gumboot, he would wear a different shoe on his other foot.  The most surprising fact was that over years of wearing the boot everyday, the gumboot did not wear.  As time passed, all of the other shoes would wear down and need to be thrown out and replaced.  But not the gumboot.  The story behind the stylish and hardy gumboot was a mystery to all.  One day, when the boy had become as tall as the gumboot and began to throw curiosity at the world, he asked his father why there was only one gumboot.  His father replied that he did not know.  Because of that, the boy developed an unbending curiosity about the boot.  As he grew older and never encountered another like it, his curiosity became obsession.  What really drove this obsession was the mystery of it all – the fact that nobody, his father included, knew anything of its origin story.  To not know the origin of something struck the boy as quite peculiar.  Everything else he had come across appeared to have an origin story.  He knew where each of his own shoes had come from and when he got them.  And because of that, he felt that the gumboot should also have an origin story.  He felt there had to be an origin story out there for the gumboot, even though nobody seemed to know what it was. He desperately wanted to know. It riled him that something he had come to feel so connected with, had no understanding of its own place in his world.  He believed that having a story for something gave it life and purpose, and that the gumboot was missing out.  This drove him mad, until one day it dawned on him what it really meant to have a story.  He realised that there were many ways to have a story and there didn’t have to be just one.  In fact, the gumboot did have a story.  It had his story for the gumboot.  The story followed the tale of how the gumboot came to be in his life. It followed what it was about the gumboot that made it different to other gumboots, and to shoes in general. He realised that the story of the gumboot is like a truth for it, and that it was okay to create the story based on his relationship with the gumboot, to give it an origin story.  He considered what he knew about the gumboot – how it came into his life, and what purpose it played. He thought of all the memories he shared with the gumboot.  He remembered filling it with water & putting plants in it. He remembered his father whacking a thief over the head with it when he tried to steal his father’s car. The gumboot’s story had life and grew. It taught him many things. Most of all, he learnt about story and how it gave a home to things in his life.

 

 

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Not my problem – Jocelyn

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

I’m not a dweller.

To have a life vanish from my body five times over wasn’t easy – but what is?

My life is happy and fulfilling but I don’t like to be judged.

And people do.

Their problem – not mine

“You never can really feel like a woman unless you’ve had children.” Every day I wake up and feel like a woman, because I am a woman.

“Well of course you’ll never really enjoy life without children.” Feel free to watch me try.

“It’s hard for you to understand children because you’re not a parent.” I guess I must have been sleeping through all my years as a teacher.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll be lonely in your old age.?” No!

Wouldn’t you have loved to see what your kids looked like? Yes!

“It’s nice you have a dog to replace a child.” In case you haven’t noticed my dog is a dog, not a child.

“Your life is easy, you haven’t got children.” Thank you. I’m glad I make it look easy.

Their problem – not mine

Period.

 

 

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Scrambled Eggs – Kimberly Martin

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

“I froze my eggs,” Rachel announced as she and her oldest friend Leda walked along the Elwood foreshore on the way to their weekly personal training session on the beach.

“Can you do that? I thought eggs went gross.”

Rachel laughed. “Baby-making eggs.”

“Sheesh, you serious?” Leda replied. “Doesn’t that cost a fortune?”

“Yep 15,000 big ones.” Rachel was surprisingly matter-of-fact for somebody who barely seemed to be able to scrape together rent.

“Whoa! Where’d you get that kind of cash?”

“Remember how my Great Aunt Bev died? Turns out she bypassed my douche bag dad in the will and left some money to me and my sister. And the way things are going for me on the husband-front right now, I reckon this is as good an investment as any blue chip.”

Leda and Rachel always planned to jog to their shared sweatfest, but with conversations about men, fertility and career climbing to get through, they never got beyond a power walk.

And once the workout began, conversation ceased immediately because A. Their hot trainer Luke absolutely smashed them so they could barely breathe, let alone gossip, and B. Even if they could muster the strength to chat, their conversations were rarely suitable for the ears of anyone outside the inner sanctum.

“Wow. Reckon I should do it too?” Leda asked.

“Up to you. I just want the piece of mind.”

“But celebs in their 40s are always getting preggas.”

“I just don’t want to take the risk.”

“But you’re 33 – plenty of time to meet someone.”

“Ledes, we’ve been telling each other the same thing since we were 23 and all I’m getting is wanker after wanker. Do I need to remind you what it’s like to be standing in a white dress alone at an alter? Look, the way I see it is, now I can always get a Ryan Gosling lookalikes’ sperm down the track and do the parenting thing solo.”

“Hang on, this is your kid you’re talking about. Do you really want a son that hot? Way too creepy to be perving on him like that all the time. I reckon you want a plump and cheerful son. Mad keen on hugs and never going to leave you for some skank in a midriff.”

“Whatever, you know what I mean.” Rachel was laughing before getting serious again. “I guess now the ball’s in my court and I don’t have to freak out.”

Rachel had baggage. She knew it and the four dates she’d been on in the past three years had only proved it.

Everything seemed to be progressing well on each one. They’d chatted easily, had great sex and promised to call when she’d left. Then crickets.

She’d tried casual texts to check in, but no response, and when she texted the last one demanding an explanation about why he’d gone radio silent, she had to hand it to him for his honesty. “It’s dripping off you,” he’d written. When she asked him to clarify, she got, “The desperation”.

Ouch.

But it took that clarity for her to realise how much she’d let her hunger for kids get in her way. Her mum had four children by her age and Rachel had always envisaged a big brood for herself. And as every birthday rolled around, she felt incrementally frantic.

But now that she had 12 little half-children, simply waiting for Mr Dreamboat’s sperm to make them fully-fledged little humans, she felt an unusual sense of serenity.

“Come to think of it, you have been different,” Leda said. “Way calmer, I reckon.”

It had taken her four weeks to work up the courage to tell anyone, and she knew Leda was a good warm-up act. Their weekly walk-to-hell/workout had become a kind of confessional where Leda shared her increasingly reckless sexual escapades and Rachel debriefed about work, life and all the other stressors that seemed to accumulate along with the self-help books on her bedside table.

“That was the plan,” Rachel replied as they saw Luke waving on the beach beside boxing gloves, mitts and mats.

“Ladies, got your gossip out of the way?” he asked as they dumped their wallets and phones and prepared for their orders.

“Alright, Leda – see that football oval over there? You’ve got two laps. Rachel, you’re boxing with me.”

Leda set off and Rachel gloved up.

“Okay you – give me what you’ve got.”

Luke called out numbers and sequences and Rachel grunted as she smashed the pads for five straight minutes before he called a breather.

Doubled over, catching her breath, Luke commended Rachel’s efforts.

“Nice work Rach – your fitness has skyrocketed in the past month,” he said.

“Is there someone I need to be jealous of?”

It was only then that Rachel noticed Luke’s uncanny resemblance to Ryan Gosling.

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Springtime in Melbourne – Pia Emery

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Inner city Melbourne has an on going love affair with Plane Trees. Their thick trunks and upward reaching branches curl like fingers around power lines and wooden telegraph poles.

The Old Woman sat despondently in her seat, on the Number 96 tram. She had taken this route most of her long life. She always loved looking out at the swinging leaves of the Plane trees as the tram sped past.

Another Melbourne windy day.  She hated the wind.  It messed with her hair and her heart. Today she was tired.  Today she felt old. She had cut marks on her palms from the Aldi shopping bags she carried. Her hair had decided it didn’t want to stay within the multitude of pins carefully placed 5 hours ago and she realised she would be opening her front door again, to an empty house.

She looked around in dismay at the youths on the tram.  All those young people with bad posture – hunched shoulders and stretched necks – looking at their phones whilst life whizzed by.

But the quiet, well dressed Asian man in the corner caught her eye.

He was crying.

She had never witnessed an Asian person crying before.

The Asian man kept to himself – as tears streamed down his face.  He kept his sunglasses on and made no eye contact.

It moved her.

As the tram approached the Old Woman’s stop – she walked towards the Asian Man.

“You’re alright love.  I know it’s hard – but you must keep going.  I’m sure things will turn around” she said. The Asian man looked at the small, white, shrivelled lady in front of him. He could see a hard life in her eyes.  Touched, he took her hand as a lifetime of polite upbringing kicked in.

“ You are right” he said “it is hard, but the kindness of strangers and moments like these make it better”

The Old Woman smiled as she walked away from the tram stop, knowing she had made a connection.

The Asian man vowed never to be caught out not taking a hay ever tablet ever again.

FIN

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Die Quietly – Helen Stan

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Riding along the road to the city, he looks down at the bodies left to rot in the mud.  No dignified end. No tears cried for them. No raising a tankard in celebration of their lives. Such a senseless war.
Raising his gaze, suddenly aware that his armour is grossly uncomfortable.  He sifts in his saddle. His horse moves it’s head, acknowledging his masters uneasiness.  It snorts, jogs a little on the spot. A settling word from its master, calms it’s nerves and it returns to a settling walk. He gives it’s necks a soothing rub and notices it’s magnificent mane flowing along, like a gentle wave on the beach, Wheat swaying in fields or desert sands shifting by the wind.
He feels tired,exhausted but he must remain the leader, to command and show no weakness. How he wishes he could rest and bathe and be warm. These winters leave one frozen to the core. The Sun’s rays insipidly filter down and weakly caresses his face.  He spots deer in the distance and instructs his men at arms to go hunting. Hopefully he can fill the emptiness his stomach has felt for many days now. He dreams of a feast, with abundant food, friends, wine and song. And the softness of a woman who loves him. The scent of Rose on her skin, Her velvet gown with its fragile lace and her golden hair, soft in his hands.
The shrill of a dying archer brings him back to reality. He yells out, annoyed, ” the insolence of you Sir. Die quietly!”
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Chadstone. No one gets out alive.

COLUMNS

Chadstone is the largest shrine to Mammon in Australia. So I went to find out whether the population of Australia (the amount of people who visit each year) could be wrong.

They are. Or I am. You choose.

Chadstone is a metastasised tumour of offensive proportions that’s easy to find. You simply follow the line of dead-eyed wage slaves attracted to this cynical, hermetically sealed weatherless biosphere by the promise a new phone will fix their punctured soul and homewares and jumbo caramel mugachinos will fill their gaping cavern of disappointment.

I was thrilled to have the ”almost 9000 car spaces but I still couldn’t find a park” experience along with everyone else who’d thought on this beautiful Sunday morning: ”Mmmm, how can we spend the day avoiding marinating in each other’s emotional cesspool and distracting ourselves from the darkness of our souls? I know! Let’s head down to the abattoir of souls and buy cheap clothes, processed food and anything with a remote control.”

Chadstone is the same as any other shopping centre, just bigger. The domed glass roof and palm trees only highlight the vast gap between life and this soul-destroying cathedral to emptiness.

Four-wheel-drive mums trading passive-aggressive insults over skinny lattes in the food court. Eight-year-old girls looking like they’re about to audition for the Pussycat Dolls. Fat people with a burger in one hand and a bucket of Coke in the other. Old folk on scooters who’d give their right ventricle to be euthanased. A guy in a T-shirt that said Duck My Sick. Sneering, shuffling teenagers. And grown men having clothes bought for them by their mothers, I mean their wives, reminding me women marry men expecting to change them and men marry women expecting them to stay the same.

Why buy a doughnut when you can buy a doughnut maker? Water when you can buy a water filtration unit? Or a pie when you can buy a pie maker? Easy to clean, easy to store and 20 per cent off! Why buy clothes when you could purchase a garment to enhance your ”lifestyle experience”? Most people had more than 10 loyalty cards in their wallets. Loyalty card sluts.

The food is obscene. Its abundance and pointless variety communicate a lack of intrinsic value. As if it were not grown and prepared by humans. Just processed. As I passed the giant cookies and monstrous muffins, The Pancake Parlour looked lamer than usual. But there was an honesty in its lameness I respected. If anyone can illuminate me to the point of Pretzel World I’d forever be in their debt.

No one looks happy. Everyone looks anaesthetised. A day spent at Chadstone made me understand why they call these shopping centres complexes. Complex as in a psychological problem that’s difficult to analyse, understand or solve.

What does it say about a culture when shopping is considered a valid form of recreation? It says we have far too much money. The lemmings entering and exiting Chadstone look exactly like the gamblers at the casino. They bound in all excitement and optimism and leave stooped, sad and dragging their feet. Because as tragic as it is, Chadstone seems better than their real lives.

Memento mori is a Latin phrase that means ”remember you will die”. The phrase is also used to describe objects that remind people of their mortality. A mate has a skull as hers, to remind her to live life to the fullest and treasure each day and the people she loves.

Chadstone should be a huge memento mori for us all. If we knew we were all going to be dead in a week, shopping centres would be empty. Truth is, some of us will be dead. If you find yourself heading towards one of these spiritless palaces of consumption, memento mori. Remember you will die and chuck a screaming uey. And if you find yourself in captivity shuffling round with the walking cadavers in search of the next hit, ask yourself if you are already dead.

Christmas shopping tips for people who hate shopping 

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