Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 20, 2018

Winter can be a dark, depressing time.

Yes, devouring more bread-related foods is lovely. Crackling fires are divine. And it’s easy to pretend you’re a Norwegian Disney princess when there’s a thick layer sparkling frost on the grass. But no matter how cute you look in a beanie and extra-thick flanny combo, the cold, blistery season presents some serious low points.

It means you spend more time inside, because going outside requires far too much effort. And this means you spend more time alone, with because you’ve decided venturing outside to see your friends is more effort than it’s worth or, most likely, your friends have decided that venturing outside is more effort than you’re worth. And because of this aloneness and insideness, you tend to spend a lot of your down time curled up inside a blanket like a grumpy sausage roll, alone with your own thoughts and stale musk.

All this time on your own can lead you to some dark places. You learn things about yourself that you didn’t know and are confronted with parts of you that you’ve been pretending don’t exist.

It can be very dangerous indeed because, if you’re like me, it might lead to you to ruminate on the things you don’t have; that all important thing that’s missing from your life. When you’re cold and alone, it’s much harder to ignore the painful throbs of a heart aching for more. The longing becomes unbearable.

Yes, it puts into sharp focus how much I really, really need a clothesline.

When I left for Sydney, I didn’t think about. I was younger then. I arrived with the spring, when the sun’s rays lingered and filled apartments with warmth. A clothesline would be nice, I thought, but not having one wasn’t the end of the world. I was strong. Independent. Resourceful. I didn’t need a rotating frame.

But now winter has set in and I’m realising just how foolish I was.

Leaving aside the fact that having a rotating Hills Hoist means you’ll be able to liven up any dull barbecue/dinner party/wake with a round of Goon Of Fortune, there are some other practical delights of a clothesline I yearn for. Yes, yearn, like a one-dimensional female character in a 1950s romance epic yearns for an emotionally-distant solider with questionable views about the role of women in society to return from The War.

Having to dry an entire load of laundry on a clotheshorse is more deflating than you’d think. When the sun rises late, sets early and only hits your apartment for a short period of time, your clothes can take days to try. Days. After one particularly miserable weekend, my jumpers were still so damp after 48 hours of “drying”, I could have sucked enough water out of them to last me a day in the desert.

You drape your cheap, pretend-not-to-be-aware-of-how-unethically-they-were-produced clothes on the bars, knowing full well that the dank smell of confinement and your personal… aroma will never completely dry out of their fibres.

With a clothesline, you can hang clothes outside and get at least some progress from the icy breeze and winter sun. But not here.

Instead of a backyard, I have a balcony a little bigger than a ute tray with an extremely windy outlook. You can’t leave an unsecured clotheshorse out there unattended because there’s a high likelihood your washing will blow away.

As such, it’s a rarity to be able to position the clotheshorse outside to let the sun scorch the one’s clothes/linen/sinful past. I long for that smell sheets get after being hung to dry in the sun all day – it’s a smell that assures you all the germs have been fried. And knowing those germs have died horrible, horrible deaths helps me sleep at night.

I had my sheets on the balcony when I started writing this, so I could hop up and grab them if they blow away. I was literally watching laundry dry/living the glamorous big city life.

And because you can’t leave it outside, your laundry has to be hung in the lounge room. Suddenly, your collection of novelty pyjama pants and I-can-get-just-one-more-wear-out-of-these undies becomes an art installation for all to see.

Look, maybe it’s just the cold talking. Maybe once the sun comes out I’ll realise that I’m fine on my own.

But right now, as I sit in my damp apartment surrounded by knickers and musty gym gear, I want a clothesline and I don’t care how desperate that sounds.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, April 6, 2018

The other night, I got up on my high I’m-from-the-country horse.

Now, this is interesting considering I’m someone who needs a block of wood as a boost to hop up into the saddle and I’m only just competent at riding (and that competence is arguable, however, considering that time I fell off a horse, broke my wrist and my life crumbled to pieces because I could no longer write, drive manual cars or shower without the company of a plastic bag).

I’ve written about my tendency to ham up my rural roots in the big smoke (see, I’m even doing it now) before. It’s just something that happens when you are surrounded by people who don’t know all the lyrics to Boys From The Bush. I automatically pretend I’m a member of the Outback Club. I’ll use strange words like “sorghum” and “charolais”. I’ll find a way to bring swags into the conversation so I can let it slip that I’ve slept outdoors. I may even start talking about the “rain out our way”.

And then I get into my rants. It all depends on what’s topical at the time – milk prices, live export or that extremely private, little-known gentleman Barnaby Joyce. Whatever’s been in the news.

But because I’ve been a little out of the cycle (I don’t know if you know this, but I was, like, in Europe. I’ve been to France, sweetie). So I’m not fully up to speed with the current events that I can chime in about “them bastards in Sydney just not bloody getting it”.

However, that’s not going to put a dampener over my bonfire (that you can light because you’re like five kilometres away from your nearest neighbour, I tell them) of country pride. I have this tendency to stew on things that annoy me about Sydney that wouldn’t be an issue back home. As such, I always have a backlog of “things that really shit me” that I can draw on at the moment’s notice.

And, recently, the targets of my rants have been dog owners.

You see, it’s now trendy to have border collies as pets. And I don’t disagree with that; they are lovely dogs that enrich many human lives. But the thing about border collies is that they were bred as working dogs and have a metric heckload of energy underneath that glossy, fashionable coat. They need to run. They stimulation. And they need big, open spaces.

Now, I doubt there are many backyards big enough for a collie in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. You can take them to the park every day, but they’re still being cooped up in a tiny yard – or worse, an apartment – for most of the day.

I’ve even started seeing kelpies being walked in Sydney parks. Kelpies in the city, for heaven’s sake. It’s bloody silly and makes me quite angry.

So, back to the other night. I was standing next to a guy at a reputable late-night kebab shop and we got talking about animals. I can’t remember how the conversation started, but the lovely thing about late-night kebab joints is that most people up for a chat. A whole new set of social rules apply. People are friendly. People actually talk.

Anyway, it came out that old mate had a kelpie.

And because I’d polished off a whole bottle of the finest, cheapest rosé the bottleo near me had to offer, I was in a ranting mood.

I started going on about how much space kelpies need and that they’re working dogs and that’s pretty bloody rough to keep the poor fella cooped up in the city. I don’t know how coherent I was at that time of the evening, however I did my best to berate him for having a working dog as an ironic appropriation of working class culture as an inner city status symbol. I may have even used the word “wanker”.

I thought I was doing pretty well at making it clear that I wasn’t from Sydney and that I knew stuff about the world because of where I happened to have grown up, portraying my background as proof of my superiority as a human even though it was something I had no control over.

But then old mate told me he was a farmer visiting Sydney from Victoria.

Oh. Dear.

According to my somewhat hazy memory, I backpedalled a bit then tried to rope him into my rant about wanker dog owners in Sydney. But for the purpose of ending this column on a comical note, I’m going to pretend I said this:

“So uh… get much rain out your way?”

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, May 30, 2018

Just an update on where I am as a person now.

I live in a share house situation, which tends to breed passive aggressive behaviour and, if you’re silly enough to move into a house with a clearly-non-council-approved spiral staircase that leads to a maze of dungeon-like rooms like my friends were, scabies*.

* This is not a joke. This is what happens when five boys decide to live together and only the landlords of houses in need of demolition will approve them to rent. They caught actual scabies. Scabies!

Thankfully, passive aggressiveness appears to be the only infestation plaguing my flat and the flare-ups are minor and only seem to occur when the bins fills up.

Ever notice how whenever you take out the rubbish – no matter how infrequently you do so – you always feel like the only one who ever does it?

Any time you banish the waste to the confines of a wheelie bin, it makes you feel like a truly noble being. It’s like you’re the only one willing to take a stand. In you mind you are a heroic waste crusader; the last frontier keeping the household from being violently swallowed up by a mountain of empty yoghurt containers and banana peels.

I was taking out the recycling bin the other day, in a wee bit of a huff. I mean, I had to go all the way down the hall, down the stairs and open a door with a bucket in my hands. And I had to put on shoes to do this. The injustice of it all was difficult to ignore.

But, because I’m the backbone of the household and the defender of filth*, I humbly carried the bin downstairs to the bay of wheelie bins underneath my apartment building.

* I may even deserve a statue, or at least an oil painting of some description, to commemorate my great sacrifice for the greater good. It’s only reasonable. 

And as I was tipping countless wine bottles I’d not drunk a sip from (not that I’m bitter or anything…) into the bin, I noticed something: three containers looking suspiciously like Tupperware sitting in another recycling wheelie bin.

I had to investigate.

And sure enough, my eagle eyes had not deceived me. There were three clean, perfectly sound containers just sitting there, abandoned among the empty hummus tubs and water bottles.

As someone who learned much about the workings of society through the prism of Mum’s Tupperware Parties, I knew this was gold.

This wasn’t just some crappy plastic container from the two dollar shop; this was the good stuff. It’s the stuff you write your last name on with a nikko pen so someone doesn’t snag it from a primary school barbecue. I mean, those were airtight, stackable containers that could keep your jam drops fresh for week. And, being my mother’s daughter, I knew these babies had a lifetime guarantee*. Sure, they were missing their lids, but you don’t just throw something like that away**.

* I promise this hasn’t been sponsored by Tupperware in any way, not that I’d say no to a few spare lids. I just am very well-versed in the benefits of Tupperware, having spent a life time with no first-hand experience with weevils.

** But something tells me these people had more dollars than sense. I mean, one of the containers was quite large and had a label on it that read “dried apricots”. Those wrinkly bastards aren’t cheap. If you eat them so much that they need their own designated container – let alone a big arse container – then you’re obviously making bank. One day I’d like to be wealthy enough to not care about a Tupperware lifetime guarantee, but I can’t see it happening. 

So of course I fished them out.

And then I started digging to find the lids. Some would call this “dumpster diving” but I would be more inclined to label it “not being the kind of dingbat who would turn their back on free Tupperware”. I’d also like to point out that it was a recycling bin, so it wasn’t like I was rummaging through used nappies.

Perhaps this will turn out to be a pivotal moment in my life, clearly marking the end of my youth and the beginning of my adult life.

I mean, there are few things that scream “grown up” quite like a dedication to extending the shelf life of baked goods through proper pantry storage. There was no turning back now.

And in case there was any doubt about what I’ve become; I wasn’t even disappointed I only found one lid. Because now I have an excuse to “have a few of the girls around” and put on a batch of scones*.

* Pumpkin, of course. 

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, April 23, 2018

Apologies for the lack of bonus italics commentary with this one, I’m posting this during game one of Origin, between exclamations of “for fuck’s sake!” and the tackle count restarting. 

The tricky thing about going overseas is condensing your trip into an informative yet entertaining sound bite when people ask how it was.

These days, no one has time to hear the whole story; there’s only room for the highlights. And I get that – it takes me far too long to tell a story and I often lose my place. Short, snappy highlights make sense.

Given my whole livelihood depends on my ability to tell stories, you’d think I’d be able to spin a decent yarn about a trip to overseas.

But you’d be wrong.

I’m having a lot of trouble carving up my trip into entertaining, easy-to-digest chunks. The memories of my trip are jumbled together in a messy clump, like that bottom drawer where you throw all the junk you can’t find a place for but don’t want to throw away.

Thankfully, I’d anticipated this post-holiday memory loss, and used my smartphone to photographically document the small but important details of my journey. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I figured I’d let my photos do the talking.

But because it would be unreasonable and quite egotistical (even for me, someone who commands a fair hunk of paper each week by talking about themselves) of me to demand hundreds of my photos be printed in the paper, I’ve selected one image from each day of my trip to describe to you. I hope they culminate to paint a vivid picture of my travels:

Day one: a tiny bit of bread from a cheeseburger, purposefully leftover so I could tell myself “I didn’t eat the whole thing”.

Day two: jewellery with a matching dagger – to remind me to commission myself a necklace-earring-dagger set once I’m rich and fabulous.

Day three: the Cliffs of Dover at a distance that makes them look extremely underwhelming.

Day four: my hand, holding a bit of cheese up to the Eiffel Tower with a disapproving look from a guy in my tour group in the background.

Day five: a dad wearing a belt with dogs embroidered on it while reading the info about artworks in that classic reading-historical-plaque stance all dads seem to take.

Day six: a wine bottle and a packet of chips strategically placed in the grass at a French truck stop.

Day seven: a cider bottle I thought was a display of excessive packaging.

Day eight: a coaster featuring my terrible life advice before it was hung from the ceiling of a backpackers’ bar.

Day nine: me, looking extremely unimpressed next to the Leaning Tower of Piza.

Day ten: me, seconds after spitting a massive wad of phlegm over the side of the only bridge the Nazis spared in Florence.

Day eleven: a very large, very old statue of a pinecone that I don’t understand the significance of.

Day twelve: a delicious eggplant parmigiana from a servo.

Day thirteen: a pizza with hot chips on it, taken from a shop window.

Day fourteen: a half-eaten bowl of sauerkraut.

Day fifteen: a close up of a girl in my tour group’s eye.

Day sixteen: a plastic cup of prosecco with a strawberry ice block in it.

Day seventeen: a sausage, slathered in curry sauce on a bed of hot chips. No chicken salt.

Day eighteen: magnets depicting the sausage, slathered in curry cause on a bed of hot chips. Again, no evidence of chicken salt.

Day nineteen: a windmill house poorly-framed by my shivering hands.

Day twenty: a paper cone of hot chips with ketchup, mayonnaise and diced raw onions on top.

Day twenty-one: two tomatoes, stuffed with meaty, Indian goodness.

Day twenty-two: a man in sunglasses, clearly judging me for taking a photo of the British flags hanging over the street.

Day twenty-three: green post boxes, which I thought was extremely exotic.

Day twenty-four: my big toe after half the nail was ripped off at an Irish pebble beach.

Day twenty-five: a cup of tea in the foreground with a Saint Bernard puppy in the background.

Day twenty-six: my dinner – a single-serve of hazelnut spread I’d snagged from a hostel breakfast – on a fold-out tray on a train.

Day twenty-seven: an over-priced airport steak.

Day twenty-eight: a miserable, rainy Sydney through the window of an aeroplane.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, May 16, 2018

You’re perhaps becoming a little sick of my shithouse recipes by now, and I don’t blame you. I am too. I’m also currently reading Heartburn by Nora Ephron, which is quite laden with recipes. So I understand your fatigue. 

However, it’s important to note that I drank a very, very cheap bottle of rosé – among other things – last night, so today wasn’t the most productive of days. I mean, sure, I achieved things. I listened to Kanye’s new album. I created a very sad Instagram post that attracted 20 plus (plus! I say!). I showered my body. 

Looking back on that list, I realise now that I did manage to do a lot of things.

Which is perhaps why my mind is so fatigued now, weary from a day of ticking off extremely achievable goals. 

And so, rather than dazzling you with a well-crafted, revenant piece of writing, I’m just going to slap another reheated recipe in front of you, telling you “ya git what cha givin – don’t be so bloody ungrateful”. And, yes, it is chicken nugget related. Again. 

I’m sorry, that’s all I’ve got in the freezer. 

Of course, no autographical cookbook of mine would be complete without an ode to crumbed chicken.

But I’ve already gifted you with the secret to the best schnitty ever (make your own breadcrumbs) and the culinary masterpiece that is a trough of nugg-chos (nachos, but with chicken nuggets instead of corn chips).

Thankfully, I have another nugget-related recipe up my sleeve.

I can’t remember when I started making these, but I do know it was born from a desire to both eat chicken nuggets and be healthy.

As someone with neither a dependant child nor a job that requires me to use spreadsheets, I can’t comment on If Women Can Have Both (a question no one seems to really ever ask men).

However, I can say that, when it comes to nuggets and health, women (and men, for that matter) really can have It All. It All does, however, come with compromises.

This isn’t a clean eating recipe requiring coconut oil or something that can only be grown at a particular altitude in the Amazon. But it’s also not exactly the same as what you’d get from a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant.

It’s like KFC but it isn’t, and you have to accept that.

It’s at this point that I’ll drop the disclaimer I’ve learned to apply to my everyday life: expect the worst.

It sounds negative, but years of disappointment have taught me that lowering those expectations to the very bottom rung is an excellent means of protecting yourself. If the outcome is as disastrous as you expected, then you at least get the satisfaction of knowing that you were right. But if things turn out great, then you get to enjoy the fact that things aren’t terrible and, as a plus, that good outcome will seem even better when you compare it to the train wreck of a situation you were expecting.

And with this, I’ll launch into the recipe.

Step 1: On a wide dinner plate, dump two or three heaped tablespoons of wholemeal flour. Now, I have neither the power nor the resources to force you into using slightly healthier flour. Domestic flights are expensive, so I can’t come to your kitchen to personally shame you into using a particular ingredient. Perhaps one day I will be able to communicate with birds and send a fleet of magpies to monitor you on my behalf, but I have yet to win their trust.

Step 2: Crack in a bunch of black pepper and a good sprinkling of salt.

Step 3: Mix together with a fork, trying not to get flour everywhere, because wiping up flour with a wet cloth can coat your bench in a filthy paste that lingers for days.

Step 4: Grab two unnaturally large chicken breasts, cutting them into slices no more than 1cm in thickness.

Step 5: Realise that chickens don’t really have actual breasts because they aren’t mammals, and wonder what other lies you’re being fed by The System.

Step 6: Press each slice into the dry mix, coating each piece in as much flour that will stick to the moist, sticky chicken-goop.

Step 7: Pause for reflection.

Now, I’m going to level with you – this isn’t actually that healthy of a recipe. The next step is going to involve a lot of oil and delusion. If you wanted to be healthy, you could place the chicken on an oven tray, coat the chicken in a light cooking spray, and bake. But I choose to say yes to life, and that means saying yes to shallow frying and lying to yourself.

Step 8:  Say yes to life.

Step 9: Pour a good tablespoon/ladle of extra virgin olive oil into a frying pan, warming to a medium heat. I say extra virgin oil because it’s something I’ve told myself is healthy for years and don’t want to do any research that might suggest this isn’t the case. Besides, it’s probably better to cook in olive oil than a mixture of butter, lard and milk chocolate, right?

Step 10: Once hot, place the first batch of chicken in the pan, turning once the edges are white, firm and curling up slightly. This shouldn’t take too long as the chicken pieces are quite thin.

Step 11: Cook chicken on the other side until they reach your ideal level of golden-brownness.

Step 12: Repeat the process, making sure to keep topping up the oil levels.

Step 13: Serve to your friends, making the case that the wholemeal flour and lack of “highly-processed ingredients” makes this meal healthy.

Step 14: Avoid any follow up questions, changing the subject if necessary – bringing up the Kardashians generally does the trick.