2 Mar

Oh what a night!

Keithie getting his face painted!

Absolutely nothing was going to ruin Keithie’s night at Sydney’s Mardi Gras! Not even one of the faeries breaking from the dance routine, twirling over to Keithie – who by this time was hanging over the railing holding out his hand along with hundreds and thousands of other spectators for the traditional slapping – and planting a big wet kiss smack on Keithie’s lips!

I grabbed Keithie’s clenched fist, which he’d pulled back ready to punch the bloke in the tutu, just in time: “Keithie!” I said angrily. “This is their parade and if they want to wish you a happy Mardi Gras with a kiss, you let ‘em, OK?”

Keithie thought about it for a moment, and then threw his hand back over the barricade just as the next wave of sparkling, mincing dancing boys strutted past.

Our evening had started early. We’d booked at the Holiday Inn in the Cross, which was just a stones throw from Oxford Street the main route for the parade. But we’d bought tickets in the Glamstand which is located on the Surry Hills end of Flinders Street and while on any other day it would have been a 20-minute stroll, we had to wade through hoards of parade goers, who’d come early to get a good spot, to get to our seats in time for the start.

Arriving at the pearly gates of Glamstand felt more like emerging from a snowstorm into Shangri-La! On producing our tickets we found ourselves in something akin to the Easter Show: there were cultural food stalls galore; wine bars and beer kegs, everything but the Ferris Wheel; an exciting world all neatly tucked in behind the bleachers where later we watched the parade.

We each ordered a chilled chardie of some variety, nice but not a patch on Swansea’s award winning wines, and I dragged Keithie over to the face painting tent where he lapped up the attention of two gorgeous lesbians who panted pink and blue love hearts all over his mug. With our faces aligned to the 2013 Mardi Gras theme: “Generations of Love” we topped up our glasses and started to mingle.

Keithie couldn’t get over how friendly gay folk are…everyone we past wished us a happy Mardi Gras! Soon Keithie got into the swing of things and wished everyone he past a ‘Happy Mardi Gras!’ I went off to get us some hot dogs – Keithie wasn’t up for trying anything fancy: he’s a meat and three vege man but will choke back a hot dog if pushed – and when I returned he was deep in a yarn with a couple of queens from New York City telling them all about his sheep and asking if they had sheep in NY. They thought that was pretty funny.

The parade got underway with the Dykes on Bikes. Keithie took a big slug of his wine as at least 100 bikes, thundered past us ridden by some pretty heavy duty leather clad gals and their bare-chested pillion passengers!

“What d’ya reckon about that Keithie?”

“That’s a lot of bikes!” He blushed.

After that the hours just flew by. Keithie got really excited when the NSW Police float passed – he was busting to tell Charlie. We waved and screamed for a good four hours at the SES, Gay Pride, Australian Defence Forces, dancing boys, dancing girls, the Queens, the princesses, the parents, families and friends of lesbians and gays, the socially responsible corporates, the NGOs, the political lobby groups, the trannies, the butches the femmes, the Sydney Lord Mayor and a bunch folk around Keithie’s age called “The 78ers” – the crowd went ballistic over them!

Then suddenly, it was over. We waited in case there was a last minute surprise, like you do when a move has been so good you can’t leave the theatre, but finally we fell in with the slow moving mass of wrung out but elated spectators.

We got back to your hotel in the early hours of the morning after wandering through Kethie’s favourite haunt, Kings Cross, in the hope of spying some of the thugs from Keithie’s favourite TV series underbelly. But Keithie wouldn’t have noticed them even if they stopped him in his path; he just couldn’t stop talking about that Mardi Gras parade!

By Dyranda | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
23 Feb

Alien Invasion

My girlfriend sent this picture of her first baby at 12 weeks, in utero, as they say in biology. I showed it to Keithie and told him it was a girl.

Keithie brought the laptop up close, stared at it for a while, then put it down.

“What is that?” He grinned but I could tell he thought I was taking the piss out of him.

So I pointed out its bits: feet, head, nose eyes and told him that if we took an ultrasound of one of his pregnant ewes this is pretty much what it would look like.

But as I said it I knew I’d pushed my luck; Keithie’s perfect little lambs should never be compared to humans.

“looks more like an alien!” Keithie said, unimpressed.

He had a point. We contemporary humans do have a way of treating plain old pregnancy like an alien invasion.

Take Ivy’s mum Kel for instance. When she was pregnant the parent police moved in on her almost the moment her pregnancy was diagnosed. First off, she became aware of this weird expectation that her previously ordered life, as a highflying publishing executive, would automatically give way to a bunch of rogue hormones that will not only turn her brain to mush but cause her to take leave of her senses.

One day, while she was waiting for an appointment with her obstetrician another expectant woman overheard her conversation with the practice nurse who was trying to make future appointments fit with Kel’s busy work schedule.

“You shouldn’t travel when you’re pregnant, you risk complications,” the woman offered, adding that she should know she has three children – oh right, well that takes precedence over medical advice and scientific evidence any day!

The she went on to tell Kel all about the risks of home birth, which basically come down to incompetent midwives who figure out there’s a problem only after its too late – you gotta wonder how our great, great grandmothers managed!

Then she told Kel that under no circumstances should she entertain the idea of a caesarean section as this would cause obesity in her baby; she must also take plenty of folic acid or her baby will be born autistic, and she assumed that Kel’s diet was good before the pregnancy since poor diet is associated with birth defects like cleft palate and, later in life, type 2 diabetes.

“And here’s the best part Keithie: when you’re pregnant you absolutely can’t eat: ham, salami, sushi, pate, soft cheeses (like camembert and brie), cold take-away barbeque chicken and ready-to-eat chilled peeled prawns!”

“Ham! What’s wrong with ham?” Keithie said, disgusted. “That’s over the fence.”

Not as over the fence as the last part of the ‘good advice’: no sex during pregnancy, it will bring on your labour.

I asked Keithie if his ewes behaved any different when they were pregnant.

“We’ll they don’t like the ram in the paddock, so I take it out” he said trying to be helpful.

Then he admitted that he really took it out because the ram belonged to Julian Cotton and Julian needed it back.

As I poured us a chardie, Keithie and I both agreed that pregnant sheep have got it much better than pregnant humans mainly because pregnancy for sheep and the farmer and the whole town for that matter is business as usual.

Only a few months back one of the ewes was having a problem pushing out the twin, and Keithie was just about to call his buddy Alifie when Elvin the postie turned up and he helped pull the lamb out. Half an hour later mum was up having a feed and the twins were checking out the paddock with all the other non-autistic, cleft palate or obese lambs!

Now there’s an interesting thought: maybe expectant women should be munching grass?

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16 Feb

True Love?

I decided recently that enough time had passed since my divorce and it was time to meet someone; nothing serious just something different, as Keithie would say. My decision to try online dating coincided with my buddy Tarnya’s wedding invitation, which marks a union that started on the site e-Harmony.

I tried to explain how it worked to Keithie last night but he just couldn’t get his head around why anyone would pay money to be meet someone that they could just as easily meet in the pub.

So, I reminded him about the pretty girl who walked into Swansea’s pub (which burned down in 2002) 50 years earlier and how he and his mates surreptitiously watched her all night, too scared to make a move.

“Do you still think it’s easy?”

Keithie had the decency to blush but he still couldn’t come at the idea of answering a series of questions and then waiting to see if there was someone out there who liked the sound of him enough to start a conversation.

“I would only talk to the blonde ones,” Keithie announced.

“Julia Gillard’s not blonde?”

“But she’s nice.” Keithie smiled so sweetly I wanted to hug him.

Anyway, I signed up and within a day I had attracted quite a bit of interest; I was instantly flattered and started reading through the profiles. A couple of hours later I was feeling pretty dismayed not so much with the quality of the talent pool but with my reaction to all these potential suitors.

To be honest, I couldn’t believe how harshly I was willing to judge them:

“Five foot 4! Are you kidding?”

or

“What were you thinking when you posted that photo…I’d die before kissing that face.”

Or

“The spell checker’s there for a reason mate! Hmmm.”

Or

“Redhead! No way!”

Then I got a message from someone I liked, articulate, good looking, seemed confident and was five foot 9! So I replied and yeah, I might have gone on a bit but this felt like someone I could have a conversation with…a week later I’d heard nothing back.

So I called Tarnya who admitted she had to kiss a few frogs before she found Rob.

Despite her advice to persevere I was feeling the sting of rejection and the exhaustion of the emotional roller coaster ride, so I went off line for a while.

Then last night I decided to look in, tentatively, and found a message in my online inbox from someone who had taken the time to read my profile and construct a series of honest questions about whether or not I thought we might be compatible. Even though I was heartened, I decided not to reply, there’s a big age gap and I didn’t want to disappoint such a nice person.

I’ve also decided that while couples are increasingly finding love online, I’m gonna to take my chances back in the real world starting with Tarnya and Rob’s wedding in Vanuatu next month – although, I’m trying to figure out why Tarnya’s seated me at a table of gay men! Maybe its mother’s brain – she’s pregnant!

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9 Feb

Beautiful Tassie Open for Business!

Our gorgeous Hazards

Keithie cut out an article in the Hobart Mercury about how six out of 10 Australians rate Aussie beaches higher than Bail, Thailand and Fiji beaches. He brought it over when he came for tea last night and we dissected it for street cred! The good news is that Tassie’s own Wineglass Bay was among those beaches singled out as being one of the best in the country. The article ran a breathtaking image of the Bay, taken from above; and we both agreed it was a true reflection of our pure white sands and seductive aqua blue waters set against our protected natural environment.

But the bad news is that all that hasn’t been enough to encourage the tourists to visit following the appalling coverage that we got on radio, television, in newspapers and in social media during the recent fires. Don’t get me wrong, the fires were devastating and it will be a long time before many, many individuals, families and communities recover their losses.

The thing is when tragedy strikes it often brings out the best in people but for some reason noone, except us, wants to talk about it! You don’t have to look far in any community to find examples of generosity as towns rally together to do their bit. But this time (lets not forget, fires are part of life in the country; they’ve come before and they’ll come again) the media managed to singlehanded damn the place with bad news and outright misinformation from almost the moment the first flame ignited.

I don’t know whether its because journalists are so desperate to have their tweet retweeted or their story ‘liked’ by thousands on Facebook but the irresponsible reporting has had a dire effect on our little economy which relies on our visitors feeling safe swimming in our beaches, savouring our locally caught seafood and sleeping over in our towns.

Thanks to the bloody naysaying media, here in Swansea our B&Bs, cottages, backpackers and restaurants and cafes got hammered with cancellations or just plain old ‘no shows’. Many of us spent hours on the phone or emailing frightened tourists to convince them that it was safe to embark on their holidays; we kept up with road closures and national park openings and shared the info with visitors and each other. But the business losses have been significant.

Tasmania is one of the best places in the world to live and we want you to know it. Last year one of the local unis ran a survey and it turns out that almost 90% of Tasmanians are satisfied with their lives and personal circumstances; we’re cool with our standard of living and our level of happiness. Yes, we have a high unemployment rate but not as high as Europe or the US, and we have hardly any debt compared to other states and territories – probably because we live within our means!

What the survey didn’t show was how determined we are. Just this week our tourism industry has done a deal with Wot If and together we’re running a campaign to remind folk that Tassie is still open for business!

“Why wouldn’t you want to come here?” said Keithie as I pushed him out the door last night.

“Yes indeed!” I said and Louie, who was waiting at the back gate to walk him home said: “baaaa!”

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26 Jan

Kings Cross here we come!

Keithie with his ‘mates’ in the Cross

When I took Keithie to Sydney a couple of years back, the place he loved most was Kings Cross – he’s never stopped talking about how when he called in to the Kings Cross Police Station the cops there couldn’t get over the fact that Swansea’s copper, Charlie, was keeping an eye on Keithie’s sheep while he was away.

I thought his obsession with Kings Cross was to do with the fact that the Swannie’s HQ is located on Darlinghurst Road right smack in the middle of the Cross, but during the week Keithie’s been banging on about the TV series Underbelly, which is producing a sixth season – Keithie’s favourite season was 2010 filmed, you guessed it: in Kings Cross.

Is that why you want to go to the Sydney Mardi Gras?” I asked. “Because the parade goes past Kings Cross?”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” said Keithie leaving me wondering what the hell he meant.

What happens if we bump into the drug dealers Louis and Bill Bayeh? Or the murderer, Michael Kanaan? “ I teased. “They might not want your type in their neighbourhood!”

Keithie grinned…he’s so good natured.

“I’ve been on the internet about the Mardi Gras and we can get seats in the Glam Stand, where you can see the whole parade, have a drink, something to eat and a rest if you get tired.” I said.

Keithie thought that was tops especially given he’d seen crowds, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, eight-deep on either side of the parade route angling for a view at last years Mardi Gras.

“That must’ve been where Kylie Minogue sat,” Keithie said. And that’s when I realised he was anxious.

“Well, if its good enough for her its good enough for us,” I said. “How about I get us some tickets?”

Keithie wanted to know how much they were and so I told him they were quite exy.

“Nearly 200 bucks!”

Keithie sucked his breath through his teeth.

I told him it’s because the money goes to the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation, which helps young gays to learn to live with all the discrimination the world heaps on them just for being themselves.

“Well that’s alright then,” he said.

Then I told Keithie about the gay guy who invented the computer.

“His community couldn’t cope with the fact that he was so clever and gay at the same time it so they gave him a choice: hormone injections that would pretty much castrate him, or two years in jail.

“Can you imagine what your buddies from Underbelly would have done to Alan Turing in jail?”

“What did he choose?” Keithie asked.

“Neither. He killed himself.”

Keithie shook his head – sometimes he just doesn’t know how to think about some of the things people do to people in other communities.

Anyway Keithie, now that all those criminals in Underbelly are so famous they’ll probably have a float of their own just to wind up the NSW Police who have a float of their own.”

“Do they?”

“Course! The police force is full of gays…they’re everywhere…they’re even here in Swansea!”

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19 Jan

A Rum One

She’s a Rummin!

“That lamb,” Keithie chuckled this morning. “She’s a rummin she is.”

He was watching Louie chomp through a wheel barrow of roses, cut especially for her by his new neighbours who’ve taken to her – well of course they have; she knows what side her bread’s buttered on!

“What is a rummin?” I asked Keithie.

“Somthin’ different…I suppose,” he said after a moments thought.

It occurred to me that Keithie and I regularly trot out phrases with great conviction often with no idea where they came from. For example just last week I told Keithie that the Tasmanian Government’s back slapping over its digital TV success didn’t “cut the mustard” when we still can’t get SBS TV in Swansea!

Not only did Keithie share the spirit of my sentiment but he totally got where I was coming from, even though the phrase was coined from O. Henry’s short story Cabbage and Kings which he penned in 1894 when cut referred to harvesting and mustard was slang for ‘the best’.

But even after we pulled it apart we both drew blanks on how rummin came about. So we Googled it and found out that, in the case of Yorkshire batsman Michael Vaughan, it was an inconvenient truth, ie he was actually born in Manchester.

But two things bothered me about this definition:

  1. No one’s trying to cover up Louie’s dietary peculiarities – the whole town knows about her penchant for roses.
  2. Keithie reserves this phrase for women, and only those women he’s fond of.

For example, last week he told me: “Camilla [Swansea’s GP and Keithie’s number one heartthrob] came by this afternoon…she’s a rummin that one!”

The fact that Camilla called in to Keithie’s place on the way home from the clinic wasn’t the point. The point was that she asked him to take a look at a fence in her paddock. Given that half the town asks Keithie to look at their fences from time to time, it was hard to see how this innocent act made Camilla a rummin. Even Keithie wasn’t sure, or wasn’t saying!

Google was fairly light on definitions but eventually we found a site called World Wide Words and discovered that a rum one (remember Aussies shorten everything so rum one = rummin) the term has its roots in the criminal underworld.

That’s when Keithie got really interested.

It turns out that back in the olden days when it all started, the rum part had nothing to do with drink and was positive: rum booze is fine or excellent drink, a rum duke is a handsome man and a rum dab is a dextrous thief (dabs are fingers).

But all that changed in the 1800s when it started to mean odd, strange or peculiar: A rum book was a curious or strange one, a rum customer was a peculiar man or one risky to offend, a rum phiz was an odd face. And it kept evolving so that by the end of the 19th Century rum duke was “a strange, unaccountable person”.

So coming back to present day, I conclude that since Keithie’s so tight lipped about Camilla and her cloak and dagger fence story, and since she doesn’t play cricket, she must have criminal tendencies and we need to look closely at what that fence is keeping in!

As for Louie. She is, without question, “somethin’ different”. If you need proof just look at her life to date:

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12 Jan

Prevention is better than cure

Brucie with Louie in tow

It would be fair to say it’s been a bastard of a week for our little town, with holidaymakers cancelling their visits off the back of news reports that sounded more like the Anti-Christ had landed in Tasmania with a flame thrower in one hand and a cigarette in the other, than a reasonable and helpful description of what was occurring.

“Poor Tasmania!” I said to Keithie last night.

Not only are we dealing with loss of business but we’re flat out fighting one another over who’s to blame. The Hobart Mercury is dead set it’s the Tasmanian Green’s fault.

Apparently some farmers, and a bunch of mainlanders who have bought up chunks of land down here, say that they’ve been prevented by the Greens from burning off their scrub and pastures.

Keithie says that’s over the fence, and he should know, burning off is an annual calendar event for him, every autumn and winter, just as putting the ram to the ewes and lambing season are features of Keithie’s world every spring and every summer.

“Get’s hot in the summer and you gotta make sure there’s no fuel laying about,” he says as though it’s as obvious as taking a dump when nature calls.

It would be fair to say that Keithie is evangelistic about keeping our community safe from the fires that have come on and off throughout his life!

All year round he builds majestic bonfires on his land; strategic creations strengthened with twigs, leaves, bark, grass, pine needles, weeds even Brucie, also a lifelong bushcraftsman, traipses across the paddock, Louie in tow, to offer rose cuttings to Keithie’s alters.

Why do we do this? Well, I confess, for me, the thought of a cool starry evening, a BBQed hot dog in one hand and a chardie in the other mesmerised by Keithie’s bonfire is all the encouragement I need – and let me tell you it’s a night to remember.

But actually, we do it because that’s what Tasmanian farmers have always done. The knowledge has been passed from generation to generation. Keithie and Brucie never needed bushfire warnings because burning off is just plain old common sense and complacency wasn’t an option.

But in recent times there have been so many new laws about when you can and can’t burn off, and needing to get permits before you strike the match, and having to draw up plans to submit with the permit, not to mention the hobby farmers who threaten to sue you if your fire gets out of control. Is it any wonder farmers have stopped burning off?

“It’s over the fence,” says Keithie, shaking his head.

He’s right. Bushfires aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they reckon they’re going to get worse, which is no surprise to Keithie who’s seen his property through 70 odd years of heatwaves, floods and other extreme weather events:

“Some years is hot some is cold, that’s just the way it works,” Keithie says when he hears folk saying things like “we’ll beat this” after their place has been wiped out by fire.

His point is: there’s no point in going to war with mother nature. We should be asking what we can do differently so that when it happens again, and it will, there’ll be less loss and damage.

For example, last week, on the first day of the fires the Hobart Mercury started banging on about replacing overhead powerlines and poles. But since it’s often those very powerlines and poles that cause the fires, maybe we should be looking at putting all those things underground instead? Other states are doing it.

Anyways, it’s complex and we don’t want to bang on ourselves when so many Tasmanians have lost so much. But lets face it, we live here because we love the bush and since bushfires are a part of this world, it makes sense to seize the day and start talking about prevention rather than cure.

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5 Jan

Keithie goes digital!

Late last year Swansea got digital TV switched on and for Xmas Santa gave Keithie some cash toward replacing his old 15-inch analogue set.

As is Keithie’s way, he canvassed the town to see what sort of telly he should buy.

I gotta hand it to Keithie, while he has no idea what the internet is and even less interest in things like FaceBook and Twitter – “why would I want to tweet when I can just pick up the phone?” he told me one day when I was trying to explain the merits of social media – he walks all over the average executive when it comes to market research.

So, by the time we hit the road for the Boxing Day sales in Hobart Keithie had seen what most of the Swansea households had in their livings rooms, he knew what they watched and how often and he was sold on the sharp picture and clear sound that digi promised.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the retail experience.

We started our search at Harvey Norman and never left. Keithie was bugged eyed and beyond capable of choosing from the rows and rows of TVs: small, large and monstrous.

We were served by a very cleaver young geek who hailed from Bicheno and supported the Swannies.

He told us that the LG 42 inch, the set Keithie seemed to be leaning towards, was top of the range because it was a:

“…full HD LED LCD smart TV with 1920 x 1080 resolution, USB recording, USB movie playback, USB picture view, USB music, playback, with a built in HD tuner, a100Hz screen refresh rate, a 7-day EPG (electronic program guide), 5,000,000:1:1 dynamic contrast ratio and its Blu-Ray ready.

“That’ll do,” said Keithie.

“You don’t have to get that one just because he’s a Swans supporter Keithie,” I said.

Keithie paused for a minute.

“Does it come with her on it?” Keithie said pointing at Rihanna.

“Keithie, they’ve all got Rihanna on them!” I said. “It’s a video.”

Back home, Todd, Swansea’s electrician came over and set it all up for Keithie. Since most of the oldies in town can’t afford a new telly Todd had been setting up their set top boxes for free. He put up a new aerial for Keithie as well so Keithie gave him an old fridge he had kicking around in the shed so Todd can keep his beer cold.

Since then Keithie’s been all but glued to his new telly. He can’t get over the fact that he’s gone from a choice of four channels to 13 and has a 24/7 news service. In fact, it would be fair to say that it’s messed up his routine because news always came after tea and now he can’t stop checking in on it whenever he’s in doors.

Last night while we were having a drink in the garden, Keithie asked if I wanted to go to the Mardi Gras?

“You mean the gay Mardi Gras?”

Keithie nodded.

“I seen it on the telly…its in Sydney next year,”

“It’s in Sydney every year Keithie.”

I didn’t think he was serious but he raised it again when he came to cut some of my roses for his new vase this morning…so I said I’d look into it.

Can’t imagine how Keithie’s going to go at the Mardi Gras though!

By Dyranda | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (5)
29 Dec

A Dinkum Dinner

“What time’s tea?” Keithie asked.

“It’s dinner Keithie! These guys are Sydneysiders not country bumpkins like you!”

“So it’s tea at 6 then?”

I relayed the conversation to Anne and John when they arrived for a belated chrissie catch up at 5.30 last night and it got us talking about how hard it must for foreigners arriving on Australia’s golden soil having learnt passable English only to find that Aussies combine the Queen’s English with dinkum English, leaving newcomers feeling like a shag on a rock – so to speak!

Keithie arrived as Anne and John were telling me about their new neighbour, a fellow from Iraq, who turned up on their doorstep the day after a cocktail party at their apartment, waving the Macquarie Dictionary and wanting to know what ‘useless as a spare prick at a wedding’ meant.

To its credit the Macquarie had gone out of its way to acknowledge and provide a context for the many Aussie uses of ‘prick’, for example: ‘the penis’ or ‘a despicable person’, in addition to some standard definitions: ‘a puncture made by a needle, thorn or the like’ or ‘any pointed instrument or weapon’.

Wesam, the neighbour, had tried to figure it out by looking up all the words independently and putting them together in a sensible, logical fashion and he’d decided that Brian, the subject of conversation at the cocktail party, possessed an additional penis which served no particular purpose to his bride. What he didn’t understand was why this was funny.

“It did his head in!” John said.

“You did his head in when you said it was the same as saying Brian was as useless as a glass door on a dunny or as useless as screen doors on a submarine or like a one-legged man at an arse-kicker’s party!” said Anne.

Keithie asked if he, Wesam, chucked a wobbly.

“Or a spaz,” said Anne.

“Has he chucked a U-ie or a lefty in his car yet?” I asked.

“Maybe he’ll just chuck a mental and chuck off!” said John.

We were on a roll so, like all good Aussie sheilas, I topped up our glasses.

“I was in a meeting recently waiting for a colleague to show up when his assistant popped her head in the door to say that wouldn’t be coming because he’d done his hammie,” said Anne.

“Another colleague said: ‘that’d be right he’s off with the fairies as usual’. And then one of the contractors, a girl from New York, accused us [the Australians] of ruining Xmas for her calling it ‘Chrissie’, and she declared that never attending another ‘brekkie meeting’ couldn’t come soon enough!

“I think other cultures think we’re vulgar,” I said.

“Well, that doesn’t change the fact that at some point you still have to point percy at the porcelain,” said John.

“And if it’s ‘off’, there’s no disputing that it’s off like a bride’s nightie!” I said.

“Or a Jew’s foreskin!” Said Anne.

“Or a bucket of prawns!” Said Keithie.

“And no matter where you are in the world, given the right circumstances, you can feel like a pick pocket in a nudist camp!” Said John.

“Or be well stacked!” Said Keithie.

“Or be as game as a piss-ant.”

“Or be a gadabout.”

“Or be dead and won’t lie down.”

“Dead from neck up, more like it.”

“Don’t come the raw prawn with me!”

“No really…I’m dead set!”

And with that we kicked the bucket on the conversation and descended on the kitchen table to chow down!

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22 Dec

Dyranda’s Top 10 Givers

Look what Santa gave me? Keithie’s been salivating over it since I brought it back from an all girls Chrissie drinkies at Jane’s place on Nine Mile Beach.

Jane’s one of those salt of the earth women who makes you feel like you want to be a better person without making you feel bad about who you are. Don’t get me wrong, she’s no saint, but she is seriously generous and all 12 of us left her party with one of these stunningly hand crafted gingerbread houses.

As I was driving home I got thinking about what giving means and who does it best. One of Keithie’s shearer’s was whinging last week about how every Xmas his three sisters, all older and married with kids, produce just one gift from the whole family and yet he’s expected to give gifts to each of the kids.

You could argue that since Xmas is really for kids he should just put and shut up but I say those sisters are pretty smart – let’s face it, it’s taken him 15 years to figure out he’s getting the raw end of the deal. Still, he’ll get the last laugh: this year he’s giving each family a subscription to an online storage facility so they can keep all their precious photos and important papers safe from fire or other disaster! Ripper mate!

But seriously, when you think about it generosity is everywhere. There’s the obvious people like the rich and famous: Mel Gibson, George Lucas, Meryl Streep, Barbara Streisand, Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock and Taylor Swift to name a few.

And then there’s Warren Buffett who’s in a league of his own as one of the world’s richest men who has given most of his wealth to people all across the globe who are suffering and sick. He even came out against greed during the GFC, arguing that it wasn’t fair his secretary had to pay a higher tax rate than him!

The thing about generosity is that it often goes hand in hand with courage and some of the most generous people not only lack celebrity status they’re also …wait for it…women working at the coalface, chipping away at their little piece of the world, trying to make it a better place for their kids.

So, by the time Keithie arrived for afternoon tea yesterday, I was all fired up and made him listen while I recited my top 10 generous people – in no particular order – of 2012:

1. First on my list is E L James whose erotica has liberated most of my friends and millions of mothers all over the world.

2. Second is Cami Anderson who has dedicated her career to freeing children all over the USA from believing they can’t achieve because they were born on the wrong side of the tracks.

Then there’s those incredible women who put their lives on the line for other women:

3. Maryam Durani who boldly discusses the issues of Afghanistan women on her radio station in Kandahar, as the Taliban circle, and

4. Manal al-Sharif who posted video of herself on YouTube driving around Saudi streets! (Keithie doesn’t believe women aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia; he thinks I’m having a lend of him!)

5. Aung Sann Su Kyi who, even though she’s uber, uber famous, is a living, evolving reminder that world peace can happen as long as we all keep believing.

6. Dame Elizabeth Murdoch who spent her entire life caring for others because, she believed, that is how to create happiness.

7. Jan Cameron Tassie’s wildlife and animal welfare hero. Louie says thank you Jan!

8. Dolly the sheep for her extraordinary contribution to science! (Yeah, I know, she’s long gone but we can’t leave Louie out of this altogether!)

9. Camilla Byrne, Swansea’s GP and Keithie’s heartthrob, who singlehandedly raised money to build a swimming pool to teach the kids in our little seaside community how to swim.

And last but not least:

10. Julia Gillard, our PM and Keithie’s other heartthrob, for generously leaving Tony Abbott’s balls intact during that stunning misogyny speech to the Parliament that went viral on YouTube – Go Julia!

At the conclusion of my list Keithie, being a man of few words, “done a grin”, to quote Keithie, then reached over and tore the door off the gingerbread house!

Thanks Jane….it’s tops!

 

By Dyranda | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)