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."

Who's in Control Here

                         Who’s in Control Here?

According to a recent study, the key to self-control is practice. As in, the more you practice self-control, the more inclined you are to engage it when you need it most.

Take Wednesday night for example, when two excellent hours were spent at a concert, leaping around to seminal 1980s band New Order. Amongst the 5,000 or so revellers there were plentiful elbows to the ribs, hair flicked in faces and sprays of beer that were all happily endured in the name of good spirits. In any other circumstance these encroachments on the person would never be tolerated. However, the concert continued unabated without a visit from the riot police.

Nonetheless, my companion, who shall remain nameless but carries the XY chromosome, took a somewhat different approach to the evening. Whenever a flailing limb made contact or a stream of ale breached the meniscus of a fellow rocker’s plastic cup and became airborne in his direction, he would repay the action in kind...and with interest. The recipient of this harangue would stare wide-eyed at the angry man and wonder: why all the negative energy?

One’s tiny mind begins to tick over in these situations and draw tenuous links. And, in deference to New Order and its predecessor Joy Division, the title of the latter’s most intriguing song came to mind: She’s Lost Control. Why is it that one person can control their emotions when another can’t?

Back at the concert, the old grey matter was working overtime and came up with a theory. Where the psychological scientists of the aforementioned study had tortured their subjects by denying them chocolate biscuits or forcing them to hold a nasty King Pigeon pose (some breed of contortive yoga move), my XY friend had merely had “a hard day at work”. A nine-hour conga-line of whining clients and incompetents had slowly sapped his reserves of self-control and here was his chance to let loose.

Miraculously, two hours passed and no actual violence was perpetrated on another individual. However, a quick exit from the venue was followed by what turned out to be a 90-minute queue to leave the carpark. Again, good spirits reigned. Fellow carparkers tooted their horns in the style of New Order classics and generally made good of a tedious situation.

XY held his own for about 45 minutes...and then lost it. Alighting from the car and confirming that he was merely popping out to get a snack from the nearby convenience store, he returned 10 minutes later out of breath and electric. On enquiring, it turns out that he was probably lucky to have all limbs remaining. Allegedly, on finding a carpark attendant (a large gent from Tonga) behind glass on the lower level, he had engaged in some unsavoury chat and found that the attendant, too, had had a “hard day” and was happy to let XY know about it in a physical fashion. Evidently the flight/fight response had kicked in.

On the drive home, one was reminded of the lyrics of a tune pilfered from Tennessee Ernie Ford by the smooth old crooner, Tom Jones, called Sixteen Tons. “If you see me coming, better step aside. A lot of men didn’t, and a lot of men died.”

A Whole Lot of Nothing

An invitation to a wedding, such as popped through my letter box some months ago, sets off a chain of events that I care not to think about too deeply. The most acerbic of which is the requirement to tart up. Generally, I favour the wardrobe-selected-from-the-pile-on-the-bed method for my everyday wear (this is what used to be called 'un-laundered', but is now referred to as 'boho chic'). However, weddings require a certain amount of attention to detail. This is a road less travelled for me and, to be honest, I find it painful.

I don't know quite how it happened, but as I passed from teenage-hood into adult-hood I missed the whole personal grooming craze. Sure, I know sometime back in the last century most women started waxing and tanning and dyeing and painting and lasering and injecting. But I didn't. And now I find myself in a parallel universe when anyone starts talking about Brazilians (which I understand nearly everyone sports nowadays), stick-on eyelashes, straightening irons, full-legs, half-legs (is this an amputee's convention?), paper pants and botulinum toxin (measured in LDs - that's Lethal Doses, as in, "how many LDs does it take to kill a rat?" But that's another story.)

Nonetheless, a level of 'tartedness' is expected at a wedding so I made my way to the mother of all shopping meccas to select a suitable item. Now, whilst I've been in this parallel universe, and obviously not paying attention, it appears that there has been an alarming transmutation of the human female form. I can reliably report that the world is now populated by anorexic Amazonian sylphs. A sea of racks is dedicated to these strange supernatural beings and prodigious amounts of gear is presently available for them. Of course, I could have made my way over to the frumps section, but I was here to get some GOOD gear, not the old maroon and aquamarine tat that was being offered over in the far corner.

In the fitting room, just as I popped the $359 hand-spun Bedouin crafted (assembled in China) silk kaftan over my head, I heard a call...no, more of an entreaty, from the cubicle beside me. "Hey. Have you got this in a size zero?". What! What! Surely Beelzebub had visited Sydney town and she was right here in the David Jones fitting rooms. A size ZERO! What was that fool thinking? What is a size zero? Is it some type of Black Hole, a vortex into which one is sucked when one squeezes into those heroin-chic drainpipes? She called again, this time to her boyfriend, "The four's too big, I need a zero." The cuckold opined the existence of Nothing and went back to caressing his i-phone. The shop assistant regrettably confirmed the non-existence of Nothing and also went back to pressing buttons on her cash register. And there came an audible lamentation at the lack of Nothing from the stall beside me.

Having decided on my Middle Eastern number in size twelve I wanted to move swiftly from the house of horrors and away from that very disturbing scene. But before I could, I heard the homily of Rene Descartes coursing through my tiny brain: "I think, therefore I am. I think, therefore I am." I was compelled to eyeball this Nothing, so as I departed I craned my head around the divider to see the Zero Woman. But there was Nothing there.

And as the cashier rang up her best sale of the day, I was moved to interpolate a thought from the insightful F. Scott Fitzgerald. "Fashion is a racket. You can't be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero." I'm not sure if the cashier was with me or not on that one.

Not everyone's a winner, baby

With the advent, in the late 1990s, of dross that began with Big Brother and culminated in I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, it appears that there is a new modus operandi for the youth of today - and it has nothing to do with aiming for an A+ in algebra.
In the 70s, one was happy with a gold star in the exercise book for exceptionally good work, and one also took it on the chin when one got nothing, realising that one had not truly excelled at anything in particular during the year. However, that was then, and this is now.
Having endured a veritable caboodle of School Presentation Days this week, two distinct and palpable themes began to emerge - one that had me back in 1997 dusting off my CD single of Wannabe by the Spice Girls, and the other cranking out Elton's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The songs, I think, speak volumes about the obsessions of their age. But I waver from my course.
The first of the Presentation Days was a delightful reflection on the rewards of Persistence and Confidence. The two-hour production went off without even the glimmer of a hitch. No duffed lines, no wardrobe malfunctions, no melt-downs. Rather impressive from a hundred or so 5-year-old girls, but somehow rather too precise for my liking. Hmmm...the apologue wasn't clear until I'd partaken of the next two events.
The second Presentation Day was the clincher in the quest to prove my allegorical theory. It too was a deliciously wholesome display, this time of little men fancied up and showing off their various talents. However in this one EVERY SINGLE BOY received a prize. The pointy heads in 2S must have been up all night thinking up some of these hum-dingers. "Best Friend in a Crisis", "Most Enthusiastic Trumpet Playing" - the list went on and on and was only marginally pipped by the hearty applause as each group was ushered off centre stage. The whole plot slightly alarmed me. The school had moved into 1990s mode, and I desperately wanted them to be playing a tune from 1975.
The third Presentation Day, however, restored my faith in human rationality. As I read the Order of Proceedings my heart sank when I saw the reams of awards to be trotted out. But then an unlikely arbiter of reason tottered up to the podium. The headmistress pulled from her bag an iPad, an iPhone and a dog-eared copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She proceeded to tell her audience how the creators of these pieces of modern iconography had been failures, also-rans, school nobodies.
And later, as she read the names of those winners who pranced jauntily up onto the stage, every loser in the house felt just a little bit better about themselves.

I beg to differ with Hot Chocolate, who entreated us to believe that everyone's a winner, baby. Rather, I'm with old Leo Tolstoy who was far more pragmatic about things. "We lost because we told ourselves we lost."

Hands Off, My Friend

One must endure a number of tedious adult-type gatherings as maturity sets in. But none saps the life out of oneself quite like the Annual Accountant's Dinner. This is the one where your financial advisor (very loose term) gathers together you and the other blind faithful for a celebration of how he (or she) has managed to persuade the taxman, on your behalf, that you are a struggling writer/lawyer/doctor/taxidermist and that all concessions should be called in to assist you in your pursuit of bettering the profession.
Meanwhile, your financial advisor has just placed his order for the new Porsche 911 from the Frankfurt Motor Show, and you are still wondering whether you could hang on to that 13-year-old Toyota RAV4 for one more year before it goes to God.
But I digress. This is not a venue for rancour, this is a venue for sizzling social observation and the Annual Accountant's Dinner provides just such an opportunity.
Like a wedding, a dinner such as this does not simply fall together. Hours of preparation go into details, details, darling. Guest lists, venues, menus, speeches and most importantly (and mostly explosively) the seating plan. Seating Plan and the term laissez faire are not happy bedfellows. Consequently, I am endlessly intrigued by whom I am seated with at such gatherings of the acolytes.
Okay, so it was a predominantly medical crowd this particular evening but, wedged between two psychiatrists who specialise in treating child sex offenders, the alarm bells began ringing. Quietly, in my own private Idaho, I was mulling over Foucault's famous declaration that madness was silenced by reason. Foucault quite clearly was deluded.
As I pressed down my baked celeriac and beetroot with Jerusalem artichoke mousse it dawned on me how freaking bizarre this whole arc of comrades was.
As the night rollicked along, the conversations became increasingly absurd until I was convinced Federico Fellini would leap out from behind a curtain at any moment.
Unhappily, he never appeared, but this didn't stifle the steady stream of weirdness, which culminated in this:
My husband, who I unashamedly class as quite a handsome number, was being chatted up right in front of me by one of these kooky head-shrinkers. The gall! The flirting was wanton, the body language outrageous and the squirm factor (from the husband) rated an eleven. And the most intriguing element of the home-wrecker's gambit was that he was a HE, a dude, a guy, an XY chromosome. The husband was being chatted up by a MAN.
As I said, the Accountant's Dinner is an exercise in social observation, and I was loving every minute of it. However, the silvery beads were appearing on the husband's brow and by the third shin-mauling I succumbed and realised I had to break him out. We bid our adieus, but not before the lush prised a business card from the husband and promised to be in touch.
And he was a man of his word. That night at 11pm, home-wrecker tapped out a little late-night note from his i-Phone just for the husband. "What a great night. I'd really like to get to know you better. Let's keep in touch."
As I left the husband to measure his reply I reminisced on the words of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland and thought that perhaps he could be my financial advisor. "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be,” said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here."