There's an old Aussie say to which I've always been partial: flat out like a one-armed fan dancer. And that is precisely how I have felt this past week. I feel like I have only one feathered fan with which to hide my modesty, and trust me I need two because although of mature years, I still pass the pencil test and don't need just the one fan to hold over BOTH erogenous zones that the fans are meant to cover. The upper zone has not yet moved south to share space with the lower. I have this image of myself stumbling about like Simon Smith's Dancing Bear holding a fan to my chest and trying to curl one leg around myself like a yogi-ing flamingo trying to hide my Mound of Venus. Okay, now that I have burned your brain with a bizarre, but unerotic, image, I shall explain why I have been away from this 'pute and hopping and flapping like a one-armed fan dancer of late.
First of all, I've been incredibly busy with work. Second of all, we have had the painters in to repair damage caused by the Anzac Day flood. This has entailed moving the few bits of furniture that won't destroyed around, and now we've got to move it all back. We have friends staying tonight who have travelled up from Penrith, or the 'Riff as they like to call it, and we are going to a local pub and watching Mental as Anything. You know what? I have never seen the Mentals live. For a woman who did the bulk of her partying in the Eighties, this might seem strange. After all, I have seen The Models, Boom Crash Opera, Icehouse, and Wa Wa Nee. Um, yes, I am cringing into a vulture-like crouch as I type that last one. Oh, don't get me wrong. I love Paul Gray as a musician and think he is very talented, and he did fantastic work as the musical director to the Countdown Spectacular 2 concert, but I was not a fan of Wa Wa Nee. I went to a concert in North Sydney with a cousin of mine in 1986. The venue was a known pick-up joint, and another relative tried to talk us out of attending on this basis. I stood there in disbelief, but did not point out that as a red-blooded twenty-year-old, a pick-up joint was somewhat appealing. I merely said, 'Yeah?' with the unspoken subtext of 'What's your point?' loud and clear. So we got off the bus, and I wasn't sure what street number this alleged libidinous grotto had on the strata title. So I suggested we ask some other people in the street. My cousin was mortified that complete strangers would know it was our attention to attend this venue. I was more mortified that people would think I was happy to be watching Wa Wa Nee. I pointed out that these complete strangers would not really care where we spent our evening, and acquiesced by going to a phone booth and checking out the address in the White Pages, which thankfully had not been torn to bits by vandals. So we went to this venue, and watched Wa Wa Nee. My cousin danced and said, 'C'mon, Bing! Dance! It's awesome!' As a lifelong lover of glam rock and metal, I stood there drinking my West Coast Cooler and watched in bemusement at the guys in the puffy shirts, gelled and moussed hair playing key-tars and/or strap-on synths, whatever the damn things are called. Also met a guy that night who I thought was the love of my life, and he turned out to be a colossal horse's arse.
So I'm going to the Mentals tonight. Can't wait, actually.
As I said, I've been busy with work, but sometimes at work when I've finished showering and preparing breakfast for one of the elderly women, we watch a little breakfast television together. So it happened I got to have a look at Geoffrey Edelsten's interview alongside his freshly affianced twenty-something from the US. And shuddered. As did the old lady I was minding, who proclaimed him a 'silly old fool'. Oh, it was horrible, my friends! She had a low cut dress that made me think there were two bald men fighting down the front of her top (but it was an improvement on that beyond-gauche outfit she wore to that funeral), and the former medico was wearing what appeared to be a cast-off from Gary Glitter's wardrobe. 'She's after his money,' proclaimed the octagenarian wisely. I said I thought his money was not grabbable due to bankruptcy. I could be wrong on this. But together we shuddered: a woman in her eighties and a woman in her forties; a generation apart but in total sympatico with the utter vulgarity and horror with which we were faced.
Oh, and I found some ratings for my first novel 'Calumny while reading Irvine Welsh' on Good Reads. 4.5 and 5 out of 5 respectively. To those that rated: thank-you-thank-you-thank-you! One of the mums at soccer this morning told me how she is enjoying 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth', and felt she was being taken along on the journey, and was almost tempted to go and light up herself after reading the scene where my protagonist is choofin' on a Jay in a car with a young woman who's picked him up at the pub.
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