My Earliest Memories; My Tantrum, Imaginery Friends, My Brother Sam & Rock Cakes

To people who know me well, my first memory will come as no surprise..  I was about 2 and a half and I threw the mother of all tantrums outside Myer in Launceston.  My disgusted mother jumped into a taxi and left me screaming blue murder at my grandmother.  I can’t recall everything exactly but I do remember her then throwing me into a cab and taking me home.  I suspect, given it was an era where a smack was okay, I received one or two off my mum when I got home..  And maybe another one or two off my dad when he got home from work…

My second memory is living in a fantastic unit so huge, it was like a house.  It had the most amazing view of Launceston with the biggest balcony I have ever seen, even to this day.  I had a lot of happy times in that unit, I remember standing on the balcony with my dad and my imaginary friend (I had multiple imaginary friends for years…) with a bowl of carrot and potato, trying to feed the birds (years later when I questioned my mum on why raw vegetables, she informed me apparently I thought bread wasn’t good enough).  Sunday mornings were a blast – I was an only child for a time while we lived there (I was 3) and on Sundays mum and dad would crank up the stereo and we’d listen (and I’d dance) to Sherbet, Skyhooks and Abba.  Oh how I loved Abba.  My dad loved (and still does) country and western, so when mum would allow it he’d play Kenny Rogers (and I love Kenny to this day, much to the chagrin of my husband), Dolly, Slim Dusty and Johnny Cash to name a few..

My baby brother came along while we lived in that magical place and I was hell bent on calling him Sam.  My parents had other ideas and named him something else.  But, in true fashion of my obstinate ways, I continued to call him Sam.  To the point dad sat me down one day and told me “no more”.  I can’t recall if I continued it for too long after that but to this day I still laugh about it.

The last memory I have of living there is mum’s rock cakes.  To this day dad teases her and says that he and I used to stand in the garage (like the balcony, it was HUGE, and I am sure we didn’t have a car back then, so we used it as a play room when it was raining, which in Launceston is frequently!) and throw them and try to get them to bounce, but they were so heavy and dense they didn’t bounce.  I can’t recall if they were that bad but I can remember standing in the garage throwing them.  At least I think I can, maybe because dad has told the story to me for 37 years and now I just take it as gospel.

So there you go, they are my earliest memories.  I think it’s kind of great that one day, maybe when I am gone from this earth, one of my many god children and nieces/nephews can read my blog and have a laugh at what their auntie did many, many years before…

Kings Cross – Where Glam Meets Sleaze

I moved to Sydney in April 1990.  I was a girl from a small town who had never know anything like Kings Cross (the closest I came was Nightmoves in Launceston where the worst thing that nearly happened was I nearly got busted for underage drinking..  Or maybe that was Hot Gossip.. But I digress).

My overall point is I hadn’t grown up in Sydney or experienced anywhere like the Cross EVER, but I never once felt unsafe.   My girlfriends and I used to go out every weekend, dance the night away at Studebakers, continue to party all night, and rock into the Bourbon and Beefsteak at 6am for breakfast before the walk home (to Paddington, we’d usually spent all our money out, and the walk home was only about 20 minutes).  We knew to steer clear of seedy alley ways – that’s just using common sense.  We’d wave to the bikies, who used to line the streets, and spend their nights “keeping an eye on the place (amongst other things I am sure), and if we were up for a longer walk, stop down a Harry’s Café De Wheels for a pie.  The unwritten rule was that if you stayed out of trouble then trouble wouldn’t find you (refer to previous sentence about common sense).

In an extract about the cross (reference:  http://bit.ly/Sxad2b))

"You find it ugly, I find it lovely", wrote poet and journalist Kenneth Slessor in his 1933 book Darlinghurst Nights. These days, though, visitors to Kings Cross and Darlinghurst are more likely to find it more pleasant and unassuming than seedy and sleazy. Kings Cross in the 1930s was the closest thing Australia had to an urban bohemia, a Montmartre or Amsterdam red light district. It was the place to come for sly grog, titillation and sex. In the 1970s it was a welcoming home to Sydney's hippies and the place where American soldiers on leave from the Vietnam War came for sex and recreation. In the 90s it became a centre for the heroin trade and the city's homeless. Alongside the sex and drugs, though, the Cross has always been a fertile breeding ground for the arts. It was the scene of Australia's first cross-dressing cabaret Les Girls, the musical Hair was staged in a Kings Cross theatre and has been home to many of Australia's artistic royalty, from poets Slessor, Mary Gilmour and Robert Balas to painters William Dobell, Donald Friend, John Olsen and writer Frank Moorhouse.

Fast forward to 2012 and the tragic death of Tom Kelly.  Combine his death with the other stories you hear and this much is true;  I still go out in the Cross, as do many people, there are loads of great restaurants, but these days I am a heck of a lot more alert. 

The vibe is not what it was in and I don’t think we will ever recapture that.  Which is sad because once upon a time, it truly was an eclectic melting pot of people from all walks of life,

Kings Cross – where glam fights sleaze:

http://bit.ly/MbBB4W

I hope they catch the heartless thugs who killed Tom.

A Girls Weekend. Good for the Soul.

There is nothing better for the soul than a girls weekend away at a beach side retreat..  Okay, retreat might be pushing it, glamping is more like it (it has electricity and hot water, while I am not too much of a princess, no hair dryer or hot shower might be taking it a bit too far for me, especially in the middle of winter).

Arriving later than expected, due to traffic (who knew half of Sydney packed up and headed south on weekends!), as soon as I arrived it was like the weight of the world left my shoulders and I began to relax.  The sound of the ocean, the wind whipping through my bones as I walked across the sand, almost at the waters edge, daring it to hit my feet.. 

Being there with my someone who is like a sister to me, who knows all my secrets and loves me for who I am, was the icing on the cake..  We toasted our weekend with champagne and we laughed out loud, a lot, as we sat around the fire..  It was, quite simply put, heaven..

Saturday saw us explore Berry and even though it was not supposed to be a shopping mecca, in usual form I couldn't resist buying a dress, we ate ice cream and enjoyed the sunshine while people watching.  Not sure if we could back up with more champagne, at 6pm we cracked a bottle of bubbly and after a few tentative sips, sat back to enjoy the sound of nothing but the ocean and the overwhelming feeling of peace that surrounds you when you have no where to be and no one to answer to but yourselves.

I think all women need to do it once and a while.  I know I will be trying to make it a bi yearly event.  I think next time I'll try and extend it to 3 days.. 

Women and Tattoos

I waited a long time to get my tattoo (well, I have a few now, I'm talking my first one).  I always had a picture of what I wanted in my mind but I could never express it on paper.  Finally, one day while browsing through a book on Japanese culture I stumbled across a beautiful picture.  I asked my husband, a fantastic sketcher, to copy it down and "Allegra-ise" it.  And he did.  This is the result.

I was lucky enough to be in LA, Venice Beach to be precise, in 2009 and I made the decision to go under the gun.  It was a very windy day, the studio was right on the beach, like something out of an old movie.  The doors were all wide open, the sand was whipping through and the music was hard core metal.  The tattooists were real artists.  I showed them the picture and they set about recreating it, adding a few touches here and there.  We increased the size quite substantially (my husband later told me that he thought I was mad going under a gun for nearly five hours for my first one, but I don't do things in halves I guess!), got the positioning right and away we went..  Four and a half hours of, well I am not going to lie, down right agonising pain.  At one point they dispatched my husband to the closest shop to buy Coke - the full strength stuff full of sugar, as I nearly passed out.  Turns out my husband tells me later it's because for about a minute and a half I held my breath.

In the end I was crunched over a chair with the worst sand storm going on outside listening to music that made my head pound (but that could have been the gun going hell for leather for four hours on my skin), smoking (yes, bad I know but it gave me something to concentrate on) and drinking straight whisky, such was the pain.  The Australian authorities would have had a field day.  But you know what?  I wouldn't change that experience for the world.  It is a story I tell over and over again and a lot of people don't believe me.  To them I say, if you are ever at Venice Beach and fancy getting a tattoo, let me know and I'll point you in the right direction (the tattooists are all still there) and you can experience it all for yourself!

What a hell of a way to get your first tattoo.

They are discreet, I work in the corporate world so they can't not be, and when I am 70 they won't make me look like, well what ever it is 70 year old women with tattoos look like (I am not one to cast aspersions); they are just something I wanted to do.  So I did.

Shopping, The Dead Sea & A Westfield

I love shopping.  Whether it be ambling through the markets on a lazy weekend anywhere in NSW or popping into a (good) Westfield to while away, let’s say, 4 or 5 hours (yes, I seriously do this – I don’t necessarily spend a cent, I just love to see what’s new and if anything, I buy for others)..

What I don’t love about shopping centres is “spruikers”, for want of a better term, trying to sell their “dead sea beauty products” every time I walk past (it would be remiss of me not to point out I work near a shopping centre and to get out of the office, I obviously, given my love of meandering, walk to the shopping centre - although not every day, I am not totally sad). 

I walk towards their "pop up stall" with a feeling of dread, knowing that in their own greasy way, they are going to compliment me on my shoes, my hair, the colour of my eyes (okay, so they don’t get that close but you get my drift) and then when I offer a brief, tight smile and shake my head, they will pursue me for a few feet, telling me how wonderful their products are and how they will make me look 20 years younger.

Number one, I don’t want to look 20 years younger, I look bloody well fine as I am.  Number 2, if their claim was indeed correct, I suspect they wouldn’t be working on a commission basis in a little shopping centre in the burbs, they would be RICH (like I am, apparently, having lost my health care rebate on the 1^st of July and had my tax cut eaten away, bar $3 per annum, by the carbon tax BUT that is a blog for another day) and living in the Caribbean and no woman in the world would look a day over 30.  I guess no one has actually said that to them yet, maybe I need to be the first?

So, I shall hope they move on soon so I can resume shopping without darting into shops to take cover (there is not a lot I can buy in MotherCraft but it happens to be the closest shop I can take refuge in to avoid them).  If they stay, I may have to stop shopping.  And truthfully, we all know that is not going to happen.