Originally published by The Clifton Courier, December 2, 2020

We’re well and truly into barbecue season. 

Sundays previously spent curled up on the couch in front of yet another screening of Cougar Town are now spent basking in the sunshine in parks and backyards. And I’ve reached an age where attendees are required to bring something more than a single packet of two-for-price-of-one chippies (keeping the second bag at home for later, obviously). We’ve grown. We’ve matured. We’ve gone past the age where our scummy habits can no longer be written off as youthful cluelessness and will be seen as serious character flaws.

You don’t want to be the friend who offers to bring the plates to the barbecue and turn up with a packet of flimsy paper disappointment discs when someone brought 10 steaks and someone else brought enough sparkling wine for all.

We’re better than that now. 

I mean, I’m not saying that it’s a competition, however, it’s a non-competition you don’t want to lose. It’s no longer enough just to bring something (yes, even when you’re told not to bring anything). You have to contribute.  

But I will say this, trying too hard to win this competitive non-competition can also feel like a stinging loss. 

I remember one time I put on a picnic and offered to make an array of slices, thinking it would be a casual afternoon in the kitchen the day before. But it was not. There were three different slices with three different processes and the oven was on well into the night. And it was January. So it made for a sweaty, stressy time. 

Never again.  

And, yes, most of the time you can’t go wrong with a cob loaf. But even with my cheeky stovetop shortcut, it still requires a bit of oven time. And, let’s be frank, if you plonk one of those babies down next to the Bega slices and Jatz, it’s going to be very, very clear that you’re being competitive in this non-competition. A cob loaf is a show-stopping power move and it’s less-than subtle.

So, when I’m confronted with a group chat full of offers to bring drinks and desserts, I gently assert myself with guacamole. 

Now, it’s just a dip, but if you do it right, you come off as a fancy and thoughtful but still rather laid back friend. And, again, I’m not saying that friendly barbecues are competitions, but you do come out as a winner if you can hit that trifecta. 

I’m very well aware guacamole is essentially mushed avocado and a recipe for it could be three-words long: “mush the avocado” but I’ve never been one to cut a long story short. And, to quote the scripture of Australian cinema, “it’s what you do with it”.

The first thing you want to do is get yourself a novelty serving dish. You want it to stand out from all the other offerings on the table. I recommend the most garish receptacle you can find at a second hand shop. I have this dish that’s shaped like a large avocado. The base and the lid are bumpy and dark green and it comes with a smooth, brown spoon that looks like the seed. It’s fabulous and Nigella Lawson has one just like it (something I never fail to mention each time I use it). It’s undoubtedly my best op-shop buy. 

Then you grab two ripe avocados. You can check for softness without destroying the avos for other customers by lightly pinching near the stem instead of squeezing/bruising the whole thing.. 

Mash up your avos in the skin by slicing them in half and scraping at the flesh with a fork. 

Scoop the gunge out of the shell and into your novelty holder. Some people say to use lemon to keep the avo from browning, but then everything tastes like lemon and, to paraphrase a young Hugh Grant, if you wanted lemon you’d just buy lemon. No, squeeze in the juice of a half a lime for zest, aesthetic and to feel like you’re doing something more than just mushing avocado. 

Then sprinkle in a pinch of salt, about the same amount of pepper and as much chilli flakes as you deem appropriate. I reckon maybe a teaspoon is enough, but I don’t really measure the amount; I just shake the jar until I’m mildly concerned about the heat. 

Then snip in one to two finely-chopped stalks of shallots/spring onions/scallions, depending on how comfortable you are with the barbecue guests to have onion breath around them. 

Mix until all the flecks are evenly distributed and, if you really want to impress, serve with fancy corn chips – the thick tortilla kind. 

Place on the table with a flourish to distract everyone as you snag yourself your fifth Tim Tam of the night.  

Originally published by the Clifton Courier, November 25, 2020

Yeah look, it’s been a while. I meant to only take a break for Christmas after posting this video:

..but I never got around to posting the video. Turns out I was super busy, but I can’t say exactly what I was busy doing. I will let you assume that’s because that’s because my activities are classified secrets, rather than because I simply lost control of my life for a while there. Anyway, all you need to know is that I’m back now.

I forgot to put the bins out last night. 

My housemates are away, meaning I’m the Woman of the House (which, I suppose, means I’m able to answer my phone with “lady of the house speaking” so that’s something I should embrace with gusto).

I’m responsible for closing the windows when it starts to rain. I’m responsible for fetching the mail. I’m responsible for cooking up elaborate schemes to protect my house from bungling robbers.

I’m also responsible for ensuring the household waste is collected. 

The kitchen tidy was full last night and I had made a mental note to take the rubbish down to the bin. 

* I was going to do something with a wheelie bin, but they are either very hard to draw or my brain is broken. So I drew a person with a bag of rubbish for a head instead. The t-shirt slogan is a reference to the Weasley twins shouting “that’s rubbish” in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when they were barred from entering the TriWizard Tournament because they were underage. I just love that this was the response that seemed fitting of two rowdy 16-year-old boys who were expressing their deep displeasure at something.

But there’s more to putting the rubbish bag into the wheelie bin than just depositing a rubbish bag into a bin. 

The wheelie bin is kept underneath the house and under the house is unsealed. And most of the time that’s perfectly fine. We don’t hang out under there. We don’t hold dinner parties or do yoga under there or anything. We don’t need a fancy concrete slab. 

However, when you’ve already had your shower for the night and the only shoes you have by the door are thongs, you do find yourself longing for a slab of concrete. 

Because even though I’ve spent a great deal of my life in thongs, I haven’t yet masted the ability to not flick ground filth up at me while wearing them. Perhaps it’s something in my gait – I do have a distinct rhythm when it comes to thong wearing, with my signature combination of flicks and slaps being so individual my sister can recognise it across a crowded hardware store – or maybe I’m just wearing the wrong size thongs. 

But, whatever the reason, I find that I feel I need to wash my feet when I come in after taking out the rubbish. It’s very biblical of me. 

Plus, now that it’s getting warmer, there’s the very real threat of encountering cane toads after dark. 

I mean, I don’t care how wussy and squeamish it makes me sound, I don’t think anyone would want to risk potential exposure to a cane toad if they can help it.  There’s a lot many of us would disagree on but I think I can speak for all of humanity when I say: “cane toads are yucky”. They are universally unpleasant.

And when you’re wearing thongs, the risk of touching one with an unsuspecting foot is very high. 

So I went to bed, pledging that I would deal with the rubbish situation at first light. I even set my alarm nice and early on my day off.

But my alarm was not early enough. 

This morning my slumber was rudely disturbed by the screechy brakes, bin-grabbing hydraulics and tumbling of household refuse in the metal belly of the truck. I bolted out of bed, grabbed the rubbish bag and raced out the front in my bedclothes*. I wouldn’t say I was scantily clad, but I certainly wouldn’t wear that…outfit to work.

* I can’t remember what my bedclothes consisted of at the time, however, I think it’s safe to assume that I wasn’t wearing pants. Like, I get away with some pretty casual outfits at work, but even I have my standards. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I draw the line at the criminal definition of public indecency.

The garbage truck was on the other side of the road when I triumphantly landed the bin on the curb. I reasoned that, given the garbage truck woke me from across the road far up the street, you’d think I’d have woken if the truck had been getting to work right outside my window. Surely, it must not have been through on my side of the street. There might still be time. 

But then I felt the weight of the red-lidded bin my more punctual neighbours had placed out on the curb. It was unsettlingly light. It could have been empty. 

However, I held out hope. 

I made myself a cup of tea, put on some long pyjama pants and have been sitting out on the front veranda ever since, waiting for the garbage truck like a child waits for Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.

But it’s been more than an hour now and there’s been no truck, only commuters walking past the house on their way to the train station.

So I think I’ll wait an hour or two before bringing the bin in. Not so much because I’m hopeful for redemption, but so there’s no one around to witness my walk of shame – wheeling a full garbage bin back into the yard.

The ultimate suburban humiliation. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, November 11, 2020

So remember a while back when I challenged my sister to write my column for me?

Well, the overachieving little snot actually took me up on it. 

She was over at my place the other day and mentioned that she was keen to do it, but said she’d have to wait until after the uni semester was done. So I pulled out my diary to look at the dates. 

And with that we slipped into Playing Office mode. 

We’re not an overly theatrical family (which, I’m pointing out right now, is very different to being a dramatic family – “theatrical” implies some kind of organised stage show with musical talent and rational story arcs, and anyone who has every heard any of the Maguire girls tell a story will know, our story arcs are a little more… abstract than that of your average three act play) but we do slip into something I’d describe as a cross between improvisation and delusion quite easily. And my sister and I have a long history of Playing Office.

It was one of my favourite games as a child. 

We’d set up a desk, break out Mum’s typewriter and invent high-stress corporate situations. Reports due by 5pm. Faxes that must be sent. Manila folders to be dramatically slammed on desks. You know, office stuff.

While most other kids were out riding bikes or swinging on monkey bars, I sitting inside was shouting into a toy phone about some very important reports I had yet to receive. 

I didn’t have an imaginary friend growing up; I had an imaginary assistant. Her name was Channel and you could only reach her by mobile phone.  

Anyway, while we may have since grown up and encountered actual office life (which, much to my great disappointment, is devoid of manila folders and fax machines thanks to the digital revolution) we still will occasionally slip back into Playing Office.

And we did that the other day. 

We decided that if she was going to actually write a column, she’d have to pitch it to me, A Very Professional and Totally Important Person. She’d need to have a presentation ready and I would have to give her feedback on it. 

So we set up meeting: a breakfast meeting on a weekday, obviously. 

On the day of the breakfast meeting, I set my alarm early and, rather than wear a t-shirt with characters from The Simpsons on it with a retina-burningly bright coloured skirt (AKA what I actually wear to work) I put on a white collared button up shirt and a pencil skirt (which, admittedly, was still retina-burningly bright coloured, but I reasoned that I was playing the part of a bold business woman who wasn’t afraid of a little colour).

Then we got to a café, pulled out our notebooks and started discussing ideas in our Professional Voices. 

I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t come off as the most professional in my day-to-day life. I’m nasally. I say “like” and “geez” a lot. I’ll sprinkle in a couple of swears and swear-substitutes like “dingbat” and “far out brussel sprout” for colour. My Professional Voice is deeper, less pitchy and sees me say things like “such as” and “regards”. It’s like I become a whole other person. So when I put on my Professional Voice, it’s very, very obvious. And not just to people who know me, but anyone around me.

And that became obvious when a bunch of cyclists rocked up and took up the table beside us. I could see in their eyes that they saw what was unfolding at the table next to them for what it was – a fake business meeting between two giggly adult sisters. And they thought it was weird. 

But, look, that didn’t throw us off our game (in the figurative and literal sense). 

We forged on with the meeting and came up with a plan. 

So, I suppose this is really just a long-winded way of me saying that, next week, there’s still going to be a Just a Thought column, but said thoughts will be coming from the head of someone else. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, October 4, 2020

There’s lots of little things that irritate us.

I am a full time resident of the Internet, a place where people debate politics, reconnect with long lost friends and learn about the world around them without having to actually go anywhere. It’s also a place where people complain. A lot. 

And one thing I see people complaining about quite a bit is the sound of other people eating. There are many, many memes dedicated to this gripe.

And, look, fair enough.

There is a condition where people experience negative emotional reactions to specific sounds. It’s called Misophonia and it doesn’t sound like much fun at all. While the negative emotion triggered by a specific sound can be anger – something that’s very much reflected in the memes I’ve seen – research suggests stress, anxiety and the feeling of being trapped can also be triggered by sounds in people with the condition. So, yeah, not a lot of fun. 

But I gotta tell ya, I really don’t mind the sound of chewing all that much. I mean, I don’t want to see someone slurping up hot yoghurt or anything, but chewing sounds don’t seem to bother me. In fact, the sound of someone else crunching on something can be quite pleasant. Soya crisps – those things that look like musk sticks except biscuity – produce the most satisfying sound.

But there are a bunch of other sounds that do really, really irk me. I realise that listing them here is pretty much giving someone a set of instructions on how to rub me up the wrong way, so I may live to regret this:

Something being dragged across carpet: Just thinking about it makes me skin crawl. You know how when you think about paper cuts and it just makes you wince? That’s what carpet dragging does to me. I rationalise that it’s probably because I’d have some pretty intense carpet burn before and the sound reminds me of the unpleasant heat and confusing pain of it, but it feels like there’s something deep within my soul that morally objects to the sound. Like, I have nothing against carpet as a floor covering. It’s soft to the foot and helps to silence unnecessary sounds. But the fibre-y grind of something dragging across it is just downright profanity. What makes this worse is that one of my sisters loves rubbing her feet across carpet. I can’t say if this is in response to my extreme dislike of the sound but I will say that she does mostly keep it to a minimum when I’m around.

Dentist drills: I don’t think I need to explain this. Dentists are great. And I know there’s a purpose for drilling. But no amount of reassurance is going to make this sound any less distressing. 

People mispronouncing Allora: I don’t come across it al that much, but occasionally you’ll hear a news reporter or a friend unfamiliar with the area pronounce it as A-law-rah. And, look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Allora is the Shelbyville to Clifton’s Springfield (depending on where you’re from, you may swap around the names) in that it’s our rival town. But it’s a friendly rivalry. Kind of like it’s our sibling – we do share a footy team, after all. And just like your own siblings, you can hang s— on each other until the proverbial cows come home, but as soon as someone else picks on them, there’s hell to pay. So when I hear someone disrespecting the town that doesn’t even have it’s own footy clubhouse (cop that!) I feel compelled to step in.

Running water just going down the sink: I know that water needs to be used. I get it. But I just can’t handle the sound of water just going down the drain for no real purpose. This ranges from a drip to a full on jet of water. I know someone who likes to keep the water running when they brush their teeth because the running water means the spittle they cough up is flushed down the drain faster and it’s infuriating. It takes every gram of self control I posses not to storm in and turn off the tap. But I do continue to remind them about that time not that long ago when we used to have to take four-minute showers.

Someone saying “oh yeah, we’ve run out of milk”: It’s not so bad getting a text message to that effect while you’re in the shops, but hearing it when you’ve just got home and you’re fangin’ for a cup of tea after a long day is nothing short of soul crushing.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, October 28, 2020

Ok, so it’s been while since I’ve done a recipe and in recent weeks I haven’t done anything exciting enough to get a column out of it, so I’m going to tell you about making macaroons.

* Yeah sooo I know someone pretty fantastic who says “it’s not shit” instead of “it’s not bad” when trying to describe something that’s actually pretty damn good. The slang has rubbed off on my, and now it’s part of my vernacular. I say it so much, my housemate even said it the other day.

Now, don’t go thinking these are those fancy French biscuits that used to be all the rage when Masterchef first started. I don’t have the skill or patience to pull them off. And, look, I’m not saying I hate them, but they’re not my favourite things. Like, I’ll eat them if they’re around, but I’d probs opt for a croissant or a vanilla slice (although I think the French would have a fancier name for it) if confronted with them as choices at a little patisserie. Perhaps it’s because I think they think they’re better than me. And, look, they definitely are, but I just don’t think they deserved all the hype.

Anyway, macaroons are the macron’s more laid back Italian cousin. 

I got right into them recently after watching my spiritual guide Nigella Lawson cook them on one of her shows.

The recipe was in her first book How To Eat, which is some 500 pages and has no pictures – as a comparison, I’d say it was as thick as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Anyway, in the book she talks about ways to use up egg whites if you’re cooking something that only demands the yolks. She’s not one to waste anything, and she inspires her readers/followers/disciples not to either.

Anyway I’ve tweaked her recipe to make it my own, which is to say that I added a few extra ingredients without changing the process in any way, shape or form. 

So, you need 150 grams of ground almonds which, I admit, isn’t what most of us would class as a pantry staple. The stuff can be pretty exxy, especially because it’s billed as a flour alternative. In fact, I also use shelled pistachio nuts in this recipe, which I acknowledge is also among the fancier nuts. So, if you’ve ever had a sneaking suspicion I’m a bit of a wanker, perhaps you have reason to. 

Anyway, before you do anything, preheat your oven to 160 degrees. This recipe doesn’t take long to chuck together, so you might want to do it a little bit ahead of time. You need 150 grams of ground almond and, while Nigella calls for 200 grams I reckon 150 grams of caster sugar is probably quite enough (insert joke about being sweet enough here). Chuck this in a bowl with two egg whites and mix. 

I’d use a mixing machine of some kind because I’m lazy, but I can’t see why you’d need machinery to do the work for you for any other reason. It doesn’t really need to be whipped all that much. 

Then she calls for a teaspoon of almond extract, but I don’t have that in my pantry and I find that sometimes almond flavouring tastes kind of medicine-y. So I go with one teaspoon of coconut essence.

When I actually went back and looked at the book, I noticed she also says to chuck in a tablespoon of flour, but after making a few batches, this addition is news to me so I’m going to just ignore that. 

Instead, I’m going to tell you to added two tablespoons of shredded or desiccated coconut – I don’t think it matters either way, so long as you’re not scooping out the flesh of the coconut, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad?

Anyway, mix all this up and then once you have a gluey-coloured kind of paste, wet your hands with water, pinch out about a tablespoon of the stuff at a time, roll them into little balls and place on a lined backing tray. I mean, you could use flour to stop the mixture from sticking to your hands, but I always find that a little wet spritzing is less messy. 

Then once you’ve rolled them all out, press a few pistachios on top. I like to do a little flower-like arrangement, but you do what feels best to you. you don’t even have to add them if you don’t want to. I’ve got no qualifications to be telling you how to live your life. 

Then chuck them in the oven for about 20 minutes. Leave them on the baking tray to cool for a bit before puling them off, otherwise they’ll stick to the paper. 

Serve these to your friends and family after telling them that, yes, they’re supposed to be a little chewy and if they can’t handle that, then they should take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, October 21, 2020

When mowing a communal lawn, where should you draw the line?

I make no secrets of the fact that I love mowing the lawn. I also like a bit of easy listening Fleetwood Mac. I like going to pubs where you can hear what other people are saying. I’ve caught myself thinking “oooh that would be a lovely place for a cup of tea” while watching Scream… I still watch Scream. I know I’m no longer classed as a “young adult”. I’ve reached that age, and I’m ok with it.

Mowing the lawn is a bit of a mid-week treat for me, except when I get out to the nature strip. Because there’s a lot to think about. 

Take, for example, a mowing expedition many moons ago. 

My house doesn’t have a paved driveway, so it’s just all grass between both neighbours’ driveways either side. There’s no clear border dividing the nature strip between houses, and when I tried to line up the mower with the fence line, I realised I’d overshot it by a metre or so. So I kept on going up to their driveway and then, thinking it’d be rude not to do it on the other side, when up to the boundary of my other neighbour’s yard. 

But then I was struck with a moral quandary, as I often am. Was this the right thing to do?

I mean, I don’t want to be cutting anyone’s grass, figuratively speaking. Because what if they were saving that job for the weekend and were really, really looking forward to the feeling of satisfaction of mowing the lawn. Am I robbing them of not only a weekend activity, but a sense of pride? What if they really needed that self-esteem boost and I just chopped them down like a rogue tuft of dandelions in the middle of a backyard?

I mean, I personally was a little disappointed when my housemate last mowed the lawn, because it meant it would be another week (well, I actually did it six days later, but we’d had a bit of rain so I think it was justified) before I could break out the mower again.  

And, let’s be honest, neighbourly relations can be highly political. There’s a lot of different ways someone could take a neighbour mowing their nature strip. 

Sure, there’s a school of thought that mowing a nature strip for your neighbour is a nice thing to do. You’re saving them the trouble of having to drag clunky piece of machinery around in the hot sun. You’re saving them making apologetic grimaces at passers by who get a few flicks of grass on their crisp white sneakers. You’re saving them from getting those sticky black weed seed things on their legs as they walk from the car to their home after a long day at work. You’re just a neighbourly person with a bit too much energy and a newfound obsession with cutting grass. 

But there are other ways it could be taken. 

It could be taken as a passive aggressive move, not so subtly telling your neighbours that they’re filthy grubs who need to clean up their act. That you’re sick of seeing their messy habits on display via a nature strip. That they’re bringing down the value of the entire street with their filthy un-lawn-mowing ways. It could be taken as a bold declaration that you think they’re incredibly lazy and that you’re better than them because you actually pull your finger out and get stuff done.

But, then, what if I’d mowed just my patch, what kind of message does that send? It would easily be interpreted as extremely petty, going right up to your fence line and only your fence line, especially when there’s a dividing driveway not far from your property boundaries. This might project hostility, in that you’re not willing to assist your neighbours, as well as a certain air of arrogance that goes beyond garden pride.

Would this be considered bad diplomacy? 

In the end, I reasoned that I’d made the right choice. If I’d half mowed one neighbour’s nature strip, I may as well have finished it. And I had to do the other neighbour’s side because I didn’t want to be accused of forming an alliance with one side and spurning the other. 

I just hope they never, ever return the favour, because I really don’t like it when someone cuts my grass, not figuratively speaking and absolutely not literally speaking. 

Keep off my lawn. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, October 14, 2020

Look, this is going to sound very pessimistic, but sometimes the routines of daily life can be quite astoundingly pointless. 

I’m generally a bit of a pessimist even though the course of my life hasn’t given me much cause to be. But even though I can be a Negative Nancy, that doesn’t mean I’m not cheery. Or chirpy. In fact, sometimes I get the impression from the visible wincing of those within a shouting radius of me that sometimes I might be just a tiny bit too chirpy at times. What I’m trying to say is, don’t read too much into that opening line. I get a great deal of joy from sunsets and giggling babies and daises and kookaburras and all that jazz.

But sometimes, I notice a Sisyphus-like pattern in my life. 

Sisyphus was a king who, based on my very basic research on Google, I think was carrying on like a bit of douchebag. As punishment for his douchey ways, he was forced by Zeus to roll an “immense” boulder up a hill which, crushingly, would roll back down again when it neared the top. And then he’d have to push it up again. And on and on and on it would go forever and ever. Eternal toil and futility. And, according to one source, this hill was located in Hades. I know from Bring It On that Hades is not a place you want to end up (and you could end up there if you committed the mortal sin of dropping the Spirit Stick*, which you should never, ever do). So I imagine it wasn’t one of those places where you could take in the scenery or enjoy the fresh air while labouring without purpose. I imagine it would have been pretty unpleasant. 

* Look, I tried to find a video clip of the Spirit Stick scene to link out to, but it appears the movie is too old to have been on YouTube. Concerning, I know.

I feel like that fellow when I look in my fridge or pantry – however, I think it must be said that my housemates and I have created a living environment that is at the very least better than a joyless dungeon for souls.

Because I’m looking at my food storage areas and either thinking “geez, I need to clear some bloody space in here” or “gosh, I better get more stuff to put in here”. Like, I stock up on more food only to feel as though I need to get rid of it. And I only get rid of stuff so I can put more stuff in its place.

My immense boulder comes in the form of a jar of oil that goats cheese was soaking in. Or a lump of pumpkin. Or half a bag of Brussles sprouts. Or a jar of horseradish cream I bought to spice up a Rueben sandwich I had a real hankering for on day, only to realise that it was awful (I’d put far too much on the sanga and it felt as though horseradish cream gas was leaking out my nose and eyes… I would not recommend replicating this sensation).

I see those things in the fridge every day, taking up precious space. 

I want to clear that space so badly. I want to reclaim it. But then, I think to myself, what would I do if I saw my shelf in the fridge bare? Would it be comforting? Or would the sight of a wide-open shelf compel me to fill it?

The answer is obviously yes. 

So where does it end?

I mean, I’m reaching for a perfect level of refrigerator fullness, but the nature of man means that can never be a permanent state. It isn’t an attainable end goal. Because the circle of life forbids it. My human body will inevitably get hungry and consume some of the food inside, thus depleting the stock. And even if my mortal flesh doesn’t cry out of sustenance (or, in the much more likely event, I sustain myself with impulse takeaway buys which I reheat for days and days on end) the food will eventually rot and start leaching mystery juices that need to be cleared away. 

Refrigerator perfection is a fleeting moment in time you can experience but not hold on to, like a sunset or a baby’s giggle or a blooming daisy or the laugh of a kookaburra.

Just like sunsets settle into nighttime, babies grow up into sullen teenagers, daisies wilt and kookaburras bugger off into the open sky, the perfect level of refrigerator fullness doesn’t last forever.

And, yet, I keep striving for those brief moments of perfect balance. 

I suppose that’s what life is all about: savouring the good things while you can, wherever you can find them. Knowing those good things don’t last forever makes them even more precious, I suppose.  

And if you’d like to savour the delights of a barely-used jar of horseradish cream, you know exactly where to find one.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, September 30, 2020

I had a very annoying day the other day. 

It started out fabulously. It was a Saturday, the sun was shining, and I’d had carrot cake for breakfast. 

After breakfast I was supposed to go watch a game of footy. Now, I’m not one who really knows the rules of AFL all that well, despite having had One Of Them in the family for more than a decade. But I do really enjoy watching live community sports. 

You get yourself a few stubbies, you spend a nice afternoon in the sunshine and you get to yell like a menace. It’s not so much about knowing the rules; it’s about the vibe of the thing. And the pair I was going along to the match with on this particular day are just dandy. Having a few drinks and shouting with them is a good time.

So I was looking forward to the game.

But some communication failures meant I left breakfast with just half an hour before kick off and only a vague idea of where the game was, which was apparently “at the [insert team name here]’s place”.

Now, I’ve lived in Brisbane a while, but I am far from a local. I still need map apps to get me from A to B, even if I’ve been to A 40 times and I live at B. I didn’t know the oval’s name. I had a general idea of where the suburb was. But without pressing for further details, I searched the team name and eventually came up with a map location. 

I was going to be late, but only by about 10 minutes. So I set off to said location toot sweet*. I even took a toll road**. 

* If you could please pronounce this in your head the same way they say it on Kath and Kim, that would be very noice.

** I don’t use toll roads often, because a lot of the time you only save like five minutes and it costs you like five bucks. But I will resort to them when I’m in a hurry OR if I feel like treating myself to not having to encounter traffic lights like the common folk. Like, sometimes I have a cheeky “you’re worth it” moment while driving an treat myself to a slightly short route. It’s like a luxurious act of self care… which is a little sad, when you think about it.

But when I got there, I noticed a distinct lack of cars. I saw what looked like maintenance works on the field. And it dawned on me that I was at the wrong place. 

Then I saw a message from the third amigo telling me that the game was actually being played at a location 30 minutes from where I was. About the same time, I get a notification about my phone running out of battery. I knew it didn’t have enough juice to get me to the next location. 

So, being exactly nine minutes from my place, I decided to dash home and grab a charger so I could make the journey without my rectangular navigation device dying on me. 

I got home and, knowing I would be quick, I left my phone in the car. After considering leaving the car unlocked, I decided I’d better lock it up for security reasons and ran into the house. After a quick trip to the ladies room, I grabbed my charger and slammed the door shut behind me.

About a millisecond later, I realised that I’d locked my keys in the house. I let out a throaty, frustrated groan that one can only produce when one has no one to blame but oneself for the dumb predicament one found oneself in.

So then I tried to break into the house. 

I tried prying open the easy-to-reach windows. But we keep the windows locked when we’re away in case a robber tries to get in. 

Then I noticed a higher, tighter window was open. Usually the ladder is locked up in case a robber tries to get in, but this time it wasn’t. I figured this was the universe throwing me a bone. 

But it turns out the windows were still too high and tight to crawl into. Which is handy, in case a robber tries to get in.

So I tried reaching into window with a mop handle to unlock another window. But, alas, the security windows are both robber and dingbat-who-locked-her-keys-inside proof.

In the end, all the ladder did was put me at the right height to stare desperately at my keys on the bench. If anything, it felt like the universe mocking me by freeing the ladder.

But then, I figured, at least I learned that someone about my height would find it extremely difficult to break into my house.

And maybe there was some kind of cosmic force stopping me from going to that game for some unknown reason and this might have been the universe’s way of protecting me from some unknown danger. 

So I gave up.

Then, with a desire not to waste the afternoon and a motivation to make it clear to the neighbours that I was not a robber, I decided to mow the lawn instead. 

Actually, perhaps this whole thing was really just the universe telling me the yard was a mess.