This week’s challenge ingredients include:

Cream cheese: I had one rye bagel leftover in the freezer and couldn’t not eat it with a slathering of creamy smear, strawberries and honey. Life is there to be lived and bagels are there to be smeared. Unfortunately, with a lack of bagels, the cream cheese just sat in my fridge.

Half a packet of fine semolina flour: I bought this when I was making vanilla slice from scratch, because I’m fancy like that. I also made another vanilla slice from a packet mix, which seemed to go quicker than my homemade stuff. Probably because my friends are fools who wouldn’t know a good slice if it slapped them in the face. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Shredded coconut: This was also a slice ingredient from months back. I like sprinkling this on my yoghurt, but because it was buried under other stuff, I didn’t know I had it and it went uneaten.

Margarine: I’m usually quite an anti-margarine person. I needed this for gingerbread and hid it at the back of the fridge so I wouldn’t have to look at it every time I went for a glass of milk. But eventually I found it and, even though I think it is mediocrity in congealed form, it still deserves to be used rather than chucked in the bin.

Coconut essence: I honestly hate myself for forgetting I had this stuff; coconut is the best flavour.

Inspiration:

First off, I had to Google just what the heck one can do with semolina. As it turns out, it makes for a nice cake. I stumbled upon one recipe with yoghurt and coconut from someone who just goes by Layla on a website called GimmeDelicous. It’s called basbousa aka harissa and the pictures made it look like the perfect cuppa accompaniment. I of course tweaked it, because I had to work with what I had and I’m a bit of a loose unit like that.

How to do what I did:

Straight off the bat, I went rogue. I decided to use up the cream cheese in place of the yoghurt or sour cream Layla suggested. I figured cream cheese was close enough. I Googled “cream cheese sour cream alternative” and learned that mixing cream cheese with a bit of lemon juice and milk does the trick.

So I tipped exactly 156 grams of cream cheese into my food processor, along with 27 grams of lemon juice (yes, I’m aware that’s not the way to measure liquid, but I was using scales and this just seemed easier than dirtying a measuring jug) and a tablespoon of milk.

Then I melted 133 grams of margarine in a large mixing bowl in the microwave. The recipe called for two cups of coarse semolina, but I only had one and a half cups of fine semolina, so I added that. I think the yoghurt/sour cream/vague dairy mix and butter measurements were off too, so I didn’t think it would matter too much.

I next added one cup of shredded coconut, a third of a cup of caster sugar and a teaspoon of baking soda and gave it a stir. Next, I added the yoghurt alternative, two tablespoons of coconut essenceand the zest from the lemon I just squeezed.

I gave it a mix and it turned into this weird, airy kind of dough. I pressed it into a slice tin and put it in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 30 minutes. You’re supposed to let it go brown but I think that’s because you’re also supposed to make a sugar syrup to drizzle over the top, which keeps it moist. But I like things slightly undercooked and couldn’t be arsed to make a sugar drizzle, so I ripped it out at the first sign of bronzing.

I quite enjoyed my first piece, but I quickly realised its dryness made very much a slice rather than a cake. I have a feeling more liquid would have changed this but, to be honest, I don’t mind a good dry slice.

I didn’t have any on me, but I reckon topping this with lemon curd would lift it from an average slice you eat like a Chiko roll to a dainty morning tea item you eat off a saucer with a cake fork.

This week’s challenge ingredients include:

A bag of brown rice: I usually buy the microwavable rice because I have extreme performance anxiety when it comes to cooking rice on a stovetop. I currently have bigger issues to tackle than overcoming my fear of cooking rice the old fashioned way, so if I don’t use this in a risotto context, it’s going into a bunch of balloons to be made into stress balls.

A wine bottle filled with frozen chicken stock: Yep, I’m a grown up who makes stock and drinks wine. I mean, I only made stock once and the wine I drink is trash, but still. I made this after roasting a chookie months ago and promptly forgot about it.

Goat’s cheese that had a questionable tinge to it: I bought one jar of marinated goat’s cheese ages ago and kept the oil once the cheese was gone. I would then buy cheaper cheese and marinate it in the leftover oil, because I’m thrifty like that.

One thawed chicken breast I needed to use before it went bad: I have a terrible habit of overzealously thawing meat when I haven’t properly planned my meals. I’m getting help.

Here’s how to do what I did:

Slice one chicken breast into thin pieces in a vague diagonal motion. Sprinkle a bunch of salt on to a plate and lay the raw chicken atop it and cover with more salt. This is some last-minute tenderising which may or may not do anything, but at least you’re trying.

Next, slice the white chunk of a leek, going right up until it gets to the mid-green part where the leaves start to fan out. Set aside in a bowl.

Slice one large onion and dice three or four cloves of garlic. Set aside.

Then, slice about 300 grams of mushrooms – I used the white button ones, but I guess you can use any non-poisonous fungi you prefer. Set aside.

By now your chicken should be slightly tenderer than it was before. Usually you need to salt those baes for a few hours, but this recipe takes long enough as it is, so that’s going to have to do.

Heat a large frypan on a medium to high heat, then chuck in 20 grams of butter, letting it melt and brown a little. Drop in a glug of olive oil then a good squeeze of minced garlic from a tube. Once that starts sizzling, lay the chicken in, being careful not to overcrowd the pan, and brown on both sides. Set aside in a bowl so you capture all that garlicky chicken juice.

Add more butter and oil to the same pan with the crusty chickeny bits before tossing in the whitest bits of leek, garlic and onion. The heat should be low to medium at this point.

Once the onion starts going translucent and soft, add one cup of brown rice, stirring slightly until it also goes translucent. I don’t know if this is important or not, but it was what the Arborio rice packet says to do when you make risotto with that stuff, so I assume it’s the same deal.

Add one cup of stock, stirring gently until all the liquid is absorbed.

Now add all the other leek choppings, along with another cup of stock.

Once that’s absorbed, chuck in those mushies and another three-quarters-of-a-cup of stock because that’s all I had left.

I’m not going to lie to you, I’d started drinking wine by this point and was watching TV, so I covered the pan and let it sit for a while – I can’t say how long because I honestly cannot remember.

Once the rice has soaked that up, add half a cup of cheap red winefrom the fridge. Chuck the lid back on and watch another 20 minutes or so of TV. After that point, the dish should look suspiciously like red wine vomit, bubbling away.

If your rice isn’t soft enough, add more wine to the mix, stir and let sit for another 10 minutes or so. It’s totally fine – brown rice needs its me time, and so do you, honey.

Once you’re happy with the squishiness of the rice, grab three cubes and a few crumbly dregs of goat’s cheese and stir into the mixture.

Slop the delicious goop into bowls and serve… yourself, after pouring another glass of wine.

If you want to completely recreate the recipe, I recommend enjoying this dish curled up under a blanket with a scented candle burning while watching The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina.

In case you missed out on the previous instalment of the never-ending chain of unnecessary and self-indulgent musings, I’ve set myself a challenge to cook stuff using the leftover ingredients I need to clear out of my fridge and pantry. I compared it to Ready, Steady, Cook,except, for some strange reason, no television network is broadcasting it. So I’m giving it to you in written form.

This week’s challenge ingredients include:

Half a jar of cranberry sauce:I used this for Christmas Day snack offerings, which were turkey snags, brie cheese and cranberry sauce shoved into mini dinner rolls. The flavours were all there. It was a classic festive combo that can’t really go wrong… except it wasn’t all that popular. I guess it was because I cooked everything the night before, which meant the cheese melted and then solidified again and the beigeness of the sausages made these things look like decaying finger mini hotdogs. I feel they would have been a hit at a house party at like 1am.

Dried cranberries:I bought these for a homemade stuffing and would eat them sporadically with a handful of nuts, but had gone off them for a while.

Vanilla chai teabags:These were an impulse buy one a grocery run before going to a weekend getaway. I didn’t even open the box on the trip but I eventually tried one and found the vanilla flavouring too… chemical-y.

Important notes:I think the biggest takeaway message from this one is that cranberry sauce is not really a sauce, it’s a soft jam and could easily be spread on toast. But that’s a lot of pieces of toast to dedicate to just getting rid of some cranberry goo, so I decided to clear it out in one fell swoop. The plan was to make jam drops, based on my oaten scone things as the biscuit.

Here’s how to do what I did:

The first thing to do is get one cup of milk – I used cow’s milk but, by all means, use soy or almond or rat milk if you prefer – and tip it into a small saucepan. Then rip the paper off three or four vanilla chai tea bags and add them to the milk. Turn the heat up to a low to medium level, and let the aromas waft in a way that make you feel super wholesome, because there are few things more wholesome than gently warming milk on a stove top.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. I used the fan force setting, but you probably know your oven better than I do, so listen to your gut when it comes to preheating.

Next, get out your food processor and blend three cups of oatsinto a grainy meal. Tip this into a mixing bowl and add three teaspoons of baking soda.

Next, add a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg, because those were the spices listed on the cranberry sauce jar. I also added a nervous shake of allspice into the mix, because I apparently can’t handle a recipe without the stuff.

Then rub in exactly 30 grams of butter into the mix with your fingers. You could probably add more butter, but that was all I had left in the fridge. Obviously, I went out and bought more though, because I can’t actually live without a steady supply of butter on hand.

Next, throw in two tablespoons of brown sugarinto the warm milk until it dissolves.

Tip the milky mix into the bowl, stirring with whatever implement you prefer. I used a spoon, but anything stick-like will do.

Freak out that the mix is far too watery to be clumped into biscuity-balls, and chuck in exactly 63 grams of dried cranberriesand another cup of oats.

Curse yourself for overcorrecting yet again, before crackingan egginto a clear glass, to check for half-formed chick foetuses.

Lightly beat the egg by fishing out a small shell fragment with your finger before stirring it into the mix.

By now, you should have a goop that’s firm but not impossible to manipulate into clumps. If not, you could either add more milk or oats until you get the consistency you want, or just eat the mixture straight from the bowel in front of an episode of Keeping Up Appearances. Who am I to judge?

Roll the mixture into balls and use a small spoon to create little wells in the clumps.

Scoop out the contents of half-a-jar of cranberry sauce, dropping the festive jam into each hole until you’ve used it all up.

Bake for seven minutes before rotating and baking for another 11 minutes. Once they get slightly browned, they have the structural integrity to contain the cranberry sauce and can safely be removed from the oven.

Allow to cool slightly before hoeing right in, because the jam will be pretty hot.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier July 24

Last time I took a holiday, I prepared a bunch of columns before I left to ensure I could still irritate the fine township of Clifton even while I was out of the country. I wrote a bunch of ramblings that somewhat resembled recipes, which weren’t exactly time sensitive and, therefore, could be described as timeless. Classics even, at a stretch.

This time I plan on employing the same strategy, but with a mundane little twist to spice things up slightly.

I’m moving house before I leave and I have a lot of items on my shelves in the fridge and pantry to clear out before I take off. There are half-finished items that I can’t really justify taking with me to my new digs, but can’t handle throwing away. They’re still good; just opened.

So I’m setting myself a challenge to create appetizing and hopefully entertaining recipes using the stuff I have leftover in my pantry and fridge. It’s kind of like a low-budget Ready, Steady, Cook except I have no time limit and I’m allowed to drink wine while I do it.

So that’s what you’re going to get for the next few weeks, you lucky, lucky duckies.

But before I get into these questionable recipes, I have to acknowledge the ingredients that cold not be saved. These items were in a container I took home with me from Armidale, stored at my parents’ house while I was in Sydney and, for some reason, thought I would use when I moved back to Brisbane. As you can imagine, they are well past their use-by dates. Most of them are half-used, waiting to be turned into health slice or bliss balls or something equally as annoying, but that wasn’t to be.

Bee pollen: Yep, bee pollen. It was, at one stage, one of those super trendy superfood things. It was the kind of stuff influencers used to sprinkle on top of smoothie bowls. I have no idea what it was supposed to be good for or how it was supposed to transform my life, but I thought it would taste kind of honeycomb-y. And despite someone who puffs up like a balloon when stung by a bee and gets hit pretty hard at hay fever season, I thought bee pollen would be a goer. Don’t worry – it didn’t cause an allergic reaction. In fact, it was the opposite; it was extremely underwhelming. It had the texture of Nescafe instant coffee and the taste of old flowers mixed with boring dirt.

Cacao powder: Another superfood thing that was supposed to make smoothies pop. It didn’t. I don’t care what anyone tells you, cacao is not just as good as chocolate. It’s chocolate’s very dull cousin.

Black chia seeds: I would put this in my smoothies, but I never really understood why. They’d always clump up and get stuck at the bottom of my container, so I probably never ingested enough of them for my bod to milk their benefits.

LSA meal: This was ground linseed, sunflower seed and almond meal. I’m not sure why I bought it, but I imagine it was for sprinkling of some kind. According to the packet, it’s high in fibre, so that was obviously the drawcard. I love fibre. Fibre is my jam. But this stuff clearly wasn’t.

White quinoa: I do eat this stuff but I found it very intimidating to cook. I guess because you’re supposed to cook it like rice. I once tried to cook rice in a saucepan and nearly burnt the arse out of the pot. That incident has apparently traumatised me to the point of only ever cooking rice in microwavable sachets. I know, it’s pathetic.

Almond meal: Most of the stuff on this list is just wanky superfood dust that I didn’t like but couldn’t justify throwing away because it was so exxy. But I do like cooking with almond meal; it makes for delicious, dense cakes. I think the problem here was that, because it was covered in packets of crap I was in denial about buying, I simply didn’t see it. It had a weird smell by the time I realised I had it and I had to let it go.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 3, 2019

The other day I was tasked with contributing something to an afternoon tea and I decided that, after seeing it during my social media scrolling, I wanted to try baking savoury shortbread. It has everything I love – high butter content, rosemary and salt. Perfection.

I found a recipe from a stylish-sounding lady called Sue Moran who suggests using these bickies instead of place cards at themed brunches in a post on a website called View From Great Island.

I could have just followed the recipe as it was, but we all know that I like to make things about me, so I decided to make enough tweaks to the shortbread so that I could take more credit for the buttery creations. I could pretend that I had basically invented a new recipe by lazily swapping the flour and adding a few extra herbs.

The original recipe called for one-and-a-quarter cups of flour but, because I’m a millennial with a complicated relationship with food, I decided to use a healthier flour. I went into the supermarket to select my superior form of powdered carb, tossing up between wholemeal flour and spelt flour. It was a tough call to make. It was the “ketchup or catsup?” scene from The Simpsons all over again. I wanted the crumbly, rustic texture of wholemeal flour, but I liked the trendiness spelt offered. In the end, I decided to go with both.

I used three quarters of a cup of spelt flour and half a cup of wholemeal flour.

I sieved them both separately because it seemed like the kind of thing a wholesome baker would do. The spelt flour, which was almost as fine as normal flour, had a few grainy bits at the end, but I thought they seemed like they would be good for my guts, so I forced them through the sieve. The wholemeal flour had even more husk than the spelt, but it looked super healthy and rustic and all kinds of wanky, so in that stuff went.

Next, I found a stalk of rosemary I’d swiped from a platter of wraps, where it was used as a tasteful garnish. I chopped the leaves finely but the recipe called for two tablespoons for herbage, so I went out to my pot plants for more. I grabbed a good bushy stalk of thyme and four sage leaves and their stems, because that’s all the sage I’ve been able to grow. According to my notes, I needed an extra half a tablespoon of dried rosemary to meet the two-tablespoon requirement. Then I chucked in a good crack of black pepper and two large pinches of Maldon salt, sprinkled dramatically into the mixing bowl.

I then added 115 grams of softened butter, chopped, and a whole bloody cupful of parmesan cheese, which seemed excessive to me but that’s what the recipe called for.

Our gal Sue wanted me to blitz this up into a food processor to make a dough but, in an extremely out-of-character move, I decided not to use my beloved food processor. I had a hankering for wholesomeness and that meant scrunching the butter into the flour like one would with scones.

Once I’d made a rough, crumbly dough I read that I should try adding half a teaspoon of water to get the mixture to come together.

But I decided to get a little reckless and veer from advice in front of me. In my notes I wrote “Fuck that, ADD GARLIC”. Buckle up everyone, we’re going off-road here.

I added a half a teaspoon of minced garlic to bring that gear together.

I know, it’s pretty unconventional. Garlic with parmesan and rosemary? Who thinks of that?!

However, after a wee bit of kneading, I realised that I actually did need that half teaspoon of water, which really made a difference.

It’s about this time I realised I needed to pre-heat the oven. The temperature was in Fahrenheit, so it roughly translated to 175 degrees. Honestly, I would say to go ya-self mate and up the heat to 180 degrees.

Then I rolled out the dough between two sheets of baking paper to prevent a mess. I also used a cold bottle of wine (yep, I like my reds cold; room-temperature wine makes me think of urine samples) from the fridge because I didn’t have a rolling pin. I like to think the cold wine does something good for the butter in the dough, but I don’t have the authority to make that claim. I then used a narrow drinking glass to cut the dough into circles, laid them on a tray and baked them for about 15 minutes.

But if you’re playing along at home, just watch for when they have tiny bit of browning on the sides, at which point you should yank them out, wack them on a rustic chopping board and Instagram accordingly.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 26, 2019

Sometimes I feel personally victimised by my own brain.

The other day I used bleach to clean some not-at-all-white-anymore whites I had piled up. I was hoping to use the power of chemicals to blast away my careless laundry mistakes, wine stains and general grubbiness.

I have very little experience with bleach, as mine was not a bleach-using household. I mean, it’s not like we used lemon halves to clean every surface or cleansed the house with a smudge stick instead a spray-and-wipe, but we generally try to avoid harsh chemicals. And so bleach was never really a thing in our house. Even when I was bitten on the face by my dog (I totally forgot about that whole saga until the other day) and soaked a white and yellow tea towel with my blood, the more natural soak-it-in-cold-water trick eliminated the need for bleach.

So I’m not used to its power and potency.

I remember the first time I used bleach to clean my bathroom as a 26-year-old, I was absolutely amazed by the way it erased months of neglect and cleared out the concerning density of mould metropolises in the grout between the tiles. Some of my euphoria probably came from the fumes I inhaled, but the sentiment was in no way chemically enhanced. That was a powerful clean.

Anyway, I decided to use this magic potion/extremely dangerous chemical to make my whites white again. I poured some bleach into a bucket, added water and squished my clothes around in the colour-zapping liquid with my bare hands and went upstairs to have a shower while the clothes soaked.

I washed my hands with soap before hopping into the shower, but as I was lathering my hair with shampoo, the thought struck me that it would be very, very unfortunate if I still had some bleach on my mitts and was unknowingly coating my locks with it.

Panic set in.

I pictured my dark-but-also-somehow-kinda-reddish brown hair dotted with cat-wee-coloured splodges. Thick, Carmello streaks. 2002-Paris-Hilton-blonde regrowth dripping into brown hair.

It wasn’t a nice picture.

Tried to comfort myself by lying that I could be super laid back about it and just roll with it, even though that kind of response woluld be physically impossible for me. I told myself I could just dye over the bleach. Perhaps I could become more of a cap wearer. Maybe I’d become someone who rocks bold headscarves.

But just in case (a highly-likely case, mind you) I couldn’t actually be someone who just says “oh well” and moves on with life, I took evasive action. I finished washing my hair using just my nails, scratching the shampoo in rather than pressing my potentially-chemical-laced fingertips into my scalp. I then rinsed very, very, very thoroughly. I hopped out of the shower, tied my hair back and tried to get on with my day.

I knew that, given the fact I washed my hands before touching my hair, the likelihood of an accidental dye job was low. But my brain didn’t want me to believe that.

Instead, it attuned me to the sensations in my general head region. I mean, I assume this is some kind of danger sensing response, hard-wired into my brain as a result of thousands of years of evolution that helped my cave-dwelling ancestors overcome threats. But in a modern setting it has manifested into something that is really not helpful.

I’d convinced myself that I felt burning on my scalp. This, something told me, had nothing to do with the fact that I scratched my head skin raw while shampooing and everything to do with chemical burns. The totally normal amount of hair that came out in my fingers while showering was essentially half the hair on my head, broken off after the bleach burned through the roots. And that dizziness I was feeling had nothing to do with the fact that the only liquid I’d consumed by 2pm that day (it was my day off and I’d had a cheeky sleep-in) was two cups of tea; it was the bleach, which I pictured eroding my actual brain, having seeped in through my hair, skin and even my skull.

Eventually, I forced myself to look in the mirror, examining my roots for yellow blotches. There were none to be found. There was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine.

Of course, after obsessing about this for a good hunk of the day, I fully expect to experience many absurd hair-related dreams as my brain organises the day’s events in my sleep.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 19, 2019

I’ve gone off Queenslanders.

Of course, when I say I’m off Queenslanders, I’m talking about the traditional wooden dwellings, not the maroon-blooded people lucky enough to reside in this great state.

I had long held a dream of finding myself a home among the gum trees, doing it up real nice and living the country-chic life, flouncing around on my vast wearing linens and wooden beads, tea in hand. In this fantasy, the style of home has always been a Queenslander.

But after living in one for the past six months, I’m realising that I might not be the type of person best suited to a Queenslander.

Because, for someone who makes as much noise as I do, I value silence. I love total darkness of the night time. And, most importantly, I’m someone who needs to be able to forget that other people exist when I’m trying to sleep.

When your brain carries on like mine does, whirling around like a whipper snipper, you have to remove all distractions to get it to settle the heck down for bed.

Some would call me irritable, controlling or obsessive. But I just can’t sleep when there’s light shining in my eyes or a TV blaring or someone tinkering within earshot. I have to block all that out to get a decent night’s sleep.

And I’ve discovered that living in a dwelling that may as well have been constructed out of Paddle Pop sticks doesn’t make that very easy.

I grew up in a brick, ground-level house with cork tiles. It wasn’t bad – the floor was never cold of a winter’s morning and the colouring reminded me of Anzac bickies. But after watching far too many home reno shows where people worship original hardwood floorboards, I’d assumed they were the duck’s nuts. I lusted after them like 14-year-old me lusted after Adam Brody (the black-haired guy from The OC who was actually also in a great movie called Grind).

Sure, floorboards look great, but looks aren’t everything, people. Because suspended high in the air, these varnished timber slabs are noisy as all heck. No matter how quietly you try to tread across them, you still sound like a hippo thundering into the kitchen.

The walls aren’t much better. Again, the timber cladding looks bloody mint. But they may as well be cigarette rolling papers for how good they are at blocking out sound. If someone is stirring a cup of tea on the other end of the house, you’ll know about it.

But the worst thing about my delightful little rental is that all the bedrooms have these decorative grates above the doors, which is a wooden panel with intricate cutouts. And look, I appreciate the aesthetic value of these designs. It would have taken someone a lot of time to do them. But sweet baby cheeses are they impractical.

They let in the light. They let in the noise. They reinforce the inconvenient truth that I am not the only person who exists on this planet, which is not under my total command.

Recently, I’ve found that I’ve been unable to take it any longer. I took drastic action. And it makes me look real suss.

I stuck brown paper to the outside of the grate, covering it from the rest of the house. This makes it look as if I’ve got something to hide. It’s like I’m breeding salamanders illegally or fervently trying to locate the obscure members of early Big Brother seasons as part of a secret mission.

But I had to do this, because the brown paper hides the strings tried to the grille, which would have raised more questions.

You see, I’ve tied an old pillow to the inside of the grate, hoping the padding will block out the infernal sounds of life beyond the confines of my room. And it looks weird. Not only is the pillow brown and yellowy, but I’ve fixed it to the grille by having two long stiches on the top and one stich along the bottom. Unwittingly, I stitched an extremely off-putting face into the pillow, which glowers at me from above. I’ve posted a picture of it Instagram, but in case you’re not an Insta user, just picture a dirty, square cloud disapproving the heck out of you.

And that’s what’s above my door. That’s what I sleep with every night. It’s what I wake up to every morning.

I suspect being constantly judged by a sassy, sweat-stained pillow may slowly erode the scant remains of my sanity, but right now that’s my best option.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 12, 2019

Waving is a big thing in our family.

Obviously we’re big on the finger wave to the stop-go person going through road works. And we appreciate a courtesy wave from drivers we make room for when they need to change lanes under pressure.

But the Maguire family is all about the send-off wave.

I’m not entirely sure where it began, but somewhere along the line we started following guests out to their cars, gathering at a clump at the end of the driveway and waving until they get half-way down the street.

As children, my sisters and I would take this a step further and run barefoot alongside our friends’ cars as they were picked up from sleepovers, evoking the drama of a WWI nurse keeping up with her beloved soldier along the platform, waving until his train was out of sight – only, rather than being restricted to the confines of a train platform, we stopped when we reached the patch of prickles.

Sometimes the send-off can put you in a bit of a fluster, especially if you’re like me and take a while to get set up for a long journey. When you’re putting on the right playlist, looking for sunnies and trying to wedge your water bottle in an easy to reach spot, having the whole family standing there waiting for you to bugger off can be a bit annoying.

But the older we all get, the less of an annoyance it has become.

This thought struck me last week. I was back in town for a few hours last Tuesday, deciding to kick off my mid week-weekend with a cheeky cervical screening (let this be a reminder for anyone who has been putting off a routine check: just bloody get it over and done with, for heaven’s sake). I popped into the Maguire house for a catch up and cup or three of tea.

In case you have blocked it from your memory, it was aggressively cold last Tuesday.* My parents had shut up the house and were keeping warm by the fireplace. So when it came time for me to leave that afternoon, I expected to bid my farewells in the kitchen, especially to Dad.

* This was obviously a couple of Tuesdays ago now. And, in the off chance you weren’t in the township of Clifton on the Tuesday in question, it was real fucken cold. Like, put on your grainiest Aussie drawl cold. 

My father dislikes the cold more than he hates the way people say they’re going to the “bathroom” when they’re actually going to the toilet (I personally don’t have a problem with people finding a polite way to say “I’m off to excrete some waste” but that seems to matter to Macca, who takes a tough stance against the Americanisation of our culture).

He really, really doesn’t like the cold.

But, sure enough, both parents made their way out of the warmth and through the garage-cum-lounge-room, which is much colder (“you can feel the difference with that insulation”) than the rest of the house. Dad even ventured outside – wearing a woollen jacket, mind you.

It’s an unnecessary gesture; saying goodbye at the door would absolutely suffice. But, geez, it’s pretty nice, I thought to myself as I drove off.

It reminded me of the time a few years back, when Dad was dropping me at the Brisbane airport to catch the plane that would take me to my new life Sydney. We were running slightly late and I hopped out at the drop-off zone feeling flustered, saying a quick goodbye because there were cars everywhere.  I rushed to the check-in counter and then waited quietly at the gate. I’d assumed Dad, who finds the traffic of Toowoomba hectic, would have bolted from the madness of the airport. But then I saw a battered, dusty Akubra coming up the escalators and there was Macca, ready to wave me off.

Despite the traffic, the ridiculous car park fees and having to muck around with the bloody paid parking machines, the old Maguire tradition continued. He was there waiting with me as the rest of the passengers boarded, watched on as I finally gave the flight attendant my ticket and waved the whole time I walked down gangway and out of sight.

Again, the send-off wave is completely unnecessary and can be a quite a bit of effort, but geez, it’s really bloody nice.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 5, 2019

I wrote this short, sharp burst of rage after putting off writing my column until the last minute as I was devoid of even any half-baked ideas. My editor shot me an email telling em that, given how close they were to finishing that week’s paper, the slot allocated for my smut had shrunk somewhat. I thought it was a good opportunity to get something off my chest .

I’ve just watched an Instagram video of a friend participating some kind of waterfall cleansing ceremony in Bali where she has to rid her body of all negativity by screaming into a curtain of rushing water. She said it was freeing and epic.

I too would like that feeling – to be released from the shackles of my rage.

But I, unfortunately, happen to find myself inside a Queenslander with paper-thin walls surrounded by neighbours on a not-all-that-quiet suburban street. If I were to audibly let out the 4,893 megalitres of negativity inside my body, the house would quickly be surrounded by a swat team.

So, instead, I’m going to purge myself of my underlying rage in the form of a short, sharp little rant by angrily tapping on my keyboard.

I feel like these little spaces are ideal for venting spontaneously about something extremely trivial with absolutely no justification. Last time it was the yuckiness of fake mint flavouring and, by extension, toothpaste. Today, I choose to direct my anger towards those bins with the flappy lids.

If you’re lucky enough not to be familiar with them, these are the ones that have triangular, pointed tops – kind of like giant milk cartons.

I grew up in a household with a foot-activated bin. You pressed down on the pedal, the lid flipped open and you could dump your pencil shavings in one painless motion. You didn’t have to touch the bin. You didn’t have to bend down. You weren’t a slave to the vessel containing the household rubbish. And when the lid came down, all the filth was sealed off from the world. It’s an excellent system.

So I cannot understand why people endure the bins with these flappy lids that swing up and down like they’re mocking you with their big, stupid binny grins.

They never completely close, meaning the stench and germs from your waste leech out and pollute the air you breathe into your precious, precious lungs. If you want to put something small in there, you have to get right up close to the garbage. You have to stoop down to its level. And, if you’re chucking out a teabag, you generally end up getting tea on the outside flap and have to wipe it off.

Most frustrating of all, if your bin gets to the point where it’s nearly full but not full enough to traipse out to the wheelie bin in your pyjamas wearing bedsocks and thongs, you can’t really use the lid. The lid gets stuck on a large chunk of rubbish and you find yourself needing to lift the whole flappy lid apparatus throw away a single teabag.

We all know I was leading to this point but there’s really no other way to wrap up this unprovoked outburst: this type bin needs to be binned.*

* In a responsible manner that will insure the plastic will be recycled and used for another product that will better the live of humanity. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier on May 29, 2019

The clutter you keep in your car is a special kind of clutter.

It’s not like the stuff shoved into a bottom drawer because you don’t really have anywhere else to put it, it’s the things you collect along your journey.

It’s the stuff you carry with you when you leave your home base. And that makes the clutter more than a jumble of items, but an inventory of supplies. You may never need to draw on those supplies, but preparedness is the difference between a day out and disaster.

So when you clean out your car, the decision to either dump something or keep it in your stores is a decision that requires a lot of hypothetical thinking. You must consider the possible scenarios you could find yourself in and whether that item will assist you.

Of course, when you have an overactive imagination and a tendency to worry, this means a lot of items are put in the “keep” category, such as:

A small portion of All Bran: As much as I love bran in all its forms – with and without sultanas – this wasn’t put there on purpose. I don’t have such a compulsive need to chow down on high-fibre cereal that I need to keep a secret stash of bran in the various crevices of my life. I’d left it at my parents’ place and my mother, who seems to only take her bran with sultanas, didn’t need it cluttering the pantry. She’d bundled it up with a few bits and pieces I’d left at the Maguire Manor for me to take to my actual home. I’d crammed everything into the glove box and completely forgot about it. Now whenever I open the glove box and see the bran, I can’t bring myself to take it inside. What if I find myself stuck on the side of the road for hours with no sustenance? What if I stay at a mate’s place and their breakfast options lack significant fibre? I can’t take those kinds of risks. So the bran stays.

A clean pair of undies: Again, these were originally in the car because they were included in Mum’s care package/bundle of crap I’d left at her house (the amazing thing about leaving clothes behind at my parents place is that they miraculously turn up freshly laundered). I reason that it’s extremely practical to always be packing spare knickers. This is not a reflection of my driving abilities – I am proud to say that no one has ever soiled themself while I was at the wheel. However, I like to always be ready in case of spontaneous slumber parties (I’d think nothing of borrowing a friend’s pyjamas, but sharing knickers crosses a line) or having to skip town at a moment’s notice after making some powerful enemies in a high-stakes game of poker. It would be ideal to have fresh undies in either scenario.

A free singlet I got for participating in a work fun run: Because if I end up in the middle of nowhere having starved to death after finishing all the bran, I want to impress whoever finds me by showing them how active my withered body once was.

A quarter of a carton of stubbies: Because you should never turn up to a party empty handed and you just never know when a mid-week morning tea will turn into a party.

Several supermarket green bags: I really only need one but I keep forgetting to bring them into the shops with me and end up buying more.

Two eskies: I have a big one and a little one, meaning I’m covered if I spontaneously purchase a ham and, on the same outing, pick up a bunch of prawns from the trawlers. Clearly, this is an aspirational thing. They say you should dress for the job you want to have, so I’m hoping the “cart around enough insulated boxes for lavish diet you one day hope to exist on” also applies.

A pair of bold, angled hoop earrings: I think I’ve established that most of the items in my car are kept there for emergency purposes and these earrings are no exception. If you’re dressed like an absolute bag of human excrement and find yourself needing to look somewhat polished, statement earrings will change everything. A pair of statement earrings will make it look as if you chose your outfit with purpose, rather than chucking on whatever was comfiest. Always keep emergency statement earrings handy.