Summer Holidays #2

Things I learnt in South Australia:

-wine is awesome. Also port.

-South Australians are only allowed to listen to Dido. All other musical artists are banned.

-the speed limit in SA is 60k/h. Everywhere. This is because SA citizens are all born with loosely attached heads, and the authorities are afraid that if they drive too fast their heads will fall right off.

-when you go swimming at the beach, hairy men with tattoos leave laminated cards in your beach bag that say "Pete's Mobile, call or txt anytime", and a number which, out of respect for Pete, I won't include. This is the generally accepted method of courtship in SA.

-cockatoos are fucking evil.

-SA contains some lovely young people ("Pete" notwithstanding), but all the women I encountered over 50 were surly and sour. Apart from my grandma, of course.

-there is no God (imho. and Richard Dawkins').

In Your Pants

YA writer Maureen Johnson has suggested on her (hilarious but often pants-on-fire) blog that all book titles are made much better with the addition of "In Your Pants". This idea was taken up by John and Hank Green in their Brotherhood 2.0 project (check it out if you haven't already).

Here are some favourites from my bookshelves:

Robert Cormier's I Am The Cheese In Your Pants

Robin Klein's People Might Hear You In Your Pants

Robert Holdstock's Unknown Regions In Your Pants

Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh In Your Pants

Isobelle Carmody's The Gathering In Your Pants

Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did In Your Pants

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy In Your Pants

Inga Clendinnen's Dancing With Strangers In Your Pants

Georgette Heyer's Bath Tangle In Your Pants

A A Milne's Now We Are Six In Your Pants

5 Reasons I am Proud to be an Australian

1. Tim Flannery is the Australian of the Year.

2. Not a member of the Irwin family.

3. Crowded House is reforming.

4. Despite living in a country where we are banned from taking our national flag to rock concerts because idiots might use them as an excuse to beat people up, we must be proud that we live somewhere it is entirely possible to sell your life on eBay.

5. We may have a nasty water crisis going on, but things aren't so bad that we have to breed giant rabbits in order to survive, like North Korea:

Summer Holidays #1

Your valiant heroine (me) is snorkelling around the pier at Portsea. Under the water, there are:
-weedy sea dragons (awesome)
-puffer-fish
-stargazer fish
-cuttlefish
-etc

Above the water (on the pier) there are:
-entirely obnoxious, tanned, bleached-blonde, overly muscularly developed, (did I say obnoxious?) teenagers who clearly think they are living in the OC.

One of said obnoxious teenagers (a boy) suddenly yells out to me:

Kid: Lady! Lady! Get out of the water! Now!

Lili: ??

Kid: There's a stingray! There's a stingray! Right under you! Get out of the water!

Lili: (looks down into water through snorkel) Actually, there's two stingrays.

Kid: (nearly wetting himself which would sadly ruin his expensively distressed board-shorts) !!! Get out!!!! It will kill you!!!

Lili: It will not kill me.

Kid: It will! It will! Get out!

Lili: It. Will. Not. Kill. Me.

Kid: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lili: Kid, how old are you?

Kid: 14.

Lili: (takes a moment to marvel at the kind of parent that would let their 14 year old son have his own speedboat) Right. Do you know how many people have been killed by stingrays in your ENTIRE LIFETIME???

Kid: No.

Lili: ONE. ONE MAN WHO WAS PROBABLY TRYING TO PASH THE STINGRAY*. Now bugger off.

Kid's Girlfriend: If I get in the water, can I look at it through your snorkel?

Lili: Sure.

Kid's Girlfriend peels off her sundress to reveal the kind of body that I know I didn't have when I was 14. And still don't have. Bitch.

She gets in the water, looks at the stingray. Her boyfriend? Won't move off the jetty. Is that his knees knocking together I see? Is that a puddle of terrified urine I see gathering at his feet? Or is it just the last trickle of his overblown pre-pubescent masculinity running down his inner thigh?

__________

*I am not without blame when it comes to pashing sea-creatures. At one point earlier in the day the man showing us the marine life of the Mornington Peninsula fished out an abalone and explained that it was a gastropod (stomach and leg), and then stuck it on my snorkel mask and made an entirely lame joke about it now being an eye-pod. Except the abalone was obviously feeling frisky and schlooped its way down off my mask and gave me a bigsloppy one right on the kisser. It wasn't bad. Beggars can't be choosers.

Icehouse, qu'est que c'est?

i have Moved House. and i finally have civilised things like internet. and a phone. and a glass splashback.

and a Fabulous Magic Machine with elves inside. it is the Best Thing Ever. you put dirty dishes inside, give the elves some Elvish Crack and then they MAKE THE DISHES CLEAN FOR YOU!!

it's amazing. seriously. revolutionary.

Speaking of cool houses, who remembers the 80s band Icehouse? (how's that for a segue? huh? huh?)

Fronted by Iva Davies, with such hits as Electric Blue, We Can Get Together and Great Southern Land.

Well, my dad's best friend was the lead guitarist in Icehouse. If we were the sort of family that had godparents, he would be my godfather.

After the band broke up, he moved to LA, where he lived on a boat and made wigs for Hollywood films. He left us most of his crap in boxes, including a framed platinum album for Man of Colours. We did what any close, loving friends would do, and hung it in the toilet.

And there it stayed, for several years, until I asked my mum one day if it would play on a turntable. We pried open the frame, and stuck it on our record player. it was green pool felt on one side, shiny silver record on the other.

It did play.

But not an Icehouse song.

It played Psycho Killer by Talking Heads.

Go figure.