parismarisamadonna

Non, je ne regrette rien – Edith Piaf 1956

Just over 8 years ago, my father slid from this mortal coil and into the arms of whatever you believe exists after death. Dying, as he did from mesothelioma, asbestos induced lung cancer, the Dust Diseases Board of NSW awarded compensation to his living family members. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough for me to sell up, break up and embark on the dream I’d held close to my heart for a lifetime.

Seven years ago, I took the blood money and I moved to Paris.

Bastille Day 2011

 

The Art-sist-ologer and her share of the bloodied pot came along for the ride and we lived for three months in a garret^ on Rue de Rennes. It was on the 6^th floor of a typically Parisian Haussmannian building with no lift. It was so small and so sparsely furnished, I didn’t even sleep on a proper bed. Our ‘kitchen’ was a piece of furniture in a tiny hall between the bedroom and the salon. Between us we could stretch our arms and touch the walls on either side. We laughed a lot, we drank a lot of very cheap wine and she painted between her French language classes. Meanwhile, I was given the chance of a lifetime. 

The American, a man wise beyond his years, wickedly smirking at the world from under a heavy but mirthful brow, hired me to lead his team of Paris based recruiters at the Search Engine. I’d never been a recruiter in my life, I’d actually never worked anywhere that didn’t serve food, but he trusted his instincts and he trusted me. I did what he asked of me, very well I think, for just under 12 months, at which point the world economy vomited chaos from within its Goldman’d over-Sachs-ed walls and I again found myself without gainful employment. 

Shortly thereafter, the Fruit Company came a-knocking and I was again busy from 9 to 5, albeit with a sister who’d deserted me for Sydney, a crappy leg and an even crappier French boyfriend.

Three months after we arrived in Paris, I was run over by a bicycle and broke both bones in my lower right leg. I learned that the Art-sist-ologer was a dab hand at painting lichen but a little less at ease jabbing needles into her older sister’s fleshy thigh. I subsequently learned how to ascend and descend 6 flights of stairs on my arse as she held the plastered limb aloft. I also learned that the French Administration as it relates to public healthcare (in fact most everything) is an unmoving colossus reminiscent of the Woolly Mammoth; huge, hairy, slow and best left buried under 2 millennia of pack ice. Bureaucracy is, in case you didn’t know, a French word.

The following 5 years, bursting with Fruit flavour, were among the best I’ve yet lived. I travelled the world. I’ve seen San Francisco sparkle in the sunshine, I’ve seen Warsaw radiate the history of a thousand atrocities in the rain and I’ve seen the ancient stones of Rome coated with a blanket of historically unprecedented snow. My most treasured experience occurred only last summer. Wandering the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul on a Friday I stumbled upon midday prayers at the city’s largest Mosque.  The moment of peace I experienced as the incomprehensible words of Mullah rang out across the shiny minarets and blue-tiled alleys will stay with me until I take my last breath.

I became friends with some of the best people I’ve had the good fortune to know. The Body, The American and The Fashionista with whom I’d travailed at the Search Engine have kept my weekends filled with prattle, pranks and Pinot. While my fellow French Fruits, New Girl, The Painted Saint, The Butcher and Braveheart have eaten as many home-cooked meals in my flat than I have.

These new friendships, born within the walls of the 75^th department of France have proven to be among the strongest I’ve known. Their steadfast support over the past few months cannot go unacknowledged. They’ve also got exceptionally strong livers and tolerate my habit for crying at the most inconvenient moments or singing out loud, in the street, in front of other people. They’ve also borne witness to the many crushes, the 12-month relationship with the Internet Lover and they don’t mind hanging out with a middle-aged, straight woman who wears Doctor Marten’s boots. They’ve proven to be pretty decent, open-minded friends indeed. 

Through it all, Louis XIV, King of France, has ably squired me. Despite his changing paramours, his frequent absences, first to Evian and then to London; his advice, his love and his intimate knowledge of the French tax system have kept me out of trouble, out of debt and lightheaded with Champagne. An alcoholic beverage that he claims has the least calories but I maintain has the most alcohol.  

Mad Cow. The view from my table at Le Miroir

 

Back on the red dirt, I’ve become an Auntie three times over; Sapphire, Smack and Squeal were all born in Sydney’s autumn while I meandered cobbled streets and drank Rosé in the sunshine in Paris’s springtime. I lost two grandmothers. I mourned most keenly the departure of Gramma, who left me only 48 hours after I left her in Sydney. Cousins are engaged, weddings are missed and Motherbear has been awake at 3am to listen as I wailed, lamenting this and that, always by my side in spirit even if she couldn’t be in person.

In Paris, I’ve had the chance to reconnect with The Academic, the exchange student who lived closest to me when, as teenagers, we were both flung into the far south of France. I’ve watched as her little family in the northern suburbs of Paris has grown in number. I’ve been treated to not one, but two, secular baptisms in her local town hall, a ceremony that I didn’t even know existed; a ceremony that most French people didn’t know existed.

I attended the wedding of The Stylist and The Samurai, an Australian woman and a Japanese man who met in the City of Light before returning to Melbourne and having two little girls. Two micro-Melbournians who both have French Christian names in honour of the place their parents fell in love.

I spent weeks drenched in duck fat, Roquefort and Madiron with my wonderful French family in the south and rediscovered a love for a man who doesn’t love me back, but who will one day realise what he’s missed and lament my departure. I was also briefly engaged to be married to another French man, The F-Word, who dumped me rather unceremoniously when I was visiting him in Bologna. That happened 3 years ago, I’ve never fully recovered, I probably never will, but I’m stronger and wiser and drunker for the experience.

Through it all, I’ve lived in a little flat on the hill that looks down over Paris. I tread the streets in shiny red boots in the winter or shiny red ballets in the summer. Everyone, including the homeless dude with ever-changing puppies around the corner, knows who I am; I am L’Australienne.

Azzam the Pizza man downstairs who has fed every member of my family with really bad pizza and expensive wine will be sad to see me leave. He’ll have no one to flirt with, although he did give me a lift home one day when he saw me on the street in town. His countrymen, who own the 8 à Huit* a block below will miss questioning my preference for buying fresh milk rather than the more popular UHT variety. I’ve never understood why a country that is so widely known for what it can do with lactose prefers to drink heat-treated milk.

Down the road, the Pharmacist and his wife, have sold me everything from the needles I jabbed myself with during the Broken Leg saga, to the control tights I’m now obliged to wear in the summer to keep the busted foot from swelling to alien proportions, to my anti-anxiety medication and most memorably, the 4 litres of liquid one is required to imbibe before a colonoscopy. With every transaction, they’ve asked after my wellbeing, taught me how to self-inject and questioned the health of my Godmother, for whom I also purchase a particular mineral salt in massive (no doubt illegal) quantities, a mineral salt not sold in Australia.

Just next to the chemist are Samir, his brother and their myriad sons. A bevy of well built Tunisians who sell the best fruit in the 18^th Arrondissement. They’ve given free strawberries to Sapphire & Smack, they’ve spoken in broken English to everyone who’s ever stayed with me, they’ve had the unique pleasure of selling me grapes that don’t come in a bottle.

A bit further down Rue des Abbesses are Jacky and his Butchery cum Sweeney Todd slaughter chamber. When they aren’t doing unspeakable things to the gutted remains of a pig, they revel in the delight of harassing L’Australienne as the Wallabies continue to lose rugby matches in all corners of the globe. Guillaume, the hot one, is married, but like all married French men, continues to seek the pleasures of the flesh beyond holy matrimony and winks artfully at me as he minces my steak or slices my sausage.

Keeping this Goliath of a woman clean in her all-together are Laura and Muriel who paint my feet and do delicate things to my delicate parts on the Rue des Martyrs. Along with Stephane & Muriel who bleach and frizz the hair on my head to keep it in the electrified, kissed-by-the-sun mop of a Medusa that tops my grey matter below. They’ve all suggested that I continue to return to Paris to maintain my treatments, because where I’m going, women don’t care about that kind of thing the way parisiennes do.

Most of all though, I’ll miss my friends at Le Miroir. Seb, Julien, Kathrine and the team have always greeted me with a smile. They’ve put up with my dining alone every Saturday accompanied only by a computer. They’ve watched as I wrote the many thousand words that you’ve read on these pages. They’ve kept my glass full and they’re going to help me throw a party to celebrate my ‘exit stage left’ from Paris. They’ve always been so very kind to their singular Australienne.

A title I won’t hold for much longer.

I’m about to embark on another adventure; I’m reclaiming my birthright and moving to Great Britain. My father, who never lived to see me live my Parisian dream, would be proud as punch to know his daughter is taking advantage of the greatest gift he ever bestowed on his three children, a British Passport. He’d also take advantage of a free place to stay…

I never expected to see my Parisian dream become a reality; I never really expected it to end quite so abruptly either. But most of what happens to me is unexpected. It’s often the result of chance, of being frustrated, of being happy, of being inebriated or a blinding hangover.

I’m off to discover what its like to live in a single city that houses the same number of people as the entire continent of Australia. I’m off to be berated up close and personal every time we lose the cricket. I’m off to learn how to say Aubergine or Courgette instead of Eggplant or Zucchini; but in English and not French. I’m off to learn how to use 5 vowels rather than the single ‘eh’ that Australians use. I’m off to live in the same city as Tom and Benedict.

After seven years of kissing frogs, it must be time to kiss a Prince.

 

A Paris, nous avons vecus des belles moments ensemble, nous avons rigolé, nous avons pleuré, je vous aime tous, et non, je ne regrette rien.

  

MM at Madeleine. Week 1 2007

 

 

^In French, these type of flats are known as chambre de bonne, meaning housemaid’s room. Think Downton Abbey, where Anna lives 

*In France, we don’t have corner stores open 7-11, they prefer the more manageable hours of 8 to 8

Fixing a Hole – The Beatles 1967

So this is where I live…I actually pay actual money to live in this space. For every one of you who think it romantic to live in Paris, showered with snails and garlic and kisses, let me convey a short riposte of reality.

 

My front door and the ceiling above.

 

Around four years ago, the shower in the flat upstairs, obviously noticing that it was way more fun downstairs at my place, decided to come down and say hi. It chose to come down via the ceiling and the living room wall, rather than using the front door like a polite shower should. It continued to pay regular visits over the course of 2 years until finally the people upstairs were legally forced to seal it in and prevent its errant night-time wandering. 

Ever since, anyone who has visited chez moi has remarked upon the incredibly beautiful watercolour inked directly onto my living room wall.  It was a unique mural of my own, a melting, surreal landscape, a series of brown and white markings reflecting the putrid Parisian horizon outside. Quite appropriate really, I live less than 50 metres from the Salvador Dali museum in Montmartre. With the benefit of hindsight, I genuinely miss that mural; in fact, I miss having a wall at all.

During these past four years, I’ve welcomed all number of insurance experts, architects, body corporate representatives and various residents of the building, each of them stopping by to inspect ‘the wall’. It is surprising that ‘the wall’ has never fallen on my head. It is equally remarkable that I haven’t yet died of asbestos or lead poisoning; the building is after all, over 100 years old. It was, after the war, home to a brood of pretty Parisian prostitutes; likely the last time anyone had sex chez moi.

My landlords sued the landlord upstairs and then they sued the body corporate. They even had a bash at trying to get me to pay for the damage, but I’m nothing if not a colossal pain in the arse when wrongly accused. None of it worked, their insurance finally agreed to pay for the repairs. Enter stage right, Dodgy Incorporated.

Bienvenue Chez Moi!

 

Two months ago, I was informed that the repairs, repainting two rooms and fixing the wall, would commence mid-January. I was also informed that during this time I would be required to leave chez moi and live chez my landlords’ parents for four weeks. The day before I moved, it was casually dropped in conversation that the painter, Monsieur Dodgy, and his wife, Madame Dodgette, would be living chez moi, for the duration of the repairs.

Forgive me for swearing, but what the up-your-French-fucking-arse fuckitty fuck? My initial reaction to being forcibly evicted while someone else lays their sweaty builders’ buttcrack all over my Pink Egyptian Cotton sheets was about as subtle as the red cheeks of the ladies of the night, former occupants of chez moi. Documenting said reaction in slightly more palatable terms proved easy enough. Small victory to me, The Dodgy Double would not be sleeping in my bed. Though what they did do couldn’t really have been worse.

My venerable godfather, Big Al, is a painter; he has been emblazoned with splotches of white paint since I can remember. My dearly departed father was a carpenter, as he oft reminded us, just like Jesus. As a result, I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to weapons of mass construction. I grew up in a house that was constantly being renovated and despite my lack of training I regularly helped out. I can wield a paintbrush and a cordless drill with absolute confidence. So last weekend, when I returned to my little flat on the hill, I was stunned. I could have done a better job with my hairbrush and a box of Lego.

As any lady knows, when you are doing your eye make up, you hold a tissue below your lower lashes to catch any fallout from your lids onto your cheeks. Similarly, gravity dictates that if you’re going to attempt to paint anything, the first rule is to protect the floor. The second is that you need massive lengths of masking tape. I know this, and I’m a barely qualified HR chick whose only experience painting is what I do each morning to my face. If you were making a living from painting other people’s walls, I’m guessing you’d have learned about protecting the client’s belongings at some point during your apprenticeship? I’d like to know, Dodgy McDodgerson, why are there drops of paint on every flat surface in the apartment…ironically, every flat surface except for the single wall that was meant to be fixed?

In a truly spectacular display of productivity à la française, I’ve been returned to my little flat to live in a space that is less liveable than it was when I left. In four weeks, Dodgy Destructions have repainted every room except for the living room, the damaged one. They’ve also broken down the entire wall and most of the ceiling in order to ascertain the scale of the damage to the structural integrity of the space. These architectural geniuses, after ripping off seven layers of the plaster, have ascertained that the beams need to be replaced. Dodgy PhD could not have ascertained this fact without removing the only thing that protects me from the cold, from the ancient chimneys, from all manner of dust and crap hidden in the century old walls?

Could they not have just made small holes? Could they not have used the fancy infrared things that look through the plaster? Could they not have done anything even remotely like fixing the hole and a lot less like breaking new ones?

Because it’s France and nothing is ever easy, the body corporate are now involved so everything has come to a grinding halt; the walls cannot be fixed by a company other than one chosen by the body corporate. They need to get quotes, they need architects to analyse the structure, they need to schedule the repairs in accordance with the wishes of the surrounding apartments, they need to do all of this in their 35 hr work week with 2 hours off for lunch everyday. Meanwhile, I’m living in Chernobyl! 

I moved that shit out before I moved back in...

 

My landlords were no longer able to accommodate me in the tiny chamber of loneliness and despair up in the ghetto of desperate youths; I had no choice but to come home. But first, adding insult to injury, I had to move Dodgy Dude’s paint kit out of my living room.  

But…hold onto your paint-splattered hats, the next chapter might just be the perfect happy ending to this less than Disney adventure.

Photo in no way representative of next adventure except in my imagination.

 

Elegantly Wasted – INXS 1997

Before I go further, let me start by saying that the Art-sist-ologer likes INXS more than I do. I am just hitching my popsugar pony to her bandwagon. There has been some familial contention over recent days; I want no beef in my family unless someone is barbecuing it, in which case, medium rare for me please. I was too busy Voguing in fingerless pink lace gloves while simulating masturbation and expressing myself to have paid much attention to the sensually evocative hips of Michael Hutchence. 

In much the same way that the Art-sist-ologer and the Smartarse, due only to their geographic proximity to me as youths, can sing, word perfectly, everything Madonna ever released, I too have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things INXS. When she wasn’t staring sullenly into space lamenting her meaningless existence, the Art-sist-ologer would take a minute or two to stare sullenly at her bedside stereo while Michael moaned about needing her tonight or tearing her apart. Sufficiently stuffed with postmodern angst, she would go back to staring without a soundtrack…or dying her hair purple.*

Long story short, if you ever lived within the walls of 32 Hilliger Road, you knew all the words to Madonna and INXS as well as The Beatles (Dad), Queen (Motherbear) and Faith no More (The Smartarse). We’re nothing if not steadfastly loyal to our favourite artists. 

Unsurprisingly, I, accompanied by 25% of the population of Australia, watched the recently aired mini-series that retold the story of Australia’s most successful rock band; 6 exceptionally Mullet-ed boys from the Northern Beaches of Sydney who went from singing to pissheads in pubs to filling Wembley with screaming British virgins. As the old adage goes, girls wanted to shag them, blokes wanted to be them. A few Sundays ago, Australians were forced to choose between watching INXS or a dramatisation of events regarding convicted criminal Schapelle Corby. The beautician and the body board didn’t win the ratings that night; Australians still have enough sense to avoid the Murdochisation of their telly and watch some very sexy men shake their hips and play air guitar.

The series itself was just OK; the guy who played Michael was a miniscule spark on the sexual lightening rod that Michael really was. The one playing Kirk Pengilly was downright shameful while the ones playing the Farriss brothers were passable. The girl who played Kylie Minogue was the most convincing of them all. However, for my money, the most impressive performance was that of the wigmaker. Six different mullets, plus the luscious schoolboy locks of the seventies, the hair could have had it’s own series; Never Comb Us A Part

 

I remember exactly where I was when I learned that Michael Hutchence had died. I was in a taxi, weaving from George Street, in the centre of Sydney to my then home in North Paddington, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. I had taken a rare Saturday night off because that night, I was going to the birthday party of a boy I’d had a crush on for months. The only thing I could think about was scrubbing off the deep fried filth of a busy Saturday lunch at Planet Hollywood and getting gorgeous in the hope of getting some from the Salacious Scorpio.

The taxi driver, with an odour and an accent resplendent with sub continental spice, pointed at the police cars as we drove up New South Head Road. They were parked in front of the Indian Restaurant in Edgecliff where Michael had eaten his last meal.

With no more intensity or emotion than he’d used to ask me where I was going, the driver turned to me and said, “The singer from INXS is dead up there.” I asked him to turn on the radio; we both listened as the entire city interrupted their busy Saturday afternoon of summery Christmas shopping to talk about what was unravelling a few blocks away.

Michael Hutchence died 17 years ago. INXS never really recovered from it, some might say they were over before he did whatever he did to himself that night. 

For many of you, especially if you’re British, Michael Hutchence is most widely remembered as the bloke that shagged Paula Yates while she was still with Sir Bob. He is the drugged-up longhaired Aussie lout who shagged his way through a cast of supermodels before shacking up with the Beatified Boomtown Rat’s wife. You probably didn’t care that much anyway, Michael died just 3 months after Diana; the world was still reeling after the demise of the Queen of Hearts and a best selling single from Elton John.

For the generation of Australians that juggled textbooks and cassette tapes in the nineties, INXS were the sound of our youth. The heady guitar riffs, the sax solos…and Michael… undulating, pouty Sex God Michael. They were the soundtrack of our summers, of our schooldays, of our sadness and our sexual awakening. I actually wonder if there is a person in Australia of my age who cannot sing New Sensation, including the punctual ‘aahs’ between the verses.

Watching this series had a very strange effect on me. Yes, I thought about Michael’s now teenage daughter, what it must be like to grow up without a mummy or a daddy and three sisters named after Strawberry Shortcake Dolls.

More than that, I was sad for me. I remembered those days in the sun. Those days when we didn’t have mobile phones, or emails, or texts instead of talks, or Al Qaida, or Scripted Reality, or Phone Hacking, or Skin Cancer, or Miley Cyrus, or Tony Abbott, or Twerking, or all of the other shit that pisses me off today. 

As I walk around these cobbled streets, uncertain of the future, uncertain of whether my apartment’s ceiling will fall onto my unprotected skull^, uncertain of everything really, Michael’s voice reminds me of a time when I knew nothing, but I wasn’t quite so terrified. I was excited to see how my life would turn out, what would I become, how I would ‘grow up’.

I’m trying very hard to focus on that feeling of excitement, rather than walking the streets expecting to be run over by an errant Peugeot scooter. I’d like to be Elegantly Wasted, not just wasted.

 

*The Art-sist-ologer was a committed disciple of the morose Seattle generation. Her natural propensity for staring at people to better understand their character had finally come into its own as she could now glare with purpose and passion. The irony is she had to give up all that black and purple to take up hot pink and orange singing all the words to Peppa Pig and DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba.

^More to come soon on the subject of Home Shit Home

Leader of the Pack – The Shangri-Las 1964

You might have heard, there’s been a wee bit of media attention, just a word casually dropped in the papers here or there. Stop the presses, it has been officially confirmed that François Hollande has been shagging one woman (an actress) while he was shacked up in unholy civil partnership with another (a journalist). Valerie “the Rottweiler” Trierweiler of the civil partnership became the Premiere Amante at some point while François was still the bloke who lived with then presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal. Valerie has been hospitalised for exhaustion; she has been officially dumped from her starring role as First Lady of France. Julie Gayet, the actress, may or may not be pregnant but definitely is suing a local tabloid for damages. Woody Allen, drawing inspiration from his own personal plight, might be the only person capable of writing a screenplay which will might Jean Dujardin his second Oscar in a starring role requiring him to say nothing at all.^ 

François, a diminutive, bespectacled, unseemly man who, instead than speaking eloquently, makes sounds reminiscent of woodland rodents, has had a lot of very high-profile vagina. I’m not sure if you are with me on this, he must be stellar in the sack. Has he got a 45cm-vibrating penis? Or maybe he can recite Shakespeare’s sonnets while simultaneously performing cunnilingus. Either way, I cannot understand why all these clever women are attracted to him. He is the Mr Collins of the French Parliament’s Pride & Prejudice; not the brooding, proud Mr Darcy, not even the bumbling Mr Bingley, but the sweaty, sycophant. He’s banged a number of very beautiful, very, very intelligent women, more than once. If only he were as popular with his constituents as he seems to be with the laydeez. If only he had multiplied the economy as efficiently as he multiplied the orgasms of his paramours.

If Francois Hollande were shagging only one woman at a time, he would be the first monogamous president of the 5^th Republique. The French, most especially the messieurs, have upheld their patriotic right of keeping lovers and conducting extramarital affairs since back when they still had kings with heads.

Leader of the Pack - Hollande

 

Sarkozy was banging a folk singing Italian supermodel at the same time he paraded his far more palatable wife for his conservative voters. Jacques Chirac had a few actresses to distract him from the exceptionally coiffed ministrations of wife Bernadette. François Mitterand was famously revealed to have an adult daughter whose mother was not Madame Mitterand. But the award for extracurricular shagging must certainly go to Valery Giscard D’Estaing, president during the free lovin’ seventies, he freeloved his way into an affair with the actress who played Emmanuelle; yes, the President of France was banging a veritable porn star.#

I’ve discussed the Hollande adultery (not really, they weren’t married) with pretty much everyone I know, both French and not French. The affair itself was not as widely reported in France as it was elsewhere; adultery in France is as common as, and as disregarded as the dog-poos. The French simply want him to get on with the job of dragging France up from the depths of recession and maintain their benefit-heavy socialist economy. François can bang whom and whatever he likes so long as the retirement age does not go north of 60. 

For us puritanical, protestant, conservative, unenlightened Anglo’s, adultery is a little less easy to stomach. It is only 15 years ago that Bill Clinton was impeached for doing hereto-unforeseen things to a cigar and the nubile intern who was holding it. The British were wholly comfortable with the notion of men cross-dressing at the weekend barbecue, or impersonating tampons, but multiple partners gets you kicked out of government and even ostracised from the Royal family.

Taking presidential adultery to sadistic, nepotistic levels not known beyond the realm of North Korea is everyone’s favourite rainbow-flag-waving president, Vladimir Putin. I, like my compatriot Adam Hills remain entirely convinced that Putin is, himself, gay. I’m not sure how a photo of a semi-naked man atop a horse cannot be considered homoerotic propaganda, but for the sake of those who tow the communist party line, lets imagine that he is straight. He divorced his wife during an interview after he had already started working his way through the Russian rhythmic gymnastic team. One can only assume their flexibility also wins them gold medals in the conjugal arts. He lately awarded his current mistress the honour of lighting the Olympic torch in Sochi, arguably the only light over there that works.

Leader of the Horse Pack. They can't afford motorbikes in Russia.

 

Like their sisters in North Korea, or any other fascist regime, I am fearful for what happens to these power-blinded women when they fall from favour. I’m reminded of the, albeit semi-fictional, novel and film The Last King of Scotland. The warning to women as to what befalls you when your omnipotent lover loses interest is a horrific image stamped on my psyche, even though I’ve seen the film just once, several years ago.

Those I’ve questioned as I began writing this have all told me that women are inherently attracted to power. Apparently we just can’t keep our pants on when faced with a man who is so potent that he lied, swindled, negotiated, lobbied and cheated his way into leadership over a weak regime that pays lip service to democracy rather than actually living it. If that is power, no number of Louboutins, Michelin Starred Dinners or Tiffany Tennis Bracelets could induce me to tolerate it, let alone be attracted to it.

Power comes from within, it is not the result of the job you do. Tony Abbott, current Prime Minister of Australia, proves this, even if he proves nothing else.

Leader of a Pack of Children - Tony Abbott

 

Tony is a God-fearing Catholic married to Margie since he began his illustrious career in right-wing politics and bipartisan misogyny. Staunchly opposed to marriage equality and abortion, he was for many years known as the Mad Monk. I’d like to get some grass roots support behind a push to change that nickname to the Catholic C**t, but I recognise in today’s censorship-stupefied Australia, printing such a name might frighten the Queenslanders.

Much like Hollande, Tony won his election because the electorate were not voting for the other guy rather than actually voting for him. Burdened with unpopularity among the intellectual elite and the working poor, Tony has had to content himself with winning over the burgeoning middle classes*, those with a “home cinema” and an “outdoor kitchen” and not a TV or a BBQ. Many of these people have become wealthy as Australia digs everything of value out of the ground and sells it to China.  They are generally concerned only with themselves, their children and the size of their mortgage. They are frightened that the freakish, scary immigrants are going to take their money and are obsessed with city street crime while at the same time celebrating the early release of a convicted criminal from a scary Balinese gaol.

These are also the people that are killing sharks, in the ocean, off the coast of Western Australia under the guise of the newly introduced Shark Cull. A move designed to reduce the number of shark attacks in WA and protect their valuable tourist dollar. A move that is far more logical than say, not swimming in the ocean where the sharks live. By the same logic, we could see the dawn of a native bird cull for fear of being shat on when one goes outside, into the home of the birds. We could equally introduce a wombat cull to ensure the nasty little buggers don’t damage the paint job on the new Commodore when they get caught underneath the wheels at 180kmh down the Pacific Highway in the middle of the forest, the forest where the wombats live.

Tony, the man with the most powerful position in Australia has very little personal charisma. When he speaks, he sounds surprisingly like an adolescent, not the authoritative baritone of Obama or even the rounded, weighted vowels of David Cameron. Robbed of the personality that would win him the hearts of the people, he’s resorted to scare tactics and jingoism to maintain a flimsy hold on power. Shouldered with religious beliefs that prevent him from shagging around, he’s resorted to belittling the large majority of women he interacts with, most famously, Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia.

These boys in charge all around the world, why do they get to do anything and everything they want? They get to bang whom they want, when they want. They get to change the rules to suit their own design and they’re rarely in power long enough to be held accountable.

I think it might be time for a girl to get a shot at the title. I’m not suggesting that women are immune to corruption, that they are inherently better at the job than a man is, but I‘d certainly like to see a few more Merkels and a few less Millibands. I’d like to see the population represented by the population, not by the guys with the best lobbyists, the best speechwriters or the best relationship with Rupert Murdoch. 

I’d like to see the other Clinton in the big chair…maybe even with a cigar.

Because she's a woman? This recent photo, taken from an article reporting her new haircut...

 

 

^I might have made up the last sentence…

#Slightly more respectable that Italy who elected one to government

*There is a b-word used to describe these people. However, if I use it here, Motherbear will cease all ties with me, she hates the B-word more than she hates Tony

Killer Queen – Queen 1974

Last week while many of you, most especially the menfolk, were grunting and gurning and gyrating with excitement as 22 very small men wearing very large plastic exoskeletons threw a ball back and forth, I was watching the ads. Well, I watched them the next day on YouTube, but let’s not get pernickety on the details.

Had the time zone been marginally less stupid o’clock, I would still not have watched the Big Game live. I don’t appreciate American Football. Learning the rules of the three codes of football (Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Rules) played prevalently in Australia was quite enough until I got to Europe where I’ve since gathered the requisite working knowledge of soccer. Adding a fifth code is just plain ridiculous; especially when I’ve got so much data already vying for space in the corridors and alcoves of my mind palace.* However, pop culture fangirl that I am, as every year, I was curious to check out the latest crop of mega-buck Super Bowl publicity.

This year, a spritely little vignette featuring Anna Kendrick briefly interrupted the traditional worship at the altar of Budweiser and machismo. There was something very long and boring starring Arnie and even Ellen Degeneres, seemingly the antithesis of all that is the testosterone turbocharged NFL, danced about to flog her powder blue earphones.

My own little world stopped when they started banging on about cars, which is odd because I do not own a car, and even odder, because I cannot drive. When Jaguar decided to brand their 60 seconds of football-fuelled propaganda #BritishVillains, I obligingly sat up and paid attention.

The Jaguar advertisement was made exclusively for American consumption and will not be screened for Her Majesty's, or any of her subjects' pleasure; the country in which it was filmed, the country from whence Jaguar hails and the country native to the three men who feature in the humorous little celebration of all that is bad in Britain. The three actors make suppositions as to why it is that the baddies are so often British. They reference power, the stiff upper lip, the precision and their obsession for details. All of them are wearing suits and bowties as they approach the Palace. All of them are very, very handsome.

Ben Kingsley. Dishy Bald Brit.

 

Ben Kingsley won an Oscar playing the most generous man that ever lived in Ghandi, Tom Hiddleston is more often seen in Shakespeare than Asgard and Mark Strong is regularly cast as the Arab intelligence officer, despite being Italian. But in this advert, these three men were bundled together representing the new British Invasion. Americans aren’t bad enough to play their own baddies, so they’re importing them from the UK.

When interviewed by the ultimate British baddie Jeremy Clarkson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Star Trek’s resident baddie, was asked why all the bad guys in Hollywood films are British. Cumberbatch suggested that it was because Americans speak with warm round vowels while Brits speak in a staccato of clipped consonants. He implied that their accent makes them sound more intelligent, rendering them much nastier than their cousins across the Atlantic. Being well spoken, being intelligent naturally suggests that you are bad.

Mark Strong. Dishy Crooked Tooth Brit.

 

I don’t disagree. Our collective consciousness is drowning with idiots getting their 15 minutes because they were filmed doing something stupid on a smartphone. If you don’t believe me, check out the latest episode of Rich Kids of Beverly Hills^ or check out just about anything on Twitter or Instagram. Being vacuous and inane is its own reward in our new establishment. You might even make a million from your sextape. Being clever is not only frowned upon; it is potentially the root of evil.

Why are British actors taking over Hollywood? Why is America gaga for Maggie Smith’s vitriolic barbs in Downton? Why was a man with a moniker most people can’t spell let alone say voted sexiest man?

Ben Elton, the brilliant mind that wrote Blackadder and We Will Rock You, suggested during one of his stand up routines that Hollywood movies use British voices for baddies because it harks back to the War of Independence. The original American bad guys were British soldiers; think Jason Isaacs in The Patriot. Elton’s theory certainly makes sense, but I’ve got another one.

Ralph Fiennes. Dishy You-Know-Who Brit

 

Maybe it is just because many contemporary American actors, pumped up on inflated paychecks, scientology and macrobiotic goji berry smoothies are very, very conscious of their public image. Playing a character that is mean, or controversial, or unchristian, is anathema to securing lucrative cosmetic and jewellery sponsorship deals. 

I’m a big fan of the mega hit Homeland. I wondered early on why it was that the lead actor, Damian Lewis playing an American soldier, was not American. That character, Nicholas Brody, is a traitor to the American people, a converted Muslim that spends much of the first series on his knees calling out in Arabic. Is it too much to theorise that the casting agent couldn’t find a local star willing to do it?

Tom Hiddleston. Dishier than his Aussie Brother Brit.

 

As with any rule, or any of the gross generalisations previously featured on these pages, there are exceptions. The lately departed Phillip Seymour Hoffman had the biggest acclaim of his career playing a very, very nasty gay man and John Malkovich does a brilliant baddie, but generally speaking, if ever a character is going to be universally despised, the actor is foreign. Stephen Spielberg cast Englishman Ralph Fiennes as the German Nazi camp director in Schindler’s List, American Hannibal Lecter is portrayed by English Anthony Hopkins and in Titanic, the poor good Irish were trapped downstairs while the nasty English drank tea from porcelain cups before sailing off to safety in life rafts.

I’m sure that when Jaguar made their ad, they were just being funny, playing up on the recent anglophilia that has gripped the stars and stripes. Their little girls are fainting over One Direction while their mums are having hot flushes for Matthew Crawley. London has just this past year overtaken Paris to become the European city most visited by Americans. I suspect that the Olympics had something to do with it. I also suspect that the current craze for all things transatlantic is not likely to end anytime soon.

 

If it means more Benedict, I’m not going to complain.

Benedict Cumberbatch. Dishy 6 Syllable Brit.

 

 

*Yes, that is a reference to Sherlock. He and I share the same megalithic intellectual capabilities 

^Actually don’t. Even my admittedly low-level crap-o-meter forced me to look away after 15 minutes

Gypsy – Lady Gaga 2013

Staring down the very real possibility of leaving France sooner rather than later, I’m taking the time to review my Bucket List. 

Louis XIV has already taken care of No 1; the King is whisking me away this spring to see, and smell, the Lavender Fields of Provence.  I can’t remember if it was My Mother’s Castle or My Father’s Glory or Jean de Florette or Manon des Sources, but it was in one of those romantic, sun-drenched films I was forced to watch in French class. When I was a teenager, I first saw a screen filled with lavender flowers as far as the eye can see, feathery mauve blankets draped across the sun bleached yellow clay of France’s hottest corner. Ever since, I have wanted to throw myself onto that purple pillow and slip into a luscious lavender coma for at least as long as it takes for someone to proffer another glass of ice cold Rosé.

So the first item will be ticked in May. For January, I settled on Bucket List No 2; the Fish Market at Marseille.

A long time ago, while disinterestedly flicking through food channels on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I happened upon the High Priest of Pisciculture, Rick Stein, banging on about the Fish Wives flogging their husbands’ treasures on the shoreline of the Old Port at Marseille.

You may not know this, but the phrase, to swear like a Fish Wife was actually born in the salty port of France’s second largest city. Should you ever visit, your sense of propriety will remain perfectly in tact; you won’t be able to understand a single word they say. The accent of Marseille being so stained with the broguish tongue curls and nasals of nearby Italy and Africa, you can barely make out their bonjour, let alone their merde or anything remotely crude. In addition to the accent is their incomprehensible slang, a hybrid of French peppered with words they stole from the Maghreb as the human stream of immigration sailed, and continues to sail, into the limestone harbour of France’s largest passenger terminal. 

Beyond the romance of salt, of sea and of ships, Marseille is, on the whole, unimpressive. Perched between the fashionable French Riviera to the right and the family friendly holiday resorts of Languedoc to the left, Marseille is a working city studded with chimneys that spew grey smoke into the grey sky and stain the facades of the chalky houses a dirty, smoggy grey. Much like the working harbours in Northern England or Newcastle north of Sydney, the city is undergoing a bit of renovation around the docklands. Disused crumbling brick grain stores are being transformed into very fancy apartments that will be filled with ridiculous lengths of Italianate marble kitchen bench-tops as the Nouveau Riche take over walls their ancestors would have scoffed at.

MuCEM and the Villa Mediterranee. Black Lace Box and Precarious White Box

 

There is however, a pretty damn impressive brand spanking new Museum.

MuCEM is the museum of Mediterranean Culture inaugurated last year as part of the celebrations to commemorate Marseille being the European Capital of Culture for 2013. Before you get all hot and sweaty with excitement, I will add that this year, Hull, of Northern England, is the European Capital of Culture. The overpaid Bureaucrat that is being paid his weight in gold to decide where the European Capital of Culture is must have a penchant for dusty, dirty, industrialised cesspits in need of a facelift. But anyway, back to this fancy new museum. 

If you’ve ever wanted to see just what a clever man can do with concrete and a touch of creativity, the building is really, very impressive. Unlike Gehry’s Aluminium Vomit in Bilbao, MuCEM is a gigantic black concrete lace coated box, designed by a French-Algerian with an Italian name and a wee bit more respect for the existing landscape than the bloke who destroyed Bilbao. From atop the Chantilly Cube stretches a fine black footbridge onto the ancient Fort of St Jean, one of the two that guard the entrance into Marseille’s Old Port. Wandering along the medieval terraces of ochre granite and staring back into the computer generated black concrete masterpiece is a visually extraordinary feat of architectural harmony. Gehry may want to visit.

There are sunlounges dotted everywhere, long benches and designer gardens perched on top of rooms filled with ancient artefacts and a very good restaurant. The views up to the hilltop basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, Mary standing up high on a hill to protect the mariners, not not the poor fish) are worth the visit. On our chosen day, the only thing we could see was the violence of the gathering storm that dumped enough water to flood most of southern France.

Napoleon's Fancy House on the Hill - Pharo

 

I was far less impressed with the exhibition inside; a visual history of the Mediterranean peoples and how their mastery of agriculture, invention of citizenship, desire to discover new worlds and creation of the three religions of the book means that they are the most advanced people on earth.

Yeah well, they also discovered how to harass, torture and kill each other in the name of afore-mentioned cow, colony, passport or theological fairytale. Not so advanced the way I see it. Although there was a very interesting section about the Death Sentence. I’ve now seen, with my very own eyes, an actual Guillotine that actually killed someone. France, the ever so advanced nation of the Rights of Man practised the death penalty until Mitterand abolished it in 1981. In France, they executed the poor souls with a Guillotine, until the very last one was beheaded, in Marseille, in 1977. My French family assure me that the guillotine is far more effective method of execution as death is instantaneous, unlike the barbaric anglo method of hanging. I suppose I’m just a bit squeamish about the idea of removing a person’s head when not in the context of Tudor marriages or Game of Thrones.

Efficient..unlike everything in France since.

 

During my short stay in Marseille, I didn’t see a man beheaded, but I was witness to a live Sea Bass being hung, drawn and quartered, upon a small plastic table, in the open space just above a busy Metro Station.

Unburdened by the mundane criteria of anything like a health code or hygiene standards, in Marseille, after the Fish Wife has harassed you into purchasing the frolicking fish in front of her, her knife wielding husband will happily prepare your piscatorial delicacy for cooking. The Sea Bass, as alive as you or I, was rather annoyed at being removed from his tray of seawater and refused to lie still on the scales as he was weighed. He jumped onto the ground at least three times before Madame was able to price him. Sea Bass seasoned with the smoke and shizzle of a pedestrian zone must be delicious. 

Go Fish.

 

More spectacular than the aqua acrobatics was the knife entering the belly of the writhing fish and the scarlet sensation of his insides spilling over the table followed by a crimson tide of blood gushing onto the pavement below. A quick wipe over with an oil-stained cloth and the gutted guppy was thrown into a plastic bag in anticipation of a generous bath of garlic and parsley.

For two hours we stood and watched as tables were set up and filled with gasping fish of all shapes and sizes. Crayfish pricked at the eyes of the wiggling fish and squid stared up as they were poked and prodded by customers assessing their freshness. Being winter, there was a fishy frenzy for the Monkfish; the ugliest things you ever did see, so ugly that they are usually sold without their giant toothy heads. Echoing their compatriots of 1789, we observed the beheading of a hundred or so of the tasty little buggers, albeit with a giant knife that slammed down onto the plastic bench, hammering out the rhythm of repetitive death, rather than the slick squeal of Lady Guillotine herself.

The Fishwife.

 

After observing the mass murder of a whole lot of fish in a whole lot of increasingly brutal ways, it was time for lunch.

The second reason I wanted to visit Marseille was to eat Bouillabaisse. The dish, a stew of the various fish native to the rocky, salty shores of the Mediterranean is flavoured with saffron and garlic and served with garlic bread and rouille, a sort of mayonnaise thickened with potato. Garlic, bread, potato, fish, mayonnaise…fancy French fish and chips? Possibly… but most definitely one of the most delicious plates of food I have ever eaten.

Sailed right into my mouth...

 

Wet through after three days of torrential rain and freezing temperatures, it was time to head back to the southern French House on the Prairie, the place I’ve been hiding out these past few weeks. The recent crush has ended with a colossal slap to earth. If only I was as adept at selecting the qualities of the opposite sex as I am at combining words to describe food?

Today, I’m off again. The red Swiss Army suitcase will roll into another city, for another adventure. I’m not sure what this one will bring, but I know that I’ll never, ever stop moving, searching and seeing…or falling stupidly in love with inappropriate men and ridiculously handsome British movie stars.

 

After three months of anxious panic and crippling stress, it is definitely time I got Loki.

Marseille.

 

 

 

Final Observation - Proof positive that men are ENCOURAGED to piss outdoors.

 

Strong – London Grammar 2013

You may think that strength is physical. 

I know plenty of people who spend hours and days and weeks in sweaty rooms lifting moulded doughnuts of iron, pushing against their own weight or running on the spot in a measured effort to better define the slabs of muscle that surround their nipples or their groin. Effort that renders their physique that much more appealing to the human eye. Effort that is by no means wasted. Tom Hiddleston recently released a video on YouTube demonstrating just how much the fine-tuning of the human form can transform a woman from sentient being to quivering jelly of oestrogen-infused energy. I’m all for the pursuit of physical strength, I only wish I could master the talent myself.

Instead, my strength is mental.

I’m not very clever when it comes to physical acts of force; caber-tossing, karate-chopping cinder blocks and such…when a perfectly finished manicure is at risk, I prefer oenological feats. Walking in a straight line without clashing against a wall, a doorjamb or another person has oft proved to be a challenge beyond the bounds of my ambulant skills. All of which could be due, in part, to the oenological athleticism.

But when required to withstand the onslaught of abuse inherent in any family, in any professional setting or as of late, while engaged in the search for gainful employment, I stand up better than most. I’ve got all the fancy words, the witty turns of phrase and the litany of filthy words to hold my own…and then some.

Granted, I don’t do it alone.

Spending one’s days fruitlessly is tiring. Spending one’s days fruitlessly without the comforts of home is just plain exhausting.

For two weeks now, I’ve been forcibly relocated from chez moi; the little red box on the hill in Montmartre is undergoing much-needed repairs. The walls have been falling away from their struts for four years when the pipes from up above exploded under the weight of a hundred years of Parisian showers and Parisian sewerage and lord knows what else.

Not willing to spend the days alienated from my professional life in a garret leaning across the darker side of La Butte, I took the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge and escape to the welcome embrace of my French family in the South. I’ve written several times before of the blonde brood that occupy the Little House on the Prairie in the South; The Blondes of Salies de Bearn.

Ciboure. Birthplace of Ravel and an impressive thunderstorm.

 

Papa and Maman are my French parents. I met them when I was 16 years old fresh off a plane from Sydney. They tell me that I was a bit of a monster at the time; all adolescent expertise and unruly mouth, unwilling to listen to anyone or heed the warnings of those with more life experience than I. In the 20 years since, not much has changed, but they assure me that I’m a little more tolerant of their interjections. I’d argue that they’ve just become a little more tolerant of me, of my outbursts, of my inherent aggression and my obsessive need to be right…all the time. Which I usually am.

They are doted with three children; Michelangelo, an elder son crowned with his trademark cherubic blond curls, Raphael, a middle son branded with all the drama intrinsic to any middle child and Leonarda, an ultimate daughter, doctor of chemistry and the without question, the brains of the whole outfit. ^ 

Unlike their Parisian parents, the children grew up among the cornfields of the Pyrenees-Atlantiques; a trapezium of yellow and green hugged to the south by the snow-capped heights of the Pyrenees, to the North by the duck-farm expanses of Les Landes, to the west by the fruited vines that produce the finest yellow wine in the world, Jurançon, and to the right by the only thing in France that reminds me of Australia. The Atlantic coast on either side of Biarritz; surf beaches, wetsuited surfers, the European headquarters of Rip Curl, Billabong, Quiksilver and if you are very lucky, fish and chips.

The brash, young Australian of the early nineties has given way to the mouthy, aging Parisienne of the teenies. While I was once horrified by the sleepy village that afforded little amusement for a suburban teenager, today I am enamoured with the rolling green fields of harvested corn that offer welcome respite from the dense grey fudge that is Paris in the wintertime.

The Horse Butcher at Salies Market..no, I didn't.

 

More to the point, in the South-West of France, one eats like a king. I don’t know about you, but for me, the ennui of modern life is much assuaged with a tonic of fermented grapes and force-fed poultry.

It isn’t for nothing that Yves Camdeborde, originally from Pau, is recognised among the best Chefs in France…and a judge on French Masterchef. Chefs from this part of the world use the local Piment d’Espelette instead of pepper. The little red peppers, the fattened duck and the salted ham are certainly the reason that there are more than twenty Michelin starred restaurants within the 64*. This tiny corner of France is famous for duck in all its forms, for Foie Gras, for Poulet Basquaise, for Jambon de Bayonne, for some of the best seafood beyond Brittany…and it is also the home of the beret and the espadrille. Such a small pocket of countryside has given the un-Gallic world so much of what France is renowned for, it’s no surprise that the Atlantic Coast is among the most visited regions of France.

A few days in the country was exactly the prescription to alleviate the stress of being homeless, the waiting game of a job search and the abject solitude of being the only person I know who has nothing to do during standard working hours.

Fortified with duck fat, the blood-red perfume of Madiron, the syrupy sugar of Jurançon and the spark from the red peppers of Espelette, I am now strong enough, like a bird of prey, to return to the North, cross the channel and conquer all that awaits me.

There’s also a bit of a crush on the horizon, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer for any news about that. I’ve waited twenty years…I’m now strong enough to wait twenty more.

So can you.

 

 

The house the Spanish Infanta resided in as she awaited her marriage to Louis XIV.

St Jean de Luz.

 

 

 

^All references to teenagers and mutants are entirely intentional

*The department number for the Pyrenees-Atlantiques

I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) – The Proclaimers 1988

Family. 

We are born of two parents, if we are lucky, we have a sibling or two, even luckier, we have a crowd of cousins and aunts and grandparents and uncles who surround us with affection and support and unconditional love, guiding us safely along the road from infancy, through our turbulent adolescence and into the void of uncertainty and self-doubt that characterises adulthood. 

If we are truly blessed, we manage to enlarge this circle of trust with a few friends and lovers, who will, each in their own way, help to build a wall of security around the individual, creating a fortress of understanding, shared history and someone you can shag that doesn’t share your DNA. Most people achieve this by getting married or something equivalent; creating their own family unit to replace the one they were born into… Simba and Mustafa knew it; it’s the circle of life. Aie-chum-mum-maah!

View from Cargese

 

Opting to take the road less travelled by, and stubbornly unwilling to settle into anything like comfort or security, I’ve ripened and grown these past years without the proximity of my biological unit. Mine, depleted by the loss of a parent, adored grandparent and the very real geographical chasm between Sydney and Paris, is insufficient to stabilise the increasing insanity of a middle-aged woman riddled with insecurity and anxiety. I have replaced my immediate need with friends, all of who are lovely and exquisite in their own way, but none of who have known me longer than the half a decade I’ve lived on this side of the equator.

But I count my blessings.

I have another family.

Some hill I walked up..

 

Papa and Maman, and their three children, took me into their home when I was a brash, mouthy 16 yr old. They have continued to love and support me, despite the distance, despite the years between visits and despite the fact that I am now a brash, mouthy, 37 yr old. They, like my own venerable family, delight in taking the piss out of their somewhat unstable, teary and emotional sister/daughter. Like the family B I’m from, my French Famille B recognise that I am not what I generally appear to be; that much of it is artifice and sleight of hand designed to detract from the much feebler reality. They love me, unconditionally.

They love me so unconditionally; they decided to invite me on their family holiday to Corsica.

Once owned by the Italians, and subsequently sold to the French to pay for war debts, Corsica is one of those scraps of earth that stubbornly refused to join on to a proper country and instead floated off into the Mediterranean. These floating remnants of empires became strategic fortresses; poker chips to be thrown in as collateral for political negotiations that today, embarrassingly, serve no greater purpose than providing the rest of Europe with somewhere to get a tan. Like Sardinia, Sicily and Palma de Mallorca, Corsica is among the top tourist destinations in the world.

A beach. A herd of errant cows. No need to salt the beef.

 

My French Famille B rented a home near the town of Cargese. A home featuring a bedroom, for my particular use, from which it required no more than 7 steps (I counted) to jump into the pool and then about 100 more (also counted), to jump into the Mediterranean (though the sea was only about 2 metres deep so jumping in headfirst would have been unwise, even for someone like me, someone who always jumps in headfirst). Seven days on an Island, surrounded by water, with no questions or decisions about where to go or what to do, what could possibly go wrong?

Corsica is essentially an extension of the Alps; a little bronzed appendix of mountains pushing their chests out above the sea. There is not a single stretch of highway on the whole west coast, let alone a stretch of straight road, let alone dual carriageway. Getting from point A to point B involves the careful navigation of a series of conjoined hairpin bends. Seven bobby pins up a hill, followed by eight bobby pins back down, every day, every time you want to go somewhere. If you are especially lucky, there will be a bit of steel strung along the outside ridge to hold in the cars as they drive out into the void. But more often than not, it is down to the chauffeur and the tyres’ tread to hold you on the breathing side of the pearly gates. I spent every morning dreading egress into Papa’s PT Cruiser and every afternoon praying I wouldn’t lose my lunch. Especially considering that lunch was so damn delicious.

Pig. All different ways. But not Alive.

 

After a bit of research and consultation, I’ve discovered that the main reason people go to Corisca is to eat.

Corsica is blessed with a moderate climate, miles of seaside, buckets of rain, days of sunshine and lots of hills. So it stands to reason that they produce kilolitres of wine, mega tonnes of pork and half the continent’s chestnuts. If there is a way to combine pig, chestnuts and wine, I’ve almost certainly eaten it. They also, like their Italian neighbours, have a bit of a thing for veal. Perhaps their shared Latin sanguinity doesn’t lend itself to patience; so they just cannot wait for the poor beast to achieve maturity before they slaughter it and slather it with garlic and tomato.

Once one has eaten all the ham, all the sausage and all the cheese and poured a bucket of wine downs one’s throat, why not lace up the sneakers, slap on the hat and head off on a fifty trillion metre walk through a cliff top forest?

The goats got there so much quicker than I did

 

Michelangelo, my older French brother, is, like his namesake a master at fashioning beautiful things from the rugged crumbs of the earth and he is crowned with a mop of cherubic blond Sistine Chapel-ite pre-Raphaelite curls. He has several passions; he is an avid collector of the comic books that every single human soul bearing a French Passport reads at least once a day, bandes dessinés,* he knows about everything since forever and he loves hiking. So each day, after a three course lunch, I’d be dragged, kicking and screaming and cursing and damning, along some track through the nature to discover the natural beauty of bugs and dirt while walking up increasingly steep inclines. I hated every minute of it; I was sweaty, I was red-faced and jelly-legged, but I did it.

The main reason I did it is because Michelangelo is an adult male and thus has some kind of psychological noose around my neck; I am obligated instinctively to refuse to let him win. The second reason I did it was because I was eating all the ham, all the cheese and drinking all the chestnut beer in Corsica; walking straight up a hill in 35 degree heat was one method of ensuring I would still fly home. Even so, I’m not at ease in the natural world where I have no control over my environment; little buzzing things fly at my face, there is just so much dirt and leaves and trees and flowers and rocks are just not as impressive to me as they might be to others. But I did it anyway; I am glad I did.

What I preferred though, were the boat rides.

 

Scandola. Rock Porn.

 

The Gulf of Porto is a cliff-bordered bay hugged on the right by the Natural Reserve of Scandola and on the left by the Calanche of Piana. I’m from a country that can boast it’s fair share of magnificently impressive red rocks, but I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as that gulf^. Especially given I saw it all, from the water, inside the Corse Adrenaline, a boat powered by Mr Fusion and driven by a rather handsome doppelganger of Mark Webber. Gigantic red granite protrusions give way to little grottos and lagoons painted straight onto the sea from The Little Mermaid. You can see the bottom of the water; you can see the fish swimming under the sea and all of this while gigantic sea eagles skim over your head in search of their next meal. It was truly magnificent. The only thing missing was Ariel herself. 

Papa and Michelangelo have dedicated their lives to laying marble, buying marble, shaping marble and sometimes, just to change it up, carving things from stone. Rock formations springing up left and right for two men obsessed with petrified dirt, it was kind of like geological porn. For me, rocks serve no purpose unless they are set in platinum and threaded into my earlobe, but I’ll own it; I was aroused as well.

Bonifacio. Place where men are bronze and women tremble.

 

The second boat ride took us around the very bottom of Corsica, within view, and 3G reception of her southern sister, Sardinia. Six hours of nausea prevailed as Michelangelo flung us from one hairpin onto the next. But despite his best efforts, just before lunchtime, we arrived safely in the southern port of Bonifacio. 

Not content with signalling arrival on French soil the same way as the English do, the salute of steep white chalk cliffs, the French built a village atop their calcified, crumbly precipice. Screw you Wellington and your UNESCO listed National Park at Dover, Napoleon made a cliff top skyline of tiny cottages. Sadly, many years later, the Germans invaded Corsica and stamped their orderly practical gun towers onto the cliff face from above. The WWII concrete fort they wrapped around the ancient citadel serves only to remind one of how the south of Europe values everything that is beautiful while the North favours function.

 

What WWII and a chisel can do to something beautiful. Michelangelo might have fared better.

 

Despite how unique Corsica is, there was much to remind me of the rugged, parched beauty of Australia. Beyond the red dirt and the forests, the beaches are coated with wild colonies of prickly pear. Little patches of spiny peachy goodness reminded me of my grandmother’s front yard. How is it that two Islands, so very far apart, could be so very similar? I guess that like most of what I see, I look for the similarity to ground myself. I suppose that is the sickness of a traveller, always looking for what you know, what is familiar, what reminds you of home.

Again, much like any journey to my own Southern Island, the final insult was the flight.

After seven days winding around cliffs in a car, it was only fitting that the flight should also involve intestinal acrobatics and a glass of Pietra (the chestnut beer) to calm the nerves. It isn’t that it requires 30 hours, or that you’ll spend two nights sleeping on an A380, no, it isn’t that at all; the final insult lasts only 40 minutes as you fly on a microscopic ‘aircraft’ from Ajaccio to Nice; a flight that requires one final hairpin bend around the mountains, a final loop into space, a final view of the spectacular jagged ochre coastline below.

Every morning, I woke before sunrise to take this photo

 

Corse, je t’aime. Corsica, ti amo.

 

 

 

 

*Sort of like Asterix or The Smurfs, every single person I know reads these books; it must come with the penchant for protests or the tolerance for tripe, it is native to the French 

^I have never been to the Red Centre of Australia so I’m pretty sure I’m not betraying my national heritage by saying this

***All photos are unflitered and taken with a phone

 

Happy – Pharrell Williams 2013

I’ve been awake since 3am, I’ve been wearing the same flannelette pyjama pants for 3 days, my flat looks like a photograph bomb exploded on the living room floor and I’ve eaten versions of a cheese sandwich at every meal since 2014 began. Even so, I’m deliriously happy…and it is not only because I’ve watched Death at Pemberley six times since it screened in the UK and Matthew Rhys makes a damn fine Mr Darcy especially towards the end of episode three and Matthew Goode might be the most perfect Wickham ever and… yes, so anyway, deliriously happy.

The song after which this is named features in the film Despicable 2; if you haven’t watched it, you should, I did, several times, on the planes between Paris and Dubai and Sydney. Watching cartoons makes me happy; recently I’ve had the time to do that, time I didn’t have before. I introduced my niece to the Little Mermaid and I watched Toy Story a few more times than might be medically advised. Sapphire and Smack are fanatical for Woody and Jessie so I needed to scrub up on my quotes. “There’s a snake in my boot!”

I’ve had a lot of time recently.

 

The Ancient Carbon Ritual of the Australian Male

 

Huge expanses of hours and days and weeks stretched out before me with no diary, no calendar, no appointments, no beeps from the phone; just wake up, throw on a linen dress (record was same dress for 5 days) and mooch about the world reflecting on my past, my present and of course my future.

Several days were spent in my Godparents’ backyard sorting through the contents of twelve boxes that represented my life until I left Sydney. Love letters spanned two decades covering passionate missives written by the man I left to move to Paris 7 years ago to the torn pages from schoolbooks listing the seventy reasons I was in love with a teenage boy named after a classical composer. I found the ATM receipts from every single time I withdrew money from my French bank account, in 1992, when France still had the Franc. I found letters in the scrawled handwriting of two dead people; my beloved Gramma and my father. Each time I came across their familiar cursive I wiped away my tears with one of the 78 T-shirts I have kept from the dozens of live shows I’ve been fortunate enough to see. I also found the tickets, hundreds of them, dating back to the 1980’s. I found a lock of brown curly hair belonging to I-have-no-idea-who; the teenage Composer? The French Homosexual? Me?

It must have felt important at the time..

 

Reliving my past was a very cathartic way for preparing for my future. Realising what I’ve lived, where I’ve been, what my hopes and dreams were, that I had achieved my lifelong goal; I lived in Paris.

When I wasn’t shoulder-deep in boxes and garbage and memories and treasures and locks of hair, I was knee-deep in toddlers; Sapphire, Smack and Squeal. Three little people who can say my name, who are ambulant and who are blonde semi-satanic angels. Presents were opened, screams echoed across the suburbs of Sydney and the kids liked their gifts as well.

 

Mum's Car, Kangaroos, Uncle's Front Yard..Australia.

 

There were hours that passed neck-deep in water. I swam, the little ones swam (look at me, watch me do this, I can jump) and the big ones prayed for a precious minute of silent floating free from tiny feet kicking into fleshy womanly thighs (it really hurts). Water has the elementary power to wash away the salt and sweat of months of tears and weeks of panic and anger. Swimming in pools, stomping on wet sand, splashing in puddles; there was water everywhere and I was happy.

Finally, there were the hours, the days and the weeks spent with the people who are my sun-bleached anchors. Tears were shed, and not just by my High Visibility Godfather. I laughed so hard I split in half and even spat out mouthfuls of wine. I was with my family, the handful of people who’ve kept me going. We also ate a lot of food; prawns by the kilo, oysters, roast beef, barbecued everything and smoked salmon prepared in my brother’s new home smoker. I spent time, unscheduled time.

2013 ended unexpectedly and has blown open a world (literally) of possibility for 2014. Two months from now I have no idea where I will be, what I will be doing or who I will be with. Many gained husbands and children and jobs and dogs in 2013; my life has been stripped back to the very barest of basics. But even so, I am excited, I am scared shitless and I’m happy.

Thank you UPAD, AG & Big Al, The Smartarse, the Motherchef, The Professor, The Art-sist-olger and my rightest of arms, Motherbear, for the love and the strength to see me through 2013, ready and armed to fight my next battle. 

And thank you BBC1 for Matthew Rhys in britches.

 

Those arrows singed onto my feet are definitely pointing forward.

 

 

 

 

Roar – Katy Perry 2013

If you ever had the pleasure of my actual physical company, you would know that I take up quite a lot of space. My Germanic heritage, mixed up with a lethal addiction to cheese and wine have afforded me a rather Valkyrian physiology; broad hips, sturdy thighs, thick ankles, an ample bosom ripped from the prow of a pirate ship and a whole 173 centimetres of skeleton coated with pinkish freckled flesh. When I walk into a room, it is with purpose, with intent and with a flurry of blonded curls that move to their very own rhythm, syncopated and staccato, often pushed behind ears that hold a pair of fire-engine red seeing glasses. Add the scarlet Doctor Marten boots, the gigantic red handbag and a habit of stumbling over just about anything (even flat surfaces) and you’ve got yourself the physical equivalent of costume jewellery; shiny and eye-catching, not very expensive and rather inappropriate before sunset.

Funnily enough, my physical presence is relatively unremarkable compared to the colossal gawp that sounds across humanity once I begin to speak.

I’m rather loud, I usually say exactly what I think, I swear like a fishwife (I even invent new swear words to further extend my vulgar vocabulary; c--tstard and C--ty McC--terston being my words du jour) and I am very expressive. I couldn’t lie if my life depended on it and even if I tried, my eyes, almost as large as my mouth, would betray me. I wave my hands around a lot and accentuate my words with extravagant gestures. My words, never restricted to the singular, pour forth in gushes of fury or frenzy or frustration or feeling. I use adjectives too frequently, I LOVE (or hate) everything, and everyone; I’m rarely indifferent and if I was, I wouldn’t be bothered to waste energy to discuss it.

You see, I am, what is referred to as, emo-wait for it-tional.

Over the course of my adult life, this word has been flung at me with the same venom that one might use to describe someone as racist, or homophobic, or Tony Abbott. Being emotional makes other people uncomfortable, sort of like when someone farts at a party and everyone looks at the ground or the ceiling in an attempt to pretend it isn’t there. In my experience, people are more at ease being farted on than seeing someone cry.

My Ruby Slippers.

 

Being emotional is worse than being stupid.

In my experience smart people tolerate dumb people without injury. In fact, surrounding oneself with intellectual vacuums is an effective method of appearing to be clever, think Kim Jong-Un. Equally, if everyone in your entourage has the intellectual capacity of a drunken gnat, they’ll be content to conduct the most menial of tasks, repetitively, without questioning the efficiency or productivity of what they’re doing. Sort of like bees; there’s a Queen, who knows what its all about, and about 1000 other bees who are either banging her to make baby bees, or buzzing around the countryside collecting her food. Queen Bee, smart, other bees, dumb. 

But no one walks up to a stupid person and says “I find it really difficult to be around you; your stupidity offends me and makes others wary of you.” We just accept the fact that some people are smarter than others and go about our business.

Being emotional is worse when you are a woman.

As a man, being emotional means screaming at the football, which is OK, because it is football. Or crying when your bride appears at the end of the aisle, which is OK, because it’s your wedding day. Or being silent when you’re pissed off, which is OK, because you’re pissed off. An emotional man who expresses his emotion freely and openly in the company of someone who is not his life partner is so rare that we came up with a word for it, and that word is gay. Whether or not the man is actually homosexual, emotional expression in a male is so uncharacteristic that it must be a symptom of something else, like homosexuality…or worse still, femininity.

Emotion in women was once named Hysteria, from the Greek for uterus, hystera. Men who wore smart ties and had certificates accrediting their expertise in medicine decided that being crazy must be the biological outcome of being female, so the two have been linked forever. Ironically, the vibrator was invented to cure Hysteria, so maybe Hysteria was simply the result of generations of men who couldn’t identify a clitoris and play with it long enough to induce a female orgasm. 

We also know that women are emotional when their hormones change; pre-menstrual, post-menstrual, any time of the menses menstrual, we can cry at a picture of a puppy, shout into the void because we didn’t crack an egg correctly, we can giggle like hyenas on crack. Women won the lottery when it comes to hormones; the exact balance between oestrogen and progesterone occurs for about 2 hours every 28 days, the rest of the time, we’re emo-wait for it-tional.

An emotional woman is normal, women have hormones rendering them the weaker sex and emotion is weakness. Even the stupid people know it.

To that, C--nty McC--terston, I say that you can take your f**kstick and run into the hills before shoving it up your left nostril.

Let’s forget your conservative missionary and try looking at the world from a reverse cowgirl’s perspective.

Being emotional makes people who are not comfortable with their emotions uncomfortable, like the fart at the party. The farter feels relief from enormous pressure by releasing his intestinal gases upon the unsuspecting party guests. For those of us who are passionate, expressing emotions provides a similar level of calm. If we were meant to keep emotions inside we wouldn’t have tear ducts, or hands that can make a fist or clitorises or mouths or ears.

Tears, squeals, shouts, kisses, high-fives and growls; all of it is unpredictable and spontaneous. Emotion, or as I prefer to call it passion, cannot be measured, or accounted for, or scheduled; every single person feels every single thing differently. Being emotional is one of the few tangible signs of your own unique personality and to some, any expression of individuality can be terrifying. No tall poppies or mavericks or crazy ones here.

Passion and enthusiasm and fire and rage and love and hate are what make us human. If we aren’t emotional, we are bees; fornicating or hunting pollen so we can make more honey, even if when there is already more than enough.

Sitting in front of someone and crying as you tell them how much you love them is not emotional, it is human. Crying, wiping away your tears then getting back to the washing the dishes requires courage, it is anything but weakness. I can’t imagine any human act braver than being honest about how you feel and then being strong enough to accept the consequences.

So in 2014 I’m lacing up my boots and shouting it to the hilltops, I’m going to scream into the chasms below and every single other human can like me or lump me. I love being the way I am. I do take everything personally… and why the fuckstickle shouldn’t I? 

I’m a person.