cat's bum

'show me your cat's bum,' says kapa. he's tousling my hair, scrunching in new layers, prowling round the cut with scissors. catches sight of the other hairdressers in a network of reflections. a twinkle between them.

i realise i'm stony faced in the mirror, bags under the bags under my eyes under the fluourescent lights. resisting the desire to fuss and be fussed over.

'everyone does it, when you're styling them. they can't help it,' he says. it's a trade secret. i summon a pout like i'm six years old and my little brother has tippy-toed into the lounge room wearing my leotard. kapa smiles, triumphant.

'go on then, kapa, show us yours?' says the hairdresser at left angles to me. kapa puts his chin up, tilts his head to the side and goes all marilyn monroe for a millisecond. i see it bounce off the mirrors, but mostly i get the view up his nose. then he's all shy tattoos and product again.

shoppo

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

- TS Eliot via Jess Beats & Ivan E Coyote

batmania

inactive profile

I told a bad lie Ms Fitzy. I ain't 41. I'm 48. Sorry, writes the botoxed catholic who built his own beach shack. i wake to this email. it's almost as bad as killing a native cockroach first thing in the morning.

so many holey lives, captured on swinging bridges or waterskis. in helmets and coffee shops. i look past the doorway, past the glass of red and diamond knit jumper into the bare room behind. follow a smile to the woman cropped out of the picture. scroll past the guy who likes blizzards, the one who promises to take me skiing. settle for a sec on the middle-aged ambo, his face a colour that discloses how often he really drinks. the sadness in the potbelly. soft Donna from dromana hand-feeding a big cat.

I have competing teams batting for me - one says everyone lies about their age on here and the other says that if you tell a lie about something like that, people will think you'll lie about anything. Argh. Anyway, if you can forgive me I'd love to stay in contact. If not, I understand. 

rsvp aint a confession booth, christo. you're best to go to God for your penance.

babushka

'i know because you came from me,' says mum. we're in the car outside a bakery in healesville about ten years ago. finely tuned to the key of manipulation, i'm about to strike out, tell her that i'm my own person, that she can't know what happens in my head.

but then ... i've been with her since the beginning. part of me, nestled inside mum inside nan. babushka.

i was with her on her first day of school, unenrolled because nan couldn't spell her name. i was there when mystery illness put her in bed for weeks. when she won that catholic beauty pageant and spent summer with the nuns in PNG, her ankles swelling as she hit the tarmac. when the head prefect opened the passenger door on his luminous green renault.

and nan, before she set about broiling meat in the kitchen, she carried my mum through her own cold tasmanian childhood. as her kin killed blackfellas and she lost two fingers in the butcher's shop and my grandfather came courting in the picture theatre where she sold tickets every night. 

all the women, tag teaming. reaching back as far back as women go.

ok ok, you know because i came from you. well then you should also know it's time for vanilla slice.

freedom road

'i'm really glad it's opening night, it means i'm that much closer to closing night.'

on alphas

'you need leaders, yeah? otherwise it's just community community community, pfaffy pfaf pfaf.'
- lolli

old (f)arts

'I'm not a tape recorder for other people's stories. the trick is to strip it back and make what they're saying sound like talking. that's the art of it.'
– Helen Garner on writing

psyched for the fete

'i did snow cones last year, but i didn't really know anyone. this year i'm with the drunk dutch pancake girls, should be fun. someone else can squirt the batter and do the icing sugar though, i'll handle the money.'

thinking big and that

after the baptism

'there might be some surprises waiting for you on the other side,' the priest tells my grandfather and excuses himself, leaving pa and his zimmer frame directly under a suspended sculpture of jesus, bleeding in bronze all over himself from that crown of thorns.

mum walks past. is trapped. pa starts shaking his finger at her almost immediately. His eyes narrow, leaning in close. accusing her of something.

nearby nan notices aloud that the priest seemed to escape a serve. but now it's my mum who's copping it and something snaps: she's got enough going on today, least of all this violent church. and we've suffered this mean old man for too long.

he might be 80, but he won't win an argument with me. i'm chunder the third and i've done more work on myself.

don't stop me now

cleaning lady

'the doctor told me i'll never vac again.'

'nan, that's awesome.'

'it's terrible!' she says. her eyes are filling with water. 'i should be able to dust and that, but nothing, you know ... up high or down low. nothing heavy. the first time the cleaner came in, oh i cried! but she's getting better. it's a new house to her and that.'

before she put her shoulder out, nan would get up at 4am and do the ironing. wipe the skirting boards, dust the mantle piece. make the corners uncomfortable for spiders. put the washing on. bleach the bathroom. run the vac over spotless floors. when the sun came up she'd walk to ivanhoe and clean for other people, back in the day.

no wonder she makes short work of a box of liptons.

'so how you keeping busy if you can't clean, nan?' it's noisy at the venuto club. she's waiting for her kingfish fillet, me for the rib eye. she doesn't hear me, or just doesn't answer.

first floor (kitchen)

'there's warm scones over there!'

'i'll cancel the muffin.'