Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 19, 2020

I’m extremely disappointed in myself.

Last year, standing in the pavilion on the Friday of the Clifton Show, I made a vow. I promised myself that, by the next Clifton Show, I’d have something to be proud of. I’d have a hat worthy of entering in the Old Hat Section.

I was standing there, looking in awe at the collection of battered, misshapen, faded and, in a few cases, multi-coloured headgear on the wall.

Each one of them looked like they had more than a couple of yarns to tell. The kind of hats that, if they were people, were the sort of people you’d want to have a beer with.

I was enamoured and inspired.

In 12 months’ time, I wanted to be able to contribute something worthy of being on that wall.

I’ve been a hat owner for a few years now.

One day a few years back – when I was in-between jobs and just beginning to feel human again after a rude case of bronchitis that hit me right like a sack of potatoes to the guts and proved that life just does whatever the heck it wants – I went out and bought my hat.

I was feeling a few bit off. I cut a visit with one of my sisters short and drove back to the refuge that was my other sister’s spare bedroom, kindly offered after my first interstate jaunt sucked the life out me like I was one of those yogurt pouches marketed for school lunches and the greedy kid was a regional newspaper restructure program. I was listening to Sheryl Crowe on repeat on my drive back to my sanctuary when I went past an Akrubra stockist and decided to spend some of my annual leave payout on headgear.

After a long consultation with a patient salesman, I walked out with a fawn-coloured Cattleman and a renewed sense of joy.

Since then, I’ve taken it to as many outings as I could.

It’s been in multiple pools, the Pacific ocean (but only in low-wave areas, because I didn’t want to have a Castaway moment) and in the sludgy brown of the Condamine River.

It’s been upturned into a wide-brimmed basket used to hold freshly-picked basil (yes, I make my own pesto now and I am unashamedly bragging about it), road trip snow peas and hot chips.

It’s been dressed up in bottlebrush leaves, lost at the races and returned safely atop its grateful (and, admittedly, quite concerned) owner’s head.

I’ve even worn it in the snow at a place called The Top of Europe (even though I suspect it was wasn’t actually the highest point of Europe, given there was a chocolate shop and a café up there).

And all I have to show for it is some mildly faded fabric and a few rusty eyelets.

I mean, I could stomp it a few times, soak it in a puddle of particularly potent port and give it to a dog to chew, but that’s not in the spirit of the competition.

I wouldn’t want to artificially weather my hat. I don’t want to go doing things with the express purpose of wearing and tearing my hat. Because it’s not about the damage inflicted on the headgear, but the character impregnated within the fibres of the pressed rabbit hair.

I want to have a hat with stories to tell and that means breaking it out more often. I could wear it to work, but I don’t know if an air-conditioned office environment would have the desired effect.

What I really need to do is get out there and really do some good, old-fashioned livin’.

I’m giving myself another 12 months to get it done.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 12, 2020

I’m really keen on entering something into the Clifton Show this year*.

* Except I didn’t end up entering anything.

But, ever since I got a Highly Commended prize for my handwriting – which is extremely surprising if you’ve seen my penmanship – in primary school, I haven’t earned myself one of those sweet, sweet Clifton Show Society certificates.

Last year my sister and I entered some baked goods in an early-morning flurry on the Friday. I confidently broke out my gingerbread bickies, while I had to really coax her into chucking a few scones together.

It was great fun baking under pressure and rushing to get our offerings plated up and into the pavilion before the roller-door closed, kind of like a really low-budget reality show (I mean, I feel like a Keeping-Up-With-The-Kardashians-style reality show about the Maguires would no doubt be a commercial success, but I think we all know that Mac and Deb would carry the whole series).

My sister walked away with a second place prize, but I’m no longer able to hang my self-esteem on my prize-less gingerbread bickies* so this year I’m thinking I’ll move away from baked goods.

* I respect the judges’ decision, but I tell myself that my gingerbread didn’t win because they just didn’t, like, get what I was trying to do with my bickies. Like, it’s not regular ginger bickie – it transcends all that, you know? I mean, it’s hard to even call them ginger bickies. They just didn’t fit into the category. They couldn’t be marked abasing conventional criteria. They’re beyond that. 

But I still want that thrill of having entered something in the show. I can never go because of work, but I have my minions that I send into the pavilion on the Saturday to see how I went, which isn’t as great as being there yourself, but you do what you can to feel included.

So I’ve been going through the Clifton Show Society Pavilion Schedule (which is thankfully available online, because for some reason my local Brisbane news agent doesn’t have the booklet) to see if there’s anything I could enter in a different category.

I obviously am unable to enter anything into the farm produce section, because the backyard isn’t big enough to get much sorghum going.

As for the vegetables, I could maybe one day enter my silverbeet, but I’ve potted it in a high-maintenance area that gets far too much sun and if I ignore it for a day it looks like a peeled off face mask. So maybe next year.

And then I remember something, which hits me like a flash of lightning.

For years I’ve been wanting to enter something in the Adult Needlework Section.

I mean, I’m not particularly adept when it comes to needles and thread – the art of needlework requires a certain amount of determined precision and attention to detail which I don’t really posses. I mean, if you were to go back and look at my entries in the Rose and Iris Show’s colouring-in competition over the years (which I would like it imagine are kept on file somewhere, to be brought up in case there was a need to analyse the minds of Clifton children based on their colouring capabilities) you’d see that I’m more of an abstract artist. I don’t confirm to pre-drawn lines, man. I transcend lines. Free-spirited, and all that.

However, I like to think that in the case of adult needlework, I would make an exception.

Because, while the phrasing implies the needlework is done by an adult, I preferred the take that the needlework was adult in nature.

Now, I’m not sure what exactly my design would be, but I had hoped it would have straddled the lines between obscenity and art, resulting in a tasteful and community-appropriate, yet somewhat… suggestive embroidered scene.

I have the threads. I have the needles. I have the lack of anything better to do than to spend hours embroidering erotic imagery for the sake of a weak pun.

I was inspired.

Then I flipped forward to the needlework section.

And it seems as through someone had anticipated this exact scenario.

Because the Adult Needlework Section that had existed in my head after years of flipping through the pavilion schedule isn’t in the 2020 edition, and perhaps it never actually was in previous versions.

There’s an Open Needlework Section, which is the category I would fall under (because despite what the collection of Harry Potter figurines in my room would suggest, I’m not a juvenile).

The Adult Needlework Section is for over 70s.

I sighed heavily but recognised that this was probably for the best.*

* Because I’m well aware this does not fit the “tasteful and community-appropriate, yet somewhat… suggestive” brief. It was honestly the best I could think up right now. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 5, 2020

I’m beginning to really understand my father’s love of mowing the lawn.

I have always appreciated a nice, neat patch of grass, but never quite understood the drive that would see my father drag a heavy piece of machinery across the entirety of our yard in the unforgiving summer sun. He would come into the house dripping with sweat, gulping down water like a first year uni student with a sack of goon. It always seemed like a bit much especially when the benefit was just shorter grass. I mean, it was just grass mate, take it easy.

But recently, I’ve started to see things differently.

For years I haven’t had to go anywhere near a mower. My time in Sydney was lawn-less because land was far too valuable to not be exploiting it for rent in some way. My first lease once I moved back to Queensland was in a house with more of an “outdoor area” than a yard. And while I’ve been in a house with a backyard for months now, the lack of rain meant there wasn’t really any lawn to mow.

But all that changed after a few decent rainfalls. Somehow, the grass that lay dormant and brown for so long had remembered how to be green again.

With a bit of spare time on my hands and a backyard event to tidy up for, I decided to fire up the mower.

The first time I brought it out I was fiddling with the catch trying to get it to fit to the mower. My neighbour, who I imagine I’d shamed into mowing his lawn by mucking around with our mower in plain view of his house, offered to help me fit the piece in, but also couldn’t get it to work. He got the mower going for me, but I would like to point out that I have since started the mower with just one casual rip of the pull start cord (which, make no mistake, I absolutely am bragging about – I loudly declared it work the next day and may put on my resume).

The fist few minutes of my first mow after so long out of the game felt a bit weird, but then a voice inside me whispered, “remember your training!” and I soon found my stride.

My training began more than a decade ago. It consisted of Dad yelling over the roar of motor to line the wheels up so that one side of the mower is just over the strip of freshly cut grass I’d just gone over. You don’t just go all over the place willy nilly, otherwise you miss spots. You just follow the tracks you’d already made. Without knowing it, Dad had also taught me how to shave my legs, as the same principles apply.

Despite my being more than competent at mowing as a youngster, Dad continued to be the prime mower of the household. I don’t suspect this had anything to do with complying with child labour laws, but more to do with the overwhelming sense of satisfaction that comes with cutting your own grass.

Despite the physical fitness elements and the pride that pulses through your veins when the motor ticks over after that first rip of the pull start cord, I think the best part of mowing the lawn is having something to show for you spent your time.

This isn’t something I often experience. And this is probably for the best, because I don’t really think I want a physical representation of the way I spend my time. I don’t have the data to back it up, but I reckon the biggest slices in the pie graph that would represent the way I spend my time would have to be labelled with “fruitlessly switching between smartphone apps as I stare into the social media void to lull my brain into a numb stupor” and “stressing about deciding what to do with my free time”.

Even when I am actually productive, it’s all on a computer and what I’ve achieved is discernable only to me.

But when you mow the lawn, your productivity is out there for all to see.  And boy is that sweet. When the job is done, you fix yourself a big glass of cold water, wipe your lips with the back of your sweaty hand and gaze out at your handiwork. Something inside you glows.

For the next few hours and, let’s be honest, the following day, you catch yourself standing around just looking – nay, marvelling – at your crisply mown dominion. And sweet baby cheeses, it feels pretty good.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, January 22, 2020

Every household should have a rain gauge.

Now, I know this sounds commanding and almost dictatorial of me, but I don’t intend to enforce my views beyond a bit casual rain gauge advocacy. I mean this in a suggestive, light-hearted way, in the same way you might say that everyone should watch Cougar Town or serve leftover lamb shank dregs on a bed of chicken nuggets (something I can highly recommend).

Growing up, our household always had a rain gauge. At the moment, it’s hooked up to a gum tree that was knocked around by storms so much that it’s been cut down to a gum stump.

We didn’t need a rain gauge. We were not economically invested in how much moisture was in the ground. We didn’t have to think about whether the contour banks (yep, I had to Google what they’re actually called, because “them long dirt mounds that run along paddocks that, like, stop the soil from running off when it rains” didn’t really flow with the paragraph) would hold after a heavy shower. And aside from that one time a pumpkin patch spontaneously popped up thanks to a fortuitous combination of house manure and uneaten kitchen scraps, the spare paddock that makes up most of the Maguire station hasn’t really been utilised for agricultural purposes.

But it’s still nice to have an idea about how much rain fell out our way.

Because there are few things that will break an uncomfortable silence and bring two people together better than the question “so how much did you get out your way?”. It’s one of those questions you can ask anyone, but you’re actually interested in the answer. Like, you may ask “how ya goin’?” to be polite and might not give two hoots about the answer, but you’ll always pay attention to how many mils were in their gauge.

Weather, of course, is the great unifier in that we’re all affected by it. But the amount of rain people received out their way is somehow more potent than general weather chat. It’s non-divisive and inquisitive but is very hard to steer into inappropriate, uncomfortable territory. It taps into the sticky beak inside of all us and creates pleasant, good-natured conversation. It leads to discussions about how patchy rain can be, how different the rainfall was from last year and whether you think there’s more on the way. From here, the conversation can go just about anywhere.

I mean, I’m no dating expert but I reckon breaking out a “so how much rain did you get out your way?” might just be the perfect way to strike up a conversation with a potential love interest.

The only problem is that people in The Big Smoke don’t tend to have rain gauges. Of course, I’m generalising here, but I don’t know many people in the city with gauges. I understand not everyone has a backyard in which to stick a rain gauge and they might not be able to fix one to their apartment walls, so you can’t really blame them. But the lack of a water measuring devices in this part of the world is profound. It’s something me and a few of my Clifton-raised, Brisbane-dwelling counterparts lamented the other day, after we got 12mm out our way.

I know this because we have a rain gauge on our back fence.

I’m currently living with two friends from my uni days, one is from Out Near Pittsworth and the other, her fiancé, is from Up North Somewhere. He asked her parents for a rain gauge for Christmas and it truly has been a gift that keeps on giving. He has a group chat with my friend’s father and her younger sister’s partner, with the conversation thread being a chain of rain-related banter. As such, our household is well-informed on the rainfall Out Near Pittsworth, adding a deeper richness to the rain-related conversations we’re part of.

It’s these conversations the gauge-less city slickers are missing out on, which is quite sad. Because, without a gauge, they’re effectively shut out of quality chats. They won’t have the information to be able to hit back with something along the lines of “yeah, it made a bit of noise but didn’t do much for us” to return the serve of a rain gauge pickup line at the bar.

But while the fact that not many city dwellers have rain gauges might appear to be a flaw in my pickup line theory, it’s important to point out that this strategy is not just a conversation starter, but also a screening method to make sure you don’t end up with a dud. Because, let’s be honest, do you really want to be with someone who doesn’t care about how much rain you got out your way?