Pairing up

A night fairly long ago, this old broad and fellow single team mate (you know who you are!) decided to venture out into the sea of singledoom. We'd purchased, with our hard earned, tickets to a singles' night - it should be fun, fun, fun! The tickets certainly said 'fun' and the email enticement suggested a lot more than fun. And who were we to argue?

So the eternal optimists ... ventured forth.

Firstly going to a singles night, is portentious. Single in, single out. Not that I usually enter such a deal with unadulterated blinkered optimism, I mean I was there but it felt more than a little forced, many would say contrived. Of course, it has to be, it's a singles' night and let's face it, coupled folk our age, anytime after 8 of an evening, should be found as a curled up couplet under the duvet with their respective teeth in matching glasses on the bedside table. And they say romance is dead ... but I fast forward too soon.

The entrance to the 'venue' had been singlefied. Hope was draped sniggeringly over the entrance as fairy lights twinkled in feigned delight. It teased that it was offering all the fun of the fair ... sort of. Fun, although touted and exclamation marked on the ticket,  proved to be elusive. The fair analogy was a complete flight of fancy.

Walking into the bar, I immediately felt like I was the audience of one to a huge, but not very well sung, Welsh choir. As my head turned to survey the crowd, I was aware I was one of the tallest in the room. The crowns laid bare before me, proved that shallow-ness was not the sole domain of men. 

Then fear gripped me, as the first person to catch my eye, looked like a kindly soul but was also probably older than my dad. As I sipped on my 'free' flute of champagne, my eyes darted around the room trying not to meet anyone's gaze, which I agree is not probably a good strategy at a singles' night.

Hope ebbed faster than the champagne left the flute.

Devising an exit strategy, I found my wing-man and we waddled out, the curtain of hope long gone as we wandered back into the valley of singledoom.

We found a taxi in the crisp clear night, and zoomed off along the motorway, and homeward bound. 

And there it was, a singles' night. To be fair, I suspect that many of the singles were having a whale of a time, but as a fellow whale, on that particular night, my preference was beached.

Bedroom Olympics

Well, I've just finished E L James Fifty Shades of Grey, I'd like to add that it was just after I'd finished Hare with the Amber Eyes and a fantastic biography on Margaret Mahy, both literary tombes.

My expectations were as high as those of me of winning gold in any Olympic event in these, or any, past or present, Olympic games. Which might lead you to ask, why read it at all? Well, the beast of curiosity was lapping at my feet, and I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. I'd heard about it firstly as mummy porn.

Interestingly we don't hear much about daddy porn, and the term irks me as it's somehow trying to downgrade and ridicule women, and this is of course another story. Preceding something parental to something supposedly raunchy word is akin to brewer's droop. Goodness, there's a huge industry spawned for men, straight and gay. Why not porn for women? And if it's making mega bucks why is it smirked at?  Suspect this is a bigger discussion, and I have little to contribute at this stage.

Anyway, so there was the explosion of this book, an e-book doing wonders having been written by an ordinary woman. Well, I'd say now that E L James is no ordinary woman. She's a very, very wealthy ordinary woman. I watched an interview with her and I thought, "good on you girl". What I find most extraordinary, is that she wrote the book and her sons know she wrote it. My two were horrified when they knew I was reading it, but once I'd told them of its success, they were quick to think of appropriate titles I could rename my children's books for a bigger and wider audience.  

Roll up a few months later, and in a small suburb in Auckland, a group of six women are gathered around a table, and the conversation finds its way to James's book. Surprisingly, all of my bright, beautiful friends were reading it, ordered it or were about to read it. At that stage, I was the only one not in its thralls. I'd have to borrow one of their's, and I did.

So it's Sundary morning and I've just finished it. I enjoyed it, it's an easy, entertaining, and titallating read. I think if there were Olympics for describing orgasms, then James would most definitely be a contender whether or not you're taken in by the fantasy. And rightfully so. If you have a spare minute, you could use this as a writing exercise. Might be fun or excrutiating, it's certainly not easy.

And no it's not a literary tombe and won't be put on the 'show off' bookshelf' (you know the ones where Dickens, Freud and Wilde fight with each other on the shelves). And yes, I'll be reading the next one but I have an Austen and Dickens' waiting in the wings at the moment.

A leap of faith

Admiring the little Olympic troll reminded me of something that happened in what seems like a million years ago, except it's probably not quite that long as, to be honest, I've never heard a dinosaur fart.

Anyway, when we were little, Mum used to flutter and flounce around in her psychedelic mumus, the hemlines sometimes catching on a platform sending her into a psychedelic spiral to the floor. Hair was big, sunglasses were bigger and style was interesting (and even more interesting that this 'style' has since been stolen by later generations).

Mum used to put on dinner parties. These were rather grand affairs for suburban Auckland. Remember, in the seventies McDonald's hadn't reached our shores, our idea of an Italian meal was Pizza Hut and the North Western motorway only reached Pt Chev. The table would be piled with food of all shapes and sizes. Asparagus entombed in bread, curried eggs, shrimps swimming in mayonaise and all manner of things that I can't remember  the sight of, but I can recall the smell.

To be fair, we didn't usually see the set table as I don't think we were trusted not to pick. But we did see the debris the following morning, and the elegance had exited stage left by the time we got up. Children were tucked up in bed on dinner party night - we were not the invited guests.

On one particular night, the guests had arrived. Included was our most favourite of guests, a very good friend of my mother's. He was a lovely, kind gentleman, always with a smile at hand for us. He would pop down to see us before the party began, and would have a little gift, the most memorable being a tiny farthing he gave to me.

This night, I decided that my talents should be shared. It seemed such a shame to only offer this talented performance to a sometimes grumpy immediate family audience, who tired of 'creativity' quickly.

As soon as the guests arrived, I retrieved my props from beneath my pillow, using a bit of forethought, I had my 'costume' on under my pyjamas.  Waiting until the noise had died down, I shot out of bed, arranged myself and flew upstairs.

Throwing the door open to the new lounge, I launched myself into the room. All eyes befell me. Their gazes at best appreciative, well all except for perhaps Mum's, and maybe Dad's.


Flying around the room, my graceful leaps were not exactly applauded but you could've heard a pin's flea drop if the foundations hadn't been shaking so much. Once the routine had concluded, I bowed and returned to my bedroom. Removing the tennis balls, I put them back under my pillow and put my pyjamas back on over my tights. As far as a ten-year-old me was concerened, it was a performance to be proud of.

I did Rudolph Nureyev proud. 

As I nodded off to sleep, I heard Mum explaining to Mons (Monsignieur to others)  that I'd been to two ballet lessons.

There was no good reason for any more.

Alas that was my very first, and very last public performance. 

Olympian trolls

It's the Olympics. You'd have to be an ear-muffed troll, living in a very deep, dark cave to not have been bombarded by the brightly lycra'd bodies careering about our screens in all manner of smarty-alecky ways. Impressive is the ease that folk duck and dive elegantly off towering diving boards or flit over padded mats with pert bottoms perpendicular to the floor.Blah, blah, blah.

Click.

Enough of that. Who wants to be made to feel athletically challenged while dipping your biscuit into your tea? Biscuit dipping (Tim Tam favourite, chocolate chip a close second), now there's a sport ...  you try to lower the biscuit in at just the right depth for just the right time, so it doesn't break off and ruin your cuppa. Now that's skill, real life skill. It's something you'll still be doing when you're 92. 

The Olympics last a couple of weeks, and it's basically two weeks of solid guilt infusion. You should be on that bike, it shouldn't be a spider's condominium. Where are your sneakers? What about your togs? Shoulders back, bum out. What happened to those abs and pick up that pelvic floor.

Righty ho, must be time to pop the kettle on.

Wonder how many golds the Kiwis will pick up?

Beaming

Another four years have passed, and it's fair to say my Olympic dream is well and truly over - assuming that the wick had ever realistically been lit. Flickers of hope had been at their brightest during the Nadia Comăneci years. Let's see (quick diversion to ask Mr Google). Mid-seventies, I must've been about 12. Twelve and full of Olympic hopes, I'm not sure if the dreams were colour or black and white, as I can't for the life of me remember when we got our first colour telly

Flicking ribbons around the living room, sticking my chest out and thrusting out my buttocks I was the Kiwi Nadia, I was the Kiwi Olga. I was a  natural. Unfortunately with a distended puku which had nothing to do with hunger, I thumped and thundered around the house. Dad might've made the odd comment about foundations and the house but parents are prone to exaggeration. I should know, I am one.

The particular event I thought I was born for was the beam. Not sure if it's called the beam, but it's that big bit of wood on legs. My beam was the back of the couch. It did not fair well, and I think in respect for the couch, I will not divulge any further details.Suffice to say, it was the never quite the same again. And I wonder how many couches around the world faired over the excitement of Nadia's achievements.

So now, we look agog at the latest London spectacle. We ooo and arrgh in all the rights spots. It was after all a very oooo'able and arrgh'able event, it is worth the accolades and comparisons.

But where did the last four years go, and as I have no gold clinking together to show for it, what has happened to that great big bit of time? And where will we be in 2016.

I wonder what Nadia is doing now, and if she ever wrecked a couch? I'm off for a little cyber bothering.

Weighty issues

Weightloss is a weighty issue. I've been here before, the lamenting of the time spent on the scales, that one piece of guilt laden chocolate, the obvious culprit for piling on the extra 10 kilos or so.

What's a little more disheartening is when we were youthful, wearing skin that fitted snuggly and when our face hadn't become a cartographer's dilemna, if jeans didn't quite make the journey across the hips, a quick dance around the room ensured they'd be able to complete their journey.

Not any more.

No, as age has pounded the body and pressed excess baggage where it never belonged or could possibly fit before, it has also sets the metabolic rate to self-destruct. Now, we no longer lose weight to flaunt our bodies in a bikini but it is more as a pay-it-forward kindness to our pallbearers. Who wants to think you may have helped to cause a back injury as you were on the meander off your mortal coil? Who wants to leave that sort of legacy? Remembrance can be a fine thing, as long as the memories are not only activated by a visit to the physiotherapist.

Yes, there is the notebook lying beside the keyboard. It records my dietary entries, every crumb, every slurp. It doesn't make interesting or happy reading (well, not for the chicken anyway). It will only be a month or so till it resembles a War and Peace tombe. 

And then in some faraway country children are mere bags of bones, and in neighbourhoods not so far away, children will not have any breakfast. How can the calories we deplore so much be deployed to those in need of them?

I wonder.

Apostrophe faces catastrophe!

Yeah… yeah… there are more important things to worry about… poverty, war, depravity. How can one person possibly change the world when it’s been trodden on by so many millions of feet, pooped on by so many birds?


So why not help something you can get a handle on? Something you can help one stroke at a time. It might not be a whale or yellow eyed penguin, but it is abused and misused … and let’s face it, needs our help.

First you need to find one. Apostrophes can be found loitering in sentences and words and billboards and in newspapers and on fruit shop sign's. Sometimes theyre' nestled gently between two compromised words, holding them together, making perfect sense in an imperfect world.

Before I venture to seek and find this grammatical trophy, its' time to have a little look around to see what I can find …

Please send through any mistreated, abused or missing apostrophes. Its up to us, think of how many syllables the apostrophe has saved us, how much time we have been spared?

Next, the vowels, the misappropriation and so many missing in action ... it's up to us, one key stroke or pedantic rant at a time.