Never Mind the Bollocks

Never Mind the Bollocks,
Getting Old Sucks

          Put your mind to this corker. Why is it that The Youth take great delight when I use my impressively loud horn on an ill-mannered fellow motorist, but if I reprimand a pimply teen for dropping his McThick Shake cup on the street, they cower in unfettered shame?

          Extensive interrogation of a random sample of under-10s has uncovered some priceless qualitative data. It seems that trailing on the bumper bar of the canary-coloured Ford Territory that just cut you off at the lights, with your hand on the blower for a solid 60 seconds, is COOL. That's what a young, slightly psychotic hispter might do. However, reprimanding a dude in short pants for be-fowling the footpath with his McLitter is completely UNCOOL. Old-timers do that.

          Until last week, I would have had myself pegged as the psycho hipster - I know how to ride a skateboard and post a PVP battle on Minecraft. But there was a private moment of exquisite clarity on Monday night that moth-balled that pipedream.

          At about 9pm, when The Youth had submitted to my shrewish demands to "pipe down or I'll knock your blocks off", I reclined with my standard-issue green tea, Milky Bar and daily newspaper. These delights are small but sublime. However, no sooner had I origamied my paper into the perfect fashion for the cryptic crossword than I noticed a splinter in my thumb. Annoyance factor: High.

          I harumpffffed into the bathroom, tracked down the tweezers and began the job of extracting the interloper. A good 20 minutes of tweezing, nipping and blaspheming followed without joy until I conceded defeat and realised that I may have to actually use the +1 specs I had procured from the pharmacy six months prior. I dug around in the drawer, withdrew them and gave them a spit and polish.

           I held up the thumb, which by this point was quite angry-looking and possibly bleeding. To my disappointment (as I'd been in denial about my creeping decent into long-sightedness) I could now see the digit in all its glory. Thankfully by this hour, The Youth were well into the land of slumber and so were spared the full spectrum of my florid vocabulary on discovering that the splinter was not, in fact, a splinter, but a line of black biro.

           My mother, who is certified blind as a bat, would have called on her old fave Tom Petty at this juncture, and he would have soothed her with the following croon: if you're not getting older, you're dead.

The Snoffit

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

THERE is a certain sound that may be familiar to you. It heralds an unhappy liaison between an individual and their oesophageal tract.
In my father's day, they called it a morning oyster. Not so long ago it went by the name of a Peter Stringfellow. Most recently one would hear it referred to as a hoick. However, this terminology fails to capture the truly visceral sensation of nausea that washes over oneself on hearing a sharp intake of phlegm and its triumphant expectoration. These monikers unjustly glamorise what is, quite frankly, a stomach churner.
Having witnessed a number of public hoicking incidents of late, I felt compelled to coin a new term to encapsulate the full, gory spectrum of this mucus merrymaking. And so was born the Snoffit. I expect David Astle and the Macquarie Dictionary people will be on the phone soon after reading about this natty little term that captures so much with so little effort.
Previous phrases have not taken into account the full gamut of this odious pastime. Morning oyster addresses the result, yet neglects the method of delivery. Stringfellow pays homage to the viscosity while ignoring its auditory possibilities. Hoick salutes the trajectory but turns a blind eye to the aftermath.

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Snoffit embraces the manoeuvre in its entirety. It has three tiny, but meaty components. 'Sn' is for sniff - phase one of the movement. Phase two is 'off' for cough (I know, it's not completely kosher for the grammar pedants, but work with me). Then to finish we have 'it' for vomit - the finale.
The Snoffit can happen anywhere, any time. I am more than happy to curl my lip at any passer-by who dares deliver a Snoffit within general earshot. This behaviour calls for a scornful glance and a possible furrow of the brow in an attempt to call the blighter to task. However, much to my disappointment, one cannot truly expect the offender to bag and bin his human detritus (as a recalcitrant poodle and its owner might).
So, to all you Snoffiteers out there, I acknowledge your right to employ the Snoffit, as long as you keep it strictly for personal use only. Do not engage in it before women, small children or the elderly. Do not ply it on public transport, in shopping malls or in places of worship. And do not exercise it at my house. Here ends the party broadcast from the Ministry of Social Hygiene.

Not-For-Profit

 

Not-For-Profit

Let's face it. The car ride (regardless of its origin or destination) is where most epiphanies occur nowadays. Thunderbolts were once meted out in the pews at St Jude's or at the Nepalese ashram on your tour of self-discovery. But no-one has time for that tom-foolery anymore, so the business of divine intervention has been relegated to sound bites delivered to the moving vehicle.
So it seemed appropriate that I uttered the words "Sweet Jesus!" more than once during this week's car journeys. The fodder, and indeed the ammunition, for my calls to the upper kingdom came from a revelation that is almost too depraved to disclose on these pages.
It involves an unhappy marriage of cash, kiddies and class marks. And here's how it goes:
It started with Number One son, who often communes with the pixies that dwell on a higher plain than either you or I know about. This, generally, renders him incommunicado in relation to any conversations taking part in The Car Ride. However, on this particular day his little pixie ears pricked up like an electrified fuzz ball. He had heard an apparently magic combination of words coming together: money and marks. Unhappily, I had been recounting the story of a fellow parent who had resorted to paying cash money as an incentive for their child to come home with something better than a D on the report card. The merits of this method were yet to be proven but this woman was quietly confident that she'd unlocked the holy grail of the pre-pubescent psyche, tapped into the machinations of the juvenile mind. I, of course, scoffed and dismissed the whole caper as tantamount to bribery and got on my high horse about morals, ethics and the foundations of building one's character.
Disturbingly, however, my very own Youth seemed inordinately interested in this scandalous concept. The idea that they might try just a little bit harder and for their troubles receive a monetary gain seemed to fill them with delight. In fact, I can't recall the last time I saw the Car Ride become as animated as it did on this morning.
Many weeks of attempted bargaining ensued between the Driver's Seat and the Back Stalls to no avail until I conceded with a plea bargain. I informed them that bribery was the lowest stratum of negotiation and that something a little more high-brow might be appropriate - a bet, for example. And so I bet them that they wouldn't be able to get As. Dollar amounts were discussed. Figures with three digits were bandied about. And now the challenge is on. A bit like the challenge I set last week in which I agreed, without proviso, that I would buy The Young Man a a dog if he got the gold medal at fitness club (knowing full well that a gold medal requires one to front up 100 times for the year and that our Young Friend had only enough days left to achieve a total of 89). That's where mathematics comes in handy for us misanthropic types.
And so, next week, the school reports will be winging their way to our letterbox. I suspect I know the outcomes, but I am most willing to open my wallet to be proven wrong.
And all this talk of marks had me reminiscing on the words of a witty pal of mine:
"Two dons are sitting, basking nude in their sun chairs in a grassy quadrangle at Oxford University on a summer's afternoon. They talk philosophy. Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Plato, Aristotle. Then one of them turns to the other and says, "Have you read Marx?", to which the other replies, "Oh yes, these wicker chairs are killing me."

The Problem with Stiffy

Is it wrong to treat God's tiny creatures with disdain?
What if those same tiny creatures insist on defecating in the shoes you leave outside the front door, or in your letterbox and on your windscreen? What if they leave a carpet of 'calling cards' so thick on your newly laid lawn that you can't actually see your newly laid lawn?
I, once upon a time, was a friend of the possum. No longer. Those little rats on steroids have met their match. And on a recent Saturday, one of them met their maker, right here on my front verge.
We found Stiffy (as he came to be known, after the rigor mortis had set in) in an eternal slumber outside our house, basking in the sunshine. Evidently, he had come off second best with a passing Michelin tyre the previous evening and some kind soul had popped Stiffy into the greenery. This is not the first time one of our park friends had come a cropper. Only last year we found a pal of Stiffy's propped up in the gutter holding a can of beer. I thank the passing punter who, on their way to the 1.50 at Randwick Racecourse, had taken the time out to squeeze a half-full VB into the possum's paws and set him on a jaunty angle - the amusement factor did not go unnoticed.
But back to most recent events. The Youth were the first to discover old poss and were none too happy to find Stiffy oozing his guts out all over our agapanthus. After checking for signs of life with a carefully placed Dunlop Volley, it was confirmed that our furry friend was, indeed, cactus.
The next job, of course, was how to be rid of this festering ball of fuzz. The Youth came up with all manner of inventive disposal methods including immolation, bagging up and taxidermy. The more mature of us discounted all these juvenile methods of eradication and decided on natural decomposition.
However, I did not necessarily want old poss to be decomposing at MY house. A rather malodorous and undecorous affair, to be disintegrating right there for all the world to see.
My dear brother, who happened to be visiting on the morning, drew the short straw and was elected to play undertaker. We are talking here of a grown man who has a proclivity towards fainting and vomiting at the sight of gore. However, today he seemed unfazed by Trichosurus vulpecula splayed out on the grass.
Donning a pair of disposable latex gloves he plucked the coagulated fluff ball from the undergrowth and hoiked him in a most splendid arc (see picture) over the four-lane road and into the arms of a waiting Algerian oak tree on the other side of the fence.
We bid a fond adieu to our rigid friend as he found his final resting place, back amongst his 'peeps'.
And later, sipping on a herbal tea, we couldn't help but nod in agreement with Charles de Leusse's observation that Death is a good Hotel: you are a guest at any time.

Welcome to Sacksville

How often is one in the company of greatness? Perhaps you are quite impressive yourself, and to be in a like-minded assemblage is an everyday affair. However, even flinging self-deprecation aside, I would class myself as only ‘reasonably good’. So, spending the gloaming hours on a Sydney winter’s eve with the eminent neurologist and author Oliver Sacks rates high on my list of ‘Brushes with Greatness’.

The tale goes a little something like this:
My remit was to collect Oliver from his Bondi Beach hotel and escort said luminary to the home of our mutual good friend Professor James Lance for dinner. An easy enough task for even the ‘reasonably good’. However, I had contracted a mild form of what felt like consumption the previous week and was now sporting a cracking good cough and a general pallid malaise. First thoughts were, obviously, what happens if I single-handedly knock off one of the world’s most famous neuroscientists right here in this Toyota RAV 4 tonight?

As Oliver folded himself into the two-door golden chariot, I weighed the options and decided that a plein air approach was called for. Windows down, sunroof agape, we buffeted through the crisp evening, where the gent was no doubt pondering the need for so much oxygen. Safely delivered and unwittingly now free to breathe some quality fresh air, Oliver settled in for the evening, which was filled with convivial chat about the good old days and plenty about the good new days as well.

Halfway through the evening, as I sat beside Oliver in my tuberculosis haze, I do remember him quietly unbuckling his belt while the other guests were busy debating the merits of airport security. Had I missed some vital element of the conversation? Was there going to be a show? No. As it transpired, the man was merely preparing to recount a detailed and highly amusing tale of airport metal detection that involved his troublesome belt buckle.

This was the point at which two epiphanies occurred to me. The first was that a story, whatever it be, should be told well. It should not be rushed. It should not have to fight for the floor. And it should use a good prop and a sight gag, if possible.

The second revelation was something I couldn’t specifically identify until days later. And then it came to me, bombshell-like. The ‘something’ that each of these congregated old friends had was a joie de vivre, a spirit of the bon vivant. They all knew how to live. I felt like a mere spectator in their company, a tick riding on the dog’s back.

As we departed towards the eve’s end, Professor Lance, now well known as Jim, announced that whenever we happened to be passing by we should drop in for a gin and tonic. “The bar opens at 5,” he declared, referring to his penchant for whipping up a ‘Slippery Jim’ from the drinks cabinet at a moment’s notice.

Introspection is a devilish thing. And as Oliver opined that evening, like so many years before in one of his original monographs, spending too much time in one’s own universe is a dangerous and scary thing. A much better tactic for life is to taste the delights of realms beyond your own.

Some months later I saw Professor Lance from a distance, driving his car on a Friday afternoon. He was a beacon of calm. I, on the other hand, had spent the previous 15 minutes swerving, cursing, beating the steering wheel and yelling at bus drivers in my haste to get across town. From that day on, whenever decorum and serenity are required, I call on a new verb I coined that day. I say to myself, “Just Jim Lance it”.

Get Your Act Together

Every so often one comes across a person who is so exquisitely irritating that the compulsion to wince and pelt off in the opposite direction is overwhelming. It might be the aggrandiser or the low-talker or the wine wanker that sends your synapses into self-destruct mode. For me, it's the malingerer. You know the type. The guy who always has a headache or a limp or the flu. They whine and shuffle and self-medicate and require inordinate, nay greedy, amounts of sympathy and attention. They are the scourge of the modern age.

However, it pains me to report that some weeks ago, I became The Malingerer. No need to bore one with the details, but suffice to say that the locus of the trouble was my spine. Now, the shirkers, the skivers, the festerers of the highest order will know well the plaint that I ashamedly uttered many times over the last four weeks. Something along the lines of: "I can't. My back's too sore." Each time this loser's lament left my lips I felt a sense of creeping nausea. Who was this dead beat I'd become? Even The Youth were being sucked into the vortex of self pity. "Is your back alright?" enquired the two-year-old with the sincerity only a novice could muster, for he is yet to learn the scorn that is rightly accorded to the spongers of this world.

With a misguided assumption that the back would recover after a little highlands air, we headed to the Mountains for the holidays. No need to elaborate but to say that The Air did not do its job and one had to call on the services of some ridiculously compliant side-kicks to administer massages, deliver copious amounts of red wine (I mean COPIOUS) and fawn over the simpering idler.

During this period, the Husband spent a gratuitous number of hours on the iPhone, which one can only presume was whiled away by looking under D for Divorce Lawyers. Or perhaps tweeting to his thousand-or-so followers that his wife has turned to the Dark Side and must now be disposed of post haste before she became a liability. One of his followers, known as The Queen, had tweeted back in sympathy, "And the Lord said 'Let There Be Gin' and it was Gin O’clock." It appeared that everyone else was getting on with life and I was living my own little version of Koyaanisqatsi, everything catastrophic and in slow motion.

Over the ensuing weeks some sensation did return to my spine and I currently take the form of a homo erectus as opposed to a primate. But my days as The Malingerer will never leave me. And during my hours reclining in a supine pose I channelled Dante’s Divine Comedy and considered his idea of Purgatory – a place for those too lazy to repent – hoping that my resistance to true malingering would save me from that fate. But I found most solace in the old scribbler Mark Twain, who ventured that, “it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Hair Apparent

Hair Apparent

Just as a giant snowball lurching down a hill cannot be stopped, nor can a certain regime be halted once it has been adopted. One cannot turn back a juggernaut.

The certain regime I refer to is, of course, hair removal. So as the thought of snowballs and behemoths drifted through my consciousness this week, I was forced to lie down on a niggardly vinyl examination table not once, but twice. The second visit had necessitated the first, and I felt somehow railroaded by the whole damned process. How, you ask? Like this...

When one visits the doctor to check on all things 'Downstairs' (as my grandmother referred to such matters), there is the question of whether one should prepare. Just as one might prepare for the dentist by brushing and flossing, does one need to prepare for the gynaecologist in a similarly courteous way? Until recently I would have said 'No'. However, there is a certain point at which a tidal surge of social pressure becomes too overpowering to resist. Not that your average citizen parades around flaunting their Axminster (shall we say) but there are hints everywhere about how "everyone" else is wearing theirs nowadays.

So, in deference to fashion, I found myself at the local Beauty Parlour to have some work done. This establishment is run by some lovely Thai ladies and I imagine they've seen it all. Or have they? The young apprentice who was assigned to my job seemed competent enough in the leg waxing department, chatting away as she waxed on and waxed off.

Then came the real test. The bikini wax. "Ah, you want bikini or g-string?" Hmm, having never had either (see previous post on my retarded entry into the world of personal grooming), I opted for the latter. However, the look on the young lady's face as she surveyed the area to be tended, gave me cause to reconsider. Alarm is probably the most appropriate term for what she was feeling right there and then.

"You wait one minute," she instructed, as she raced from the cubicle and called for back up from The Master next door, who was quite clearly the proprietor. After much discussion, the dowager of depilation strode in, slapped on the switch for what was presumably the Special High Intensity Training wax pot and proceeded to prattle away in a didactic fashion to her sidekick.

Let us not talk of the pain here, for that comes without hesitation. Let us instead concentrate on the methods one used to mitigate the smarting of the nether regions. The most useful amusement it seemed, as she was ripping away, was to run through my small repertoire of palindromes: WOW, MADAM, HUH. And I thought to myself, could I make these into a sentence?  I could, and I did.

As night follows day, the suffering did end and I relieved myself of $60 and made my way home, John Wayne-style. And as I perched myself on the office chair and reminisced on my day at the salon I thought it wise to channel The Duke himself, and he didn't fail me. "Life's hard," he said. "It's even harder when you're stupid."