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. 

The others

Is it just me, or is the world starting to shudder and falter and ... and ... well, who knows?

We tut and sigh when waters wash over the poorer, and lives are squandered in overcrowded cities when the earth has a tantrum. Some of us might even think that it's for the best. How can they be happy without a latte or 42" screen?

We dip into our wallets reverently, but not usually at the expense of our lifestyle or at the thought of necessarily improving somebody else's. It is often more to do with the salvation of our conscience than that of the less well-heeled masses.

What of the cosy environment we have created for ourselves? The temperature is right, adjustable. We can manage well in our cosified human nests. The fridge is full, and food and water is plentiful in the households we know. We can watch in comfort, as the Third World falls into our living room, ravaged faces and skeletal bodies. It can be turned off.

Interesting, poverty from suburbs much closer to home can hardly be seen through the curtain of well-heeled suburbandom - it's too hard to see through the smug. Opportunites galore in Godzone, opportunities for the taking, pick them off the opportunity tree - Opportunitree. All very well, but what if you can't even get to the ladder to reach the branches? 

But when the shaking happens in our own neighbourhood, when the earth's tantrums threaten to topple and turnover our own lives, then what? What makes us 'first worlders' more significant than the 'third worlders'?

Does the beggar love his children less than the banker who never sees his?

Just a meander, must be Sunday afternoon. Might go and check out how much goats costs.

Whiffy waftings

Loos and poos, for some of us, are as fascinating now as they were when we were two. Don't ask me why, I have no idea (well I do have one or two theories but I'd rather not elucidate these here). I am one of the 'fascinatees'.

You know how it goes when potty training your little sprogetts. You encourage and 'coo' and 'ooo' over the little potty sausages - this turns my stomach just thinking about it now. The first splash in the big loo, of a digestive missile from the little legged ones, is received with much raptuous fervour, especially in middle-class, over-indulged households.

I remember when once my oldest son was perched on the loo, legs swinging; as the early days of loo usage are usually quite fun. After a while, there was a little plip-plop-plip. "My poo is like rain." A pause for thought. "My bottom is a cloud." Not only toilet trained but a poet as well - my genes, obviously. If only there had been Facebook at the time.

At work, the ladies loos are pinned with all sorts of paraphenalia suggesting that there is a particular way to flush the loo, and it is explained as the 'superior flush'. Perhaps it should be called the superior flush for the Royal wee. There's even a little diagram showing how to pop a new toilet roll in, who'd have ever thought. So there's expected etiquette in the office loos which is quite delightful at first, but it also highlights the sad fact that there are a few who haven't mastered the superior flush. 

The other day, it became necessary to flush a loo in an apartment on the 22nd floor of a city tower block. Upon flushing said loo I heard the crashing and clanging as the flush hurtled down goodness knows how many kilometres of pipes to reach the ground floor. If you start doing the maths in your head, it's quite perplexing, especially for the mathematical numbskull. How many such towering blocks are there in the city? Best not to think of such things.

Anyway, the other day a fire alarm sent us scuttling out of our office block, we noticed a whiffy waft, coming from the drains. It was quite potent and drove some of us to seek a nose cover with whatever was at hand. I had the fortune to be wearing a scarf.

Auckland was particularly whiffy on that crispy autumn afternoon. And I couldn't help but wonder if the pipes below us are coping as our beautiful city grows.

Hope so.