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.