Originally Published in The Clifton Courier, February 21, 2018

So something just happened at the gym just now.

Yep, there I go, just casually dropping into conversation that I have been to the gym. Let the record show that I am somewhat active and therefore an upstanding human being!

I was doing one of those classes where you need a bench, which is a plastic platform you prop these motivationally-coloured plastic rings underneath to give said platform height. You usually need two of these rings for each end of the platform – one is too weak, while three says you’re trying too hard and no one wants to be that person at the gym.

It was already quite a full class and by the time I rocked up there were only two platforms left. It was a crowded room. My dad would probably describe it as “every man and his dog was there”, but given it was an exercise class in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, I would say “every woman and their pug” would be more appropriate.

And it’s dog eat dog in there of a Saturday morning. Resources and space are scarce.

So I had to be protective of what I’d claimed as mine.

I had stepped over the two platforms to grab the height rings behind them – I was sort of straddling them but also hovering above, almost as if I was weeing in a really, really dodgy public toilet. As I was grabbing these rings, a lady came and grabbed both platforms from between my legs.

Now this became a little awkward, because I thought I had clearly reserved one of those platforms by both my being there first and the way I was hovering over it.

Despite the fact that I’m typically quite a loud person and like to get around in a signature hat, I’m not generally the most assertive person – particularly with strangers.

I’ll usually apologise if someone steps in my path and will let people order in front of me. The other day I was at a party where the food was scarce and I was starving, but when another girl and I went for the same single serve of chips – the last one on the table – I insisted she take them.

I’m not sure what is behind this. You could argue it’s because I’m a “nice” person. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s fuelled not by chip-based philanthropy, but by a deep-seated desire to seem “nice”. Maybe it denotes a lack of self-esteem. Perhaps it’s a symptom of my patriarchal upbringing.

Whatever it is, I seem to have an innate desire to recoil and apologise.

So I was surprised when something inside made me say words to the effect “excuse me sweetie, one of those was mine”. Obviously I wasn’t that sassy and it probably tumbled out in a timid mumble, but my utterance was of assertion.

And I walked away with my gym equipment.

But then this made me think – or, depending on how you look at it, over think – about what this said about me as a person.

Was I suddenly a strong, fierce woman who knows her worth and is not afraid to claim what is rightfully hers? Had I become a woman who’s not gonna to take no… Sugar Honey Ice and Tea (this is a family paper, after all) no more?

Or was I looking at this the wrong way? I began to think about the other side of the coin, and question whether I was as in the right. Had I gone from assertive to ruthlessly selfish? And did this mean I was the kind of person you see in disaster movies desperately and mercilessly kicking people out of the way to claim a spot on the space ship/boat/back of a truck taking people to safety? This, of course, made me question whether I deserved to continue the human race in a post-apocalyptic world – who the hell did I think I was?!

Yep, that was the thought I got to after a simple misunderstanding. A slight inconvenience leads to me questioning who I am. That’s what I’m dealing with in the old think box.

In case you’re wondering, I continued the class with my head held high, told myself I was right to stand up for myself and used that bench to strengthen my thighs. Because if it does come down to me needing to boot people off emergency transport to save myself, I’m going to need one heck of a roundhouse kick.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 14, 2018 

Well, I’m going to miss another Clifton Show.

This year was going to be my year – well, show-wise, anyway. I had big plans. I was going to have wear my hat. I’d get about in appropriate footwear. I was going to host the first official Clifton Colleen Collation*.

* I thought there were only three Colleens in Clifton. I was wrong. There are more. And they  must get together for a photo. 

But, alas, it wasn’t to be.

However, I refuse to wallow. I’m not going to let it get me down. Just because I’m 831.3km away from the action (yes, I checked on Google – apparently it would take some 164 hours for me to walk that distance, which makes my grumblings about having to walk to the Rec Grounds from Mum and Dad’s place seem a little out of touch), doesn’t mean I can’t get into the spirit of it. I’m just going to have to compromise a little.

So I’ve come up with a list of things I can do in Sydney to help me get that Clifton Show feeling:

Have a vat of tomato sauce for dipping processed meats into: Just because I can’t have a dagwood dog, doesn’t mean I have to miss out on the joys of eating things on sticks and submerging them in sauce like they’re spies being tortured for information in a bad movie based on the Cold War.

I honestly don’t know why I haven’t done this sooner. I think having a personal vat of tomato sauce would really improve my outlook on life*.

* I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Like, it could be a case of “for the gal who has everything, get her a vat of tomato sauce”. In that scenario, a vat of sauce would be the proverbial cherry atop the sundae of life. But then if you look at it on the flip side – that things are so bad only a comical quantity of sauce will help – it’s not great. Maybe I’ll leave that for you, mildly concerned reader, to decide for yourself. 

Take Thursday off* as a personal, unofficial show holiday: They don’t have show holidays here in NSW. It’s very, very wrong indeed. The topic of show holidays has come up in conversation a few times, and each time I mentioned that people were given the Thursday before their local show* off as an official gazetted holiday, I was met with bewilderment.

* Well, in our case it’s the Toowoomba show and not our local, but I feel that’s a rant for another time… and that time would be late at night after a bottle or two of cheap wine.  

Perhaps this is because the real city slickers don’t even know what a show is. You have to compare it to the Sydney Royal Easter Show and then explain to them that things actually do happen outside major metropolitan areas. This can be a slow and painful process. Even when you explain to them how fun it is to hit the gravel d-floor in the designated alcohol zone with your mates’ parents while a bloke with a guitar plays classic hits on the side of a truck, they struggle to comprehend the joys of a local show.

But then, this is a place where people don’t know what a steakette is, so you have to expect certain things won’t translate.

* Yeah, I went about my business as per usual on Thursday. I even went to my scheduled gym class – those buns won’t turn themselves to steel you know!

Create a playlist of one-man covers of The Horses, Friends in Low Places and Khe San: If I close my eyes, maybe this could take me back to that hallowed gravel d-floor.

Talking about everything as if I’m a Junior Cattle Judging Champion: I could rank things in order from the best to worst, explaining my decision making process in detail. For example: “I picked this loaf of bread as Number One because it has a nice, crunchy crust and a good, even colour, which is what I like to see”. I feel as this would translate really well if you replaced potty calves with profiles on Tinder, just quietly.

Playing a recording of the Queensland Whip Cracking titles: I went along to report on the action in 2014, a filmed a short clip of one of the grand champs and posted it on Instagram. According to my caption I was hungover at the time, so I suppose to be really authentic, I’ll have to be a little on the seedy side. But to really replicate the unforgiving echoes of that oversized tin shed of a pavilion, I’m going to need to play it right up close to my hear with a bucket on my head.

You can view said video here, if you feel like it. And you could also chuck it a like. Currently it only has 20 and heavens knows I could do with the hollow self-esteem boost.

Actually, if you don’t already follow my Instagram account, you really should. It won’t make your life any better, but maybe one day if I get enough followers, the XXXX brewery will send me a carton of pity beers.

Make a fruitcake, and hope it won’t be stolen: The greatest mystery of our time.*

* This was a yuuuuuge in-joke for the Cliftonites, who all know the great scandal of the 2016 Clifton Show. Some sneaky person crept into the pavilion and made off with the first and second place winning cakes from the Boiled Fruitcake Challenge. To this day, no one knows who pulled off what might be the most delightful heist in modern history. 

There, it’s not exactly the same, but it will have to do.

Happy show time, Clifton, I’ll be with you in spirit.*

* I was, in the end. Dad came to Sydney that weekend and we decided to have “a few beers” over dinner at the pub around the corner. According to my housemate, we got home some time around 2am. 

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, February 7, 2018

A dear friend of mine is sick and I’m feeling a little useless.

I love that term, “dear friend”. First of all, it denotes that she’s more than just your standard, everyday friend and, by extension, this implies that I am capable of maintaining strong, meaningful relationships. I also like the way it sounds. It has a certain ring of sophistication to it, as though we are kindred spirits who have seen each other through a great deal and take turns around the garden with linked arms like wealthy women in Jane Austen novels. It’s a much flowerier way of saying, “we’ve been to Big Day Out together a few times, hate a lot of the same things and don’t judge one another for our messy buns or our life choices”. This the kind of excellent person who posted me a scented candle purely so I could say I was a sponsored blogger, legitimately writing in return for luxurious homewares. Yes, she is a dear friend indeed. And right now she’s not doing too crash hot.

The poor thing just had a hasty appendectomy and is quite banged up at the moment (“banged up” being a medical term, of course).

Now, this might sound a little messed up, but I kind of love it when my friends are a little sick or needy. I mean, I don’t love it enough that I would purposefully make them sick or manipulate them into thinking their relationships are over just so I could swoop in and pick up the pieces. I’m not a monster, and I doubt I have the commitment to pull something like that off.

But I do enjoy feeling useful and I like to be around for my friends.

Usually when a friend is going though something, I’ll show my love through food.

When another dear friend of mine (I’m going to start saying that as often as I can) had her baby, I rocked up with a vat of spaghetti bolognaise. It was Mum’s recipe, but I added a whole lot of spinach to help boost her iron levels.* I also brought around the most nurturing and replenishing substances known to humanity: a cob loaf.

* Girlfriend lost A LOT of blood. But instead of dying, she produced another healthy human being. What a tank. 

When I knew my housemate was having a rough time with uni, I’d whip up a pie or fry up a batch of homemade chicken schnitties to eat while we watched The Nanny.

And when there were trying times at my old workplace in Armidale, I found a big tray of nuggchos (nachos with chicken nuggets instead of corn chips, for those of you who are new to the party – if you’d like more details, check out my signature recipe here) would bring people together.

Now, this might sound as though I respond to all of life’s problems with food, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong*. Because I’ve experienced the magical healing powers a tray of homemade slice can unleash on a worn out little soul before (you ladies know who you are**). It’s hard to describe just how lovely it is to know someone cares enough about you to go to all the effort of preparing actual food and bringing it over to you. It’s like a hot of cup of tea after a cold, drizzly Toowoomba day.

* I say this as a person who ate pasta from a wheel of cheese tonight. Aaaaaand then went and got a double scoop of gelato. 

** This was a shoutout to the Clifton ladies who brought over slice when my mum was teetering on the edge of death and I was doing my best to keep the home fires burning. I’d always hated peanut butter, but this one batch of peanut butter slice was the sweet, crumbly declaration of “someone cares” that kept me from falling completely apart. 

So I like to share that feeling when I can.

But because I’m a good 10-hour drive away from my friend, I can’t just rock up with a fruitcake and a cold bag full of freezer-ready risotto.

All I can do is send supportive texts, using my words and to comfort her. And while my livelihood is based on my ability to use words, I’m not great at using them to comfort people – especially via text messages. As such, I’ve already sent her a photo of an obese beagle and a screen shot of something funny I saw on Instagram.

* It was a photo of sorghum. And underneath it I had commented “yeah the sorgs”. 

So how do I be there for her when I can’t physically be around? I’m going to have to figure that out.

Until then, my Plan B is to see if the nearest bakery to her does “Sorry your appendix bailed on you” cakes.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, January 24, 2018

It’s important to have respect for yourself.

Sooner or later, we all reach a point where we have to stand up for ourselves and say, “yeah nah, I’m not takin’ that”. There comes a time when we know we are above whatever crap is going down and strut away – preferably with a powerful song playing in the background*.

* Maybe something like Leah Haywood’s Taking Back What’s Mine or Destiny Child’s Survivor or even Britney Spears’ I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman? It really depends on the situation, I guess. 

As someone who publically recounts instances when I’ve covered myself in vomit and still asks for “your cheapest beer” at bars, you wouldn’t think that I have that much respect for myself. But it turns out that I do have a sprinkling of dignity – even if it may be a quantity small enough to fit into those tiny ornamental pockets they put in women’s jeans. *

* I  will never forgive the patriarchy for this grave injustice. Neither should you. Feel the rage. Be the change. Start a damn running shorts company with decent-sized fucking pockets. You can even call it “run the world” if you want. Im sure Beyonce would be on board. 

I was reminded of this fact only very recently.

It was nearly midnight on New Year’s Eve and I had come “home” (and I put “home” in quotation marks because I feel a place where you can’t buy a tin of XXXX Bitter* and get change back from a fiver doesn’t deserve the title of “home”) to quite a dismal situation in my Sydney flat. I still didn’t have a wardrobe. My “dresser” was a series of washing baskets and an open suitcase under my bed. A vague dank scent lingered in the carpet, as if a sprinkler spitting liquid sadness had been left on while I was away.

* You can’t even buy bitters here. It’s a disgrace. 

It was bad enough that I would have to readjust to Daylight Savings, but my living quarters made my return almost unbearable.

Because I haven’t even got to the worst part: the bathroom.

I’m lucky to have my own bathroom. This flat was in such a dodgy way when I moved in (at one point a plant sprouted through a gap in the peeling lino on the kitchen floor, no doubt nourished by the leaking roof above it) that I could afford a room with an “en suite”. And just like “home” had quote marks, so too does “en suite”, because it is too fance of a term to describe the “closet with a sink” that I call my bathroom.

I mean, I love having complete control over my toileting facilities, because it means I can be as grubby as I can handle without worrying about someone else having to live in my filth. As someone who sheds hair as much as me, this is important. I mean, I think this is a positive thing – should I be kidnapped, I’ll leave a trail of DNA to lead the intuitive detective who just gets the just the right amount of emotionally-involved in my disappearance right to me. But some people take a negative view of my shedding. Weirdly, some people actually don’t enjoy finding long, dark mystery hairs on their personal items.

Anyway, because the bathroom was my filth cave and my filth cave alone, it had been neglected in the lead up to the holidays. And the situation intensified over the break. The worst part was the toilet seat.

Now. I ask you to please keep in mind that this flat is a little on the crappy side and old enough to have great grandchildren. I’ll also assert that I am usually a clean and tidy person*. I wash my sheets weekly. I wipe down benches. I never leave crumbs in the sink. Please, please, please keep that in mind.

* I don’t think we need to take my sports bra washing schedule into account. Most females would agree that it’s normal practice. 

Because when I returned from holidays the weird splodges on the toilet seat had revealed themselves to be a full-blown mould situation.

Yeah. Mould.

And after driving for more than 10 hours from Clifton to Sydney, I just couldn’t handle that. I valued myself too much to use it. I respected myself too much to spend the first hours of the 2018 scrubbing mould off a piece of yellowed, flaky plastic that countless unknown butts had come into contact with.

Maybe this makes me a diva, but I don’t care.

So the next day I treated myself to a new toilet seat.

And while it’s somewhat depressing that I used the phrase “treat yourself” when buying a toilet seat, it was damn exhilarating to do so.

I had taken back control. I was powerful. And as I tossed that mouldy old seat into the garbage bin, I told myself that I was too good for that.

So, that’s how I set the tone for the year: asserting to myself that I was better than a mouldy toilet seat. That’s close enough to self-respect, isn’t it?

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, January 17, 2018

The truth isn’t always black and white – especially when you’re talking about eating habits.

Around the beginning of the year, we tend to get reflective of the 12 months that went by. We get year in review news stories, we look back at photos and we asses our achievements and failures. But weirdly, I was given the chance to review my grocery habits this year.

I’m a holder of a supermarket loyalty card, and this particular grocery powerhouse decided to celebrate 2018 by giving me a round-up of my points activity for 2017. Riveting, hey?

But then I noticed an item way down the bottom of the email I almost deleted instinctively without reading.  It was a summary of my most-bought items of 2017.

This was interesting. Because yes, I was obviously extremely curious to know just what I’d been trading my money for. But then, there was reason to feel anxious about this heading.

Because personal data can be telling, more telling than we’d otherwise admit to ourselves. We may say that we don’t care how many of the Kardashian sisters are brewing up another batch of Kardashian goodness in their maternal ovens, our online data may tell a whole other story. Because no matter how many rats you couldn’t give about the famed family, you may still click on a bunch of different links to stories teasing out details about them*. Just like Shakira’s hips, the data doesn’t lie.

* Dammnit Kris, just give us the answer! 

Sometimes those kinds of confronting statistics are best left alone (and by “alone”, I of course mean “for the analysts at social media platforms to package and sell to advertisers to target specific commercial messages to you”).

Was I ready to know this kind of detail about myself?

Did I really want to know how many bags of ridiculously expensive brown rice chips I’d bought in a bid to make myself feel healthier while I binged on guacamole*? Would it be helpful knowing how many loaves of bread I’d inhaled? And what if my most-bought item revealed something dark about me that I wasn’t aware of – like if I’d had a weird sponge-eating habit that I’d hidden from myself*, only to be confronted by the cold, hard commercially-collected data confirming that I’d bought 652 sponges last year? What then?!

* Incidentally, this is my dinner plan for the night. Because if I have to pay for my own dentist visits and remember to take my contraceptive pill regularly, you better believe I’m taking advantage of the I-make-my-own-damn-decisions-about-dinner aspect of adulthood. 

As it turns out, my most bought items were much blander than I’d expected.

In fact, there’s nothing remotely sinister about them. It wasn’t a suspicious amount of matches or box after box of chockie bickies. It was actually kind of boring.

And upon analysing my top four as a whole, I come off as a bit of a wanky health nut.

I purchased a box of frozen spinach 47 times. I’ve also purchased a box of frozen, chopped kale 47 times. Each box is 250 grams apiece, meaning that within the year of 2017, I bought 23.5 kilos of frozen greens. That’s roughly the equivalent of a six-year-old kid.*

* Yes, I looked this up. I also look up collective nouns a lot too. Collective nouns are fabulous, mild fun. The perfect way to amuse yourself over a cup of tea.

I also bought a quantity of sweet potato 46 times. Unfortunately they didn’t provide me the total weight, but given how much I do like to pack away the potato’s orange cousin, I reckon we’d be talking Year 12 DD-level* prop in terms of weight.

* I say Darling Downs because he wasn’t able to progress to state because he’s a little chunkier than the boys from Brissie.

The fourth most-bought item was strawberries. I bought at least 41 punnets, according to the email – even though I suspect that number to be higher given how frequently the supermarkets flogged strawbs in two-for deals*.

* They get me every bloody time. Two-for deals tap into something primal inside me and I just can’t override my natural instinct to bag a bargain. 

My data suggests I’m a healthy eater. You might even look at those figures and assume I’m some kind of fitness freak who follows strict diet plans and lives on smoothies.

But it was interesting to be presented with this insight into my grocery habits on a day when my official step count was 307 – for your information, it’s often recommended that people aim for 10,000. I also finished off a six-layer rainbow cream cake – roughly half of which I’d eaten on my own. And I’d actually sipped on a half-empty bottle of $7-dollar watermelon-flavoured wine to see if it was worth keeping after being open in the fridge for a week (unfortunately, it wasn’t).*

So while the data may not necessarily lie, it seems that – in this case – it doesn’t always tell the entire truth.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, January 10, 2018

It’s always hard when the Christmas holidays coms to an end.

There are so many dark realisations you’re slapped in the face with once the New Year rocks around.

You’ve eaten so much you can’t imagine you’ll ever feel attractive again (unless, of course, your definition of attractive is resembling a sweaty potato with arms and legs, in which case you’ll feel like the sexiest thing that can’t breathe comfortably in pants). You spent all your money on scented candles for other people, so you have to survive on baked beans and leftover fruitcake. You have to start wearing shoes again. You can’t take afternoon naps anymore. You have to return to whatever galley you sweat your days away in to fulfil to the spirit-breaking responsibilities our capitalist society demands of us.

It’s hard not to get sucked down into a sinkhole of dread.

But to pull myself out of this pit of misery, I like to do what I always do when I need to justify the foolish, frivolous actions: pretend I learned something from the experience.

Not only does this make whatever ridiculous things I did with my time off more palatable, but it also allows me to present the rest of this column to you in list-form. You see, I made the foolish mistake of getting back to being a productive member of society (and yes, I do use the phrase “productive member of society” loosely) until the last minute and can’t really form proper paragraphs at the moment. So putting things in dot points really appeals to me.

Sure, the below list doesn’t change the fact that I have to be a functional member of society again, but at least it makes me feel as if I gained something from my time off.

So please, enjoy this list of things I learned on the holidays, and try to find some scrap of wisdom:

There are certain surfaces you shouldn’t walk on in thongs: as someone who likes to flaunt their true blue, ridgey didge Aussie ways over their city-slicking comrades, I fancy myself as the type of girl who can do anything in a pair of thongs. Sure, it’s an odd manifestation of nationalism, but I like to think that I could jog, dance and even outrun a cranky kangaroo in a pair of thongs. I viewed it as some noble ability, as if competently wearing stereotypical Australian footwear makes me some kind of ‘Strayan princess – which of course this feeds right into my misguided sense of self-worth. But as it turns out, creek beds and thongs don’t mix – you either get it stuck in the thick sludge that is muddy black soil or you slide right down a dry bank and end up with a gravel rash that makes it look like you got roller blades for Christmas.

There’s nothing professional about rocking up to work with a scab all up your leg that is flaking off like old paint on a weathered fence post: See the above point for reference. And this really doesn’t help in giving off a professional vibe if you’re already someone who’ll wear last night’s bed socks to work and try to make “corporate pony t-shirt” an office look.

Passion Pop does a watermelon flavour now: the nectar of my youth may set you back a steep $7 a pop (yeah, I meant to make that pun) but at least there’s now some variety. Along of the plain, carbonated regret flavour I grew up with, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to enjoy that same average taste with a hint of fruit.

You don’t have to be fancy to appreciate a good wine: See the above point for reference.

You can double-batter a chip: if you’re eating fish and chips and the batter comes loose, don’t just waste it – you can stuff the hollow cone of deep fried carbs with deep fried potatoes. It’s like eating chips, only with more salt, more oil and a complete lack of self-respect. I recommend it with chicken salt.

Dieting just isn’t going to happen to this year: See the above point for reference.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, December 20, 2017

* Obviously, this was written just before Christmas. It was a time when I was absolutely knackered, dragging my half-decaying carcass along the ground to the finish line, leaving a trail of gloopy misery and dignity as I edged towards the end of the year. Perhaps you’ll be able to pick up on that. 

I think I have a problem.

I know what you’re thinking: “well that’s been obvious from the outset, Dannielle – the whole town is quite aware that you’re an absolute mess and this column is doing nothing to help the situation”.  Yes, it’s well documented that I have a whole range of problems. There’s my issue with the ironic over-popularisation of nuggets, financial decision-making, that whole overthinking thing I do, committing to not vomiting and, actually, any kind of commitment at all*.

* I had plenty more, but I felt that five problems was enough for a short column in an otherwise cheery pre-Christmas paper.

But now it seems I have another one to add to the already lengthy list.

I have a new kind of problem and, just like this column, it’s conveniently Christmas-related.

This problem is about my emotional attachment to a ham.

No, this isn’t going to be a heart-warming message of peace and goodwill as a way to cap off the year; it’s 600 words about ham. Sorry, but if you want something deep and meaningful from me, I’m going to need a bottle of Jameson and some ginger ale*.

* I have to admit, this line was largely me fishing for free drinks. It did not achieve the desired result, so I’m going to have to really lay it on thick before the Clifton Show rocks around. I mean, the XXXX bitters go pretty cheap anyway, but a free drink’s a free drink. And, in all honestly, I actually prefer to go with a rounds-based system when I’m out. But it would be nice to snag a free coldie as proof that someone reads my damn dribble.  

I was given a Christmas ham and it was perhaps one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

This statement is a concern. I mean, the fact that I now have sole custody over a large hunk of dead pig is a positive thing. I have a tote bag (I bought it from Cobb and Co and it says “totes”) that is full of meat. If I’m hungry, all I have to do is grab a knife and slice off a hunk of pork.

Yes, this is fortunate. But should it be the best part of my year? Should “this ham is one of the best things that has ever happened to me” be a sentence I can truthfully write? I don’t need to see a psychologist to know that this isn’t a good sign. Heck, even an internet-certified life coach would red flag this.

Secondly, I’m becoming worryingly over-protective of the ham. I’m not yet at the stage of sleeping next to the fridge with a dagger in my hand, but I wouldn’t put it past me.

I was telling a friend how I planned on “not sharing it with any bastard”. Pretty sure he thought I was joking. Then I started asking about how best to deter my people from sneakily hacking at my personal ham.

I began to practice my warning, starting off with “look guys, it’s Christmas time…” My friend expected me to finish the sentence with someone along the lines of “…so in the spirit of the season, let’s all share this delicious ham”. But that’s not what came out of my mouth.

Instead, I thought of words to the effect of: “…we’re all poor as heck from buying presents and we can’t afford groceries so that ham is my main source of protein* – now keep ya grubby mitts off it”. Not exactly the most benevolent of sentiments.

* Not a joke. Meat is spency. I only hope that I have loaded up on enough iron while I was home to get me through to the next pay day. 

This is tied in with my third ham-related problem: I have an overwhelming desire to the whole thing all by myself. I am flying home for Christmas, so it has to be gone by Friday. I mean, I could demolish a “giant” schnitzel just as fast my smug former colleague who apparently can to eat lots because he plays sports (I even ate the leftover chips off my other co-worker’s plates to really show him up) but that’s a lot of pork for one person to eat in five days. I’d literally be sweating brine; I may even require hospitalisation.

But still I want to finish it off on my own.

I don’t know what’s the most worrying motivation behind this: greed, stinginess or the personal validation I would get from telling people I ate a whole leg of ham. Neither option is good.

What started out as a magnificent gift has become a burden. I have the weight of a metaphorical leg of ham on my chest.

So as I come to my already over-stretched word limit, I’ve yet to come up with a solution. I’m usually able to pull some kind of conclusion out of somewhere by this point in the column, but I’ve got nothing. It’s the end of the year. I’m tired. I need a break.

And so the only thing that’s coming to mind now is for me to try to sneak a leg of ham on the plane as carry on luggage*. If you don’t see me at Christmas Eve mass, it’s because I’ve been detained. Merry Christmas, everyone!

* I decided against smuggling the ham under my clothes as a fake pregnancy belly and left it in the fridge. In the end, I became so sick of the ham that even contemplating it now is a thought that curdles in my stomach like hot sushi and room-temperature milk. I left a note pleading for my housemate to take the ham, but when I returned to this stinktown I opened the fridge to discover my salty nemesis waiting for me, mocking me from within its calico cloak. Its skin had hardened and withered, with the contrast between the once succulent hunk of meat I’d left behind and its current form reminiscent of the before and after mugshots government bodies use to scare people from trying methylamphetamines. 

The allure was gone. The curse broken. I knew that I had to finally rid myself of that briney demon forever. I could no longer allow it to haunt my fridge or my mind.

I threw it in the bin.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, December 6, 2017

There are some times when a minute seems to span over a different timeframe than 60 seconds.

Sometimes the unit of time that we call one minute can seem like an eternity. Sometimes it can fly by faster than a hummingbird’s heartbeat. Those 60 seconds aren’t standardised; they’re subjective.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, this sounds like the beginning of a really, really dramatic episode of Grey’s Anatomy (and that’s saying something, because that show once had an episode where a guy had an unexploded bazooka in him with Christina bloody Ricci as a guest star and it wasn’t event the season finale). It sounds like something about love or loss or maybe a poetic combination of both.

But I think we both know that’s not what this column is about.

In fact, this column isn’t about anything. It’s true. When I try to tell people what my column is about, I’m often stumped. Usually, it’s about things that cheese me off or something embarrassing I’ve done recently, and often a nice meaty blend of the two. It’s like a placenta smoothie – hard to swallow, flecked with graphic feminism (well, sometimes I do tone down the uterus talk because we are talking about a small town in Maranoa) and probably should never have existed in the first place.

So when there’s a column that is described as “uh…. I don’t really know… it’s not really about anything”, you shouldn’t expect anything too emotional from it. If you want to hear my emotional thoughts, you’re going to need to shout me several rounds and played Bob Seger’s Drift Away on the jukebox on Christmas Eve*.

* I clearly added this in as a ploy to snag a few free schooners at the pub after Christmas Eve Mass. It’s one of the top nights of the year to be out on the town in Clifton – you get pissed with your old schoolmates’ parents and really top up your hug quota. 

So no, this column isn’t going to reach emotional depths – especially considering the most emotional I’ve been lately was when my friend and I re-enacted various scenes from Titanic on a recreation of the ship’s grand staircase.*

* I can’t recommend this enough. If you’re in Sydney before February 4 and have a spare two hours, have a few beers then get down to the Titanic exhibition. They have the actual Heart of the Ocean (yes, that’s a proper noun) used in the movie and this outdoor deck scene brilliantly embellished with strategic fans for a realistic effect. Make sure you have plenty of memory free on your phone because sweet baby cheeses are you going to take some photos. 

No, this thought about the perception of the passing of time isn’t based on a tender moment, but from when I was waiting in line for the toilet at a brunch spot on Sunday morning.

I was in the line long enough for the girl in front of me to think something along the lines of “nah, bugger this” and walk away.

And if I wasn’t so desperate, I would have done the same.

It seemed as if an age had passed while I was standing there, waiting for that “engaged” sign to switch to “vacant”. I wondered what could possibly be taking someone so long – and of course, the thought did cross my mind that if someone was taking so long in there, perhaps going right in after them was against my best interests.* But then, risking soiling myself in public was also against my best interests. So I waited.

* This is obviously a poo joke, which I’m fairly certain my father would have picked up on. I was going to build on this joke by suggesting that he could have been snorting cocaine but I ran out of room. I like to think that he wasn’t doing lines because it was like 11.50am and who the heck needs coke to get through brunch, but then it was in Sydney, after all. 

And to be honest, I probably wasn’t waiting more than five minutes.

But it seemed so much longer than that. It was then that this idea about the variable passing of time hit me: time moves slowly when your bladder is full.

It made me think about some of the other situations you’re in when one minute could not possibly be 60 seconds. We’ve all been there. We’ve all questioned whether the second hand on the clock was mocking us.

And sure, time is a damn illusion. It’s a mutually agreed upon delusion humanity follows to make things easier for ourselves. And that makes sense, because just imagine how much more frustrating catching the train would be if we all had different ways of measuring time.

But while we can always measure time by the clock, the ticker in our head can drastically  alter our perception of it. And obviously there are scenarios when you want time to stay still and occasions when you want hours to pass in the blink of an eye – like when you wake up a few minutes before your alarm goes off or you’re getting a pap smear.

I guess it comes down to not only the situation, but your attitude to it.

And to prove my point, I’ll use examples that are interchangeable.

Here are some examples of occasions when a minute flies by:

When you’re in a hot car: and you know you’re going to have to get out and brave the Toowoomba drizzle at the next stop.

During exercise: and you have a one-minute break between one set of burpees and another set of something equally as tortuous.

During an ad break: when you’re running to the toilet and you don’t want to miss a thing.

And here’s when a minute drags on:

When you’re in a hot car: usually when your mum gets stuck chatting with someone on the street

During exercise: and the workout regime calls for you to do one minute of anything more strenuous than a stretch.

During an ad break: when you’re waiting to see if the drongo in the hotted-up Commodore blew over the limit.

* I feel like I should have had a concluding sentence to round this out, but honestly, I was just too damn tired. I’m really dragging my half-decaying carcass to the finish line of this year. I’m surprised I’m even managing to wear pants when I leave the house. 

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, November 29

The other day I got to thinking about my funeral.

And no, this thought isn’t borne out of deep, existential reflection. It’s not even from watching Beaches. No, this thought process was fuelled by a combination of extreme self-obsession and my controlling nature.

It came about when I was thinking about my hat, of all things. A dark brown Cattleman; I feel a strong connection to it. I’m yet to write my name in it, but it’s on my to-do list after a tense few hours (and five phone calls) without it after the races.

The thought struck me that it would look great on my casket one day (hopefully a long way into the future… although I do sometimes fantasise about humanity coming together to ensure my immortality) as a symbol of the person I was and the life that I lived; an object that encapsulated my very essence.

The idea of pre-determining what summed up me as person as opposed to leaving to someone else appealed to me. Self-obsessed? Yep. Controlling? You bet.

But you don’t want to get this wrong. Because sometimes people just don’t “get” you. For years people thought one of my sisters was a total diva who loved pink and make-up and whose life goal was to become a professional glamourzon. In truth, her favourite colour is green and she’s an absolute stinker who wants to stand up to the lions of environmental injustice. What people may think would sum you up might not actually fit the bill, so you have to take control yourself.

This got me thinking about other objects that would form an accurate representation of me as a person.

And because I had very little else to do with my Sunday afternoon (my goals for the day included getting out of bed, buying groceries and making a barley risotto, if that gives you any indication as to how I spend my weekends) I decided to write a list.

So here is a non-exhaustive list of things you would need should you want to construct a personal shine to me in your own home:

A lock of my hair: Preferably bound with a tasteful white ribbon, if available. The long, thin strands of my DNA and keratin are perhaps my most iconic assets. Being brown instead of the blonde my three sisters were gifted with, my hair is arguably one of the most significant factors that influenced my identity. It was the colour of poo while my sisters had “hair of gold”. You would think it would have made me develop a shining personality to compensate for this; instead I became a sarcastic show pony.

A belt buckle in the shape of a galloping horse: I bought this from a chain store as a teenager and still wear it today thanks to the leatherwork and friendship of Mr May. It’s now my trademark. You could say it’s a nod to my wild, free spirit bolting across the horizon towards greatness… or you could simply put it down to my childish fascination with horses because they are pretty.

A bunch of carrots: Carrots consist of about 40% of my diet – I like to have something to munch on and carrots seem like the easiest, least destructive option. Aesthetically it would be nice if the shrine carrots still had the leaves attached and were tied an earthy twine bow but, realistically speaking, slapping down a plastic kilo bag of them would be more appropriate.

An extra-strong black tea bag with a jar of ironbark honey: For obvious tea-related reasons.

A recording of the sound I make walking in my thongs, played on a loop: I have a particular rhythm. It’s a unique cycle of clicks, clacks and slaps that sounds from my thongs as I obnoxiously walk from place to place. Once you know it, it can be extremely helpful in locating me in the aisles of a hardware store.