parismarisamadonna

Take a Bow – Madonna 1994

It occurred to me last week, while perched upon the red chair, wearing the red slippers and looking into this screen through the red glasses, I’ve been writing upon these pages for a whole 20 months. That is 608 days out of the 12 775 that I have been walking upon and flying across this great blue earth. 608 days during which I’ve put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard as the case may be, originally to keep my family up to date on my rather small life in this very big city in a land far, far away with a penchant for garlic and butter.

This life, and thus, these pages would mean very little if it weren’t for the characters that have populated the stage of the life of M. For those of you who are recent followers, or those of you that have short-term memory loss, and even for those of you who don’t really care, here is a quick recap, and ever more notably, an opportunity for them to take centre stage.

Motherbear. My mother, the singular parental influence occupying my recent life and a thoroughly modern woman obliged to tolerate the tears, the laughter, the midnight phone calls and the fact that her eldest child is a psychologically unhinged quasi-alcoholic drama queen. A drama queen who feels so compelled to live a life less ordinary she recounts every detail of it to the world, albeit with a hint of that same sarcasm she inherited from her mother, inherited along with the curls and the big brain. 

The Art-sist-ologer. A sibling so named after her multi-faceted professional life as an Artist, an Astrologer and my Sister; a person much smaller than me whose belly is now home to an even smaller person. She is creative, she is imaginative and she has mind-bogglingly mastered that most complicated skill of poaching an egg. A skill I never mastered, despite her attempts to teach me when we shared very old and very small appartments in both Sydney and Paris. She would say my failure is down to my Arian lack of patience. I would say that as a Capricorn, she could achieve anything she puts her mind to.

The Smartarse. My brother, father to Sapphire and Smack, the world’s two most perfect little people golden-topped with their parents’ blonde hair and blue eyes from no one is quite sure where. The Smartarse has dedicated thirty years to taking the piss out of his older sister and more often than not, he succeeds. You can read all about him here but in a line, he is my favourite brother.

Myfatherininvertedcommas. Subject of last week’s missive, he now walks up on high with his preferred human being, John Lennon.

AG and Big Al. My Godly godparents have rescued me for hell on more than one occasion. Once, after a particular altercation with the above, they took me into their home, no questions asked and fed and housed me for a week. I can’t say that they’ve managed to instruct me in the traditional ways that godparents are expected to, given my singular drive to be an individual, the tenets of religion and I are not easy bedfellows. All the same, AG taught me how to cater a party with the planet’s most exceptional dip while Big Al, among many DIY skills and the names of almost every aircraft ever constructed has also reassured me that lachrymose does not mean weak.

uPAD. Pay attention. My father’s sister married my mother’s brother. It is legal, but the genetic result is that I look more like their sons than my own siblings. Sharing exactly the same relatives, as a littl’un it took me about twelve years to understand why other cousins had different grandparents. Frequent visitors to Francalia; UP loves the culture and AD the viticulture, they’ve reassured me that a word perfect rendition of a Beatles song and a glass of red (or seven) is a family trait rather than a mutant gene.

Gramma. She doesn’t get a name; she had this one since we were too small to say grandmother correctly. She rocks. That is all.

  Keep it Together - "I've got Brothers, I've got some sisters too"

All the way down there in the Antipodes are The Microchef, the smallest person on earth ever to bake a cake, a muffin or anything else you mix with sugar and roast. She lives in that tiny shaky country that stole the Rugby World Cup from France. She has been my dearest friend for many, many years though that will now have to change if New Zealand continues to win every game they play against both France and Australia.

Many moons ago, The Microchef was my boss at that great big American coffee company that is now not quite so big in the Land Down Under. A few moons later in that caffeinated Kingdom I was lucky enough to become the boss of Pauli Lupone. A young man so vintage he doesn’t do Kylie or Gaga, preferring Broadway, Barbra and Judy. Vintage is five-star quality, it lasts longer and it is infinitely better looking…just like Pauli.   

Last of the southerners, there is notthedogTilly. Sharing a house and a surname with the Art-sist-ologer’s dog can’t be easy for anyone. But for 2 months, notthedogTilly and I shared a bed and 5 square metres of Ealing charm in London. With her innate calm and positive nature she can do just about anything, except be on time. 

In 2007 the casting couch moved to Europe, and as such, series two took on new actors, actors with foreign accents and a fancy for frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.

The Fashionista and The Body. As different in size as in personality, these gorgeous and amazing back-up singers have been forced to endure the tears, the triumph and the tantrums of the past four years. Usually encouraged by the promise of a glass of red wine and a plate of blood red steack tartare. I figure a three-course meal helps them measure out my story telling and the wine helps them listen.

  Music Inferno - "music makes the people come together' - with The Fashionista and The Body

The American. The most sarcastic un-American person I’ve had the pleasure to know. After seeing me out the door of my employment at the Search Engine, he was kind enough to switch roles from manager to friend. An arrangement that has proven to be far more rewarding as he coaches me now in the fine art of Michelin Starred Food; decidedly more fun than work.

The F-word. Ex-Boyfriend, Ex-Fiancé, Ex-Resident of Paris, Ex-Castmember of these pages.

Louis XIV. Every so often in your life you meet someone who you think you could equally marry, love for life and savagely murder. That person is Louis. His tongue for gossip and his ready ear for me are only equal to his eye for aristocratic luxury. He also lives in a small village that makes for perfect weekend mini-breaks so I’ve learned to overcome my violent urges.

Braveheart. As Fabulous as Louis but with a thick Scottish brogue (and that is not a euphemism for anything), Braveheart’s northern heritage has afforded him an exceptionally strong liver. A physical trait shared by most members of the cast. Reviewing the preceding paragraphs, I have to ask…do I seek this ability out?

The Franglaise. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, she is one of the English spying on her native France. Like the Fashionista she was blessed with that innate Gallic style. Like me, she likes wine. Enough said.

The Academic. A special bond forms when you are sixteen and thrust into the wilds of Southern Aquitaine without the support of family and friends. She returned to New York and Yale, I returned to Sydney and a stellar career as a waitress and we lost contact for over ten years. She found me again thanks to the all-pervasive nature of modern social media and we picked up exactly where we left off. I have to admire (if envy a little) a woman who can speak this damned foreign language with perfect grammatical accuracy and is happy to let me drink the wine on the all-included menu at our local bistro. She also trusts me to look after her most precious possession, the Mini-Academique. She is either insane, or she really does love me…

Ashton and That 70’s show. A motley crew so named because unlike me, none of them were actually alive during the 70’s. While they enjoy laughing at me, they don’t get my Ferris Bueller jokes, they think the Beatles are a household pest and they think the woman who has inspired me to do all of this is the mother of Christ. Which leads me to… 

Madonna.

Nothing Really Matters - "Now that I am old, everything's changed, I'll never be the same"

Yes, she of the Gaultier bra and dubious choice of coffee table book photographs. No, we have never met, unless you count the time she was on stage in black hotpants at the Sydney Cricket Ground and I was on the other side of ‘long on’ peering at her tiny form through tiny binoculars. I was asked during the last week why she shares my name on this blog. I am nothing if not loyal. Every since Motherbear bought me my first pair of mini fishnet gloves and a black ruffle skirt I wanted to be her. Not for the s**tloads of money nor worldwide fame. Rather because I wanted to be known by only one name, because I wanted to scream out loud to all and sundry about the way I felt about everyone and everything and because I wanted to bump and grind and vogue and sing my way through my time on this earth. She became more than my inspiration, she became my way of life. 

Every star needs an entourage to keep her from falling off the edge of the stage.

Take a Bow. I thank you all.

In My Life – Lennon and McCartney 1965

It occurred to me during a recent life altering discussion with The Body, a friend who is equal in both stature and beauty to Elle Macpherson to whom this anon-name was originally attributed, that despite many references to the man known to many during his living life as that Effing Aquarian, I have never told you directly of the man who in my monologues upon these pages I refer to as myfatherininvertedcommas.

myfatherininvertedcommas

Born in post war England in 1948, in Royal Leamington Spa, Dad, like that other far more notorious Beatles fan, Steve Jobs, who was only 5 days shy of being an Aquarian himself and of course not born in England, succumbed to cancer before he reached his sixtieth year*. They shared a passion for perfection, agelessness and an insatiable enthusiasm for John, Paul and all that is, was and ever will be, The Beatles.

My father died at 9pm AEDT on Wednesday the 8^th of February 2006, 7 days after he turned 58 and exactly the same moment as Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House was resuscitating a bacteria infested patient, a patient who survived… while Dad did not. 

Being, as he was, such an unadulterated fan of John, Paul, George and Ringo, hiding him away in the vortices of my brain’s oubliette is somewhat difficult. You are reminded of him on an almost daily basis. He was a fan, and spoke to us using the lyrics of the most famous pop group of all time. There is not a week goes by I am not subject to the melodies of The Beatles. I imagine it will be just as hard for anyone who ever tries to forget me. It will be hard to push me into the recesses of the subconscious given my singular and life-long passion for Madonna.

Tip from me…if you choose to become obsessive about music, choose someone under the radar, your kids will be a little less insane.

Katoomba, NSW, AUS ~1990

I orated the eulogy, one of three, at my father’s funeral. It began, “I read the news today old boy, about a lucky man who made the grade”. I felt then, as I do today, that it was appropriate to sign the man off to the lyrics of that same man who he regarded so highly while he lived, John Lennon. He would often cite the antinomy of Lennon and McCartney as expressed in Getting Better. Paul who wrote “it’s getting better all the time” Lennon who added to the chorus “it can’t get no worse”.  Quintessentially English, glass half empty that was how he saw the world.

I remember seeing my father cry only three times. The Smartarse, The Art-sist-ologer and Motherbear, will query this point. I remember him crying when he learned John Lennon had been shot, when he got the call advising him that his brother had died and during one of our last conversations when he told me, on one of only a handful of morphine-induced occasions, that he loved me. Dad, a stiff-upper-lipped Englishman, rather than using his own words, preferred to use the words of Paul and John during moments of trying, unhinged emotion.

There are myriad examples, etched into the memorial bark of our family tree. She’s Leaving Home when I left for to France, Happy Birthday for every single one of our birthdays, Good Night to force us unwillingly into bed and most memorably, Happy Christmas (War is Over) every year as we woke, on Christmas morning, to discover what Santa had left in our pillowcases+. John and Paul were that much more able to say what he never could.

Myfatherininvertedcommas is referred to as such because he was indeed the Y chromosome that mixed with Motherbear’s Xes to create the puffy cheeked blue-eyed baby that became M. Take note mathematicians, X+Y = M. He was my father and he allowed me to become the woman that I am today, but equally the woman that I am not.

 

He loved music.

The Beatles, Elton John, Sting and Phil Collins were his favourites, and he never strayed far from his British pop origins. In his eyes, no one could make better music than a POM. Unqualified family myths suggest that he played trumpet with Mick Fleetwood during the early days of Fleetwood Mac in the Midlands of England. All that rests of that story today is the trumpet holed up in someone’s garage, a trumpet that like him, has no more breath to breathe. 

He loved Humour.

The Goodies, The Two Ronnie’s, Monty Python, Benny Hill and the Kenny Everett Show. We were raised on the dubious cross-dressing jokes of 1960’s England. A bevy of comedians with whom he would only allow passing assimilation with the ‘Canadians’ John Candy, Chevy Chase and Steve Martin. We know they are not all Canadians, but he would brook no opposition; you can’t be funny and American.

He taught me to ride a bike, he taught me to hammer a nail, he taught me how to cook chips in the proper English way and he taught me how to “cut in” when you are painting a wall. He was a carpenter. A profession, that like Jesus, as he would say, took his life.

Asbestos is the miraculous substance that kept us equally cold and warm in our newly built Australian bungalows in the 70’s and the miraculous substance that would take his life at 6 years shy of Paul McCartney’s lyrical when-I’m-64.

If you believe, He moves in mysterious ways.

Dad dying all too soon afforded me the opportunity to travel, afforded me the opportunity to see another, rather more garlicky side of this life and an opportunity to know that you only live once. That you should take advantage of every day and appreciate that which you have.

He died British, and so will my children (if ever I have them). He died a fan of the Beatles and so will I. He died a stubborn insubordinate s**t who can’t be told otherwise and so will I. He died with a fair bit more than an index finger between his eyebrow and his hairline… and so will I.

And in the end, the love we make, is equal to the love, we take.

 

 

 

* For a musical reference check this out. It is truly worth it to have patience and stay with it through the tuning of the orchestra.. and Dad was actually there with Motherbear and UPAD in 1986

 

+ In the southern hemisphere, there are no chimneys, so Santa has a magical Key that let’s him into all of the houses. He then deposits the presents into the pillowcases of the children, you with me?

 

Food, Glorious Food – Lionel Bart 1968

While showing off some photos from my trip far, far away, to a friend, on my very fancy shiny new gadget that I cannot name, it became clear that I am more than a little obsessed. Obsessed with taking photos of food. So desirous am I to relive the joys of a juicy Entrecote or the world’s most amazing Duck Breast salad or home prepared cheese plate, I feel compelled to photograph, thus preserving the savour of said delicacy on the hard drive of my unnamed computer, for time eternal (or at least until I upgrade).

Eggs Benedict at Maze Gordon Ramsay in London

I am not one of those, like *cough cough* The American, who spends every last cent she earns touring the world in a Michelin tyred car, eating in Michelin starred restaurants in search of the next most Michelin Starred chef’s, next most amazing Michelin starred dish in the next most amazing hilltop restaurant in the armpit of Spain. Unfortunately, I do not have the requisite Michelin sized budget nor do I wish to become Michelin sized c.f. previous comments on these pages referencing my Bridget Jones Michelin curved thighs.

But so-help-me-God I love eating food glorious food. Even if there is nothing else unequivocally positive that I can say about France, we are blessed with exceptional, seasonal produce for the preparation of exceptional seasonal food.

  Moules Frites at Honfleur in Normandy

The very first meal I ate on that balmy August eve in 1992 with my adoptive French family, resident of the paradise of Duck that is the Basquey-Bearnaisy South West of France, is to this day indelibly scratched onto my cerebral cortex. Magret de Canard avec chataignes et sa salade verte. Digital technology being such a recent innovation, I do not have a photo, but I can tell you, I was horrified to eat the poor bird that for the-limited-subruban-Sydney-knowledge-of-the-culinary-world-me, lived only on a lake in a park, at which you threw stale bread for your infantile weekend amusement. It certainly wasn’t stuffed, seasoned and served oh-so-just-cooked with chestnuts and salad. If only I had known then what I know today. Donald, Daffy and Daisy, you are the rosé flesh of the gods. Should I be punished, like a piscatorial Eskimo to savour just one type of flesh for the remainder of my days, it would be quacky you.

  Beef Wellington as prepared by the amazing Chris in Sydney

Australia is relatively ahead of the game when it comes to game (boom-boom). Blessed as she is with every kind of rabid, putrid, baby-stealing beast and an indigenous population who essentially invented the barbecue, they’ve perfected the art of catch, kill and char. They have however limited their kill to red-blooded mammals. True they are, red-blooded mammals like Dingo, Deer, Rabbit or Kangaroo that did hold starring roles in children’s television shows# but always carne not dissimilar to the traditional trio of beef, pork and lamb. 

In Sarkozy’s realm, rules were made to be broken; rules related to all but food. You can sleep with whomever you like that is not your wife, ride a motorbike the wrong way up a one-way street and piss against any lamppost in the street your manly stand-up-to-pee-self desires, but even La Liberté herself, Marianne, won’t save your soul if you serve Foie Gras with potatoes, eat radishes without salted butter or shock horror, savour crêpes with any beverage other than cider. 

  Panini and Pinot Grigio in Bologna

The seasons change and so, to a rhythm not dissimilar to that of the reigning monarch of days gone by, do the rules, and thus, the plat du jour. 

Summer is the realm of the fruit; Carpaccio d’Ananas, Fig and Cheese Salad and Stone Fruit whatever you like. In autumn, you can’t take two steps but for walking into a blackboard proffering the wonders of Watercress Soup or Duck with Girolles*. In winter, Lamb Shanks^ and everything-you can think of with a Clementine Syrup holds court. Spring, the veritable feast of the seasons flings fresh Asparagus Salad, the most exceptional Chevre cheese and the flesh of every baby suckling animal you could possibly imagine and maybe even some you cannot.

  Sirloin in a Newtiown Pub in Sydney

Everyone knows that in France, they eat Snails and Frog Legs. I remember the Wagon Wheel ads that aired when I was at school, ads comparing a biscuit and chocolate snack to garlic snails. Ads that drove home the point that in France they eat really weird s**t. If they can catch it, stew it in garlic and serve it with bread, they will stamp it with a Tricolour and designate it part of their national heritage. The wiser among us know that they just eat their garden pests because they don’t have Kobe (Wagyu) Beef.

  Victor Churchills Butcher in Woollahra, Sydney 

The Bride, who despite the birth of her son (YAY!!) shall not become “The Mother” but maintain her appropriately sanguine and Tarantino-esque anony-name upon these pages, has challenged me on numerous occasions that I cannot be Française until I eat veal.

  French Fries in Kowloon, Hong Kong 

Call me a hypocrite. While I have no problem eating the force-fed-fat-poached-creamy-chocolaty goodness that is Foie Gras (translates as greasy liver), I haven’t yet managed to franchise the threshold of morality that is eating animals that are to all intensive purposes, milk drinking babies. The Bride maintains that despite my incessant moaning, my penchant for red wine and my chosen side in this weekend’s Rugby World Cup Finale, I am not French until I can eat, and most importantly, truly enjoy, veal.

  Hamburger in Hamburg

I lived in New Zealand for a time. The only thing they love more than their precious thigh-slapping Ka Mate Ka Mate Ka Ora Ka Ora All Blacks is a succulent baby sheep with a touch of Rosemary and Mint Sauce (and they aren’t the names of Auckland’s local Call Girls). I am told that their local ovine produce is truly the best in the world. I, adultatarian that I am, would not know. I am, however, almost certain that my excellent cuisinière and BFF the MicroMasterChef has slipped me a Cotelet d’Agneau disguised secretly as beef just to offset the pain of a disappointing loss for the Crusaders or the All Blacks to the Waratahs or the Green and Gold. 

Scallops in Nice

Despite my love for all that is red blooded, greasy livered and delectable, I do have standards, I still don’t eat babies.

 

 

 

#Even in la Republique, they’ve heard of bloody Skippy

* Girolles, a yellow mushroom that I first encountered when I picked it up off the forest floor in a place not far from Lourdes (LINK), and then, contrary to every lesson I had ever learned in school wilderness safety, I ate it.

^ Lamb Shanks, translates in French for some odd reason as the Mouse of Lamb 

 

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme* (A Man After Midnight) – ABBA 1979

There are countries in the world that are so quietly remote and untouched by the pervasive, insidious influences of the World Wide Web, Twitter, Big Brother, Rupert Murdoch and other such modern cancers, that they have managed to maintain a unique and protected national image as yet untouched by those two great heritage levellers, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Australia was once Australian I am sure, not that I ever saw it. Today due in part to our shared Anglophonic heritage, the Great Southern Land is more of a hotter, arachnid infested version of the US and most of South East Asia is more enthusiastic about football and specifically Beckham than anyone anywhere even remotely near Manchester. In the New World, being eponymously new to the whole Known and Identifiable Country thing has led to a kind of blended culture that has left us generally undifferentiated the one from the other.

Other places, places perched upon the far far away reaches of the globe, places where they speak crazy languages and places that are too bloody cold to bother spending lots of time in have been lucky enough to keep their National Identity alive and well. 

Places like Sweden.

  Carl's House

I’ve been lucky enough to visit the great Viking Territory belonging to the sexy, senior, Seanconnery-ish King Carl several times and even luckier to be accompanied by locals who know where all the good bits are.  Even so, I have come to the conclusion that Sweden is simply an ancient Viking word that translates today into something along the lines of “keeping stuff organised”. 

It starts at the airport.

Reflect on the most recent time you were obliged to wait beside the conveyor belt for your baggage. If you’ve been blessed enough to have that experience at Paris CDG you would know that it is sheer unadulterated chaos. Small, sweaty, snotty children climb along the baggage train like stray cats spreading their germs across your matching luggage. A little old woman frailer and older than your great-grandmother is behind you doing her very best to jam her trolley into your rectum. Businessmen feign spontaneous deafness as you plead for them to move out of the way; they shouting into their Blackberries and swinging the world’s most oversized genital-substitute briefcases from their shoulders, you watching your little wheelie-case sail sadly just beyond the reaches of your outstretched arms. Basically, baggage collection anywhere is something like Orwell’s Animal Farm and in Paris-CDG is just a notch above Planet of the Apes.

In Arlanda, baggage collection looks like this.

Walk the line...

Only in Sweden could you draw a yellow line in front of the luggage belts, a yellow line to keep little fingers away from moving luggage, a yellow line behind which every single person stands, patiently waiting for the appearance of their Bjorn Borg Bag at which point they will step forward, collect their bag and wheel it away along the space left conveniently between the yellow line and the belt.

Baggage Collection Organised. Check 

My experience of the Swedes is that they are proud of their Social/Capital economy that keeps everyone in excellent health, excellent education and unparalleled wealth. I understand that they are required to pay significant income tax. I pay tax in France too. I’ve actually paid income tax in about 10 different countries but none of them have a public transport system like Stockholm. None of them have the same quality of free public university education that Sweden has. None of them are so effing good looking either. Irrelevant you say? Surely we all look so bloody haggard by comparison to the bucolic beauties of the berg because we are all so angry and annoyed that the Metro is not air-conditioned, overcrowded and late, again. 

Welfare Economy Organised. Check.

  Stockholm Harbour and the Ivory Tower from whence they give out their Nobels

Unless you live in a remote igloo on the other side of the Scandes in the comparatively rustic ghetto of a place that is Norway, you know that IKEA is from Sweden. IKEA, make more money than King Carl because they haven’t settled for selling boring old pedestrian furniture like chairs, tables, beds and couches. They sell objects that you screw into a wall that keep all of your other objects organised and arranged in Swedish serenity. Objects like a Buutte to hold your shoes, a Bookke to hold your magazines and a Plugge to roll up your power cords.

The question has to be asked, where on earth did we put our stuff in those chaotic dark ages before a 17-year-old Swedish youth invented IKEA in 1943? Where did you put your ties before you had a dedicated hanger-y thing that grouped them neatly in the cupboard? Where did children store their toys before they had a springy basket with teddy bear hands and a tail to throw them in? Where the hell did anyone go on a Sunday before we could pack everyone into the Volvo (which is essentially a steel frame that keeps your family organised while you move from point A to point B) and drop the kids into the ball filled playroom and eat meatballs to relax your nerves before you part with 75% of your annual salary for a shelving system that folds out to become your bed, your wardrobe, your kitchen table and an emergency bomb shelter?

Answer, the world was quite simply bloody unorganised.

Everyone’s Stuff Organised. Check.

  Very Organised - viking graves all in a row

If you are a music fan, you perhaps tap your feet to the random beats and syncopated bop of jazz. It could be that you air guitar your way through the passionate shouting and screaming of rock or metal. You might just like to wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care.  Not in Sweden. They even got their music organised.

ABBA, the pop group so well organised they managed to find to blokes whose names started with B (Benny and Bjorn) and two chicks whose names started with A (Anni-Frid and Agnetha) who were themselves all so organised they were even married to each other. They had matching sequinned spandex jumpsuits, and wrote basically one song. They took that one song and gave it 100 different lyrics and released it as over 20 different albums, taking the post-Vietnam the world by storm and leaving gay men a soundtrack for their martini parties forever after.

When the marriages broke down and the jumpsuits did not match anymore, their tight little organisation fell apart and the band broke up. Their legacy, Swedish Pop Music, has hurtled such successes up the charts as the matching haircut duo Roxette, the matching two-brown-boys-two-blonde-girls group Ace of Bass and the oh so organised that all of her albums have the same name Body Talk, Robyn.

Pop Music Organised. Check.

  Swedish Grave of Swedish Count who was the Undoing of Marie Antoinette 

So there is one exception; Stieg Larsson’s posthumous Millennium Series. 

Three novels and subsequently three films in Swedish, soon to be followed by a further three movies in English for those that are too lazy to read subtitles, are indeed a far cry from the Flickke and Pikkture organisation associated with most other famous Swedish artistic identities. Maybe that is why Steig’s death and the subsequent tabloid festival of disorganisation surrounding his personal affairs have become more famous than little Lisbeth and her Dragon Tattoo. 

I’ll keep you posted after my next adventure, Kkrisssmaas in Sweden.

God Jul.

 

 

 

* Unlike the songs that I usually choose as titles, the title for this one is completely irrelevant, it just so happens to be my favourite ABBA song.

 

Young Boys are my Weakness – Kate Ceberano 1989

This morning, a man of 26 short years on this earth who cannot communicate in languages other than SMS and who does not know what The Breakfast Club is, accused me of carrying on like a teenager. Louix XIV, the cherished advisor and beautiful soul that he is, almost stopped breathing this week as a result of the network problems at Blackberry so maybe he is still reeling from the shock of having to actually talk to actual human beings. All the same, there was no need to be nasty.

I am not a teenager. If a teenager is a glass of fruity fresh Sauvignon Blanc from the New World then I am a rich and spicy Bourgogne. A few years off becoming a cellared oaky Bordeaux, but not that far off. However I have to admit, Louis may have a point. 

Being a teenager was not a whole lot of fun for me. I spent lengthy periods reading lengthy books, then dedicated lengthy pages to writing about the lengthy books and then spent lengthy days carrying the lengthy books on a three hour commute to my school. I was a scholarship kid at a private school full of wealthy kids who spent their days dreaming up new ways of spending their parents’ money; ways that usually involved copious amounts of home-grown drugs. Meanwhile I had a part time job in a bakery and was saving my money for a life-changing trip overseas. Everything I was doing was dedicated to the attainment of a goal. Get the best grades school. Get to France. Get into Sydney University. Get out of the suburbs. Get out of home.

Add to that a rather destructive relationship with my father-in-inverted-commas and you have a perfect recipe for an over-achieving somewhat bookish teenager who never got the boy.

My teenage years were not the stuff of Beverly Hills 90210 where Kelly got to choose between Dylan and Brandon. Nor was it lifted from the pages of Sweet Valley High where those twins wore matching outfits and had matching boyfriends. It was more like an interminable version the excellent Kevin Spacy movie, American Beauty. Only there were three kids and no ‘beautiful’ floating plastic bags, just plain old rubbish.

Fortunately, I did get to university and I did get out of home. Rent in Sydney doesn’t come cheap so I was waiting tables on weekends and had to settle for partying after my split shift with the line cooks instead of spending any time with my fellow university students doing cool studenty stuff like discussing the finer points of socialism, Salinger or sex. 

Graduating, just barely given my exceptional hatred of German grammar, I finally started working. I have spent the years since being very ambitious, somewhat successful and very nomadic. Moving so many times around the world does not allow for very many long-term friendships. Most of my friends now live in places far far away. I am not complaining, I chose to do this. Only do remember Louis, this was all BC, Before Computers. Staying in touch today is dramatically facilitated by the advent of Facebook and Skype for which I will be eternally thankful.

Most recently, I have spent the last three years in the company of an antisocial psychopath which has resulted in lots of time in fighting the unwinnable battle that is trying to make someone else happy and very limited time spent having any actual fun.

So I have cashed in all of my adult responsibilities and become a teenager.

Not cooking and eating fast food for breakfast. Going to a gym and updating my Facebook status while I run. Rarely cleaning. Not removing my make-up before bed. Wearing the same clothes two days in a row after they spend the night in between on the floor. Buying very expensive toys and top shelf Vodka#. Throwing back shots of minty flavoured unidentified alcohol given to me by random men sitting next to me in a bar. Singing pop songs in an underground Karaoke Bar at the top of my lungs. Dancing my thighs away in the middle of a crowded bar while wearing a denim mini-skirt. Stomping the streets in shiny shoes and sparkly eye shadow and blue nail polish. Getting home at 3am on a weeknight. Discovering gigantic bruises all over my body in the morning and not knowing how they got there. Developing all consuming crushes on 25-year-old men who look like Ashton Kutcher and wishing I were Demi. It is all part of the fun.

 

Louis, if that makes me a teenager, then so be it.

 

I am finally over him.

 

 

#It is true that the most significant benefit of being a teenager at 35 is the significant increase in cashflow

 

Sweat – David Guetta and Snoop 2011

At risk of offending everyone, which I generally do anyway despite the risk and without really trying, it has become increasingly apparent that I am most decidedly not French. The Body, ensconced in her Raphaelite palace in Florence is driving a pin into her fluffy headed M voodoo doll, but it has to be said, I do not follow ze rules. 

In the same way that the French do not eat salty food for breakfast (sacré bleu!), do not follow even the most basic of traffic regulations (honk honk!) and do not wake up before 8am on weekdays (what does it mean moh-ning?), there is a very Gallic, very strict code of conduct that applies to the practice of sport or fat-burning exercise in a gym. Part of the charm of living in France is the idiosyncrasies that apply to even the most boring and mundane of life’s tasks. 

For example French people get dressed up in their Sunday best, with their tiny French children cocooned head to toe in micro-couture in order to run simple errands like go and buy bread. French people drink a syrupy extract of the coffee bean that they call coffee that we would call two cubes of sugar dissolved in a thimble of water that has a dash of coffee in it. French people do not talk about politics in the workplace. That is unless of course they want a day off work in the springtime and so they call a strike in order to allow for the talking of politics…outside the workplace…while not working…and still being paid. 

The strict social and moral codes of the French apply to all activities, at all times (even during the occupation when even the resistance fighters were coiffed and wore skirts) including the one time when it is humanly impossible to look good, exercising.

 

As mentioned previously on these pages, I wake up at 6.30am and take two metros to get to the gym when it opens. Slap me silly and call me Aunt Martha but it seems ridiculous to me that I should wake up, get dressed in my day clothes…only to take them off when I get to the gym and put on the gym clothes…only to then get changed again and redress in the day clothes. Even though I lay claim to two different nationalities, one of them is not French. I don’t care that I wear no make up and a hot pink lycra headband to stay the mane that stands on end in all directions in protest at being removed from the pillow so darn early. I hope you’ve recovered from the shock; I travel to the gym…on public transport… in my gym gear.

When I exercise, I wear shoes, socks, running pants, an oversized t-shirt (one of a collection that are regularly given to me by my employer) a head band and a purpose built harness that holds my abundant mid-section in place to prevent either of the girls from swinging free and giving me a black eye#. I wear all of this, but nay, I do not wear make up. 

Again, antipodean creature of logic that I am, when I finish exercising, I have a shower and then apply the layers of greasepaint that enable me to face the world as the Grecian Goddess that I paint myself to be. Allow me a minute to also point out that when I exercise, I sweat and my face becomes increasingly red. The idea of adding even more colours streaming in slicks down my face like teeming rain streaking the windows of my flat would serve only to render me a vision of Picasso cubism; one eye where it should be and the other somewhere below my left nostril… and all before 9am.

Finally, and most uncomfortably of the Gallic gal’s sporty habits is the après gym ritual of la douche or the shower. I was first exposed to this when a young lass of only 16 innocent years attending high school in France. This will shock the Europeans but in Australia, a country with an average annual temperature of well over 25 degrees, we do not shower at school. We play sport, we run jump, tackle and shoot, we no doubt sweat buckets and stink like builder’s bum-cracks afterwards, but we don’t have showers. Certainly a hangover of our Anglo Puritanism, we don’t get our gear off in front of each other and get naked at school. So I managed to wag an entire year of P.E. in my French high school all to maintain my maidenly virtue (*cough*).

As an internationally savvy adult, I am a little cannier and have now perfected the art of dressing, undressing, applying body-lotion and getting all Grecian Goddess-y…all while wrapped in a white towel. But not those crazy French girls!

Old, young, pert, saggy, fit, fat, brown, white, Brazilian, bushy or metro-ticket…they let it all hang out. Every single square centimetre of her naked self is exposed for your viewing pleasure while Mademoiselle, or Madame, raises her knees to apply moisturiser to her legs, lifts her arms to apply deodorant to the thatch underneath or bends over completely in half to dry in between her toes.

Adding insult to unbearable injury…

Not content with leaving me well alone inside the hermitty-crab-shell enclosure of my fluffy white towel, Mme La Sportive, while naked and spectacular and Amazonian, must also engage me in mundane conversation. Bonjour! Au Revoir! And what do you think of this weather, will it rain? Quite frankly Madame, I have no opinion about anything at all until you remove your right breast from the immediate vicinity of my left eyeball and while you are at it, how about you put your vagina away and is it really necessary to stand in front of the mirror and apply your make up while completely stark f**king naked..I mean where are you applying it? And the sight of your breasts reflected ad infinitum between the mirrors that seem to be every-bloody-where is a little retina splitting for my sleepy eyes…and all before 9am.

For the gentlemen readers, I am certain that you are getting all hot and bothered thinking about this… imagining what Sapphic pleasures we indulge in every morning while enclosed in a steamy National Lampoon-esque vision of female on female sexuality. 

So tell me what is it like on your side of the showers?

 

 

#I am exceptionally proud of my womanly Edwardian bust; I just wish I could press a button and retract them when I need to move quickly and repetitively on the spot.