Chance Delays

  Dear Hawthorn, If what is alleged is true,  I no longer want you in my life. I’m not sure you think I even exist. But that’s not the problem, is it? The problem is that I’m not sure you think anyone other than blokes like you exist. Or matter. But we do. And you mattered to us. And you have trashed everything that meant for our family. There aren’t that many properly working class families who love Hawthorn as passionately as catholics love Collingwood or Mancunians love United. But my family is one of them.   Dear Hawthorn, When I grew up, my mum and siblings and I would join my cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents, and we’d drive out to VFL park with our little plush hawks dolls, with the number of our favourite player drawn on the back. We’d eat pies at half time, and bang the advertising boards when you got a goal. My brother had a poster of Peter Knights on his wall. After family lunches at Pa’s place, all seven grandkids would climb the fence ...

  🎶 Sing along if you know the tune! 🎵 [this post in no way reflects real humans or events, I totally made it up and everyone is perfect]   On the first day of Christmas my family sent to me… my kids having pancakes with me.  So far, so good. On the second day of Christmas my family sent to me… my niece on my doorstep after maxing out two credit cards and a zippay account and she’s lost her job and can’t tell her mum so I cancel Christmas shopping so we can have a cup of tea and cut up her credit cards and plan how she’s going to get out of this mess. … and my kids having pancakes with me. On the third day of Christmas my family sent to me… The dog, bored because he's not getting walked three times a day any more, leaps after a fly and smashes mum’s favourite Country Road salad bowl which she lent me for my birthday party. I get on the CR site and start looking up the cost of Express Shipping. … two maxed out zippays … and my kids having pancakes with me. ...

 28th March, 2020. Fucking gratitude. For a long time I have thought the gratitude idea is naff. Normally naff things aren’t too bad – they can usually be ignored, or enjoyed. But this gratitude thing just came too close. Everyone was talking about it. Research has shown. Research has shown. What did it show? Gratitude is the key to happiness. That is what it showed. Be grateful. Make lists. It will fix everything. Through pain – be grateful. Try. Try harder. Be grateful. Why do I hate this? Because it's naff. And, like any lifehack for human suffering, it's not meaningless. It's dangerous. ***** Many of us from the leafier suburbs of the world know exactly what it's like to have our expressions of suffering repurposed as ingratitude.  I was fed messages, which I dutifully swallowed, about how much money and time was invested in my upbringing. On how much was spent on our house, on our various sailboats, on our holidays, on our schooling, on our exchange trips, on our u...

  I’m watching ABC News. Again. If you’re experiencing distress, she says, call Lifeline . Barnaby Joyce has just been on. He’s saying “You can make any allegation against a politician and destroy their career. Look at what happened to me.” On Monday, the Minister for Home Affairs weighed in. He said he wasn’t going to bother with “he said/she said” details of rape allegations. If you’re experiencing distress. What about rage? What if I’m experiencing rage, burning in my belly, radiating out through my pores? It’s making me unable to sit still. It’s making me try to post supportive language, to see if anyone else is feeling this. Is it pain? Or is it just pure, unadulterated rage? I know I’m not the only one who can’t sleep this week. For the RAGE. ***** I come from a culture, one of wealth, education, taste and power. My best nod to intersectionality is to acknowledge that for what it is. Our stories get told. Many do not. My contemporaries have power, in Australi...

Tonight I found myself crying over a tea towel. I like tea towels. They remind me of grandmothers, tea and mercurochrome. If I purchase any souvenirs on my travels, it will usually be a tea towel. My favourite is from the Lakes Entrance Shell Museum, one of the finest establishments in this state, and the only place I know of which combines an extensive model train set with a large stuffed head of Marlin ( Lakes Entrance: evacuated, still a strong wind change from annihilation). This one is a jingoistic little flannel, printed in sepia tones with a heading in ye olde writing, “Aussie Bush Recipes”. There’s a recipe for “Drover’s Damper” (nobody ever calls it that), Pumpkin Scones, and Anzac Biscuits, as well as a sketch of a “typical bush oven” which looks oddly like a saucepan full of hot coals. And in the top corner, it is printed with the town in which it was purchased: Cann River, Victoria. I bought the tea towel at Easter this year. The kids and I had just emerg...

It’s time for a rant, kids. Strap yourselves in so  the dash stops beeping. So today I walked into a little boutique because I saw a pair of amazing dusky pink corduroy cross-back overalls in the window and was dying to try a pair on. The largest size said “29”, which meant nothing to my untraveled eye, so I asked the shop assistant what size it was in my world. “12”, she said. “Do they make them any bigger?” I asked. “No, I don’t think so”, she said, “they don’t make things in larger sizes.” I refrained from gagging and asked if they had ANYTHING AT ALL in the shop larger than 29, and she said that they have some 30s, which is like a 12 and a half. So let me get this straight. They had so many sizes they did a 12 and a half. But there was no 16 or 18 to be seen. And apparently nor would there ever be. I should say, this wasn’t the first shop. It was the third this week. Naturally, I wanted to tell them all to GF themselves. I wanted to grab them by the collar, look...

What surprises me every time I go through this is that I didn’t see it coming. There were physical signs. Since Easter I’ve had a feeling in my ribs - a sinking in my sternum and dull pain in the centre that can’t be relieved, or stretched out. It feels like I’m walking around with a boot pressing on my chest. My joints have been hurting, my hips and back, my shoulders, my feet. I was waking up at night, and started catching every bug that came along. There were other signs too: last week I sat down to write a list, and ten minutes later realised I had been sitting motionless at the table, trying to think clearly. I sat down to edit a perfectly good paper that I’d written for work, decided I hated it, tried to fix it, made it more confusing, and then undid all my edits. I’m struggling to dress because I hate everything I own. I wear a lot of black to work right now, not because it represents my mood but because it’s so much easier to only have to choose earrings. Clea...