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.

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.