#bridgetbythebridge

#evenstronger

 

Not Olympian, Spartan.

 

Sometime late last year while basking in the dying rays of the sunshine of my thirties, I wrote about becoming strong, about taking control of myself and I recounted the propitious aftermath of half a year spent pre-dawn sweating in a gym. Six months later, I’ve taken it a bleeding, bruised step further. No longer content with just being strong, no longer content with boxing, MMA or weightlifting, now, like Gerard Butler before me, I am Spartan. #greekgoddess

  

Spartan Races, like Tough Mudder, Rat Race, Mud Run, Adrenaline Rush and all the other trademarks of this latest fad for fitness fanatics, involves running through a field and surmounting a series of increasingly difficult, painful, filthy, putrid obstacles. This is how the upwardly mobile cashed up, coked up City bankers get their rocks off these days. No longer happy with their 50 quid MANicures, MANscapes and Barber Shop Beard Braids, the boys need a way to prove that they are still Macho Macho Men, they need Maximus’ gladiatorial arena to show off their finely-hewn just-waxed sunbed-tanned torsos for the ladeez and remind themselves of what it feels like to be a totally awesome dude. #notthatimjudging 

I presume that when the biggest challenge of your average working day is whether to print in colour or print in black and white, crawling through a barbed wire tunnel restores your self-confidence, rebuilds your wife-whinging-eroded-ego and chafes your organically moisturised knees.

So that must be why Actual Real Life Royalty ran my most recent Spartan race, as in, they were 2 metres behind me, and they ran with me. #okBearwastheretoo

The Spartan Race is said to be unique (as per their Reebok-funded Marketing team) because they divide the year into three increasingly difficult races, the Sprint at 7km, the Super at 15km and then the Beast at 20km. Once you’ve completed all three, you have your Trifecta. I am now 2/3 of the way there. And I did it all with a manicure.

Can't do this one...

 

A week after I turned 40, I ran the Sprint in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with the majority of the staff from the gym. Most of them had on warrior face paint, some had on kilts, one had a Hipflask of Whisky, all of them were shouting and screaming like Spartan Warriors in the lead up to the start. #oncewerewarriors

Then along comes me…

Before you even start the race, just to enter the marshalling area, the very first thing you have to do is jump a 1.5m (5ft) wall. Doted with all the grace and elegance of a baby hippo doing the Haka, I approached said wall with caution and care. I launched myself over it; almost dissected my lady parts, straddled the wall on my inner thighs, and hit the concrete path below… right then…it can’t get worse than this…off we go. #onceateoreos

Well it can. And it did. 

Crawling on my elbows through sodden grass in a 12-inch high tunnel of electrified barbwire. Obviously that was designed for dudes. The race organisers forgot that girls with big bazongas would be dragging their nipples across the gravel. I did that.

Hauling logs, shouldering buckets of gravel, heaving 20kg medicine balls and sand bags up hill and down dale. I did that too. The singular advantage of being a girl in one of these races is that they let you carry half what the guys do. I’m stronger than most of the dudes, so the ‘carrying’ obstacles don’t bother me anywhere near as much as the climbing ones or the high ones…. the motherf**king high ones. #imnotasquirrel

 

Can do this one..

 

I clambered up the cargo net, gritting my teeth and gingerly placing each foot in a net hole. Then I swung my leg over the top and stopped. I was petrified, frozen with terror; I realised I was 8m (25ft) above ground, that the holes were big enough for me to fall through and there were people running through the arch way below. I could not move. I was shaking, trembling, adrenaline coursing through my limbs, I might have even peed a little.

But never fear, the Knight in Shining (Under) Armour* came to my rescue. He placed his hand around my ankle and held me tight. He looked into my eyes and he calmly placed my feet where they needed to go, he held my hand and reassured me that I was going to make it down, he was beside me every single step of the way and when I made it to the bottom he hugged me tight and told me he was proud. #youwanttopukedontyou #hecancooktoo #bridgetandbear 

We made it round the 7km course in an hour and a half. When I got to obstacles I couldn’t do like the Monkey Bars and the Rope Climb, I did the 30-Burpee penalty. I did it all and at the end, I jumped the fire pit that indicates you are home. The good people of Sparta, now sponsored by Reebok™, give you a Spartan-y T-shirt and a Spartan-y medal; they also give you a free Spartan-y beer and have food trucks serving Spartan-y food like Venison Burgers and whole raw suckling pig trotters. #okjustoneofthemistrue

I had accomplished something I had never even dreamed of only 11 months after the very first day I set foot in my gym. I was filthy, I was aching and bruised, I downed a bottle of wine and a bowl of chips that very afternoon. #Ihaventchangedthatmuch and what do you do when you achieve your goal? You tick it off the window list^ and make a new one.

 

Last weekend, we ran the Spartan Super around Aston Down Airfield in Gloucestershire. This little stretch of green, green grass is part owned by the Phillips’. That is Zara, Peter and their parents Anne and Mark; you know, Princess Anne. So we ran our Spartan Super with Zara and Mike Tindall and her brother Peter. I even got to see little Mia before they took off. I figure if my pastimes are shared with the 13^th, 16^th and 17^th in line to the throne of Great Britain, then I’m on the right track.

Hauling, climbing and crawling are all relatively easy for me now. Going faster, harder or for longer doesn’t bother me; I just switch the brain off and walk when I can’t run. I get tired, but I just keep going until I reach the end. I figured whatever they threw at me I would just grunt and puff and heave and run until I got there, that, or do the bloody burpees.

I thought that until I was faced with a pit of molten muddy urine soaked cowshit. I looked at my beautiful fingernails and my lovely new Salomon trail running shoes and my Nivea Rich skin and I asked myself who in Christendom I had offended so very much to find myself here in this, albeit Royal, quandary today.

Moreover, I asked myself, why on God’s Green Earth had I PAID MY OWN MONEY to do this?

 

Because I can.

 

 

My knew besties on this week's Hello!

 

 

*Under Armour is of course a well-known brand of American gym gear favoured by Bear

^I have a fancy pink pen that writes on glass, hence the Window List

 

#dickheads

 

“Hey there ‘American colleague’, how are you on this fine Friday evening?”

“I am genuinely terrified that Donald J Trump is going to be our next President”. So began a lively conversation with a dear friend and co-worker who lives in the US (and not in the homicidal southern bit).

 

After the dance of fatuous ninnies that was the GOP candidate debates, it seems that he of the steel wool scalp is destined for greatness as the Republican Party’s Presidential candidate...and maybe, if the world doesn’t wake the fuck up, in a few months, the very top job. I’ve been allaying the fears of anyone around me with a guffawing, ‘no he won’t, they aren’t that stupid’. After this past month, it seems our star-spangled Brethren might just be that fucking stupid after all.

That they be stupid is ultimately their affair, no concern of yours or mine. That they vote in a Texan Dolt to lead their great nation into years of war is their affair, it will have no impact on my own little world. That they choose a blustering Brillo Pad to forge them blindly into the next decade is their affair. Except that history proves that it isn’t just their affair.

When they remove the colossal fried cheese’n’donutburger from betwixt their buttery lips they look beyond their Rio-Grande-49^th-Paralell box and dick around with the rest of us. Ergo, if the Merino Moron does become the next POTUS, we’ll be living in his slimy shadow and it will very much become our affair. So, in the interests of public safety, a little education on the Witless Woolly Womaniser Who Wants to go to Washington.

 

The bio statement on his website is hysterical. Well it would be if it weren’t presented without the slightest speck of irony.

Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, continually setting the standards of excellence while expanding his interests in real estate, sports and entertainment.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m selecting someone to represent my political interests, I’m rarely concerned with what that individual might know about football, about renovating or about singing. If I were, I’d have voted for Victoria Beckham and we’d all be legally consigned to pout. Being the idealistic fool I am, I ask questions like what did that person learn at school? What is their track record on human rights? What sort of an image is reflected in their public persona? Have they ever suggested they might bang their own daughter^? Have they ever belittled the disabled? Has this individual who I may elect to represent me ever erected a giant gold building in homage to his genitalia?

Initially I was surprised that anyone might take Trump seriously; surely the vacuous vitriol could not be confused with federal policy? This was a guy whose greatest claim to fame was marrying exceptionally young women; surely 52% of the American population would actively vote against him? Trump was a reality TV figure, voting him as the Republican Presidential candidate is just as stupid and unrealistic as Kanye for President #surelytheycantbeserious #eyerollingemoji Surely the great people of earth’s greatest nation could not vote for a man who believes an elected politician needs only a catchphrase and a theme tune to represent the best interests of a class of people he has never, and will never, physically interact with. 

Thanks be to the Almighty Lord who rules over the Holy Land of the United States that we have some hope of being dickhead free here in the UK. #ornot

 

Boris Johnson, now that he has finished excavating every flat surface in London and transforming it into a cycle lane, now that his glory days of London Olympics are but a distant memory, now that his term as Mayor of London has come to its enforced conclusion, well now Boris needs something new to occupy his days. Armed with his Etonian Elitism, it stands to reason that he jump on the Brexit Bandwagon and stir up the xenophobes, the racists, the frightened and the fascists and encourage Her Majesty’s subjects that Europe are the baddies threatening our Afternoon Tea, our football and our financial fortitude. Because never before have British Banks filled with British Bankers, (many of them Boris’ mates from Eton) dragged British people down to the pits of British bankruptcy. That never happened, that must have been Europe. 

Without sounding like a Naïve Disney Princess Dreamer §, why can’t politicians focus on ways of bringing people together rather than ways of rending people asunder?

If the actual baddies are so fixated on dividing people into those who will and those who will not, the most effective revenge for their particular brand of politicking must be inclusion. We, and our elected leaders, must ridicule their stupid singularity rather than copy it, paint it white (not literally you Muppet) and catapult it back at them.

Bear, in one of his rare sage moments, told me that wanting to be a politician should be the first trait that excludes you from ever being one. I wonder whether wanting to be a public representative is ever altruistic, do people want to help their fellow man? Do they want the money? Do they want the hashtag? Is it purely ego?

How will this year end? Will President Trump and Prime Minister Cameron bond over their newfound glory as diabolical dickheads? Or will common sense prevail? Will the voters realise that the only race worth thinking about is the one where we strive to grow our intelligence rather than our breast size. We must win the race to search for a cure for cancer rather than a race to attract a million Twitter followers. Let’s focus on how hot the earth’s atmosphere and not how hot Ryan Gosling is.

Or are we all just destined to be dickheads?

 

^Just in case you don’t believe me

§I know that is exactly what I sound like

 

 

#destinyschild

 

Not Marvel. Not DC. Real SuperHeroes.

 

 

There is a brilliant programme we get to watch in the UK, 24 Hours in A&E.

Actually, thanks to the queer folk in the Channel 4 documentary team, we get to watch some really weird shit, some curiously odd shit, and then some really gross shit. If Body Shockers leads in the first category, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings owns the second, and 24 Hours in A&E rocks the last. One Born Every Minute and The Supervet are equally gross, equally bloody and gory and pus-y and equally “this programme contains graphic surgery”, but babies and puppies are cute and make even the grossest things Hallmark-y. 24 Hours in A&E is barely alive blood-drenched bodies trying to survive. I cry. I wince. I turn away. Nevertheless, the nerve, the calm and the dextrous skill of the people who string together three threads of human tissue to keep us alive astound me. #doctorsandnurses

 

During a recent episode, taking a short break from dry retching, I was struck by the comments of a young-ish Indian Medic; “I knew it was my calling, I always wanted to be a doctor”. He went on to explain that his parents had sacrificed all but their organs to educate their eldest son, that he had studied for as long as he could remember, and that their parental cup spilleth over the day their Hippocratic son announced that he’d been accepted to a position at a hospital in London. He specialises in plastics, the kind that helps burn victims live rather than the kind that petrifies the expressionless brows of the KardashJennWests. His variety of plastic puts skin back onto people who have lost theirs in fires, acid attacks or 50 car pile-ups. He doesn’t just save lives; he makes a tangible improvement, bettering the odds for those who have little left to live for.  

It got me thinking about having a calling.

  

The nuns of Nonnatus House on Call The Midwife oft reference their calling. On a random day they randomly woke up and knew that they would marry an ethereal being, eat cold porridge and pray on their knees for time eternal. I know teachers who always knew that they would be teachers; that shaping the fragile, nubile minds of the future was the greatest duty to which one could be soi-disant called. Madonna claims she always knew she would be a star, Beyonce and Gaga too; I guess their unbridled ambition and single-minded purpose propelled them ever towards their goal despite the bad hairdos, questionable lovers and rancid meat-dresses. I doubt anyone, ever, ever, not in this century or the precedent, woke up and just knew they’d be a Human Resources Professional.  

I grew up wanting to be an actress.

 

Poor MakeUp Choices wouldn't end here

The most mundane of life’s acts was an opportunity for Baby Bridget to shine. A mini mop of ringlets, reminiscent of Shirley Temple, further encouraged me. I mean, I actually looked like a Child Star. Family get-togethers, friends’ parties, the café I ran for a time, school classrooms, anytime there was a captive (read, imprisoned) audience, I’d take the opportunity to crack out a song and a dance, some jazz hands and a ballsy ballet. 5,6,7,8 and I was off like Minelli on her heady cocktail of Valium and vodka. The fact that most people thought I was a precocious, loud, stagey little-so-and-so never stopped me from cracking out a perfect rendition of I’m a Little Teapot, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Hanky Panky+ or the entire routine (minus white slashed robe) of Can’t Get You Outta My Head.

It was at it’s worst when I worked at Planet Hollywood. Here was a place, an entire halogen-lit temple dedicated to showing off, singing, dancing, snorting and cavorting. I was a waitress in a venue owned by egomaniacal, self-obsessed megalomaniacs; I was home. For an entire year I spontaneously broke out the dance to Will Smith’s Men in Black. #thetipsmadeitworthwhile At Planet, I worked with Timothy Spall’s daughter, The current Fashion Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, a very famous Dolly Parton impersonator and The Serial killer in Wollongong. I once served drinks to the Spice Girls and that is about as close as I ever got to actual stardom.

 

My calling, and my fragile self-esteem could never be fast friends. At 21, I was still recovering from being cast as First Murderer, not Lady Macbeth, in our final year high school play. #outdamnspot It wasn’t likely I’d ever survive making a living where rejection is par for the course, where being scrutinised for every bump and groove on your body is a daily occurrence or where discrimination based on your looks is not only encouraged, its requisite. I’d have died in a ditch in a heroin haze like so many have before and so many more will. #heathledger #riverphoenix #corymonteith

Instead, I discovered a different way to leverage* my talent for putting on a show, my love of laughter and my passion for punch lines. I discovered Learning and Development!

If you want someone to remember something, put it to music, tell a story, make it dramatic and do whatever you must to make it impactful. I crafted raps that listed the ingredients of cocktails, I dressed as an Ethiopian woman (blackface and all^) to demonstrate the indigenous methods of roasting coffee; I’ve made a prodigious fool of myself more times than I care to remember.

My calling is being a doofus, a dickhead, a goon and a fool. If only there had been a fool in Macbeth, I might have found my name up in lights and still be treading the boards today.

  

This century, life (or rather Death) happened and I found myself in Europe. I was alone, I was far, far away and I needed to keep the world Down Under abreast of my whereabouts. I wrote a diary. I shared my adventures so Motherbear wouldn’t worry, always crafting my words to make the tale read as far more daring and dramatic than it ever was, partly so she’d read it, partly so she would never know how sad I often was. One day the diary became a blog. One day the failed-actress-HR-professional became a better-than-average-part-time-writer.

 

I never woke up one day and just knew.

But I’ll keep having a go until I do.

 

 

 

+A rewritten version, sung live on radio, won me a Wheels and Dollbaby Leather Jacket that I still own…

*Anyone who works with me today will know to what point I despise this word, used here only for dramatic affect (of course)

^It was 2003, it was Australia, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times #seewhatIdidthere

 

 

#luckbesoshady

 

Fabulous. Fake. False.

 

I’m quite a lucky lady.

I’m lucky because I have all my skin and all my bones and all my organs in their rightful places. I’m lucky because I have the love of a Few Good Men, a Gorgeous Girl Squad and a Glitter of Gays; all fabulous people that I am lucky to know and with whom I share a bottle Pinot Grigio… or seven. I’m lucky because I live in London, I have a little home, I have good food, I have fresh air and I have Bear. I’m lucky because I work very hard and sometimes am rewarded with little jaunts here and there to learn a little bit more about this comical world in which we play our part. I’m lucky because usually, the places I am fortunate enough to visit are places of architectural artistry, places of cultural curiosity or places of sociological surprise. But luck is always spun on the edge of a coin, so sometimes they are not. #youwinsomeyoulosesome

Las Vegas is a spot in the centre of Nevada that was built from the ground up for one sole purpose, testing the nethermost limits of human excess. I had never been to Las Vegas, nor was I especially desperate to tick Clark County off my Bucket List. I’m more of a museum and Malbec kind of traveller. I’d rather meander in the Met than eyeball an eyesore. I despise all beverages that are blue or hidden under paper umbrellas and I don’t like hotdogs. Armed only with the memory of The Hangover, I had relatively low expectations. Even my blinding talent for childlike optimism was challenged by the glut of gaudy that is on show, 6 nights a week and twice on Saturday in Viva Las Vegas.

End Hunger Now with Auto Title and Payday Loans #theirony

  

Arriving at our hotel, we sped up a four lane driveway into a glass and steel mega-structure built with a fraction of the money that Ma & Pa Kettle have pumped into the One Armed Bandits since the 50’s. The sheer scale of the thing, 4000 rooms, 370,000 square metres and 8.6B dollars to build it, is only the initial horror. Entering into the bubonic bubble, one is overwhelmed by a heady mixture of cigarette smoke and lemon-fresh toilet freshener. Yes, in Las Vegas, you can smoke indoors. #wellsortof

Smoking is permitted indoors, on the gambling floors but you can’t smoke outdoors at a table in a restaurant. But, if said restaurant has machines indoors, you may go indoors to have your cigarette, even if you were previously sitting outdoors. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Las Vegas, where you have to go inside to smoke a cigarette. #murica

Children are also permitted to wander through the gaming floor, when accompanied by a parent, regardless of whether that parent is smoking or not. The kids, the middle-aged and the scooter-bound elderly are forced to walk through the gambling floor that is always strategically placed between reception and the lifts, or betwixt the front door and everything else. Like Daleks, the maniacal machines are ominously omnipresent. They block your path wherever you attempt to go and there are no straight paths from A to B so you can’t avoid them. You are forced, whatever you want to do, to walk through the smoky, flashy, noisy hot mess of the casino, and all the Hot Messes within. So what about the Toilet Freshener?

Naturally, the whole place reeks of cigarettes and stale beer, so they pump it full of synthetic scent to cover the fact that you are basically living in a pub. #notinagoodway

Donny & Marie. Mormons in a Casino. #theirony

 

The fact that on one day, I woke, went about my busy day, went to bed, and then woke the following day before realising I hadn’t actually been outdoors in over 24 hours is an indicator of how vast the places are, how every single need can be met within its walls, how the whole place is devised and constructed specifically to keep you as close to those villainous machines as humanly possible. You couldn’t even walk from your room to breakfast without traversing the smoky, dim lit, klaxoning, blinking gambling floor.

The lack of air messes with your skin as well as your brain; but the atmosphere is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The all-pervasive pollution comes in multiple, seditious non-olfactory forms.

If the air is polluted with smoke and scent and the fuel dust of a thousand Humvee Limousines, then the space reflected into your eyes is polluted with the constant flickering of tiny lights. It is always either too dark or too bright. There is no natural sunshine reflected indoors, there is only false sunrises and fabricated sunsets. Nowhere was this more irritating than within Caesar’s Palace.

 

Eat a 4000 calorie salad in your activewear #theirony

 

After your brain wrangles the fact that you are in a fake Ancient Rome, you push past giant columns and statues and a fucking chariot and you get to the Forum. Yes, they rebuilt the Forum, presumably just because they could, not because anyone here has any fucking interest in democracy or justice. So there you are, in the middle of a desert, in the False Forum, which now houses a Gap and an H&M and you bend your neck and the sky above you is azure blue. It is dotted with little clouds and emits a sort of half-light, and the whole thing is man-made. You never know if it is daytime or nighttime or if you’ve in fact slipped into a Tardis and are now in Ancient Fucking Rome. Even so, no one minds, because around the corner there are fifty trillion Poker Machines and the buck stops there.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your hard earned cash..

 

But wait, there’s more.

Not only can you visit a fake ancient Rome, you can also learn about it, the culture and history of the gods and their adventures. You can sit under the pretend sky, in the pretend ancient temple, with the pretend columns rising behind you and watch a pretend show featuring animatronic puppets that will jerkily narrate the story of Atlantis. Yes you can, because when you’ve given up all of your money to the gambling Gods, maybe the fake, marionette-told story of a different God will change your luck. #probablyfuckingnot

Palms. Paris. Planet Hollywood. #theirony

  

If you have mistakenly come here for a cultural non-animatronic revelation, fear not, you will be able to enjoy one of EIGHT DIFFERENT Cirque de Soleil shows permanently housed in the hotels of Sin City. Presumably the best way to take an extra dollar from your poor unfortunate gambling guest is to coerce them into watching an acrobatic air show. There is even an adult rated naked version, Zumanity. I expect that as the performers bend their lithe bodies in half you may actually see from whence the eponymous soleil shines. #circusstarfish If naked acrobatics weren’t on your cultural agenda, how about a quick trip around the world?

You could visit Paris, replete with a dwarf Eiffel Tower, a half a Palais du Louvre and a mini Opera Garnier. You could cross the Not Really Brooklyn Bridge, wander through the streets of The Not Really Village and stay in a replica Chrysler Building. You could take in the sites of Venice on a gondola tour of the Grand Canal Shoppes. They are kind of like the original Italian waterway, but with views over Dolce and Gabbana rather than Murano or Burano. In a few years there will even be a little London and an economically essential baby Beijing. All of this created by man to ensure that the 50% of Americans without passports need never actually visit the actual places, especially as gambling is annoyingly regulated in such exotic locales. And even in France, where smoking is still very much au fait, you still cannot smoke indoors. #sacrebleu

And then it was gone..

  

The Vegas I wanted to see, the Vegas of Sammy and Dean and Frank, the Vegas of yesteryear, it does still exist. It is far away from Circus Circus and Flamingo and the Mirage. The Golden Nugget and her ilk sit anachronistically 20 minutes (and 20 years) down the strip in the Old Town. The Rat Pack is gone, only sewer Rats and fanny Packs remain. What was once a town of singing sensations now houses the geriatric gyrations of Britney and Celine and Elton.

Las Vegas, only those very down on their luck need apply.

Kung Hei Fat Choi ... A whole new year and a whole new economy to drain

 

#hotornot

 

Something pretty horrible happened over the past month. Two men, men that I had adored since I was a giggling schoolgirl, men who shaped my blossoming adolescent sexuality, men that had very, very sexy voices, men that had very, very dodgy teeth, English men, two brilliantly sexy men, died.

 

David Bowie, matinee idol he was not; he had two different coloured eyes, he had a squinty glare, he was tall, he was reed thin, not especially well toned, he was pale and pasty, and dear god, when he smiled. When he smiled he revealed two rows of gnashers that could make a hippo envious. David Bowie was not pretty, he was not especially handsome, he was certainly not the epitome of masculine beauty; David Bowie was hot. 

The Thin White Duke flashed across my early morning TV screen bopping around like a bit of a loony, he wore very odd outfits and sang songs about things I didn’t really understand. Motherbear was a bit of a fan. She would play his songs very, very loudly while she cleaned the house on the weekends, usually when Dad was out. She’d remind us that ‘he wasn’t acting’ in the video for China Girl. She watched his movies, even the really weird ones, and had us watch them too. I still don’t really know what Absolute Beginners was about, but the image of his head poking up from the hot sand in Merry Christmas My Lawrence has been etched on my memory ever since I saw it, a film so dreadfully potent, I’ve only watched it the once.*

In 1986 I was ten. In 1986, we went on a family holiday to a Caravan Park north of Sydney. In 1986, Motherbear strapped her brood in the car and sat them down in front of a silver screen. In 1986, I saw Labyrinth for the first time. In 1986, I started to understand what romantic love was, what made men love girls and girls love men. David Bowie was wearing a leather coat and snakeskin leggings and a spiky wig and I was hooked. David Bowie was hot.

 

Last month we also said our long goodbye to Alan Rickman. He was the serpentine Severus Snape, he was the shambolic Sheriff of Nottingham, he was a lofty Louis XIV, he was that horny husband Harry in Love Actually, he was the caring, considerate, compassionate Colonel Brandon; he was a thousand faces, but to me, most memorably, always, he was a voice. #seewhatididthere 

Alan Rickman had a very distinct voice; a voice so unique that his peers and fellow thespians made sport of mimicking him. He made sport of it too. Everyone wanted to have that voice. He wasn’t a box-office smashing Pitt-ly leading man; he rarely played a dashing, romantic character. Often remembered as Hans Gruber, and subsequently typecast by the Americans, he was the villain, the bad guy, and the malevolent adulterous husband. #bothsidesnow

Let me tell you loudly, on behalf of my fellow ovary pouches, just in case you testosterone tasers weren’t yet aware, Alan Rickman had a very hot voice. His voice was like the sensation of liquid chocolate sauce being poured over warm popcorn. His voice was syrup, sweet, bass and salty, and that hedonistic hum made him hot. His voice, even when he was invoking evil and adultery, was seduction with sense. He was clever, he was political, he could act and quote Shakespeare, and Alan Rickman was hot.

  

David Bowie and Alan Rickman; two hot men, both of whom were 69, both of whom succumbed to cancer, both of whom fuelled many a teenage/adult woman damp pants fantasy. And when I shared this fact with some of my immediate entourage, I was subject to quizzical glances, questioning stares and puzzled censure. Neither of these genii were heartthrobs, neither made the Hemsworth-Depp-Pitt cover of People’s Sexiest Men, neither were pinups, but they were hot. The ladies (and the gays) didn’t agree. 

The discussion with the girls moved from criticism to conjecture as we each shared our weird, #hotornot crushes. Right Wing Politicians, Pervy Professors, Sexually Ambivalent Colleagues, people who were too old, people who were far too young and everything in between. A fully-grown man dressed in lycra as a Goblin King seems quite tame compared to someone who fancies a Wookie. #letthewookiewin

Zac Efron, Adonis of the perfect abdomen, is currently wallpapered across every second London Bus promoting Dirty Grandpa. I asked a colleague if she had seen said poster of almost naked Efron-pollo and her response surprised me. “I’m not that into him, he is just too perfect”.

  

So here it is. Everyone and anyone are into the pretty ones, the tall ones, the short ones, the old ones and the young ones. There is no perfect. There is no ideal. This is scientifically proven; we go for the ones we have the greatest propensity to mate with, always searching for the perfect genetic cocktail to win the race. Perhaps, like me, you prefer the ones with English teeth, lascivious voices and a penchant for close-fitting ballet tights.

 

 

 

 

*This may in fact be symptomatic of the subject matter, World War II. Schindler’s List, Paradise Road and Private Ryan, too traumatic for me, only watched them once.

#bridgetandbess

 

 

My maternal grandfather, a very serious man whose mind left our earthly plane long before his physical form ever did, named her Snickles. Its a name that evokes her very specific brand of laughter; a smile that crinkles her eyes and nose, a giggle that leaves her mouth in staccato, a happiness that you definitely observed, but could only ever hear in short, sparkling bursts. #champagnegiggles

Her daughter Squeal, the micro-doppelganger, calls her Mama. Have you ever met a 3 year old that can describe colours as either dark or light? A toddler that knows the difference between lilac and purple? An infant that articulates texture and form and shade with the same facility as she identifies the different personages in the latest series of My Little Pony? She can also point out agapanthus, frangipani and kangaroo paw; she’ll also remind you which is your favourite. A little rainbow unicorn fairy that sees the world through her mothers’ kaleidoscope eyes. #lucyintheskywithdiamonds

Our mother calls her Lizard. They spend hours in each other’s company, living as they do, a handful of metres from each other. She is anything but cold-blooded, though much like her reptilian namesake, she is a woman of few and selected sounds, preferring as she does, to express herself in pictures and images and abstracts and colours. One might argue that her taciturn nature results from being born cadet into our cacaphonic house; her elder sibling had exhausted all the available words (and decibels) before Lizard ever had a chance to learn them.

I call her Lou, a shortened version of her childhood moniker, LuLuBear, but only on those all too rare occasions that I am actually, physically with her. Here in print, many years ago, I ordained her the Art-sist-ologer. She’s an Artist, of the very talented, schooled and prizewinning kind. She’s an Astrologer; Squeal’s chart was written mere hours after she exited the womb. But before all that, she was, is, and always will be, my sister.  

 

Bess and I have had more adventures (and wine) together than your typical university sorority. Starting in the early nineties with our exchange years abroad in France and Sweden, for decades now we’ve been two, somewhat large heads of bumbling, bouncing, brown curls rambling their unique route across Europe. We’ve partied in Paris, we’ve snow-walked in Sweden, we’ve eaten in England and dined in Denmark, and on one truly awful day, we brawled in Berlin. #itwasmyfault

 

The good times have certainly trumped the bad. We’ve spent eons on trains together, slept in the tiniest cabin for 11 hours from Paris to Hamburg, laughing hysterically for much of the way. Pre-Smartphone, she drew out, on a piece of paper, the route from our tiny garrotte in Paris’s St Germain to Les Puces (the flea markets); a walk that would take us over two hours, one of dozens she traced so we would discover our new home on foot. #shehatedthemetro 

I’ve seen more lauded paintings than you have; we’ve wandered the corridors of galleries in Berlin, in Stockholm, in London, in Bilbao and bien sûr all the French ones. Not only did I see them, I can also interpret them. I had my very own real life personal audio (and visual) guide. She explained Raphael’s obsession with light and the significance of Manet’s naked (not nude) picnic. Her lessons were heard and understood, lessons I’ve since remembered when I visited other galleries alone. I know that it is nigh on impossible to make money from just knowing about paintings, but she has enriched my life, and many others’. No one can place a value on that. #ormaybetheycan?

 

Years before we embarked on our global adventures, Bess and I shared a little flat in Glebe. I say we shared it but actually we rented it from a large colony of ever-present huntsman spiders. We would take it in turns to kill them. We took it in turns to wake each other up to go for breakfast in the café downstairs. We took it in turns to fetch the wet washing from the Laundromat. We took it in turns to prepare our favourite meal; a variety of cheeses and antipasti spread on a board with a bottle of wine. #lesscookingmoredrinking

It was when we lived in Glebe that one of my favourite treasures was taken from me.

When we were still adolescents, Bess sketched a coffee and a cigarette onto a bus ticket and titled it ‘the best things in life’.  It was a tiny masterpiece I kept in my wallet for over ten years. That picture was stolen, along with my wallet, when I was pick-pocketed one night in a pub. I cared less about losing the cards or the money than I cared about losing that little picture. It was so well imprinted on my memory; I could most likely draw it for you now. #myprecious

  

Today she is a budding textile designer. The next Cath Kidston? Marimekko? Orla Kiely? House of Hackney? Who knows? If talent and determination can make a million, I look forward to a very comfortable retirement. If lifestyle acrobatics juggling a tiny person, a neurotic cattledog, a job and a passion could be remunerated at an hourly rate, she would die richer than us all. Unfortunately for those creative types, reluctantly joining us in the rat race around our world of salaries and timecards and meetings and video conferencing, self-expression and paying for handmade work is out of fashion and out of favour. If it isn’t made in Bangladesh, it is an extravagance not an investment. 

But enough already, she is my bloody sister, not a bloomin’ saint.

 

After reading this, you’ll suspect I’m exaggerating, that no two sisters can genuinely have that much fun together, or be so close. Sure, we’re sisters; we fight, we disagree, we argue and we drive each other batshit crazy. I make her out to be some kind of superhuman Amazonian Goddess; she is beautiful, she is radiant, but she has one tiny flaw (actually two). Bess has miniature gecko hands that can stick to a ceiling. She has two mini-mitts framed by two beautiful brachydachtyly thumbs. They are bespoke knobbly nodules that in their minuscule perfection echo her brachyskelic physiognomy.

 

Very good things do indeed come in small packages.

 

The Artist wears her own creation.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Lou.

 

 

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#materialgirl

Non, je ne regrette rien - Edith Piaf 1956

#stilllife

#MMXV

For regular readers of my adventures in Playland, you will know that I write an annual wrap up a little earlier than most people. I can’t wait until the veritable end of the year; I’ll be far to busy drinking lukewarm White Wine in the blistering sun over Sydney. So I need to get in early, before people start nicking off to the countryside with their families, before people turn away from social media in favour of their social real lives, before you all get so hyped up on the Sherlock or Downton Christmas specials that little else in life matters.

This annual wrap up usually coincides with the world’s most ridiculous holiday that went viral beyond America and no one knows why, Thanksgiving. So this is my wrap up for 2015, as well as my thank you to all the beautiful ones that made my canvas so colourful.

 

1.21 Gigawatts

 

MMXV kicked off with the hugest of highs, I wasn’t sure how I would ever recover. Me myself and I started the year in my new spiritual home, #bridgetinbeverlyhills. I had managed to exist for 39 years without ever having been to Los Angeles. Considering my obsession with all that is Hollywood, and a life long love with Pretty Woman, it was only fitting that I spend at least half my week in Beverly Hills, staying at the hotel in which Whitney died, and closing out the best week in recent memory with a day at Universal Studios.

I’m still not the biggest fan of America, I think they are all a bit too cheerful, a bit too oblivious, a bit too God-Fearing and not enough actual-real-life fearing; their blind faith in God and Country unsettles my natural sense of unhealthy scepticism. But after a week in Hollywood, one can understand why they do so well; the wholesale manufacture of Fairytales in this sort-of-a-bit-shitty world in which we live is comforting. Comforting like a warm hug from an elderly aunt, comforting like a tepid snifter of Brandy, comforting like an inky blindfold shielding your eyes from the harsh light of reality. No wonder I loved it so much. #bridgetlovesaprincess #bridgetlivesindenial

All geed up on bullshit and fantasy, I returned to London and decided I wanted to be a Ballroom Dancer. Classes were paid for, poor self esteem was overcome and I spent my Tuesday evenings with the former Serbian Idol, Nico. I was actually quite good at it, but the ritual humiliation of being one of the ‘singles’ in the class was more than my fragile confidence could bear.

 

Hever Castle - Anne B's old house

 

The winter thawed (not really, but the calendar said it should have) with the arrival of Mater, Mamacita, The Old Girl, Müttiroo, she of the Katherine Hepburn Up-High-Hairdo, Motherbear. It had been a whole 5 years since she had visited me in Europe and I was so excited to share my 50m2 with her, I immediately left for Brazil. #badtimingisabitch #bridgethasabloodyjobyouknow

Three months with Motherbear was a pleasure in so many ways, but not all the ones you might expect. Sure, having a ready ear to listen when I returned, exhausted and over it from work is a unique joy for someone who has lived alone for as long as I have. Having someone to hang out with on the weekend was also a rare novelty. But it made me especially happy to have the Motherbear hang out in London for Mummy-Daughter Manicures; a habit she has maintained since returning to the Great Southern Land. It was fascinating to hear her recount the miniscule differences between Border Control regulations in NZ, Canada, the UK and of course Australia; The Old Girl loves a bit of cable TV. It was refreshing to not have to wash a shirt, a plate, a glass, a knickers, a bra or on one memorable day, the balcony tiles, for an entire 3 months; she also doesn’t mind coaching the housekeeper on how to improve her life while observing as she bleaches the bath. #alwayslookingafterthelittlepeople

Having mum to play with on the weekends saw us off for weekends to Brighton, Bern and Boleyn’s house in Kent. It was all very relaxing, very civilised, very Pinot Grigio and poached eggs on toast…and then March saw the invasion of the Barbarian Hordes. #bridgetandbess #bridgetandsqueal Did you know that two very independent middle aged women, a mildly batty senior citizen and a stubborn toddler could share two rooms, one bed, one toilet, one couch and one shower? Well now you do.

A particular highlight for me…

The Little Squeal, who was sleeping on her Pink Princess Bed at the foot of mine, stood up one night in terror, asking her mother “what was that rattling noise?” Her mother, The Art-sist-ologer, was wearing earplugs to defend against said noise and didn’t answer her curious mite. I did wake up, and explained to the innocent little’un, that yes, ladies, even ones who have nail polish, can snore too. #bridgetbreathes

Other adventures included the consecutive wanderings west, to Paris and Salies and the following weekend to Stockholm. In both cases, Squeal was subjected to people who didn’t use ‘her words’, Motherbear was subjected to the culinary roulette that is Europe and I was subjected to far too many hours in an airport without enough loyalty status points to bring them to the lounge. We all had a fabulous time, then Big Al and AG showed up and seeing 6 people sitting in my living room having dinner really did make me feel like home had travelled 17,000KM; seeing all my people, all together, doing our things, on the other side of the world felt very odd. #therewasnobbq

 

#bridgetbeatspeopleup

 

Everyone left, I was alone again, and wondering why I was subjecting myself to the humiliation of dance lessons with a man (not Nico, a new teacher) I wanted to spontaneously combust every time he spoke. One night, I made a decision. I knew I needed a change. The rest of that Herculean trial is documented here so I won’t repeat it, only digitise it: 7 months, 3 dress sizes, one busted knee, one dodgy hip, one skinned patella induced trip to Guys hospital, 7 bleeding knuckles, 40kg bench, 20 push-ups and 90kg dead lift. You should also acknowledge that 7 months ago, I wouldn’t have known what any of that meant. I’ve lost a pound of flesh and gained a vernacular.

 

I’ve also gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of Theatre; standing ovation to The Critique. She whisks me off to see this and that; I rarely ask questions, I just show up. Planning in advance for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-girl like me is limited to what I do for a living. On the weekend, just give me a time and a dress code and I’m there, there with bells on and a Pinot in its theatre-rules-enforced plastic cup. #bridgetbytheboards

A couple of highlights from the limelights this year; James McAvoy in the Ruling Class, Bradley Cooper in The Elephant Man, BC in Hamlet twice, Romola Garai in Measure for Measure, Damon Albarn’s wonder.land and my favourite, I can sing the whole thing now, Minchin’s Matilda...twice. Living in London, going to the theatre doesn’t feel so much like a luxury as an obligation; we’re English, we have to uphold our birthright for sitting in overheated spaces, panting in frustration and ignoring the fleshed pressed against us. The Theatre; the Thinking Woman’s Tube. #theystillhaventfiguredouttheaircon  

While my life may have seen a few ‘Famous’s” in MMXV, it is the people I see everyday that fill my days with sequins and starshine, unicorns and rainbows, love and laughter. #yesitsthatgood #notherearenodrugs

 

Because I spend the most time with them, I’ll begin with the team of very patient individuals that have that unique privilege of my human form as the Amazonian Tyrant guiding their careers. The Duchess, Semi and  #ashtag have been my constant companions through thick and thin. The Body, the BFF with whom I now share a desk, and Miss Jones are the formidable duo who walk that fine line between laughing at my increasingly unhinged antics and wishing I worked in a different postcode. A special mention for The Kaiser of Kool, a man so beautiful, so perfect, I’m not sure why he dares to look upon something like me, something with skin marked by sun and a soul besmirched by sadness. #willheturntostone

We’ll continue with the beautiful ones, Louis XIV, Braveheart, Sunshine and Dazzle. Beautiful men, beautiful souls, the shiny cheerleaders that dance me out of my depressions, forever proffering a Flute to flutter away the nagging obsession, the flagging motivation and the gagging inebriation. They are fabulous, they are friends, they are a female fantasy.

There are also the girls; the ones who know how to use Tinder instead of Grindr. New Girl and The Tequila Sister, my adopted London Ladies. Always available for ‘a drink’ after work, a drink that is invariably seven. #thatswhytheyputitinbottles

There are those earthy French ones I visit all the time; a small family that will imminently add two more. My Famille Far Far Away, so close in nature to my actual family that we even achieved the over-the-dinner-table-fat-insult during a memorable lunchtime in Provence. Fortunately they ply me with pate and Pinot, so all is very quickly forgiven.

I cannot close without a penultimate word of gratitude for Bear, that strong and sensitive man who is my constant headache. He is the Fighting Apollo to my Warrior Artemis, Stable Mark to my Wobbly Bridget, Wicked Dr Frankenstein who has handcrafted his very own wailing monster.  

And Finally, the biggest thank you of MMXV is proffered south to the First Family of Fruitcakedom.

UPAD, Big Al, AG, Giggle and the rest. They visit, they cheer and remind me of my very deep roots, roots buried far below the red clay and sandstone of Sydney. The Art-Sist-ologer, she of the golden-thumbs and Little Squeal; waking me up every Saturday at sparrow’s fart to show me the latest Frozen toy. #hangoversandprincesses The SmartArse, His MotherChef, Sapphire and Smack; always keeping me true, never letting me forget my own story, reminding me of what it is to be one of us. #sarcastic Motherbear LX, carrying the burden of two parents, living her own melodramas, but always listening to mine, loving and supporting her growing brood, inspiring us all. 

Thank you to all of you who read this. I do it for fun; your comments and criticisms are making me a stronger, sassier, swearier writer. I long for the day when I might just have the courage to do it full time.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.  #bridgetbuggersoff #bridgetbythebeach #bridgetbytheharbourbridge #mumlooknoswearing

 

See you soon Sydney.

#imagine

 

A light in the City of Light!

 

“…nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too…”

 

I’ve prevaricated, hesitated and procrastinated. I wasn’t sure whether to write anything. I don’t want to enrage my friends, alienate my colleagues or estrange myself from a few of my closest relatives. But I’m saddened, I’m maddened and the only way I know to process my thoughts is to write it down, swear it out and just maybe share something constructive around an act so destructive.

 

I went to a fee-paying Anglican high school. For 7 years, I was subjected to songs about a God I’d never seen, stories about a prophet I couldn’t be certain ever existed and writing papers about a science that could not be proven.  We spent hours in chemistry validating the existence of science-y stuff with equations and experiments that required exacting measurement, painstaking processes and a dangerous amount of fire (especially considering the largely teenage boy audience and a school located in the bush). Most of our week was about truth, proof and certainty. Then for one hour, an hour that counted towards our grades, we’d sit in a room and share fairytales. #seasdontpart #waterdoesntbecomewine

My Anglican education was broken at 16 with a year in a state-funded high school in France. Science and history and language were still very much the order of the day, but one of the first questions my friends would ask was ‘are you right or left’. Kids were into politics, real life, Mitterand and Mururoa, not fairytales about Mary or Magdelene. In our history class we wrote papers about what we thought and then spent hours debating actual philosophy. ‘What do you think about’ was a question I couldn’t remember being asked during my years of incandescent indoctrination.

My year in France taught me to think, taught me to question, taught me to be me. Napoleon, that short second son of Corsica, had such distrust of religious institutions he separated the church from the state a century before I ever stepped out of the plane. You can’t be legally married in a church in France; the state is the highest authority in the land, not the temple. Which is why it is so frustrating that this insanity is playing out in Paris, a city of the freest peoples, a city that has been the playground of warmongers for centuries, but a city that allows its citizens to pray to whatever god they choose, to read whatever fairytales they wish, a city of religious freedom. (Except for Scientology because the French rightly classify that as a corporation, not a religion)

 

Perfection.

 

I don’t regret that I went to the school I went to, I’m very lucky that I had the good fortune to receive any education at all. If I were born somewhere else in the world, I’d perhaps have been forbidden a day in a school because a dusty book written by someone who has been dead for millennia said girls should stay dumb as a post and open their legs and cook and clean and worship a man. Malala took a few bullets in her brain to prove that girls can do whatever they want, and her parents, her friends and her family all read that same book. But they, like me, benefit from a bit of perspective a bit of context, a bit of common sense. #itwaswritten2000yearsago

I very much live with a keen sense of spirituality, a sense of energy and aura and balance and being. What I don’t have is the ability to read a book written in a language I don’t speak, that NO ONE speaks anymore, and believe word for word that I must behave the way the book says I should. I believe that if I am a good human, other people around me will be good humans too…regardless of their colour or creed. #dountoothers

I don’t get why you want me to pray for Paris; isn’t that what got us all in this trouble in the first place? One guy, with an army and a flag, said that his book was more valid than the other guy’s. That guy didn’t have a flag or an army a few years ago, but he sure does now, and he is so colossally blinkered that he’ll point his gun wherever he wants, wave his flag, and then die for his fairytale. He’s learned his opponent’s rules, he’s standing behind his book and country, with his own songs, his own code and his own twitter feed to mesmerise his comrades and he has no fear. He believes in fairytales too.

Well I propose that from this day, my fairytale be the one we all believe.

 

Once upon a time there was a land of people of all the types, kinds and colours; this land was call Sanity-Land. The people of Sanity-Land loved to read, they read all the time, but they were clever and kind and knew when a story was just a story and not the absolute truth, certainly not worth massacring your neighbours. The people of Sanity-Land didn’t mind if one person read stories about trees, and another person read stories about trucks and another person read stories about butterflies. Everyone read their stories in peace and then they hugged their children goodnight and slept soundly because they were good.

The people knew that the rules in the stories were not rules for everyday living in 2015. Obviously being a Jedi is a fairytale, obviously a land filled with mermaids under the sea is a fairytale, obviously travelling through time is a fairytale and Mr Darcy is too perfectly hot to have ever been a real person, so he must be a fairytale too. 

The Sanity-Landers cared about food, making enough food for everyone to eat. They cared about shelter, and building enough roofs for all the people of Sanity-Land. The people made music and movies and danced and apologised when they pushed in front of you at Waitrose. They didn’t think that pushing in front of you was cause for a violent knife injury; they didn’t film it and pray it went viral on YouTube. The people just recognised that we are all different and unique and if we just imagined that the borders and the books were just that, imaginary, the world would live as one. 

#bridgetandbear

 

Or, “Jiu Jitsu; a Most Unexpected Romance”.

 

Anyone who’s read anything I’ve ever written here or at parismarisamadonna will by now have gleaned a couple of core facts about me,#bridgetbythebridge. 

You’ll know that I work really, really hard, all of the time, earning all the money that keeps me (and a couple of others) fed, watered, clothed and regularly flying south to visit the little people. You will know that work, and being excellent at it, has been the unique focus of my life since forever, that my entire sense of self-worth hinges on how well I am doing in my job, how much my boss values me and whether or not I’m getting a promotion. You’ll know that my job is my life.

You will also know that I am more than just a little bit opinionated. I’ve got something to say about pretty much everything and I don’t mind how loudly or how aggressively I say it.  You’ll know that when I’m ‘off on one’ I use big words I look up on the online thesaurus almost as often as I swear like a sailor; I fuck and shit and piss and c*nt as easily as I pontificate, iterate and capitulate. I love to use all the words, I love to emote and express, I love that when I write, you can hear and see me stubbornly stomping, proudly punching the air or bellowing with belly laughs.

You’ll know that I’ve hated the way I look for as long as I’ve been conscious of my own appearance. You’ll know that I go red in the face when I do sport. You’ll know that I drink too much wine and sometimes forget how I got home. You’ll know about my anxiety and you’ll know about the dead father, the loving mother, the Smartarse brother, the artistic sister and the imaginary mister. You’ll know that I love my family more than makes sense for a woman of my age and that I love to travel, to discover the people of the world and eat all the food in the fanciest of restaurants.

You’ll know that I love bonnet dramas and Bronte and Austen; I love Downton and Dancing. I am the typical middle-aged workingwoman with no cats but all the gay friends, cheering me on, toasting and roasting and boasting. You’ll know that I am more than a little obsessed with Tom Hiddleston,#poshtotty and you’ll know that I am unfailingly optimistic, even a little naïve. But you’ll most especially know, you’ll be certain of it, you know that I am a hopeless romantic.

Which is why this story is so unexpected.

I thought I’d find my romance in the theatre, or in a dimly lit wine bar, or at work. I thought that like Lizzie or Bridget, my romance would be a battle of wits, eyes meeting over a robust bottle of Pinot, hands finding each other under the table, a romantic comedy starring Colin Firth, someone who liked me very much, just as I am. ^

 

 

Well someone did tell me they liked me very much, just as I am (specifically that I am at my best when I'm not fake or covered, just myself). Someone’s eyes did meet mine, but over the cold steel rods of a dumbbell. The battle of wits took place three times a week, very early in the morning, in a flood lit gym studio, with mirrors on the walls that I never look into. It is about as romantic as a visit to the gynaecologist. While many of you slept soundly in your beds, we were exchanging increasingly suggestive innuendo as I gritted my teeth in agony, sweating, panting, and complaining that I couldn’t do it. But I always did do it; he was always standing beside me, lifting me off the floor when I collapsed, reminding me of my own strength, a supportive hand on my shoulder, a high-five for each milestone I surpassed, or my favourite, a cheeky spank when I don't lift my hips high enough off the ground during push ups.

I have seduced a man who has never seen me with makeup on. I’ve seduced a man who has never seen me with non-swooshed daytime clothes on. I’ve seduced a man who has seen my face so red he wondered if my eyeballs would bleed. I’ve seduced a man who has seen me cry at my own weakness, who has seen me wretch in exhaustion, who has seen me quake and quiver, strain and stretch, sweat and stink, grunt and groan, wobble and wail.*

Who would ever have thought that I, the bolshie, intellectual, fancy, wine-bar type would find my romantic comedy in a fluorescent fucking gym. Who would ever have expected that a man who shouts at me, a man who forces me to do things I do not want to do, would be the object of my affection? Who would have predicted that the only man to whom I have ever listened, a man who gives me orders, who would have predicted that that man would be the one that makes my knees weak? Who would have believed that a man who observes me as I do actual physical exercise would ever find me attractive?

He lets me hit him with my bare fists. He lets me throw my entire weight against him and push him off balance. And a few weeks back he taught me Jiu Jitsu; the ancient Japanese art of grappling ones opponent, rolling around on the ground until one person pins the other one to the floor. I have bruises all over my arms, but most pleasingly, I have bruises on my lips. He lets me overpower him, he lets me throw him down and then one day, after I’d panted through an hour fighting him, he let me kiss him. #notsurethatispartofjiujitsu

He is the leading man of my very own romantic (martial arts themed) comedy. #bridgetandbear

 

[He read this before I published it, and has approved, although he wishes he wasn't named after Bear Grylls, which is ironic, because he is leading a mountain climbing expedition in Scotland as we speak. Today is his Birthday, and this was my gift to him.]

 

^That’s a quote from Bridget Jones for the uninitiated

*Seduced; a word I’ve used for poetic purpose rather than an exact description of any intentional intoxication

 

 

Also, but unrelated, please click here and LIKE the Art-sist-ologer, black one with white flowers, so she can win the universe of textile design and I can retire. 

 

 

#crazyauntM

 

They say that being a mother is the greatest reward for any and all of the women of earth. Whether she stands tall on an African plain, with a baby strapped around her swollen arms. Whether she is running through Central Park, pushing a tri-wheeled pram ahead of her and her LuLuLemon covered calves. Whether she is squinting into the sun from behind an inky black niqab, shrouded and hidden, with her brood of future rulers waddling about her feet. Whether she is cradling another sick child against an empty breast while the commuters run by, oblivious to her very own miracle of life. In any and all of these instances, women are bred to believe that their single purpose is to incubate the next generation of mewling minors, ready to consume, kill and copulate.

Well I say fuck that.

I say fuck that because I’m not a mum and I likely never will be. I say fuck that because I am more than a uterus on legs. I say fuck that because even the mums I know confide that every so often, they wonder why they can’t just walk out their front door, and never return. I say fuck that because ‘they’ are usually men, ‘they’ are usually men with ancient books that were written by other men, ‘they’ can fuck right the fuck back to where they fucking came from. I say fuck that because I am an Auntie, I’m pretty much the awesomest Auntie there ever was and all little girls need awesome aunties.

Smack, who loves having his photo taken

 

When I was a little girl, one of my favourite stories was Anne of Green Gables. I loved Anne, I wished I had a kindred spirit, I wanted to run over the hills of Prince Edward Island and I wanted to run into the strong open arms of Gilbert Blythe. Like Anne, I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to immortalise the people I knew and loved, just as she did, I wanted to visit Charlottetown and stay with Aunt Jo and be posh and civilised and dance around to opera in my pantaloons. Aunt Jo is critical to Anne’s success at school, at university and ultimately in her career. Without rich, lonely, childless Aunties, (even though she is actually Diana’s auntie), how can we expect our next generation of girls to thrive?

Without her kindly Aunt Em, who adopted her after her parents died, Dorothy would never have lived in Kansas. She would never have met the Wicked Witch with the sassy sandals. She would never made her way to Oz, with the trio of slightly paedophilic escorts. She would never have followed her Yellow Brick Road.

Without Aunt Beru, how would Luke have found himself on Tatooine? Would we have seen him staring off at the two suns, hoping for a better life? He wouldn’t have been ferreting around in the sand, running into another somewhat paedophilic Obi Wan who showed his Force and his shining sabre. 

Where would Scarlett and Melanie have found themselves without Aunt Pittypat and her sanctuary from impending civil war in Atlanta? I can assure you Miss Scarlett and Miss Melly would have died and Gone with the Wind would have gone in chapter 22 rather than chapter 63.

A day with Squeal at the zoo. She liked the guinea pigs best.

  

Being an Auntie is, aside from being quintessentially dazzling in all ways, an intrinsic component of who I am. Sapphire, Smack and Squeal; the three little people that call me Auntie (actually they don’t, they just call me by my first name), 2 little girls and a little boy that joined the evolving cast of characters in my life over the past 6 years. During that time, they’ve opened my mind to all the wonders of runny poo, projectile vomit and Disney Princesses. They’ve made me laugh (the first time Squeal said fuck), they’ve made me cry (when Sapphire wrote that I was her hero) and they’ve made me remember facts and figures I’d buried deep in my longest term memories expecting never to retrieve (Smack does love asking a question or seven during a Star Wars replay). 

I’m not their mummy, and when they are sad they will never run to me. I’m not their Daddy, so they rarely obey when I reprimand them. But I am their Auntie, so they know that when I am in town, the credit card is steaming for a swiping, and it’s time to play.

Who else do they know that will buy them every unique iteration of Elsa’s dress? Who else do they know that will run down the winding paths of the Zoo screaming, repeatedly, ‘it’s penguin time’ with no regard for the fact that while this boisterous behaviour might be acceptable for a three year old, from a forty year old, it is questionable at best and perhaps even a little unnerving? Who else do they know who can sing every single word of ‘Under the Sea’? Who else do they know that has seventeen cartoon movies on her laptop, ready to show at a moment’s notice? Who else will share her Lego with them? Who else is truly, just as much of an infant as they are? #fortyyearoldchild

Who else has opened up her homes in both Paris and London to tiny people that get dangerously close to her precious’s? Who else has dragged two lumps of tired flesh across Disneyland Paris? Or dragged a Trunki topped with a tired toddler through Heathrow? Who else has a suitcase, already packed full of tiny shoes, tiny jewels and tiny custom-made T-shirts? Who else is proud as punch that her little people have been able to see the other side of the earth before they saw the inside of a classroom. 

Aunties have that unique role in a child’s life, like Anne’s Aunt Jo, to spoil, to show, to share and to love unconditionally. I never knew how much I would love stewarding those three little souls; after all, as a rule, I literally cannot stand children.  But when you see one that has a little bit of your own genetics, somehow, your biology takes over and you find yourself changing their shitty nappies without a shuddering dry wretch of revulsion.

 

And this year I am gunning for the prize of Ultimate Auntie Ever. This year at our place, Queen Elsa and Princess Anna will be handing out the presents. #goingforthewin

 

Manicures with Sapphire.