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.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, May 9, 2018

Now, we Maguires aren’t much of a Paul Kelly family. Dad’s into Slim, The Eagles and, as all sensible people should be, Diana Ross and the Supremes. Mum dabbles in a bit of Johnny Farnham and Petula Clark. And ever since it made its cracking debut back in 1999, Britney Spears’ banger Hit Me Baby One More Timehas been getting spins in the Maguire house. Last time I looked, it was still next to radio in the kitchen, ready to be played at a moment’s notice.

As such, we’re not too familiar with the framed Kelly gravy recipe. Thanks to a bit of incidental exposure due to the boom of ironic bogan culture in metropolitan areas, I know to shout about giving my love to someone called Angus when the song comes on at a house party, but that’s about it.

I’ll also point out that I’m from a staunch Gravox family. We’ve tasted perfection and we don’t want to muck around with all the variables that can spoil a gravy. We’re not going to chance it with a risky pan-juice-and-flour combo when there’s a ripping lamb roast at stake. Nah. We like the powdered stuff you get from the box.

But that doesn’t mean we settle for a weak, salty dam water concoction of a gravy. We like a nice, rich glob of flavour to drown our potatoes in.

And just because our gravy is made up of hydrolysed vegetable protein and “natural flavour”, doesn’t mean we don’t make it our own.

Mum, for example, will sometimes mix it up with a few sliced mushrooms. When she’s cooking sausages under the griller, Mum will spice up a batch of gravy with a few slices of onion – this particular recipe calls for Dad gleefully calling out “onion gavy” at least twice, which I believe stems from an inside joke about a bloke he knew who pronounces “gravy” without the “r” and loves his onions.  Some traditions are best left unquestioned.

I however, have put my own stamp on the goo of the gods.

I like to say that it’s “a secret”, as if I’m from a cultured family that passes recipes down through the generations. It sounds wholesome.

In reality, most of my recipes come from the back of packets and the only things passed down my family trees are a tendency to hoard things and scoliosis. So this is the best I can do.

The secret: rosemary.

Thrilling, right?

But there’s more to it than that. It’s not about the rosemary, it’s what ya do with it:

The first thing you want to do is to get the Supreme Chicken gravy. Don’t get the instant just-add-boiling-water stuff – it will only disappoint you and make your potatoes/entire life limp and soggy.

The next thing you want to do is get your hands on some oil. If you’re cooking a roast, collect the juices from the roasted hunk of meat and tip this rich, bloody oil into a non-stick frypan. If you don’t have meaty juice, just use a good olive oil.

Then, chuck in a few teaspoons of dried rosemary. Now, you could defs use fresh rosemary from the garden, but us Maguires aren’t great gardeners so the concept of plucking some herbs from a functioning veggie patch is foreign to me. And considering we’re using powdered gravy, we may as well go down the highly-processed path.

Speaking of highly processed, now is the time to make your gravy paste. It’s like curry paste, except less natural. The box says to use one-and-a-half tablespoons of powder, but because of my undeniable zest for life, I tend to end up with two heaped spoonfuls. I put this powder in a cup measurement, adding a splash of water to first make a paste, then gradually adding more water once that’s been mixed. This process makes me feel like a real cook, but also prevents lumps from ruining your day.

Next, fry the rosemary on a medium heat until the leaves start crisping up.

Gently pour in the gravy water, stirring with a plastic spatula. Why a plastic spatula? Because it’s usually already dirty by this point and I can’t be arsed washing up unnecessary spoons.

The wide surface of the frypan should make your gravy thick and rich in a few minutes, so keep watching it until it reaches your desired viscosity.

Next, tip this delightful brown sludge into a jug of some sort. You can either place this on the table with your roast, or grab a straw and take the jug into a darkened room to watch reruns of The Nanny by yourself.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, May 2, 2018

For those of you who have come late to the party, this right here is another entry in a series of autobiographical recipes I’ve whipped up earlier and chucked in the freezer for later.

And after being left to defrost in a metaphorical sink at the Clifton Courier office and reheated by the great microwave that is the printing press, all I can say is that I hope no one ends up with food poisoning from this latest serving.

When nutting out my self-indulgent cookbook idea, I wrote a list of dishes I wanted to include. It featured things like risotto, pumpkin pie and “coconut wanker porridge”. But I realised these were things I cooked to impress people or made on special occasions. It became clear that, if I was going to be truly autobiographical, I needed to include the day-to-day stuff I shove into my gob. So I came up with a list of stuff I eat depressingly often, calling that list Underwhelming But Still Good.

Enjoy this taster plate of culinary insights into just how dismal my life is.

Breakfast Routine

Ok, so some people think my breakfast routine is a little on the sad side. I’ve been mocked for how regimented and soulless it is, devoid of toast, joy and life. But I disagree.

Not squandering my carb intake on breakfast frees me up to enjoy bread at any time of the day.

And the fact that it is so fine-tuned means I don’t have to think of a morning; I just have follow the same steps to get to work on time with a good serve of veggies on the already on the board.

Step 1: Place two eggs in a small saucepan of water, turning on high.

Step 2: Flick on the kettle to boil.

Step 3: Place a teabag in your tea cup/vat-sized mug.

Step 4: Place three portions of frozen spinach and three portions of frozen kale on a plate, placing the plate in the microwave without turning it on.

Step 5:Once the kettle boils, tip into the teacup. Fill the water almost to the top, so that drinking your tea will also scold your oesophagus.

Step 6: Turn the microwave on to cook the unappetising green bricks for three minutes.

Step 7: As the microwave beeps, put one teaspoon of honey into the tea, which should be of a strong stout after steeping for a little more than three minutes.

Step 8: Take the plate out of the microwave and use a spoon to remove the eggs, placing them on a folded tea towel to soak up the water.

Step 9: Stir your honey, which by now should have dissolved and diffused with the water. Add milk, but only just enough to change the colour – won’t have you drinking creamy tea like a milky heathen.

Step 10: Place eggs on plate, then sit down to eat this bountiful meal.

Step 11: Eat kale first, because it is terrible.

Step 12: Eat spinach second, because it is slightly less terrible.

Step 13:Now that you’ve eaten your veggies, you get to enjoy a dessert of hard-boiled, eggy goodness. Do this by cutting the egg right through the guts with a swift whack of a knife right in the middle of the egg and scooping out the innards with a spoon. Treat it like a kiwi fruit, rather than chicken ovulation.

Step 14: Finish your tea, mentally preparing yourself for another meaningless day in your mediocre life.

There, what’s so gloomy about that?

Onion and Bacon Bowl

This was something I pioneered while quite hungover, craving a hearty risotto to fill the void inside me. But after completing the first few steps, I became unable to continue standing upright and settled for whatever I’d prepared up to that point.

I wasn’t disappointed in the food, only in myself.

Step 1: Slice and dice a whole onion. There’s no need to be precise with your cutting because if you’re at the point where you’re making this, it doesn’t matter anyway. You’re not going to impress anyone. You’re probably hunched over, in need of a shower and all alone.

Step 2: Slice and dice about three rashers of bacon. Five if you’re really hungry/sad.

Step 3: Chuck this into a small saucepan with an angry slap of butter (about a tablespoon, but who cares?) and a dowsing of oil.

Step 4: Cook over a medium heat, stirring as you can be bothered to move.

Step 5: Once onion is fragrant and translucent, tip into a bowl, an oversized mug or eat it straight from the saucepan while watching a rerun of a TV show you’ve seen at least seven times. Avoid mirrors on your way to the couch, otherwise you’ll take a long, hard look at yourself – and you won’t be impressed.

Step 6: Curl into a ball and hope sleep comes for you.

Yeah Good Yog

When you need a treat, but you don’t actually deserve a treat.

Step 1: Slop a few spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt into a bowl

Step 2: Crumble a few walnuts over the top. This works best if you equate the crushing the nuts to crushing the patriarchy.

Step 3: Drizzle with honey.

Step 4: Pretend it’s a decadent desert and eat with imitation glee.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, April 25, 2018

I realise this post does not fit into my strict Wednesday or Sunday schedule, but considering I got motion sick from my computer and passed out at 5.30pm today, the irregular posting seems appropriate.

I’d like to point out that I’ve just returned from a month in Europe, not as an apology or an explanation for the lack of activity on this here blog, but merely to brag. I’ve been to the Trevi fountain. I’m cultured now.

And on that note, I’d like to offer you the first dish that featured in my autobiographical cook book gimmick I prepared for the paper in my absence: a soup-mix-based cob loaf. The epitome of culture.

Rip off a side and dunk right into it:

Boxing Day Cob

Now, just because it’s called “Boxing Day Cob”, doesn’t mean you can’t eat it year round.

The name is less about the date and more to do with the social conditions of the occasion. Most people will have Boxing Day off, meaning you’re probably going to a gatho of some kind. And the beauty of Boxing Day events is that they’re significantly less formal than their Christmassy counterpart.

You can wear thongs. You’re probably a little hungover. And you’re wanting to make the most out of one last day where it’s socially acceptable to eat like the disgusting slobs we all have raging inside us.

And while I’m in no way disrespecting the hallowed cob, its low-key properties makes it an absolute banger at casual parties.

Another thing about Boxing Day: the leftovers.

Chances are there are still a few roast taties and bits of lamb sitting in a Tupperware container in the fridge, just wanting to be made into a sandwich.  Not that I have anything against leftover sangas – I’m a strong advocate for the roast potato sandwich – but this is one way to use up the uneaten goods while appearing to be some kind of culinary wizard.

This particular recipe came into being last Christmas. Dad told our Boxing Day host that “the girls will bring three cobloaves” when we rocked up. Now, that’s a bit of pressure.

Of course, the classic cob mix was brought out, but I felt the need to bring some variety to the table. With a bit of imagination and a sprinkle of fatherly fate, the Boxing Day Cob was born.

Step 1: Using a serrated knife, cut the top off a cob loaf. Pull out the innards like you’re disembowelling your worst enemy, putting these bready guts on a tray with baking paper. You could coat this in cooking spray or brush it with garlic butter if you really wanted to impress people. But because I tend to win people over with my sparkling personality, I don’t need garlic butter.

Step 2: Whack the tray in a moderate oven, placing the hollowed-out loaf and the top in as well. Keep an eye on these throughout the cooking process, removing them when they’re golden brown.

Step 3:Slice and dice a large brown onion. My hospitality teacher, Barb, once said the secret to cutting onions without crying was to cut off the root of the onion last. I don’t know if that’s a failsafe method, but it seems to work for me. And I’m not someone known for holding in my tears: I once cried in The Goofy Movie.

Step 4:Slice and dice five rashers of bacon, choosing to trim or not to trim the fat rind based on how disgusted you are with yourself after Christmas dinner.

Step 5: Chuck these in a medium-sized saucepan with about 20g of butter and a good glug of olive oil.

Step 6: Sauté over a medium heat, stirring the pot to the beat of the Shrek the Halls promotional Christmas CD your family’s still playing 15 years after getting it from Big W.

Step 7:Add one tub of cream cheese and one tub of sour cream – they’re roughly 250g but you don’t need to be super precise.

Step 8:Melt this down to a thick, off-white sludge, stirring occasionally until well-combined.

Step 9:Stir in a whole packet of the powdered soup mix you asked your father to buy from Foodworks while it was still open. You thought you said onion, but he came back with tomato.

Step 10:Roll with it.

Step 11:With your ego inflated by the bold choice of adding tomato powder to cob loaf mix, let inspiration guide you to the container of leftovers in the fridge.

Step 12:Tip in some leftover roasted veggies, pretending you’re freestylin’ on Masterchef.

Step 13: Add a handful of store-bought “pizza mix” pre-grated cheese, because you were “far too busy” to grate it yourself.

Step 14:Be honest with yourself and add another two large handfuls of cheese.

Step 15: Once that’s melted, pour this slop into the hollowed out bread roll and plonk it on the table in front of your guests still on the oven tray. Don’t bother transferring it to a fancy serving platter, because no one can be bothered to wash up at this point and, if it really is being served up on Boxing Day, chances are your guests are close enough relatives to have seen the real you. Too much damage has been done for a bit of fancy serving gear to repair. It is what it is. Accept it.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 28, 2018

Something great happened to me the other week and now I’m concerned about repercussions.

On Thursday, I lost my phone. I’d been siting on the bus and made the fateful decision to hop up and sit in a different seat with a better view. Without my realising it, my phone had slipped from my pocket* and fell between a crack in the seat.

* As such, I would like to point out that this whooooooole thing would not have happened if women were granted the same pocket practicality as men. I don’t understand why having a uterus automatically equates to less pocket space. Seriously, what gives?! We can’t use that thing for storage, people! 

A few minutes later, I’d realised I was without phone and was madly rifling through the vast expanses of my gym bag. Fear struck me and I hopped off at the next stop, checking if I’d left my phone at the bus stop.

The run back down town was like something you’d see in a romantic comedy – it was even raining, for heaven’s sake. Leaving my inhibitions (and, as it turned out, my phone) on that blasted bus, I was running past men in suits and women with well-maintained shoulder-length haircuts. It was the part of the movie where the protagonist realises they can’t live without the conveniently-attractive love interest who is minutes away from stepping on a bus/plane/train and out of their life forever. I, however, wasn’t running towards my happily ever after. I was sprinting towards a combination of wires and metal with no password lock that contained screenshots from a rather salacious group chat with my closest friends (this is my Clifton girl gang – people who have known me since around the time I began to master the control of my bowels, so you can imagine the intensity of incriminating honesty which colours that conversational cesspit) and a series of rather unflattering selfies where I’m trying to work out which one of my eyes is smaller (I think it’s the left one, but I just can’t be sure*).

* After going through my pictures, it turns out there are several burst of these selfies on there. It would be terribly embarrassing if they appeared on a missing persons poster for me… but they’d be chosen because they give the most accurate depiction of me. 

Alas, no phone.

I went back to work, hoping I’d just left it at my desk.

No phone.

After plugging my details into the “Find My iPhone” feature, I discovered my telephonic communication instrument was still on the bus, having recognised the route from the coordinates it was giving off.

I was able to remotely lock my phone*, thus preventing whoever picked it up from deducing just how boring I am, based on my camera roll.

* Dad was amazed at this. He didn’t quite get it, but he was amazed. 

Cautiously hopeful, I instructed my phone give off a sound. I realised this was risky, as it had could potentially alert a scummy scumbag to the fact that there was a lost smartphone nearby for them to pawn (ideally they’d use the money for extra-strength teabags, sturdy pillows and maybe a few cheeky fireworks). But I realised that if the phone had slipped into the crack/abyss between the seat and the wall, it might never be found. The battery would eventually die and it would remain there until someone bought the bus to convert into a caravan in order to beat the dismal housing prices in Sydney.

I had to take a chance.

And, as it turns out, the gamble paid off. The person who found it was no scumbag.

She was a uni student and, from what I gather, a youth worker for a church just 20 minutes from my office.

That’s the exact person you’d want to find your phone. First of all, she’s a young and, probably, cash-strapped person who understands my reliance on my phone and could empathise with me on just how crap it would be to lose it. Plus, she had the moral fibre of someone who, presumably, voluntarily spent her spare time enriching the lives of children. I’d hit the jackpot.

I met the sweetheart (at her church, bless her) and gave her a scented candle I found in an unpacked bag the weekend prior as a way of expressing my gratitude – because the best way to express oneself is via either scented candles or interpretive dance, and I didn’t have a boombox handy.

But I worry I’ve been too lucky. I’ve heard lost phone horror stories and I had a fairy tale on my hands.

I’ve not done anything particularly kind of late. I’m very quick to judge, particularly people on reality television. I passive aggressively take out the rubbish, being purposefully loud while I do it. The only charity I’ve donated to in recent months has been the “treat yourself fund”*.

* The fund is still desperately seeking donations. 

And then something lovely like this happens.

This is karmic credit.

And just like a loan shark, Karma’s gonna get its money back somehow.

I’m dreading the metaphorical repayment notice, which will be coming in the mail any day now. And geez will that interest sting when it hits.

If there’s no column next week, assume I’ve spilled tea on my laptop or I’ve fallen into a manhole on the footpath.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 14, 2018

There are some songs you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve heard them on a dance floor.

Songs don’t become cemented as personal classics from being over-played on the radio. You need to form a personal connection to them.

There needs to be something that animates them in a way that transforms them from a collection of sounds into an anthem that lights a fire within your soul.

You hear other people rave about these songs, but you just don’t get it. It’s not as if you don’t like them. You might even sing along with them in the car. But it’s not until you’ve heard them at an event where someone has taken off their shirt and attempted to waterslide along a wooden floor on their belly in puddles of spilled beer and obscenely-potent mojito mix that they really make sense.

To illustrate my point, I’ve compiled a list of songs I didn’t truly appreciate until I heard them on a dance floor:

Take Me Home, Country Roads – John Denver

You’ve heard it on the radio enough to know the general gist of the words. But it’s only years later on your mate’s sticky lounge room floor when you’re shouting the lyrics that this tune truly kicks you in the metaphorical guts.

You’ve moved on from that little house on the edge of town and are in a new world with traffic lights and water that doesn’t corrode pipes. You’ll never forget where you came from. Suddenly, you’re thinking of that New England highway turnoff. Are you crying? Maybe.

Boys From The Bush – Lee Kernaghan

You’ve heard this a lot. It’s on your Drinking With Dad playlist. Heck, you may have even jogged to it a few times. But it’s not until you loudly proclaim you’ve been “droving caaaaaattle” after you’ve kicked off your shoes and the party has dwindled down to your closest and/or drunkest allies that the spirit of piling in the ute on a Saturday night really hits you.

5, 6, 7, 8 – Steps

If you’re aged between 25 and 30 and you were educated within these acres of opportunity, chances are you’ve probably heard this one. But even if you weren’t herded into a classroom each morning for line dancing drills, you’ve probably heard it on the radio.

Back in the day, that initial strike of the fiddle signified forced group exercise, but now it heralds an explosion of nostalgia-fuelled ecstasy.

Not as overdone as The Nutbush or The Time Warp, this is a novel trip back to the group dancing phase from the past that you actually want to take. As you fumble through the moves your fuzzy brain struggles to recall, you’re taken back to a time when life was good and your only stress was convincing your parents to let you go to the pool.

Outback Club – Lee Kernaghan

Another banger from the bloke in the black hat, this one is more of a rallying cry than his aforementioned party anthem. If you can ignore the cringey part about the female member of said Outback Club being the “kinda woman any man’d be proud of”, it’s extremely unifying.

It’s the kind of song you put your shoes back on for, squeezing back into a pair of heavy-heeled clodhoppers so you can stomp obnoxiously to the beat. This is best accompanied by purposeful, powerful clapping and screaming the lyrics to the face of the nearest person.

Party in the USA – Miley Cyrus 

You hear it on the radio and write it off as another piece of soulless trash. But then it comes on when you’re in a dance circle with your favourite people and you realise just how wrong you were.

It’s upbeat. The lyrics are easily punctuated with coordinated movements (see: “I put my haaaaaands up”). And there’s a fabulous, drawn-out “yeah” that is pretty much begging for you to scream it with everything you have inside you. It’s like a joyful exorcism.

Chicken Fried – Zac Brown Band

You didn’t know the lyrics before and you probably never will, but the words you did pick up (“chicken fried”, “night”, “just right”, “radio oooooon”) are somehow etched into your soul now. If you’re like me and didn’t grow up in a Garth Brooks household (country music was strictly Lee and Slim) you’re used to mumbling your way through country bangers. This one is probably one of the easiest tunes to pretend you know and even though you know the people you’re with know you don’t know the words, you also know they don’t care – they’ll dance with you anyway. These are your people.

Originally published in the Clifton Courier, March 14, 2018

A recipe for disaster, in 34 steps.

Step 1: Plan to make the most of a drizzly afternoon by leaving work on time, having a cup of tea, maybe doing a light ab workout and doing a bit of reading before an early bedtime.

Step 2: Remember a conversation you had with someone at work about their birthday being the next day and how much they love sticky date pudding.

Step 3: Decide to attempt to appear as a caring person, forecasting a lovely rainy afternoon baking pudding. Tell yourself it will be fun, won’t take long and will fill the apartment with a delightful caramel aroma.

Step 4: Look up a recipe on Google and tell yourself “this should be easy enough”.

Step 5: Go to the fancy, pretentious grocery store near your house for baking supplies. Wander fruitlessly until finally giving in and asking the shop assistant “where would I find the dates?”

Step 6: Be grateful the shop assistant wasn’t a sassy sitcom character who took the opportunity to make a quip about your romantic prospects.

Step 7: Be outraged by how bloody exxy medjool dates are.

Step 8: Check out the price of prunes and decide to pioneer the Sticky Prune Pudding.

Step 9: Tell yourself you’re certain you’ve read something about prunes having less calories than meedjool dates.

Step 10: Decide to keep your work clothes on because being in semi-professional attire will put you in a professional frame of mind and stop you from licking bowls and tasting mixture by the tablespoon.

Step 11: Cream brown sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs together in a food processor.

Step 12: Tell yourself to live in the moment and sneak a taste of the smooth, fudgy mix you’ve created, ignoring the fact that this artery-clogging goo is just butter, sugar and raw eggs and that you sometimes have dignity.

Step 13: Marvel at the soothing novelty of sifting flour.

Step 14: Mix everything in together and then pour into a cake tin with one of those silicone bowl scrapers, silently praising the noble sprit who invented these mixture-saving miracle sticks.

Step 15: Put the pre-cake goo into the oven.

Step 16: Prepare the caramel sauce ingredients, deciding once again to live in the moment by licking the thickened cream from the tub.

Step 17: Curse yourself for who you’ve become.

Step 18: Catch a glimpse of a spark flying around the oven out of the corner of your eye.

Step 19: Open the oven to discover more sparks coming from the inner mechanisms of the oven, hastily turn that bastard off.

Step 20: Realise your kitchen and building could have burned down because of a pudding.

Step 21: Realise you have 1.5 litres of raw prune pudding mix in your custody.

Step 22: Consider turning up to work with said raw mixture in a milk bottle for the colleague’s birthday.

Step 23: Decide to cook the raw mixture like pancakes on the sandwich press.

Step 24: Continue making the caramel sauce, frequently tasting the sinful liquid.

Step 25: Try to ignore how much caramel sauce you “tasted” to “ensure quality”.

Step 26: Scoop raw pudding mixture out of cake tin, dolloping on sandwich press until it looks like it’s been cooked all the way through.

Step 27: Repeat this process for 40 minutes, complaining to your housemate the whole time.

Step 28: Realise that, with the pudding mix, the caramel sauce and the greasing of the hotplate, you’ve used half a kilo of butter in this desert.

Step 29: Calculate an estimation of how much butter you’ve personally consumed.

Step 30: Hope to the heavens the prune power kicks in soon.

Step 31: Pile the pudding pancakes on top of each other with a drizzle of caramel sauce between each layer in a bid to ensure some semblance of structural integrity.

Step 32: Name your creation a Sticky Prune Pudding Pancake Stack.

Step 33: Take a second look at your cakey abomination and realise you’ve spent three hours of your live making a caramel cow pat.

Step 34: Decide to never do something nice for anyone ever again.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 7, 2018

I’m not someone who can lie easily.

A lie curdles in my stomach. Lying to me is like drinking room-temperature milk hungover on a hot day: I could do it under extreme circumstances, but I find it awfully unpleasant and avoid it at all costs.

Also, given my character was shaped by Disney movies and crime dramas, I’ve found lying to be illogical. The truth, I’ve been conditioned to believe, will always come out. So it makes sense* to be as honourable and upfront as you can in the first instance.

* That’s right, my morals are based on fear of the consequences, not virtue.

Honesty, then, is my favourite policy.

Not only is it ethical, but logistically, it just makes things easier. It means you don’t have to go to all the effort of covering your tracks and it saves you from having to mentally keep track of your fibs.

However, there is such a thing as being too honest. Being too upfront. Giving too much information.

This is dangerous and can make things extremely unpleasant conversationally. You want to tell the truth, but not everyone needs to hear the whole, hairy truth.

This is why euphemisms are so handy. They’re like special code words society has made up to say things without actually having articulate the shameful truth out loud.

You can say something like “I’m trying to save” instead of revealing quite how much of a mess your financial situation is. This magical phrase hints at what’s happening, with a comfortable fog of ambiguity clouding the truth.

And it’s a lovely way of explaining your frugal behaviour in such a way that it won’t make people deeply concerned for you.

Because no one needs to know that you’re buying your undies in bulk budget packs from the supermarket. Or that most of your fruit comes from the free fruit bowl in the staffroom. And people would start getting worried about you if you told them the only source of red meat you’ve had in the past two weeks was the table at a party you weren’t invited to but somehow ended up at. Generally, most people wouldn’t be impressed to hear that you ate three pieces of lamb and a cold sausage that had been presumably sitting out for hours at a stranger’s house. That takes you from “money conscious” to “scummy human ibis” preeeetty quickly.

Then there’s the polite terms for physical ailments.

I like how “upset stomach” can substitute for the graphic details that societal norms prevent you from explicitly revealing.

This blanket term means you don’t need to get down to particulars. It’s not necessary to give a lengthy description of what went down. There’s no need to even specify from which orifice you’ve exploded from. You can leave that information out. It becomes up to the listener’s imagination to fill in the details, if that’s what they want to do. They have the option to think no further about the unpleasantness that occurred. They get the message that you are unwell without any of the grossness.

And using the term “upset stomach” means people usually get the message not to pry for extra details, which is a good thing because if they don’t ask follow up questions you won’t have to tell them, for example, that you came within 30 seconds of pooing your pants at the supermarket and completely redecorating the floor of the bakery aisle.

Then there’s “I was a bit tipsy”, which is a broad way of saying “I made everyone make a toast to ginger ale and was yelling the lyrics to Disney songs”.

I also like throwing a cheeky “I’m a bit seedy” out there instead of saying “I may vomit at any time and can’t support my own head right now”.

And these are all great. But, as you’ve probably realised, I perhaps don’t use them enough. The only euphemism I frequently employ is when I refer to myself a “a columnist”, which we all know means “I overshare the graphic and depressing details of my life with people who really don’t need to hear another one of my vomit stories”.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, February 28, 2018

Everyone has something they just can’t stand.

But I’m not talking big picture stuff like gender discrimination or neglectful environmental management. That stuff goes without saying.

I’m talking about small, seemingly trivial stuff that, for whatever reason, we have adverse reactions to.

For example, I have a friend who hates bananas. Hates them. It’s not like they’ve done anything to her – she’s never been personally victimised by a yellow, curved fruit or anything. She just can’t stand them. She won’t have anything to do with any food that contains banana as an ingredient. And it’s not just the taste; she can’t even stand the thought of touching their skins.

It’s not a phobia of bananas though; there’s no fear, just a deep, unexplainable dislike.

And we all have things like that.  There are certain things that, for some illogical reason, make us sick to our stomachs. Things we find so repulsive we can’t help but have a physical reaction to. Personally, I have a few. I hate it when people drag things along carpet. I hate the feel of dry shampoo on my fingers. I hate looking at my bank account (just another “I’m a twenty-something-mess” quip for you, to stay on brand).

But perhaps my biggest one is something so completely trivial that it perfectly epitomises the notion of First World Problems: broken escalators.

They’re the worst.

And as self-promoting as this sounds, my distain for the unmoving escalator isn’t rooted in laziness. I’m usually that person who walks up escalators. Not so much because I have somewhere important to be (to have somewhere important to be, you have to be important to begin with, and I’m in no danger of that), but because I just hate waiting there. I also like the idea that by taking extra steps, I’m shaping and firming my glutes. And if you’ve ever seen a Maguire from behind, you’ll know we need all the glute shaping we can get.

The truth is that I get motion sickness from stationary escalators. Yes, I’m aware of how that sounds. But it’s true.

I guess you could call it motion-less sickness.

Even though I can see the escalators aren’t moving, my brain expects them to be. And so my brain prepares me, someone who knows full well that those stairs aren’t moving, for motion.

What results is an extremely visible brain malfunction.

I involuntarily lift my foot up much higher than a usual step would require and step on to the static stairs like I’m dipping a toe into water I’m not sure the temperature of. It looks like I’ve forgotten how my legs work.

As this happens, I noticeably dry-retch and do this weird, breathy vomity burp thing. Sometimes I even make a gasping noise, like I’m trying to breathe through my mouth with a gob full of dry Weet-Bix. I don’t really know how to describe this impulse in another other way than the way you’d respond if someone suggested your grandmother was still sexually active (but good on her, I say – you’re never too old for love).

I try to pull myself together to walk down the stairs, but grip on to the rail for dear life, trying not to look down.

As I walk away, I’m shaky, clammy-handed and, while not proven by a medical-grade thermometer, my core temp has risen by a good 10 degrees.

I can’t explain this behaviour. I can’t say exactly why escalators affect me so much. And I don’t know what this means about my overall state of mind.

I don’t have any answers to neatly wrap up this column.

So, instead, I’ll just say this: to all the escalator tradies out there, please know that your work is very noble indeed. You have my eternal gratitude. And the next time I toast, I’ll raise my glass to you.