parismarisamadonna

Living next door to Alice (Who the f**k is Alice) – New World 1972

As an Aries Warrior Queen Rockstar Legend, I was born under the constellation named after the Greek God of War. As an Aries Warrior Queen Rockstar Legend, I was also born under the red planet, a red planet named after the Roman God of War. As such, it would be fair to say that my nature is more than a little aggressive, more than a little confrontational, more than a little competitive. It would also be fair to say that I can be a frustratingly evil bitch, single minded in the attainment of my goal, a goal to win, to win at all costs and f**k the consequences.

With our fists in the air like an adolescent boy ready to punch the living daylights out of whomever we please, the great paradox of an Aries is that we are also the first sign of the zodiac, the sign that represents the first two years of a human’s life, infancy. Consequently, there is only one personality trait more prominent than our aggression and that’s our immaturity. 

Immaturity is usually levelled as a criticism. To you, immaturity may be a negative facet of the Warrior character I proudly bear. A character all wrapped in armour daubed in the warrior’s favourite colour, fire engine red. You may think I should spend my time writing one of those ridiculously wasteful personal development plans invented by Human Resources Managers to justify their salaries. Plans listing the ways in which I will do better, detailing the self help books I will read to become more thoughtful, describing the development activities I will complete to make myself a better employee, albeit a less interesting or unique person. 

So get me a rainbow flag with a giant plastic dummy in the middle of it; I am proud of my immaturity.

A childish outlook, a sparkly juvenile haze painted over the ugliness of a world where North Korea might end us all, an overactive imagination and a belief in fairytale wonder and fairydusted magic, are the positive outcomes of my immaturity. I have a lot more fun that most people do, I sing songs and smile. If that is immaturity, then I have no intention of changing.

 

Fairytale Castle..real life price of admission

 

I wrote last week about the Smartarse’s family holiday to Europe. Their holiday included a visit to Disneyland Paris; an adventure requiring more gold than Aladdin’s Genie, more strength than Mulan and more time spent waiting for a happy ending than Sleeping Beauty spent asleep in a forest. The little’uns hardly knew where they were, they slept through the majority of the afternoon, they were too small to go on most of the rides, but who gives a flying fairy foot. I was in Pink Princess Paradise!

Mildly disappointed that I could not actually get into the Princess Pavilion as no one was willing to wait for 75 minutes for me to meet Ariel and crushed with grief that we missed the Main Street Parade, my only opportunity to see Rapunzel, Aurora, Cinderella or even Jasmine, I had to settle for second best and get me some bedazzled merchandise. Sapphire, who is four, was rather jealous of my iridescent bejewelled Little Mermaid Ariel Tiara. She was no doubt less jealous of the fact that I wore it upon my giant head, in public, as we walked around the park for three hours.

The only thing that could make a 37-year-old Aries more excited than spending her month’s salary on a Fairytale Theme Park is her Birthday. 

Born on the day of the fool, a day that usually falls around Easter, people have an annoying habit of giving me Easter Eggs as a Birthday present. Chocolate, unless it is from Tiffany & Co encasing a diamond ring, is not a birthday present. Chocolate is something you give to someone who is sad, not something you give to someone who is childishly ecstatic to be celebrating another year on Earth. 

Motherbear, always ready with a joke at my expense, presented me with a giant basket of Chocolate Easter Eggs on my 21^st Birthday. I feigned happiness for a whole 4 hours before she finally caved and gave me the pair of diamond earrings that were my real present. Did I mention that my birthstone is diamond? Well now you know, there’ll be no excuses for presents that aren’t studded with compressed carbon in the future.

I turned 18 on Good Friday, one of only two days in Australia during which the sale of alcohol is prohibited*. That Birthday was pretty depressing, but I was glowing with my newly minted right to purchase alcohol, buy lottery tickets and vote. Alone, in London, on Easter Monday, this year will count as the most depressing April Fools Birthday for a very depressed April Fool.

It wasn’t meant to be that way. My Tequila Sister (also an Aries) and I had planned a weekend of childishness and alcohol-fuelled debauchery, but at the last minute, she had to deal with a family emergency. My Sunday was spent endlessly wandering the streets of Chelsea broken only by a visit to the cinema. I saw Oz the Great and Powerful and I remembered how much fun I can have all by myself. I only need a fantastical fairytale, flannelette pyjamas and a pair of Ruby Slippers…and enough wine to sink a small ship.

Spending my birthday morning talking to the Motherbear, the Art-sist-ologer, AG and Big Al, trying to recover from a hangover, made the beginning of the day especially memorable. Every single muscle in my body was contracted to prevent projectile vomiting. The rest of the day was made memorable only by the colour of nail polish I chose during my manicure at Selfridges. Yes, the neon blue nail polish was that good.

When you are an attention seeking Warrior Child, your Birthday is the single day of the year that you are guaranteed to be the name on everyone’s lips, to be the first subject of conversation, to be number one. Being alone renders that day completely irrelevant. Being alone most days is tolerable. Being alone on your Birthday is just ridiculous.

God Bless the King of France, Louis XIV.

 

M&Q

 

Having spent the Easter weekend in the Loire Valley with his consort, he had lent me his Pimlico apartment. I arrived to discover that he had created a mini egghunt requiring me to locate the hidden chocolate eggs in his flat.  Louis being Louis, the eggs were Pierre Hermé, no Cadbury or Nestle for France’s Golden King. And then we went to the theatre.

We spent an evening watching M & Q tell the tale of a little girl abused by a man of the cloth and a little boy who never grew up. Written by John Logan, the very same who wrote Skyfall, is it not completely illogical that M, Dame Judi Dench, should play opposite Q, Ben Wishaw, in Logan’s play Peter & Alice. The play tells the true story of what happened when the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland met the boy who inspired JM Barrie to write Peter Pan. Interpreted by a cast of RADA and RSC trained actors led by the Oscar Winning Dame, I was transported to the fairytale worlds of Wonderland and Neverland. I was in awe. I swung from wet eyed sadness to girlish happiness. 

Towards the end, Dame Judi’s Alice peered at us from underneath her aging eyelids and told the audience that despite the pain she endured having outlived her sons, she would continue happily living in solitude and poverty knowing that when she closed her weary eyes she could escape from her black reality by dreaming of Wonderland. She spoke my truth. I was in tears.

Louis and I left the theatre stunned into silence by the sad story of a man who would ultimately throw himself under the Tube at Sloane Square to escape the burden of being the boy who never wanted to grow up but inevitably did. Alice, she lived to see her sons slaughtered in the war, she lived to see her landed husband’s money evaporate into nothing, she survived because she knew the benefits of regular mental adventures to Wonderland.

Call that immaturity? I call it survival of the fittest.

 

 

*The other is Christmas Day, but I have recently learned that these regulations have been lifted in recent years.

Little People – Shönberg and Boublil 1980

What do you call two Marimekko poppy-print handkerchiefs, two long black banana hairclips, two plastic IKEA containers and a home massage kit? 

A Toy Box! 

Welcome to the imaginative world that I created for an almost 3 year old and an almost 4 year old; the two little bundles of blonde hair and blue eyes that I refer to on these pages as Sapphire and Smack.

Who knew that I possessed such a unique and creative ability to transform the everyday objects of a single woman’s home into toys for toddlers? Before you all get overexcited and call DOCS, the home massage kit comprised four wooden objects we renamed the octopus, the train, the spider and the rolling pin…no batteries involved. 

I’ve always been rather proud of my imagination. I can dream up Mr Darcy, Mark Darcy and Heathcliff in a matter of seconds. I imagine the guy opposite me on the train right now is secretly wishing he could whisk me off to the loos for a clinch. I imagine that the foie gras I ate for lunch yesterday is calorie free. I imagine that if I work really hard and do a good job I will be appropriately rewarded. OK, so that last one is a little far-fetched. But I had no idea that my imagination was able to turn the most banal of objects into fairytale creatures and magical games.

 

The MicroChef in action

 

An overactive imagination has afforded me the strength to remove myself from my bed most days for the last two years. I imagine that magical things will happen to me. I imagine that Grimm-ish dreams come true while the frustrations and disappointments of my quotidian mysteriously vaporise. I imagine that my life will get better. I imagine. I hope. 

So when confronted with two children who won’t stand still in the shower, Hey Presto! Two pastry brushes, a bottle of green soap, a handheld shower hose and we are re-painting the shower with magic. But be sure you bend over and paint the floor so that Auntie can clean out all of your nooks and crannies! 

The game that seemed to please the Twinkly Twosome the most was when I put their socks over my hands and made voices mocking them when they were moaning. A game that proved to be so much fun that they subsequently put on each other’s socks and created sock puppet conversations between each other…as each other…

The one game I regret introducing started on the first day they arrived. We went for a walk around the delightfully picturesque area of Paris I live in, the Red Light District. I wanted to be sure they were careful. I wanted to be sure they were careful of Dog Poo. More specifically, I didn’t want Dog Poo walked from the streets of Pigalle back inside of my apartment.

We walked two blocks from my front door before they saw the first one, then a second, then a third. But they didn’t just see it. They hollered at the top of their voices “Dog Poo!” pointing out each of the offending piles of excrement. I then prayed that the tourists we passed weren’t Anglophones, before I realised that there really is an extraordinary amount of Dog Poo in Paris. 

So I needed to come up with a new game and I needed to come up with a new game quickly. Bring on the prize-winning talent of Spot the Chemist.

Chemists in France are easily located because they are all signposted by flashing green neon crosses above their doors and windows.  Diverting the little’uns attention upwards, and away from the canine sewerage, they then spent the next three weeks pointing out every single green cross they spotted. I say ‘pointing out’. What I really mean is hollering at maximum pulmonary capacity… CHEMIST!

The other local landmark they enjoyed locating, Sapphire in particular, was the Eiffel Tower. One rather lovely moment was when she asked me why ‘they kept moving it around’. Having seen the Tower three different times in one day, from three different places, she hadn’t quite understood that it was in fact the same pile of iron, just seen from different points within the City of Lights. 

While it may be the city of Love and Art for an adult, there is not a whole lot for kids to enjoy in Paris. There aren’t the wide expanses of green grass that the kids of London take for granted. They are robbed of the backyards they have at home and there are certainly not enough square inches on a footpath to afford them the freedom to walk unsupervised. Rather difficult work on the joints of my shoulders but certainly even more painful for Sapphire and Smack.

So it was a welcome break to head for England, a car with five seats and the rolling green hills of Berkshire and Warwickshire.

 

Eton..and the boys really wear the tailcoats!

 

A journey that never takes me more than three hours and the convenience of a train that departs from a station 10 minutes walk from my front door was rendered completely soul-destroying by record snowfall in France on the eve of our departure. I’d like to say that watching the eyes of Sapphire and Smack sparkle with delight as the snow fell on the other side of the windows of my cramped apartment made it all worthwhile…but it didn’t.

Waiting four hours for a train to depart is difficult for a full grown adult with a computer and an internet connection. Waiting four hours for a train depart when the interior temperature of the train station is hovering around zero and there are two thousand people who were stranded the day before, now queuing for the same places on the same train as you, is akin to having a Brazilian wax, with an audience. Painful, messy and embarrassing.

We did eventually get to London. We did eventually check in to the luxurious St Pancras Renaissance hotel. We did eventually eat curry for dinner and we did eventually see a double-decker bus (cue the same cacophonic reaction as to a neon-posted French chemist). 

Sapphire had been telling me for months that she wanted to meet the Queen. Well, she got right up against the gates of Buckingham Palace, she stared for minutes into the eyes of the Welsh Guards, and then she asked me, in complete honesty, if they were ‘real’. I had never noticed it before, but Welsh Guards stand still for a really long time. Thanks to her four-year-old eyes, I now know that if you had never seen Welsh Guards before, they could appear to be statues. Statues just like the street artists painted in gold that she had seen a few days before on the steps in front of Sacre Coeur. 

The realness or non-realness of soldiers would prove to be a theme of our 6 days in the England. 

At Windsor Castle, where it is more theatre than actual security of Her Majesty’s Tweed Coated Person, a Soldier stood still for long enough for Smack to jump out of his stroller and approach the guardsman’s hut for a photo. Just as they were side by side, the soldier, no doubt performing his duty, stomped loudly as he performed the required manoeuvres to change his gun from his left to his right hand. Two tearful tots (and no photo) later, I wonder if the soldier didn’t regret his adherence to the rules.

Actual Castle and Actual Blue Sky!

 

We were glad then to visit Warwick Castle, not a castle guarded by actual soldiers of the royal forces but more of a fun park set within a fifteenth century pile of bricks.

Convincing the little’uns that the rather handsome young man in tights at the front gate (read portcullis) was just a ‘pretend’ soldier was easy (even if I had secretly wished the beau bowman would have rendered me immobile with his weaponry). Convincing them that the full suits of armour perched upon armour coated horses weren’t actual people or actual horses proved a little more complex. The following suite of rooms filled with wax statues provided by Madame Tussaud became nigh on Evil Dead-ly terrifying so I ran out the doors with the Tiny Two in tow as their parents spent a little more time inside discovering what has to be one of the most perfectly preserved medieval castles in the world.

After a full six days with no nail polish, no alcohol (aside my lunchtime glass of Pinot Grigio) and my latest bedtime at only 9.30pm (and only because of the Comic Relief Telethon) I knew this was not going to be one of my usual holidays.

At its very heart, the purpose of this holiday was an opportunity for The SmartArse, my little brother, to visit the town that gave birth to our father, Royal Leamington Spa. I had visited over 25 years ago, but he had never had the opportunity to visit himself. 

The name alone, Royal Leamington Spa, always reminds me of my dad; more style than substance. It sounds very grand, but once you peel away the monarchic appellation, it is just another town in England.

 

The very Royal Shopping Centre at the very Royal Leamington Spa

 

Sitting between Warwick, the seat of an earldom with a proper castle, and Stratford Upon Avon, the birthplace of no less than William Bloody Shakespeare, Leamington needed a claim to fame and won it thanks to a spurt of spring water from underground (hence the spa) and a visit from Victoria (the Queen, not Beckham, hence the Royal). Betwixt a proper full-on medieval Castle and the city dedicated to the most widely known and quoted writer in the English language, Royal Leamington Spa is still about as exciting as a Tesco Metro compared to a Tesco Extra. 

 

The house in which he lived..perhaps complete with a hole where the rain gets in

 

I met a cousin for the first time. We drove up the main street, a street my ten-year-old self remembered. We pulled up in front of the house my father called home for the second longest period of his life#. I had seen it before, I was not that fussed, I didn’t really care. There was a single moment that I will remember for as long as live. 

Somewhere along the A439 between Warwick and Stratford, Phil Collins’ Against All Odds started playing inside the Smartarse’s rented BMW.

My father was a more than committed fan of the Beatles. He would not brook any opposition to the axiom that The Beatles were the greatest band in the world. He would however listen to The Police, to Elton John and to Phil Collins. Disciples just below the exalted heights of John and Paul; Gordon, Elton and Phil were his favourites. 

“And there’s nothing left here, to remind me, just a memory of your face”

At that moment, as Phil cried out that line, there were tears in the eyes of both my brother and I; he sitting in the driver’s seat with his wife beside him, me sitting in the back seat between my brother’s two sleeping children.

There was more shouting and poo than reasonable for these past weeks to be called a holiday; but that single moment, a moment of no more than 20 seconds, shared between a brother and his sister, that moment made it all worthwhile.

 

Stratford upon Avon...two houses both alike in dignity..but one town upon one river

 

 

#The longest being the my family home in Penrith, NSW described here

Little Things – One Direction 2012

You might be alarmed that I’ve chosen a One Direction song for this one. You may find it strange that an Anglo-Australian Bilingual Rockstar of Madonnean Proportions even knows the names of their songs. You are now likely surprised by the very high opinion that I have of myself. Let’s be honest, if I don’t say it, no one else will.

Not only do I know who One Direction are, I know that their names are Liam, Niall, Harry, Zayn and Louis.  I’ve spent actual money that I have actually earned to purchase their actual music. In fact, during one rather slow day at work, I spent a good hour watching the YouTube video for Kiss You on repeat; in case you didn’t know, that is the one where they take their shirts off. I can admit it, I’m a big girl; given the opportunity, I would happily take any one of the famous five to the Boudoir Rouge for a few hours of nubile nakedness.

The reason I know who One Direction are is because I bloody well love Pop Music. The reason I can sing Timberlake’s new song end to end is because I bloody well love Pop Music. The reason I manage to smile during the most arduous commutes is because I bloody well love Pop Music. The reason I swing my hips and flick my fingers as I walk is because I bloody well love Pop Music.

In a few hours, I will officially add another digit to the number of years I’ve been breathing oxygen outside of a placenta. At 37, I have lived well over half the time my father lived. At 37, I’ve not achieved either of the big two; marriage or children. At 37, I spend more of my days feeling generally crap about that fact than I do feeling happy.

Let the Celebrations begin!

When so much of your psyche is taken up with blackness and clouds of self-judgement and insecurity, one must make a concerted effort to fill the remaining space with all manner of sparkle and glitz. One must chase away the darkness with blasts of red sequins, choreography and glistening teeth. Pop Music is just one of the many ways I do that.

Last week, my Facebook page was completely taken over by the Red Equals Signs in support of Marriage Equality and in particular, the ruling that was taking place in the USA. Before you read the next line, please recognise that I fully support the cause and cannot understand why the political powers-that-be are wasting their days debating this issue when people with no home and no food die every single day. Surely Politicians have far more important work to do.

So with all due respect to my many gay lovelies and lovers, I wish I were gay. Telling people I was a lesbian seems easier than explaining to every new person I meet that I am single and childless. If I was a lesbian, and trust me, I’ve given this a lot of thought, there would be a completely acceptable reason for my lifestyle. I know that the Religious Right would disapprove, but I don’t hang out so much with Gun Lobbyists so I reckon I’d manage.

I recognise that this may seem very offensive and simplistic, and for any offence caused, I am sincerely sorry. However, no one ever apologises for the harsh judgements levelled at me and my circumstances.

If I was a lesbian, I could argue that it wasn’t my fault. Being single and childless and heterosexual naturally implies that I have failed. Even if our so-called equal society, where a woman can run Australia and a man can work in childcare, my personal situation implies that I just wasn’t able to find a man who would have me. On a lighter note, if I was a lesbian, people might also be less judgemental about the Docs.

Beyond drunken student antics, I’ve never tried to be a lesbian, but I did try to be in a relationship, twice. Twice I tried very hard, at significant cost to my self-esteem, and twice I failed. I gave away too much to men who gave very little in return. I have a knack for making other people feel good, that I why I am successful at the work I do.

I now have a knack for channelling my efforts into things I know I can be successful at, rather than wasting my energy on men who don’t love me, men who are mean to me, men who shout at me and men who think a woman’s orgasm is like mayonnaise; something you ask for after the main course has been delivered, an added extra that will only be provided if the waiter can be bothered to make a second trip.

I chose instead to go out into the world in search of experience and adventure. I decided that if I could not be a wife or a mother I would be a Maverick. I decided that because my mother couldn’t tolerate the contractions a few of hours longer, I would live up to the name that is my birthright; Fool. I decided that I could not beat them but I would not join them either. Instead, I would do whatever the f**k I wanted and bugger the consequences.

In celebration of the inequality of my own situation, I would like my own Red Equals Sign. I would like my Red Equals Sign to be shared with the whole world in support of the fact that despite my best efforts, I never managed to locate a bloke brave enough to take on a strong woman. I never found a guy with the gumption to watch his woman take on the world and win. They were all too frightened to tolerate a vagina and a voice in the same living organism. I chose to live my own life anyway.

My choices have defined my life and my choices have worn their consequences onto my body. My eyes are usually puffy and circled from too many tears and not enough sleep. My belly is rounded by the sugar of too much wine and my thighs dimple under the weight of too much cheese. My right ankle is destroyed because I foolishly chose to cross a street in Paris and my knees bear the scars of choosing to be upright when I might have faired better crawling. Even so, the only outward sign of my age that bothers me are my hands.

Just like gramma's

Sapphire, a four year old who says the most innocent things that hurt like bleeding and blistering hell, asked me why I have so many spots on the back of my hands. As on so many occasions, my answer did not satisfy her curiosity, so I changed the subject to toys and she dutifully forgot about it. 

I’ve thought about it for a few weeks and here, dear Sapphire, is your answer.

My hands have so many spots on the back because I spent too much time in the sun growing up in Australia. I am intensely proud of being Australian, but all the same I moved to Europe in search of adventure. There are spots on my hands because since I was 14 years old I have worked. The spots and lines are the results of years spent with my hands in sinks and troughs covered in Ketchup and Coffee. My hands are spotted because I grabbed at the world and would not let go. My hands are spotted because I choose not to spend the money on treatments to fix them; I choose instead to spend a weekend away discovering a little bit more of the world.

 

En plus..c'est vrai!

 

I also choose to listen to bubblegum Pop Music.

Istanbul not Constantinople – The Four Lads 1953

So I am not very good at keeping my promises. I did say that Part II would come within a week and it has taken me a little more than 2 months. Perhaps coming in a timely manner has eluded you too. Perhaps I should get my mind out of the gutter. 

Or perhaps the newly minted omnishambles that is my life is indicative of the fact that I am becoming increasingly Turkish. I don’t arrive on time, I am incapable of ordering a full-sized main course preferring instead small plates of mezze and I can conduct entire conversations using only my hands and a series of guttural noises rather than actual words and phrases.

 

Wall made of broken, crappy tourist souvenirs. Broken, crappy tourist's gigantic head in the way

 

Since my first visit in early October of last year, I’ve spent the best part of 6 weeks in the dusty urban sprawl that is Istanbul not Constantinople. My going there so regularly is one of the rare benefits of my employment, so I ensure I dedicate as much of my meagre allotment of spare time to discovering the sprawling city that has become my second home. 

In spite of my increasingly Ottoman tendencies, I can assure you that one thing I am not about to do is adopt the eating of Miracle Nuts.

Prior to my first adventure aboard the 7th of the world’s most unsafe airlines, Turkish Airlines for the uninitiated, I had no idea what a miracle nut was. I’d heard of Golden Balls, as in King David Beckham and his ability to turn almost anything he touches into money. An early adopter of all things Fifty Shades, I’d also heard of Love Balls and their ability to render Anastasia Steele unconscious with ecstasy. Proud of my encyclopaedic knowledge of Premier League Football and erotic novels (I bet you never though you would read both of those in the same sentence) I still had no idea what a miracle nut was.

 

Miracle Nuts. Balls that Dazzle and Delight

 

I am sorry to disappoint you but Miracle Nuts are nothing more than the humble hazelnut. What you may not know is that the Hazelnut is indigenous to Turkey. You may also be completely oblivious to their miraculous powers; powers including but not exclusive to the ability to reduce cholesterol, to lessen the likelihood of heart attack and to improve sexual stamina. I no longer suffer in ignorance of said miraculous powers because all of the above is written upon the little foil packet of Miracle Nuts that the beautiful, albeit poorly coiffed# Turkish Airlines Hostesses, distribute to the terrified passengers just after takeoff. With a reputation for such poor standards of aeronautic safety, I am surprised that Miracle Nuts don’t pop out of the lifejacket along with a whistle and a light.

Continuing with the theme of bizarre moments aboard Turkish Airlines, it would be remiss of me not to highlight that the passengers clap, loudly, in unison, sometimes accompanied by cheering, once the plane has taken off and levelled at cruising speed. They also clap when the plane comes to a stop just after landing. Forgive me, but has the pilot just intonated the final high F in a particularly challenging aria? Has he just performed Hamlet’s soliloquy, word perfectly? Has he just jumped 25 trucks on a speeding motorbike? Has he just won the 100m Gold Medal?

I’m going to throw it out there, a pilot completing take-off and landing is not a competition that one hopes he will win. It is not an expectation that one hopes he will achieve. The successful navigation of the aircraft of which he is in control from Point A to Point B seems to me to be the basic requirement of his job. Therefore, something I would not applaud.

 

A couple of people hop on a fast boat to Asia, just a couple

 

In my experience, the concept of security and safety is something that Turkish people regard as an optional extra, a surprise or unexpected bonus. 

The beat-up yellow taxis that speed around the town are all fitted with seatbelts. For reasons known only unto them, the drivers have disabled them all. The clickers are all shoved down behind the cushions. There are no Jesus Handles either. Riding in a taxi or spending the afternoon in a rollercoaster, the only difference is that on a rollercoaster you are forbidden to ride without a seatbelt.

Seatbelts being such a burden on one’s existence, the fasten-your-seatbelt light on an aircraft is also seen as optional rather than requisite. While flying Qantas, should one have the audacity to stand while the seatbelt light is illuminated, you will suffer the humiliation of the hostess calling out your shame to Economy Class. The dulcet tones of Corinne from Queensland tinkle across the cabin, “will the gentlemen in the orange t-shirt please sit down” Corinne must make use of the PA as she is also prevented from standing while the seatbelt light is on. Not so in Turkey. Seatbelt light Schmeatbelt light! You can’t make them sit down, and most importantly, no one, least of all the demure hostesses will insist they do.

 

Nothing is every single only plural. Roadside hardware store. Why not?

 

Safety regulations have an annoying habit of preventing one from doing exactly as one desires.

Zippo Fluid. Shoelaces. Tissues. If you sell it they will come.

 

Inconveniences such as lane markings on roadways, traffic lights at intersections, speed limits and right of way are all thrown aside in favour of one single road rule; honk. Honk, I’m behind you. Honk, I’m beside you. Honk, I’m coming in front of you. Honk, I’m doing nothing at all as we all remain inert, stranded in gridlock, but I will honk anyway just so I’m aware that I am doing something.

While they may not excel at safety, they’ve got the whole shebang concerning food sorted out.

The Spice Bazaar - Captain Obvious.

You would surely know the sugary sweet, gelatinous confection that is Lokum, known to us in the West as Turkish Delight. Is it any wonder that the Ice Queen tempted all those little kids to venture beyond their Wardrobe and into Narnia? Even as adults, an evil horrid woman proffering a hand filled with those little cubes of fragrant, shiny, chewy sweetness would lure many of us, much older than Edmund Pevensie, beyond safety to the other side of the wardrobe doors. Perhaps CS Lewis was also drunk on rosewater when he first considered that there was a world beyond a wardrobe where lions talk and James McAvoy could be rendered more handsome with horse legs.

 

Delightful.

 

Continuing with our sickeningly sweet theme, Baklava* is as prevalent in Istanbul as McDonalds in America. It is the Krispy Kreme of Istanbul. It is no good for you; it drips with grease necessitating an absorbent towel just to grip it. The Turks truss it up in a shop window, oozing and seeping, just as Krispy Kreme have their glass fronted donut fryers tempting you forth towards arterial destruction. Not dissimilar to the way the Good Women of Amsterdam’s Red Light District are suspended inanimate in their own windows, luring witless youths; youths oblivious to the danger beyond that pinkish glow; youths oblivious to the hidden health risk when one consumes goods that have been on public display. I love Baklava myself, just not when it has been exposed to the open air since Istanbul was Constantinople.

 

Food Glorious Food...and sea sponges??

 

Perhaps the Spice Route that once wend its way from Constantinople to Amsterdam carried not just cinnamon and nutmeg, but also a blatant disregard for health guidelines regarding the public display of sweet nothings.

A child of the backyard barbeque nation, I am not at all afraid of open-air food preparation. We are at ease preparing an entire meal, cutting, marinating and cooking on the foldout trays that are attached to the sides of a barbeque. We do this in the privacy of our own homes where the worst-case scenario would be the dog jumping high enough to surreptitiously steal a T-bone. We don’t prepare raw food perched on the edge of a road chock-full of cheap Japanese cars spewing thick plumes of carbon monoxide. We don’t prepare food while feral cats and dogs circle around our little food cart sniffing hopefully at the air. We don’t prepare food without the convenience of running water and a clean bit of towel.

Baklava. Heart attack in a window.

Unable to prevent the surrounding smog and grit from contaminating the food, the Turks can at least prevent the food contaminating them.

This is why the ignorant people of Sydney have dubbed the women from Istanbul, White Ninja’s. The white ninjas are the Turkish immigrant women wearing white aprons and white headscarves as they prepare the staple diet of any music festival groupie, Gozleme. For those of you that may never be lucky enough to visit Istanbul, I am happy to confirm that this tradition is alive and well, not a custom adopted only upon arrival in Sydney. And the White Ninjas even pose for photos^.

White Ninja with Wooden Sword

For those of you who are about to curse me as racist, Ninjas are from Japan which is in Asia. Istanbul is the last city in Europe connecting the rest of us to Asia and now I’ve been to The Asian Side. That was also the most tenuous link I’ve ever made between two paragraphs.

The Asian Side, as the locals refer to it, is the portion of Istanbul that lies on the continent of Asia. It is not the side made famous by the Orient Express and Agatha Christie. It is not the side that houses the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. Nor is it the side where you will find the Spice Bazaar or the Grand Bazaar but it is the side that I have found to be the most bizarre…(see what I did there).

 

Europe on the right, Asia on the left

 

The European Side is home to half the population with only a quarter of the space. Looking out over the seven hills and the river that cuts the Golden Horn from the rest of Europe, the skyline is pierced by hundreds of minarets in front of the hundreds of ancient mosques. The hub of the spice trade, the mercantile crucible described in the novels we’ve read for centuries, the harems, the hammams, James Bond and Liam Neeson running along rooftops, all of this is squished into the tiny portion of Istanbul that is Europe.

Over in Asia, it appears that someone lost the memo about ancient squishing. There is open space, modern highways that slice through expansive green parks. People wander along the footpaths; roadside paved alleys that appear to exist only in Asia. There seems to be less people. The whole of it looks like any modern city, any redeveloped port from Southbank to Canary Wharf, suburbia. The European Side, like Rome, is so very ancient, while the Asian Side, like Shanghai, is so very new.

In my humble opinion, like Yin and Yang, Istanbul is a city of opposites. Europe and Asia. Islam and Christianity. Old and new.

One Dog. 10,000 Tourists. Hagia Sophia.

 

On my most recent trip I was finally able to fight my way past the hoards of Germans to get inside the Hagia Sophia. This curvy basilica was originally constructed as a Catholic Cathedral before being raided and converted into a Mosque many years before white feet ever walked on the red dirt of Sydney. Ataturk, the dude who made Turkey modern just after the diggers were obliterated at Gallipoli (Gelibolu in the local lingo), found the cultural significance of the Hagia Sophia so important that he designated it a museum celebrating the exceptional architecture and the peaceful secularisation of Turkey.

That one colossus of bricks and mortar could be consecrated, as a house of worship for two such opposing faiths is impossible in our modern days of CNN’s jihad. This sad fact rendered the image below so much more poignant for me. The docile eyes of Mary and her Holy Son gaze down upon a mihrab, the altar of the Mosque pointing towards Mecca.

 

Could we, in the days since Saddam and Osama became the Invaders of our Space, ever imagine such a peaceful dichotomy?

 

 

 

Full credit to my colleague, to protect his anonymity I'll simply name him Hot, for spotting this as we walked.

One day I'll get married in that dress...one day

 

 

#I do not trust an Air Hostess who has flyaway hairs in her French Roll…and I am talking about her hairstyle!

*The jury is out as to whether this comes from Turkey or Beirut

^Please excuse any offence that may be caused by such a name. For Australians, it is meant with complete affection and by no means indicative of the nascent Islamaphobia

 

 

 

 

Dear Prudence – The Beatles 1968

February.

Once upon a time, February was simply the month after the summer holidays, the month when you had to go back to school after 6 weeks of sunburn and Pine Lime Splices, the month when summer would fling her final lacquer of zinc across your nose, the month when the year began in earnest. 

In 2006, February became my mensis horribilis. There is not a single human I know made of the stuff required to live through what I lived through that month. Birthdays, deaths and marriages all sardine-canned into two weeks of tears and speeches stamped with Valentines Day, a day that I acknowledge only as “The Smartarse’s Birthday” because my disappointment at not being admired secretly or even un-secretly was dashed early in my life. I am therefore very glad that I lived through that February, seven years ago, shoulder-to-shoulder with the three people upon this earth whom I love most of all. 

I’ve told you before that I am 50% orphan. I’ve told you before that I had a less than perfect parental bond with my father. I’ve told you before that I miss him keenly and achingly, every, single, day. I just wish I could tell him that I am well.

 

My talent for Spectacle is indeed hereditary

 

All the same, today, the one thing that makes me saddest is that so much has happened since his death 7 years ago. So much has happened that would have rendered him so very proud. So much has happened that (just as when he ‘inspected the insides of his eyelids’ during a movie) he has missed.

Maybe they have Internet where he is. Maybe I am a compulsive emotional exhibitionist. Maybe my family will chastise me for these words. Maybe they’ll understand that singing the hurt aloud is how I remind myself that I am not alone. Maybe Prudence* will hear my letter begging him to come out and play.

 

Rockin the Mullet and Mo on London Bridge - 1984

 

Dad, I am sure you are busy wherever you are. You are no doubt ensuring the cornices are mitred perfectly. You are sanding away any uneven surfaces. You are scraping that poisonous glue onto sheets of Laminex. You are screwing, you are drilling, you are sawing, you are measuring or you are chiselling. You are certainly singing the falsetto harmony while you build. AD, who always sang with you, couldn’t sing the higher harmony as well as you could…at least that is what you told us.

Dad, I am sure that wherever you are, they think your jokes are ridiculous; I tried to tell you so many times that after the 3^rd or 4^th iteration, your jokes just aren’t funny anymore. Your older brother, who I am friends with on Facebook, is yet to learn that lesson. As much as it frustrates me, somewhere very hidden away, it also makes me a little bit happy; happy because I hear your voice when he makes his slapstick-champagne-comedy comments on my Wall. 

Dad, the world has changed a bit since you wandered up the long and winding road.  Your little family has grown much bigger and I am a little bit sad that you never got to see it for yourself.

 

She wasn't funny because she wasn't English

 

Sapphire was born 4 years ago. She is blonde, like your son, and she has blue eyes like me. She can sing Metallica off by heart, she dances around oblivious to the true meaning of most of what she incants#. She can sing Metallica for the same reason I can sing every single note John Lennon and the Beatles ever recorded. Her father committed early to one single favourite group. She wasn’t given much of a choice as to what she listened to. When she gets older, she will likely become passionately committed to bubblegum pop music sung by talentless but semi-handsome youths and she will do this only to rebel against her musically adept father. With some luck, when she reaches 13, One Direction will have retired.

Standing beside some of your handiwork

 

Dad, Smack was born a year after his older sister and he bears your name.  He can sing every song he has learned note perfectly. He sings in tune, he hammers out rhythms with his fists; he has a voice like an angel. We are all sure that he will grow to have your talent for song. We are all hopeful that he won’t ask to learn how to play your trumpet. We kept it safe; it is hidden in your son’s garage. We look at it from time to time. I am happy to look, the sound it makes pierces my subconscious even 10 years after you were last able to blow into it.

Dad, Squeal is the most recent addition to our little world. She belongs to the one of us who most resembles you, the Little One. That ‘Little One’ gave us a Little treasure to be cherished just as you once cherished your daughter. She does remind us of you, but we are all glad that the brachydactyly thumb syndrome you passed onto her mother seems to have arrested after just one generation. 

Dad, you would be glad to know that the Queen still reigns glorious and victorious. You would be glad to know that Paul McCartney is still alive and that he has married again. Your parsimonious nature would also be glad to know that this time he had the good sense to have her sign a pre-nup.  Ringo is touring Australia, I don’t know why; I don’t know who would pay to see it, you wouldn’t either. I keep intermittent tabs on the cricket, but Tony Grieg died this summer. Without Tony’s voice, I’m not sure I can continue to watch cricket. Without your coaching when I was still a little ringlet-headed girl, I would not even understand the rules.

Those eyes...

 

Dad, I still love Madonna. You were wrong; she was not a flash in the pan and continues to tour only 2 years shy of your age when you breathed your last. You were also wrong about the Spice Girls and Kylie Minogue. Thanks to your habit of not replacing the cassette in the Datsun Ute for 6 months at a time, I can still sing Elton, Sting and Phil, word-perfectly, at the top of my voice. You might be surprised to know that Elton is married to a man and has two sons, Phil is now more famous for his doll-faced daughter than his own music and I don’t even know what Sting is up to. Maybe that tantric pornographic marathon wore him out.

Dad, in the last year I have visited Warsaw, Barcelona and Istanbul, each for the first time. I have been Here, There and Everywhere.  I go to London once a month. For these reasons alone, I will be eternally grateful to you. Dad, I live in Paris now, just above the Moulin Rouge. You never knew this, and you never will, but when you died, you gave me enough money to take off for a few months and I never went back. The fact that you never legally became Australian has afforded me the opportunity to live here in Europe and travel freely from one ancient kingdom to another. Dad, that you did this, has changed my life forever.

Dad, I circle Parliament Square in a black cab about once a month, and I still quote the Vacation movies of Chevy Chase, “look kids Big Ben”.  I’ve now lost track of how many friends or colleagues I’ve had to explain that joke to. Dad, I have never looked at a black pudding and not called it an Ecky Thump and every time I order a Waldorf salad I wonder whether they will have run out of Waldorfs.

Dad, in a month your son and his family will come to Europe, and together, we will make the pilgrimage to Leamington Spa. I will explain to them that you built the trap door in front of Warwick Castle; we will be there to ensure your legacy lives on in your grandchildren. I will remind your son’s children that the Christmas Carol is “we three kings of Orient Are” and not “we three kings from Leamington Spa”. I will make sure they know that if ever they became short, they can buy a pair of trousers at Selfridges without needing the hems taken up. I will make sure they know how lucky they are not to have inherited your lack of stature.

Dad, I long for the day when I can remember your face and feel only happiness and love. We never had it all sunshine and roses you and me; our relationship was never like Emma’s or Elizabeth Bennet’s. We were more Persuasion you and I, but I loved you all the same.

Dad, I hope you will be most glad to know that after you left, Motherbear more than filled the hole you left behind. She made sure we remembered you with love; she made sure we had time to grieve; she made sure we kept your memory alive. She encouraged me to follow my dreams, something I am sure you wished you had done.

 

We have the same talent for grinning in a photo

 

 

# I was 16 before I understood the true meaning of the “fish and finger pie” of Penny Lane

* My Father was many things; prudent was not one of them, but the Beatles have a limited catalogue so I beg you to forgive my artistic licence 

Holiday Road – Lindsay Buckingham 1983

On the same day that Sydney recorded it’s hottest ever temperature, 45.8 degrees Celsius, I was sitting on my frozen arse in the middle of a street covered in snow. Newborn foals, slippery legs splayed as they attempt to hold themselves upright after months spent folded inside their mother’s protective womb can demonstrate more grace when perambulating than I do. I struggle to walk on flat even ground, let alone a concrete pavement covered in a layer of ice, mixed cocktail style with Paris’s favourite street accessory, dogshit. 

I can’t walk on snow, I can’t ski and I am not at my best when covered in so many layers of wool that I resemble the Michelin’s Man’s slightly fatter wife. I can’t do any of this, because I am Australian. Australia’s unique and sunburned culture gives rise to many idiosyncrasies. One of them is that dogshit is never frozen into snow because dogs live on the back of utes. And here is a photo to prove it.

Dog on a Ute, where dogs should be

 

And so begins the recounting of a family road trip under the Southern Sun, 5 days of fun in our Korean chariot of fire.

Motherbear, the Art-sist-ologer, her Professor, and myself piled into our Korean Family Fun Bus that was so much fun it was actually called a Carnival. Little Squeal was strapped into her baby protection capsule, we were happy she was safe; she was not so happy to be pinned prone into a plastic sweatbox. She also had about four times more luggage than the rest of us…combined. Fruitphone in hand, and Diet Coke at the ready for the Chauffeur, I was chief navigator, Fruitpunch in hand, the Art-sistologer was chief baby feeder, Fruity Expression pasted on, The Professor was chief baby amuser and Motherbear, the only one among us with a driver’s license, was of course, driving. We headed south, we laughed a lot, first stop, Berrima.

Berrima is a speck in the middle of my home state, New South Wales. Berrima exists for a singular purpose in it’s isolated life, it is exactly halfway between Sydney and Canberra, the midpoint of a drive that takes around three hours when one follows the speed limit*, it is the place that everyone stops to take a comfort break. Berrima is essentially a town built around a public toilet.

We stopped, Squeal sucked, we smoked, Squeal was changed and dried and we were ready to leave. Then the Art-sist-ologer uttered the phrase that would bring forth peals of laughter and render me doubled over in tears. “Did you know that Berrima is the home of the Fibre of the Gods?”

Well no, I didn’t, but now I do. And here is the photo to prove it.

 

Fibre of the Gods 

Indeed, Alpaca is a sort of Llama like beast that has become quite the fashionable animal to husband among Australia’s farmers. Alpacas can subsist on a whiff of fresh air, a handful of wheat and very little water. Hence, they survive and in fact thrive in Australia; more so than their thirsty ovine cousins and this fact, obviously, according to the giant sign upon the roof of the purveyor of the Fibre of the Gods, renders Alpacas so much more Saintly than the rest of those dastardly devilish beasts we usually rely on to furnish us with breathable warm fibre. Alpacas? Godly? Well who knew? Especially given that it rarely gets below 10 degrees in central New South Wales, I imagine that breathable warm fibre is somewhat obsolete. 

Further down the road we crossed Wingecarribee Creek, the less contented version of Carribee Creek, and not quite so annoying as Wingecarribee River, all three of which are waterways one traverses en route to the Nation’s Capital.

As we approached Canberra, we passed a giant field. A field bordered by giant wind turbines and filled with cows and sheep. The Giant Field is not so remarkable considering we had spent the last three hours weaving our way down the heart of New South Wales’ agriculture centre. What is remarkable is that this Giant Field is named Lake George. Lake George the last thing one sees before arriving in Canberra. Lake George is a giant expanse of land demonstrating all the characteristics of a lake, except water. Lake George is dry, and has been for two decades. And here are the photos to prove it.

 

"Lake" George

 

The Professor’s Mother, the Professor’s Father and Brother, my maternal cousins, my paternal cousins, the ones who we call double cousins, little people, older people, a few dogs and lots of Lego; 2 days catching up with family in timing consistent with a military training exercise. We stayed the night with my cousin Giggles and her husband Grin, yet another POM who invaded Australia and my family. They afforded us the hospitality of their four bedrooms with air conditioning, pure Australian luxury with enough space for her brother, all of us and two sheepdogs. In Australia we have real dogs, dogs that cannot be carried within monogrammed Louis Vuitton leathergoods, dogs that know better than to shit in the street, frozen or otherwise, dogs that bark like a proper dog should, they don’t mewl like a whimpering adolescent.

Canberra, the Nation’s Capital, is a city that serves two very useful purposes. Firstly, as the home of Australia’s federal government, Canberra is home to the large majority of Australia’s public servants. We’d prefer that they were re-grouped into one statutory municipality. We wouldn’t want them running errant, attempting to rule the rest of us, and that is why Australia is not France. The second is to be the place that provides the rest of Australia with porn and pot. The Australian Capital Territory; home to our government, the Australian National Library, the Australian National Gallery, the Australian National University and the only place in Australia where marijuana and pornography can be bought and sold as easily as apples or oranges.

Not even a State, a Territory

A true Chicken and Egg conundrum; did the public service necessitate the vices or did the red light district give rise to the seat of government? Is Tom Cruise Gay? What is the meaning of life? Questions all with answers that will be revealed by the great philosophers of our distant future… 

After sharing our days with family in Canberra, it was time to head east. We were off to Sussex Inlet, home to Ocean & Earth, one of Australia’s many iconic surfwear brands, and home to both my father’s sister and my mother’s brother, who are married each other (did you follow that?). I call them UPAD, you might call us a very close family, and the truth is it just makes it easier to keep track of cousins and grandparents when two whole families share exactly the same relatives. In Australia we are all about simplification of life’s great problems.

Braidwood's local pub and Australia's gift to the universe, Bogans.

Halfway between Canberra and Sussex, exists another remote town cum public toilet named Braidwood. Braidwood, like its northern neighbour Berrima, is remote, surrounded by open land and dissected by a highway. The main street is filled with cafes and restaurants, never visited more than once, by those passing through, trying desperately to get to the ocean. The road in is straight and dry, the road out winds through hills and forests that have seen the end of too many young men in very fast cars.

 

The Australian National Carriage, a ute

Three hours and a hungry baby later, we came to a stop in front of UPAD’s house. Two Grey Kangaroos stood guard in the shaded front garden to welcome us. I sometimes wonder if bad shit happens to me because I write about my life on these pages. I sometimes wonder if insanely lucky shit happens to me for the same reason. In thirty years in Australia, I’d never seen a kangaroo outside of a zoo. All the same, here is a photo to prove it.

 

The Australian National Emblem, a Kangaroo, best served Medium Rare

 

UPAD have a large house, everyone in Australia does. Apartments in Australia are larger than flats in Europe and farms can be larger than the Netherlands. At UPAD’s, the backyard is divided in two with space dedicated on each side to Australia’s two great backyard accoutrements, a swimming pool and a Hill’s Hoist. And here is a photo to prove it.

 

The National Australian Invention, an apparatus to suspend and amuse small children if you can't afford Disneyland

Until one lives in an inner city Parisian apartment, one has no concept of how hard it is to dry one’s clean laundry between October and March. Until one returns to Australia, one has no concept of how terrifying it is to live in fear of Huntsman Spiders. Life is a never-ending balancing act between pros and cons, but I’ll take the snow over spiders, I’ll eat my foie gras and you can have the dried out beef, I’ll take the dogshitty streets of Abbesses and try to forget that I’ve not seen a sun ripened pineapple since July.

The Smartarse packed his car with Sapphire, Smack and their formidable mother The MotherChef and joined us chez UPAD. For two days, my family was reunited under the one roof. We ate prawns, we drank cold white wine, we played with Lego, we ate too much, we drank too much, we swam our hangovers dry in the pool, we laughed and for a few hours, I was happy.

On the road home to Sydney, staring out at the Pacific Ocean on my right and wide yellowing farms on my left, my mind wandered. It is an odd sensation to be on holiday and partaking of activities that were once an everyday part of my life. I am a tourist when I go home. I am a visitor when I see my family. I took photos of places I’d seen a thousand times before, places that now seem as foreign to me as the Eiffel Tower might have been fifteen years ago.

The strange displaced feeling of my new life, a life my father never knew I had, was summed up in a short exchange with the four-year-old Sapphire who will soon be staying at my place in Paris.

“You know that we eat snails where I live?”

“Don’t be silly Auntie, no one eats snails!”

“Oh we do, and if you don’t like them, you can eat frogs”

“Now you are being really silly, no one eats frogs and snails” 

About 30 years ago I remember my father saying something similar to me. About 30 years ago I remember my mother telling me about a woman who was Queen and the people cut off her head. About 15 years ago I decided to find out if all of those stories were true.

The Pacific Ocean, not so pacific when filled with British backpackers

I don’t regret it.

 

 

 

* You hear that UPAD? Speed Limit.

 

White Christmas – Bing Crosby 1942

If you read this regularly, you will know that I tend to bitch and complain. Everywhere I go, I find something wrong; the people are rude, the traffic is horrendous, the food is dreadful, the wine is too expensive, the cheese is orange, the men aren’t attractive, et cetera, et cetera. I must sound like an ungrateful little s**t, too precious for the populace, to up her own bum to appreciate how lucky she is. Trust me, I value every day, every minute, every sight and every lucky visit to a previously undiscovered city. I just find that I’m funnier when I’m miserable. 

But take note, write it down, drop a pin and call the newspaper; I’ve found a city that is completely perfect and wonderful and pretty and fascinating in every way, shape and form. And that city is Warsaw.

Not a film set...

I’ve spent the last 4 days working and wandering, speaking and sauntering, emailing and emoting. I also spent the best part of a day outside in temperatures that maxed at -10 Celsius and still smiled.  I walked around on frozen ice inevitably falling on my arse at least a dozen times and even then, I was humiliated, embarrassed and bruised, but deliciously happy. I had no data connection on my phone for four days and was deprived of all social media, email, text and maps...and still, I was a kid in a candy store.

Quite simple really, I love Christmas. As a little girl sweltering under the Festive Southern Sun, I dreamed of a White Christmas, a Christmas where Santa didn’t wear shorts, and a Christmas that looked like the Christmas in the movies. I wanted a Christmas with scarves and mittens, with mulled wine and hot cinnamon-y, apple-y things, with snowmen and real icicles not the glass and neon kind.

Impossibly beautiful, Impossible to photograph..

 

So very lucky for me then, that for a few weeks in December, the centre of Warsaw is illuminated from one frozen end to the other. The sun dies just before 4pm and the city centre comes to life. Adults triple their duck down layers; children are sealed into those star-shaped onesies like Maggie Simpson as Varsovians meander along Krakowskie Przedmieście (that is a street name, not the chemical composition of a narcotic). The length of the street dips down onto the Royal Castle Square where one comes upon the Royal Castle, lit up like a giant wrapped present while a giant Christmas tree stands guard in front.  

The first night I saw it, I was gobsmacked; inner children have a way of becoming significantly more outer at Christmastime. But then on the second night, the whole shebang was shrouded with about 10cm of snow, real life postcard style actual snow and the tears welled up. They only welled; they didn’t fall, freezing on contact with my congealed eyeballs. I have never seen anything so beautiful…I am only sad that my photos have no hope of doing it justice.

Stalin's Phallus

I stood in the square, I watched the kids running around in delight, I gingerly placed one Doctor Marten in front of the other as I made my way from one side to the other seeking the solace of my warm hotel room. I face-planted the pavement, I slid on my bum to safety and I was still humming carols to myself in glee.

To say that the Poles are proud of their heritage would be to say that Americans are mildly Patriotic. Someone told me that there are more Polish people buried in Warsaw’s cemeteries than there are alive in the city today. It stands to reason then that the ones who survived have a lot to be proud of. Half the city was wiped out by the crazy Austrian, then the crazy Russian sequestered them behind his iron curtain, then they all got fired up (possibly on the omnipresent Vodka) and took their beautiful city back. 

 

Supreme Court, Supreme Memorial of Warsaw Uprising

 

A combination of colourful dollhouse shuttered townhouses, palatial park-side villas and communist concrete cubes; the small section that I saw was exceptionally beautiful. The whitest of white Churches*, wide-open spaces filled with trees and colossal bronze statues, Nike was my favourite, she just did it for me (sorry). Neighbouring buildings are milestones of diametrically opposed epochs in Poland’s history, but they sit comfortably next to each other separated only by streets, rattling trams and the incessant bustle of commuters.

The Polish are also very proud of Chopin. His name is the very Gallic sounding Frederic Chopin so I am sure I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to assume he was French. After a visit to Warsaw, you won’t be left in any doubt. You land at Chopin airport, visit the Chopin Museum, check out the numerous Chopin statues, listen to the Chopin that is piped through every restaurant or bar, walk down Chopin street, stand on the corner where the Nazis destroyed Chopin’s piano and when you have had enough, throw down a little glass of Chopin Vodka.

Former Communist Party HQ, now Advertising for Japanese Camera..and a palm tree??

If I were Polish, I would be most proud of my language, or more specifically, my ability to speak it. Like Finnish, Polish is made up of a disproportionate number of consonants to vowels. Every single word is long, and big words and gigantic. Even the simple hi, becomes cześć in Polish, that’s four consonants to one vowel. One wonders what Wheel of Fortune looks like in Poland; do they use a full length Football Stadium for the set? Like the Finns born in the bitter cold air of the North, I am convinced there is a very practical reason for avoiding vowels. When it is -12, as it was this morning, opening one’s mouth too wide to articulate an ‘a’ or an ‘o’ could result in catching one’s death of cold. Best to keep one’s teeth clenched and stay warm.

They do fill their mouths though. They fill them with a delightful little pockets of goodness called Pierogi.

 

Pierogi, I picked Spelt to be healthy..HA!

 

Pierogi are large gnocchi type things that are stuffed with either sweet or savoury fillings that are eaten in plural, never singular. Their convenient size, their portability, their capacity to hold little bundles of spinach or cheese or cabbage or potato or blueberries or even mashed up meat, creates variety and excitement. Each time you bite into one, you have no idea what is concealed within. It is a kind of food bingo. Then, if you are still not convinced by the many qualities of the pierogi, you can cover them with sauce! Creamy molten cheese, shimmering melted butter or in my case, something pink and oily called gravy. Thick brown beefy syrup it was not. Small pieces of crunchy bacon and onion fried in oil floating in oil it was. I know, it all sounds like cholesterol on steroids and crack, but when it is cold enough to freeze-your-jolly-good-feller, it was just perfect!

The Nazi’s may have left Poland with the abject horror and the legacy of their war, then Stalin gifted them the colossal imposing Palace of Culture and Science. Neither is especially beautiful, both are best remembered, but not revered. Leaving Poland today, I am smacked by the beauty, the warm genuine embrace of the people and my own personal Bridget Christmas mini-break. 

Dziękuję Polska!

 

 

Handstand, barely clothed, in the town square, why not?

 

*Take note Paris, you can actually clean a building and restore it’s original colour

 

We are young – Fun. 2012

As I write these words, I am sitting inside of a train, a train that careens at rapid speed across the expanse of usually yellow Normand fields that have now become a dull brown. The fields will remain so until after Santa has been and done his thing, until the sun shines down in March, a sun that is so bright it may well warm the buried corpses of the countless young men who lay beneath, the young men who laid down their lives two generations ago so that a girl like me could travel freely between a Kingdom and a Republique.

I’ve been in London about two dozen times this year, mostly for work, meetings, events and interviews for the Fruit Company. The buying and selling of Fruit is such a complex business that they require a loud-mouthed Australian to come in and shake the tree on occasion. I’ve also been lucky, thanks to the modern wonder of the frequent traveller point, to have been under La Manche a handful of times just for fun. Hayfever starring Jeremy Northam was a high point; the Queen’s Jubilee Thames pageant was a rather soggy and wet low point. The family were also in town so I remember a particularly decadent day in a park with about 12 litres of Pinot Grigio shared between just three. Yes, it runs in the family..

I’ll be there but once more, only briefly, as my very little plane connects me to the very big plane that stands waiting at Heathrow. She waits in the ice and the rain and the cold to dash me back to the sunshine for the last two weeks of 2012. This will be my second trip south in 8 months; 2012 has been a bit of a topsy-turvy year…

From here...

This year was marked by two events in the spring, events that fell within a month of each other, events that gave me every good reason to leave France for good.

In April, the wonderful, curly, freckly, herbal, giggly Art-sist-olger, with some biochemical help from The Professor, sprung forth into this world the truly delightful Squeal. She is a beauty to behold, although all but 3 weeks of my experience with her is limited to my making stupid faces over Skype in the hope that Squeal will smile or laugh. So far, all she has managed is flinching, in terror, when I say Boo! I will see her again in a few weeks. She almost has teeth now and has also made friends with the dog, which is a good thing. I’m not sure whom the Art-sist-ologer would choose if forced to keep either one or the other.

May heralded the event I had been dreading since 2007 on that day I first boarded a plane for romantic adventure and oenological decadence in Paris. My beloved Gramma, she who shared the Aries sun with me, she who taught me every single thing I know how to do with a needle (even getting out splinters), she who sponged my reddened sunburned back with vinegar (yeah, I don’t know why either), she who cradled me, chided me and fed me, she who inspired me in so many ways, took her last steps on our mortal coil and wandered off to organise family barbeques in the afterlife. Albeit still wearing pristine white trousers and perfectly polished red nails. 

The death of a loved one, by nature of it’s stamping such a blackened end to something so colourful, is never an experience one would wish to endure more than once. Having watched my own father slip first from consciousness and then eventually, life, I have shed tears, I have rolled on the floor in grief; I’ve been hysterical with anger and red with frustration. I lived that, but I lived it all with Motherbear beside me, holding my hand and forcing me to smile …or at least to eat some cheese and have another glass of wine.

Having returned from Sydney to my bed in Paris only 24 hours before Gramma died, I was sitting alone, on a Monday, in my apartment, wrapped in a quilt and barely lucid when the call came through. It was 5am, I had to face my first day back at work, I had so much to do and all I wanted was to pull the quilt over my head, disappear and cry.

I had dreaded this moment for 5 years while knowing, rationally, that it was inevitable. I wanted to be with my family, I wanted to be with Motherbear (I still do) but hardest of all for me, I was the only one of her 13 living grandchildren not present at her funeral. Considering how much she did for me, it feels to me like an affront. I was offered the plane ticket to go, but Gramma was nothing if not careful, and even she would have considered it a ridiculous waste of money…struth! Funerals are never a party, but we go so that we know that the person is in fact dead and not wandering the moors in a stupor. Seven months later, I am still not sure I believe she is really gone.

Thankfully, I am your glass half full kind of girl…I do my very best to focus on the positive…or at least drink it out!

2012 has been a spectacular year. Like all of the best Effing Rockstars, (Kylie, Madonna et al) I like to release my Greatest Hits just in time for Christmas. But to ensure you’ll buy my rehashed list, there is one brand new hit that you haven’t yet heard. So hear they are; M The Showstoppers 2012

• Ringing in the New Year in Evian with Louis XIV, filled with Raclette and Champagne, singing Disney songs and not caring about who heard or saw, because I was with Louis and I love him, just as a good Queen should
• Spending a summer’s eve under the stars with Braveheart, at Stade de France, watching in awe as Her Material Majesty strutted her taut and terrific stuff, then flashed her boob, for the Paris audience of the MDNA tour, tickets that were purchased for me by the four amazing creatures I used to manage; The Bruce, La Franglaise, Heidi and Bjork
• More Saturday lunches than I can count with Matt, Charlotte and Seb at Le Miroir, the Scallops with Truffles in Spring will go down in my history as one of the finer meals I’ve eaten, ever
• My first trip to Istanbul, my first trip to Barcelona, both religious experiences
• My first Italian Wedding, even if I still think he should have married me
• The Hollywood Costume Exhibition, mecca for a woman who loves red shoes
• Watching Gotye dance and sing with the Body, watching the Body dance and sing to Gotye, watching me say he is Australian to any human within earshot
• Snow in Rome, for the first time in 27 years
• The weekend before my Birthday, with New Girl and Braveheart, feet dangling over the edge of the Seine, a chilled glass of Rose in one hand, a baguette stand-in microphone in the other, a Gleeful experience for the whole of Paris
• Dinner with the Body and the Fashionista at Le Patio, a dreadful affair, but we always do it with more international style than just 3 French girls
• Reunion drinks with the Microchef and Special K at the Royal in Paddington, it had been 7 years, we had a lot to talk about
• Soldier Says. That is all
• Sitting in a hotel in Turkey and clapping during my breakfast. Then watching the whole breakfast room start clapping, I had just told them that Obama had won 
• The feeling of my mothers arms, wrapped around my shoulders, at that first moment when I see her after 22 hours in the air. That moment when I wonder why I ever left.

 

To Here..

The one thing that has remained unchanged this year, like the one before and possibly the one to come, is that I’ve walked this earth hand in hand with only my insane alter egos and myself. However, that of which I am the most proud, the one thing that keeps me together even in May when I wanted to chuck the whole lot in and fling myself from my bedroom window, the force that keeps me fighting like the Arien Warrior I am, is that I am loved.

My friends, who form the cast of these pages, ducking in and ducking out to play their different roles and each in their own way support me as I gradually descend into the neurosis of woman. I only hope that is some small way I’ve been able to play a part in their lives as well. And even if I do wear red shoes, I hope I am not the Wicked Witch.

Finally of course there are my family, the unseen backstage crew, those who charge me with enough electricity to keep the red light turned on even during the darkest hours. They also tease me about being melodramatic and a drama queen, which given that last phrase seems entirely unfair.

I’ve had a couple of weeks touring the countryside this year with AGBA and the aforementioned Saturday brunch with Cuz and the Gang. But most Saturday mornings, before many of you have even lifted your heads, I’ve spent an hour or two singing nursery rhymes with Sapphire and Smack, whistling at the dog and remaining calm while the Smartarse and the Art-sist-olger take the piss out of my every word. And of course the hours spent recounting the week that was with Motherbear, showing her the clothes I’ve bought, discussing the latest issue of Empire Magazine and more than a few tears.

After such a tremendous success in 2012, I did not chuck it in. This Aries Warrior is fortunate to have an exceptionally skilled battalion with her to see her to victory in the next campaign. And who knows? 2013 may even bring a Gallant Knight to the fore so that the Warrior can take an hour off and get her nails done.

 

… we’ll see...

Magical Mystery Tour – The Beatles 1967

I am absolutely exhausted. 

My eyes are sore and red from the smog, my skin is putrid with sweat and filth, my insides are knotted half in anxiety and half in a violent reaction to something I ate and my feet are swollen with heat and the pressure of having been upright for an eternity. My head is swimming with the smells, sights and sounds of a magical place and my heart is heavy with hopes that I could not have stayed a little bit longer. 

I’ve just returned from a weekend in Istanbul, my first time ever in Turkey, my first time ever in a country that could be remotely described as Arab, which it isn’t, but I’m not really sure how you could describe it. My first time ever in a place that is so very different from anything I’ve seen or known, that I’m really just a bit shell-shocked.

Tea, The Bosphorous, Sunshine and the most decorative menu in Europe

Turkey is known as the cradle of the earth where The East meets The West, a place where you’ll see crescent topped minarets pick at the hazy blue sky just beside Orthodox steeples and modern glass skyscrapers. Where women can be completely shrouded in flowing black chiffon or decadently exposed in denim micro shorts and stand side by side in the queue at H&M. It is a place of paradox, of conflict and chaos, but also of soothing calm, all scented with the exotic spices evoking the colossal wealth and smoky souvenir of the Ottoman Empire.

Istanbul was the destination of the Orient Express, which in the times that preceded commercial air travel was the steam powered missile into the exotic East, that is, if you made it past one of Agatha Christie’s murderers. Having spent such a short time moving about the huge expanse of the city, I’ll describe only that which I did see, and try to fill in the gaps when I (hopefully) get to go there again.

There are people everywhere.

Genuine Fuqari Rugs..

Despite being an Australian, used to plenty of personal space, I’ve become accustomed to being jostled, being pushed and sharing body odours with men in small spaces thanks to many hours spent in either the London Underground or Paris’ Metro. I don’t like it, but I tolerate it for a good cause; like at a Madonna concert. Being surrounded by people and unable to see beyond the head of the person in front of me makes me nervous and anxious; so I’ve spent three days feeling like I might spontaneously vomit.

The oppressive volumes of people come in all shapes and sizes. There are tourists everywhere; their beige Utility Vests only outsized by their phallic telephoto camera lenses. Dissimilarly to Paris, Istanbul is a favoured destination of not just your average American, eager to see where their Thanksgiving dinner bird comes from, but also hundreds from any one of the neighbouring Stan’s made famous by Borat. There are so many different nationalities, all trying to discern the unique coded messages issued in the native Turkish, that everyone ends up speaking the same physical language, articulated only in gesture and action, something like Monty Python slapstick mixed with Toddler. 

The Turks themselves are generally dark, with even darker hair and ebony eyes…and incredibly handsome in the male variety. They are like an especially virile race of Italians, sometimes with shocking blue eyes set into the chocolate skin that would set my knees a trembling like a virgin debutante of the 1890s on her Grand Tour. The women are all flowing long hair, at least those that aren’t wearing headscarves are. I have long hair and am rather proud of it, but given my experience, the even greater lengths of the shiny hair on these women must wreak havoc on their shower drains and the sewerage systems of Istanbul.

White Gozleme Ninja .. only Australians will understand

Everything is in groups.

The Tourists huddle together like gaggles of lost geese, all following a raised umbrella or a waving flag. The locals also appeared only in groups, often groups of men, or groups of women, rarely mixed, and rarely just two. Safety in numbers appears to be the order of the Turkish day, but it goes beyond just pedestrian ambulation. 

Sitting on a bus, or in a taxi, I noticed that commerce happens in groups as well. On one random street, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, every single shop sold power generators. I have never seen a power generator for sale in my life, but I know that is what they were: generator is the same word in Turkish. When I say the whole street, I mean 10 shops, one after another, all selling the same thing, like “Power Generator Avenue”. It was a phenomenon that would be repeated many a time as I discovered the city. I saw Chandelier Street, Hubcap Road and most memorably, Water Filter Boulevard.

Power Generator Avenue

Beyond the shops, grouped in safety and similarity, were the cars. I’ve never seen so many vehicles moving together in such a small space since I was last in a dodgem car, which by the way, is the best analogy for the road rules. There are lanes marked on larger roads, but in the middle of the city, if there are 4 spare metres, a car will slip in. If you want people to know where you are, or where you are going, the orange blinker lights are superseded by the sound of an angry horn. Traffic circulation, much like inter-human communication, is managed by sound and gesture, rather than by a common legal code.

I think that for every Turk I saw, I also saw a car and a Taxi. Every Turk of every age could sit simultaneously in a passenger vehicle and a taxi and there would still have been a seat left for me. The traffic is horrendous, every trip to every new destination a trial for the senses and the weak stomach that would culminate with the ride to the airport.

 I’ve never truly been afraid that I was kidnapped until the day a taxi drove me to Ataturk Airport.

Barrelling along the highways at such a speed as to make Superman hurl, I was pretty much ready to give up the Doner Kebab I’d eaten 2 hours earlier. Then we hit a traffic jam. With the use of his waving hands, my Schumacher-esque chauffeur then explained that we were taking a detour, a detour that would take us so very far away from our destination I became convinced I was the subject of the new Liam Neeson film based in Istanbul, Taken 3 – The Red That Was Stolen In October. After 20 kilometres of additional route, we circumnavigated the traffic jam, and possibly the whole Black Sea, and arrived at the airport.

Guess what the number one best seller was?

*I wrote this a month ago but could not publish until this week... I’ve since got a new job, returned to Istanbul and discovered even more. There is just so much to say …Part II tomorrow

Yes..I cried when I saw this...

Summer Paradise – Simple Plan ft Sean Paul 2012

Spending four nights staying in a Very Posh house that featured in a Very Posh lifestyle television show that is run by and filled with Very Posh English people. Eating your body weight in beef, for lunch, and then for dinner, for six whole days. Wandering the gilded halls of Versailles at exactly the same moment as 1.5 billion Chinese people. Visiting a ghostly abandoned village whose entire population was assassinated at the end of the Second World War by bored Nazis.  Touring a small picturesque village perched in a valley somewhere between nowhere and very far away, a small picturesque village famous for that forgotten wonder of modern home decoration…tapestry…and even taking a guided tour of local tapestry factory. Why of course! It is M’s summer vacation diary.

 

Versailles, my other home

Many of my friends take two, if not three, full weeks in the summer and disappear from Paris. Those with small children will undoubtedly stay within the safety of France, descending upon the sandy southern coasts like so many large sea birds, their sunscreen lathered younglings clutched safely under a wing while they search for just enough sunshine to see them through winter’s cruel, grey pallor. They will pack up the car and move their entire life south, rent a small beachside apartment and remain eerily absent until exactly 24 hours before schools begin the new year and the entire nation winds it’s way back up to the landlocked island that employs half of the working population of France, Paris.

My younger, cooler friends, not yet weighed down by more mature accoutrements like a spouse, offspring or acute anxiety, throw a couple of T-shirts into a rucksack and head to Thailand. Once there, they suck down radioactive cocktails, swim with all kinds of poisonous objects (and some fish) and maybe even risk Hepatitis C to get a hipster tribal tattoo. I’ve never been one for these kinds of holidays; I’m not Geldof–y enough to wear the same t-shirt six days in a row and still look edgy and cool rather than unwashed and semi-Neanderthal.

 

Station sign painted about the same time as most of locals

My holidays are largely made up of spending stupid amounts of money to sit in a flying torture chamber for 24 hours and then sleep on an airbed for 2 weeks before sitting in the flying torture chamber for another 24 hours now weighed down by another year’s supply of Vegemite and Libra Fleur Tampons*. The payoff is lots of time spent in the company of the exceptional wit and intelligence of Motherbear and the exceptional volume and stickiness of the three little people who call me Auntie. So it was a welcome delight that my Godparents should risk the pricey, flying torture chamber to pay me a visit in Paris and take me south for a mini break.

My summer holiday was a full four days off work (just four) and a total of ten days in the company of AG and BA. The good thing about spending time in close quarters with family is that you can bitch about work without fear of retribution, drink as much as you want without being judged alcoholic and feel that all too rare warming glow of unconditional love. To ensure that I remain high on their list of unconditional love, I’ll not go into detail about what may not be quite so fun about travelling with family. They only saw me lose it once. They looked politely away as the f-bomb was rapidly and loudly dropped like a jar of marbles hitting a glass table; an expletive explosion the result of the single occasion I lost my temper. 

 

Chez Jallot, Lost in the Limousin

The advantage of not planning your own trip and blindly following others is that you just may just happen upon some rare moments of beauty; rare moments that would never have figured on your own bucket list, rare moments that completely take your breath away.

One of those moments occurred when I first clapped eyes on Oradour-sur-Glane. I’ve watched, seen and heard my fair share of glum WWII history. I spent a year with a French family that had been refugees from occupied Normandy. Almost everyone here has a grandparent who remembers the shame of the Swastikas hung over the Rivoli Galleries and Motherbear has read every written word about the Holocaust. Even forced, repeat viewings of Schindler’s List could not prepare me for what I witnessed in this tiny village just outside of Limoges.

 

The skeletal remains of a village

German soldiers wiped out the entire village for reasons that still remain unclear. They killed everyone and burned the village to prevent evidence of their crimes. Horrified by what remained, the few remaining residents decamped, and ultimately set up a new village on the left side of the hill, the skeletal remains of the destroyed buildings have become a charred eulogy to those who died. Such a morbid souvenir of recent history is hardly the stuff of summertime fun in the sun, but it is definitely worth a visit if you are passing by.

 

We were staying in the region around Limoges known as the Limousin, a little known speck of France just below Paris. A region largely forgotten except that they raise France’s entire output of juicy, succulent, delicious, criminally expensive beef. While travelling around this populated, picture-postcard agriculture region it was hard to forget that the entire Limousin is as big as one average cattle station in outback Queensland, owned by just one single man. Australians consider themselves experts when it comes to the production, slaughter and preparation of our national dish, beef. Our beef is as hardy as a Landrover, raised in desert conditions with very little water, grass or shade. The Limousin cows that we saw dotted all over the pastures live in comparatively verdant luxury. They dine all day on luscious grass, sit underneath giant chestnut trees and even wander into ancient brick barns when it gets cold. That must be why they taste so damn good.

 

Aubusson, the Tapestry capital of France...now you know

What was rather disconcerting in this idyllic lost corner of France was that I never really felt like I was actually in France. The house we stayed in was owned and run by an English couple that featured on Grand Designs. Their tele-reali-notoriety being their prime source of custom, everyone else that was in the house with us was also English. Sitting down to the evening meal, prepared by the venerable Deni, the lady of the house, one could not help but feel a little bit Downton Abbey…all very posh English conversation with very posh English people and very posh Australian food.

Prepare yourself for the irony of ironies.

 

AWW's Pork in Orange Sauce

Here in the perfect little countryside farmhouse sitting in France’s gourmet breadbasket, the English owners serve French style food that they prepare following cookbooks from the Australian Women’s Weekly . The food was undoubtedly very, very good, what it wasn’t, was French. They would go on to explain that the AWW allowed them to cut a few corners and still produce delicious food. Not contented with serving quasi-French food redesigned by Australian housewives, Deni went on to explain that she did not purchase fresh bread…because French bread isn’t very tasty. She would instead serve defrosted commercially produced bread purchased at a local supermarket. No small wonder then that the French think the English are the culinary equivalent of Genghis Khan.

As our journey continued South, and we came to a modern wonder of civil engineering, the English would get their own back; the Viaduc de Millau.

 

Sir Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, his real name, built that...

I am not one to get overexcited about a bridge, or anything remotely techy or engineer-y except for Lego. But I have to say; this is one impressive span of steel and cement. I also have to say, it was designed by a Pom, the same Pom who designed the Gherkin in London, Sir Norman Forster.

 

So maybe the French have mastered how to salt and oil a perfect piece of beef…but the Poms have built a pretty spectacular bridge to get over it.

 

 

Jogi, the Hovawart of Chez Jallot, German for best dog ever

 

* It is a little known fact that I’ve never bought tampons in France. They just aren’t the same. So now you know.