A Short Guide to Aussie Politics

How Politics is won!!

A photo-story rather like those that graced Mizz magazine back in the 80's, demonstrating the delicate intracacies of 'Politics Down-Under'

Meet our star crossed lovers:



John Howard (leader of the Liberal Party)




Kim Beazley (leader of the Labor party). For Aussie purposes please turn everything you know about politics on its head, therefore Liberal are Labour and Labor are Liberal




JH: Grrr, Kim. You'll never get my job. I'm king of the world.




KB: Shucks boss, don't be horrible, it hurts my feelings.




JH: Everyone hates me but they are all too scared to vote for someone else....my evil plan is working... mwhaa ha ha ha ha!




KB: Not this time Speccy-Spitty man for I shall win them over with my magnificent beer gut and delinquent wiggly mono-brow




JH: I told you Kim-boy, I'm king of the world. Take that you brute *biff*. I shall stamp on your head til you bleed from your eyeballs! Da daah




JH: Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda...
KB: Please Johnny, if you are going to have naughty bott bott sex with me could you refer to me as 'Giorgio La Bamba'?




JH: Take that naughty Giorgio La Bamba. I win again. The unsuspecting public will never know the truth!


With many thanks to 'Tuck and Roll' who share an uncanny resemblance to our beloved Politicians of Australia. (And many belated but reluctant thanks to the psycho ex-boyfriend who tried to buy my love with these magnificent singing and dancing toys!)

Johhny and KimBoy

And if you didn't believe me then here's the proof!

I present you with Tuck and Roll or John and Kim as they are known to their friends!

Fabulous Food

Dave ate brains. In a Ray Liotta manner. So I had to try a little too!




And it tasted right nice! (but no, it doesn't make you more intelligent...damn)
We did drink an awfully large amount of wine though so anything could have tasted nice, even the inside of Dave's head!

Joint Accounts

Well last night Dave and I drank pink fizz to celebrate the fact that we are now proud land owners (apparantly we sign for the house loan later?!). We went to the bank and we sat for what seemed like five hours discussing loans, interest rates, repayments with interest only options, repayments without interest only options, house insurance, repayment insurance, contents insurance, builders falling off our roof insurance, action against gods will insurance and in case of death insurance.

Yep we got the whole 'did you know that 1 in 3 people will suffer from a life threatening illness in their life time' speech. However, I don't think he expected me to reply 'yeah, and I'm the one responsible for killing them'!

I am just hoping that Dave was really listening to it all as I spent the first half of the interview trying to determine his accent. Scottish but where from? Too soft for a Weegie. Too proper for the Brock. Not sing-songy enough for the Islands. When the Bank manager stepped outside to fax something (I dunno, possibly a contract I signed which promised half of my house to him, I didn't read it!) Dave turned to me and said 'So what do you think?'. I replied 'Not sure. Do you think Stirling or maybe the Borders'. Apparently this wasn't the answer he was looking for. He was discussing the offset account compared to the phlooby-looby account (really wasn't listening) and was hilariously asking for my advice! Me, the girl who can eek out twenty pounds for a fortnight before payday but as soon as payday arrives the money slips out of my hands like liquid mercury. Anyway the offset vs the phlooby arguement was soon discarded as I embroiled Dave in the 'Scottish?' game. He assured me that he was not even from Scotland. He reckons Irish! As if. I can tell an Irish from a Scottish accent. We decided that maybe in the middle. Isle of Mull?

So with that game nicely tied up it left me with some time to contemplate the reasoning for the school uniform green paint on the walls as Dave and Bernard (surely Scottish) discussed yet more land owning issues and ways the bank can take our house from us! Now who would match green walls with burnt orange furniture? In a bank? Where people are already nauseaus enough at the thought of owing 25 years of their working life to a multi-million dollar owning Bank? I think it was a conniving way of making the customer feel that the belly wibbling vomit feeling in the pit of their stomach was not to do with the putrid colours at all but with the possibility of losing their house to the bank, right leg to a shark or roof to a 'willy-willy' (small but destructable tornado) and at once signing up for every insurance known to man.

We of course resisted buying into that whole insurance malarcky. Well at the moment we have nothing to insure. What could possibly happen to a piece of earth and sand? Blow over? No, tis flat. Woodworm? No, tis dirt etc etc.

Anyway I zoned back into the conversation when Bernard happened to mention credit cards and the joint account! Joint Account? Flippin Heck. This is more serious than I thought. I hadn't realised that we would be 'doing' the married persons joint account thing. Now I have no problem in spending Dave's money when he's the one doing the actual spending but to actually take his money out of his account, now that's a different story. I would feel like a thief every time I went and spent money on something nice for myself (ooh, you should see the fabulous bag I bought from Accessorise the other day. Coral with sequins and beads and flowers. Very summer and very now!) which is, lets face it, every week! After discussing it with Dave we think we may have come up with a plan. I will set up another account in my name and transfer a minimal amount there each month and this will hopefully cover my addiction to all things sparkly and all things tequila related!

And it shall be called 'The Ladies Nice Things' account. Wish me luck!

Ohm...ohm...ohm (bugger this, it ain't working!) ARRRGGHHH!

Now I don't want to come across as a patchouli wearing hippy (however I am sitting at this very moment swirling my tinkly chinese healing balls and listening to Folk music- Sethy Babes Lakeman rocks my push bike!!) but I do feel that I have to bring the tragic 'retro-news' to the masses

... man!

Cosmetic companies are STILL testing products on little fluffy bunny rabbits and poor doe eyed puppies! How dare they desecrate our furry wild life?

Here is a comprehensive list of those companies that squirt eye-makeup remover into the blood shot eyes of caged animals (you'd do well to avoid the blood stained eyeshadows and moisturisers..please?):

• Calvin Klein Cosmetics
• Clairo
• Cover Girl
• Johnson and Johnson
• L'Oreal
• Maxfactor
• Nivea
• Olay
• Pantene
• Rimmel
• Sally Hansen
• Shiseido cosmetics
• Vidal Sasoon

And the best? Donna Karan. They have a 'no animal testing' policy but however just cannot resist the lure of selling furs! Un petit hypocritical?

'why yes, dahling. Our furs are just delect-able. Yah, nearly forty-three chinchillas. Lunch? Oh, would lahve to, let me grab my eyeliner first. Test it on the fluffy-bunnies? Why no. Of caurse not. How dreadful. Oh, dahling, you are so funny. We're environmentally hip'...'oh, I do lahrve your stole dahling. Fox?'

..?

I thought we sorted this all out in the sixth form? Do we really have to go through the whole braiding our unkempt hair into teeny tiny plaits and flashing the v signs at everyone all over again? Besides my fashion sense was questionable back then and I really really can't go back to wearing stripy frayed shorts or bat wing embroidered blouses!

Sparkle

Things Sparkle has done which should have mortally wounded my credibility but didn't:

• Telling all of the hunky young guys who worked with her that I still hadn't been 'de-flowered' at a ridiculously old age (18)
• On meeting Dave for the first time she presented us with matching tshirts. His had a picture of me in a love heart and mine had a picture of him in a love heart. The pictures were placed on the left side of the tshirt so as to 'connect the picture heart to the real heart'. Thank god Dave has a sense of humour. He insisted on wearing it for the entire weekend! I still have my tshirt which I wear to bed sometimes. Much to the digust of the boy!
• Sending me to a famous choreographers dance workshop wearing a cheap copy of his famous dance fashion label. He spied the tshirt, threw a diva-esque strop and sent me to the back of the class! I never did get 'discovered' after that.
• Telling me, aged 7, that I was a fairy princess given to her by the fairy queen. I believed her and told all of my friends who laughed in my face. She still to this day insists this story is true!
• Convincing me to get my hair cut at the Vidal Sassoon cutting school and coming away with an 80's human league pink, black and shaved haircut which almost got me disciplinary action at work. However I grew to love it and my boss kept commenting on my lack of roots when I had been secretly colouring my roots! Thickies!
• Stating that she thought that my lovely first boyfriend Jon had far too skinny legs to be son-in-law material. I thought I would love him for eternity. She was, of course, eventually right! Who could seriously allow a skinny-legged man into their life and beach side fantasies?
• Making me 'perform' an impromptu tap dance for my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. I wouldn't have minded so much but I was wearing a very flary dress circa 1991 and every time I spun around, the lecherous old geezers would wiggle their false teeth at me and wink in my pure and innocent direction!
• Making me a fabulously Madonna-esque outfit for the school disco. It was the 80's and she made me a black satin skirt with fluorescent pink netted underskirt (There may well have been lace fingerless gloves. Have tried to blot out the whole incident!). My 'mate' Kerry came to walk with me to the disco and when I opened the door she proclaimed in a very sneery voice 'I'm not going to the disco with you looking like that!'. Of course I don't blame Sparks now for she has so much more fashion sense than Kerry ever had (even though she ended up being a 'fashion mo-delle'....in New Zealand...the fashion capital of the world....for sheep!!)
• Insisted that I arrive at the Plymouth Hoe dressed in Fishnets and a leotard (in broad daylight, for god sakes!) to tap dance for Roy Castle as he was travelling Blighty with his Cancer Research bandwagon-type roadshow. We didn't dance for him due to lack of time but I did get a very fabulous ride in a hot air balloon (still in my fishnets and leotard!).

However I love her to bits. Could you imagine having a normal mum? How boring!!

Bikes and Hits

Well I'm pretty sure someone has a contract out on my life. That bloody starling bombed me again. Every bloody day (well apart from Saturday as Dave and I had arranged to meet half way at the pub but he wasn't playing and cheated by bringing the car. I ended up drinking too much beer and having to walk the bike in a not very straight line to his car where he chucked it in the boot and drove me home, thus keeping me from Mr Pecky). He incessantly pecked at my hair and left shoulder (he really is attracted to my left shoulder, odd. Maybe he wants my hair cos it looks like straw after a shift with it screwed to my heid in a bun all day?).

This time in a bid to swat him away from my face (not the face please, no not the face) I near on rode into a passing 4WD, overcompensated with the fright and veered off the road, bumped over the kerb and almost landed in the river! It was a beautiful day so I rode on a little way farther, taunting the would be assassin with 'Eurrrarghs' and 'Grrrs' as I went. I found a quiet spot and spent ten minutes paddling in the cool clear waters of the Swan River. Well after first checking for these really dangerous spikey fish things (another of Daves stories. Do I believe him?).

I'm enjoying the ride still. I'm wondering when the novelty will wear off. It does feel like a fantastic way of unwinding after a hellish shift. It can take me an hour to get home depending on whether I stop for a paddle or not. It does mean I miss forty minutes of mind-numbing telly though. Am still not sure if this is a good thing or not. My second favourite bit of the ride (after riding through the bushland next to the river, singing my head off) is when I ride past the old folks units. Why do the oldies always get the best views? You can tell its inhabited by the elderly as it smells of grannies and freshly cooked apple pie. It feels really homely around there that it never fails to remind me of my gran and nana. They were always baking pies and such like. No one does that anymore, well not me at least but then I don't cook. Ever!

So wish me luck as I go into week two of 'Natalies Thigh Busting Plan'. Not sure it's going to work as exercise always gives me an appetite. That's a cruel twist of fate if ever I heard one!

Neighbours Storylines in Advance

It's Neighbours twentieth anniversary this year so expect the following characters to come back into the programme for a while:

• Anneliese
• Lance
• Joe Mangel
• Phil Martin
• Lucy Robinson

The story so far...ie who is sleeping with who:

• Karl was sleeping with Izzy but after finding out about her slappery ways he's sleeping with his teddy and rocking himself to sleep each night whilst squeezing out a tear or two.
• Izzy (who is now trying to be a pop star. She thinks she can do this by screeching the deep and meaningful lyrics 'baby baby baby baby. You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child'. Hmm) was sleeping with Gus, Jack, Paul Robinson (don't it make you feel good, yeah...god I loved him in leathers in that video!) and Karl. Dumped by everyone and is now trying to sleep with Paul again but his wooden leg keeps getting in the way! Newcomer Ned is in lurve with Izzy (why?) and is tempting her with his cast member unsoiled flesh.
• Lyn Scully was sleeping with Joe (husband) but left him after he mysteriously never came back from the farm. Briefly started a torrid affair with Max and Izzys Dad before embarking on cute teenage affair with Joe Mangel (of the son of Mrs Mangel fame)! Cause for much soul searching cos 'he has the same name as my husband...howl'?
• Susan was sleeping with Karl 'can't keep it in my pants' Kennedy until the Izzy thang. Briefly shared the father of Max and Izzy until his tarty ways were found out. Now engaged to a man who has a terminal illness but hasn't thought to mention it to anyone. And guess who his doctor is? Karl Kennedy...the plot thickens!
• Sky was sleeping with Boyd but now has taken it up with Dylan after a sweet moment when he wrote down a numbered list of all the girls he had slept with before and presented it to Sky thinking she would be impressed!
• Boyd was sleeping with Sky but is now single after a flirtation with the single mum and is now trying to seduce Janae (but she's not even out of knee high socks yet!)
• Connor started out as the boyfriend of Michelle before getting Lori pregnant and then falling for the charms of Carmella with the gangster dad. Now tasting the delights of the child Serena after involving her in his sordid bikini business!! He will soon steal money from the shop, get embroiled with Carmella yet again and unravel his life in a fabulously soapie manner! (Cue much huffing from Serena)
• Liljana was sleeping with her husband David before being seduced by the chocolate voice of Paul Robbo. Then he lost his leg, gets outed as a 'baddie' and she returns to her husband with her tail between her legs. David meanwhile finds the whole thing disgraceful before finding it hilarious!
• Stu (who got his lucky break on the show by being a former BB housemate!!) married Sindi before she threw a mentaller and he sent her away to a psychopath unit.
• Steph is still sleeping with Max (who I find impossibly cute!!) and after the disappointment of losing her adopted baby, she discovers she is pregnant (only in neighbours...)
• Paul Robbos daughter Elle (product of one of the twins) turns up and is infatuated with Ned. For the record, she's another poisonous dwarf to throw into the mix!
• Janelle is not sleeping with any of them!!

Did you know that for a few years Dave sponsered me a dog from Dogs Trust called Henry Ramsey? He was the cutest thing and his main attribute was that he had 'very short legs'! Dave stopped paying for his supper when we moved over here. He's probably dead now. Starved because of him!!

Am I the only one who still thinks that Paul Robinson is still quite sexy even after all these years on the shelf of Aussie Soaps?

And does anyone else dream of discovering that 'Jelly Belly Bishop' is their long lost grandad?

Eek, Exercise.

Well I did it. I actually cycled to work, worked a eight and a half hour shift and then cycled home.

Think I will collapse now....

I worked out that it's a twenty kilometre round trip. I have no idea what that is in old money! That makes me feel all fit and twenty year old like. I took the long way home by the river as it's prettier and therefore more likely to make me peddle faster. The soundtrack was Jamiroquai 'Dynamite' and I got all jiggly on a couple of the very disco-esque tracks. I got caught singing along to 'feels just like it should' including the 'urh urh urgh urh urgh urh eurgh's'! An old couple coming out of the bushes (what were they doing in there?) stumbled onto the pathway just in front of me as I was reaching my 'sugar spice' crescendo. I'm not sure who was embarrased more. Luckily I could peddle furiously away from them before my gears slipped and I almost fell off in front of a group of teenage boys (where do all these people come from on a Friday afternoon?).

The rest of the ride passed uneventfully apart from being sky-dived by an angry starling. It wouldn't leave me alone for at least 200 metres and was pecking at my pony tail and tshirt. I think he wanted to kill me. Maybe I ate his cousin or something?

And the bastard hill? Piece of cake. Didn't need the newsagent and didn't need the Oxygen tank I had secretly planted at the summit the night before!

Oh. My. Dear. God!

Apparently they aren't myths after all! These pics come courtesy of Davo. He tells me that they came from a friend of his and therefore are very real! I still haven't figured out if he's having me on or not!

According to Dave this poor wee snakey was eating a farmers sheep and then had accidentally caught his over large, post-sheep rampaging gut in an electric fence. Some tourists came across the 'thing' getting constantly electrocuted and getting angrier by the minute.

Now here comes the stupid bit. They thought it would be a nice thing to cut him loose and send in on his way in a kind of 'Born Free' tear jerker moment. Hmmm, me thinks I would have let the bugger starve to keep getting jerked around in the manner of David Byrne from Talking Heads, by the intermittant leccy fence.

The farmer was allegedly furious with the tourists! (Quite right too.) All Dave keeps saying is that he isn't poisonous, just a poor python. I say anything with teeth like that needs to be in a zoo not in public!

Am all of a sudden taken back four months of progress with all things creepy crawly!

Piccies

View from my ward! Setting sun over the ocean and Rottnest Island. How do I get any work done?
The bottle brush tree that the parrots like to swing in.
My lemon tree with its solitary lemon. Was very nice in my gin later that evening!

Am on night shift so am too vague for literacy and too overworked for anything exciting to have happened!

So its piccy time.

More Piccies

Sea Dragons. Found in the coastal waters of Western Australia. And yes, they are real!!
Feeding the parrots in Karri Valley. Hungry buggers. They took all the corn Dave was saving to go fishing with!
Another pink and grey galah. Flamin Galah's!
The Indian Ocean at Leighton Beach.

Courage

Now I can't say too much about individual patients of mine for confidentiality reasons but sometimes you can't help but have your heart broken. Occasionally you will look after a patient that you somehow will immediately hold in higher regard than the others. You're not meant to have favourites but I'm only human after all.

I remember the first one I fell in love with. It was before I became a nurse. I was still at school and working as a teagirl in our local hospice with Nicola. His name was Tom and Nic and I would mitch off school (sorry mum!!) and catch a bus to visit him at St Lukes. We would sit there all afternoon and listen to him telling us stories about his cats (hey anything to avoid Sociology with the pervemeister Jukes. Nic do you remember him trying to thrust his crotch at the class? Classy fella.). He was a beautiful man and we were devastated when he passed away.

I'm not sure what it is that draws me to some people. Sometimes all it will take is a look in someones eyes for you to develop a soft spot for them. With this particular man it was a throw away comment made by another nurse.

'I don't like 'X'. He's so rude so I told him that he can't speak to me like that' She said in a true 'Kath and Kim' style voice that would have been funny if she wasn't referring to a real person.

My heart instantly went out to this patient who after just being diagnosed with terminal cancer was not allowed to be a little grumpy. I was looking after him that afternoon so I went and introduced myself to him properly and asked how he was doing. He was obviously very withdrawn but had good reason to be. He had a wife and family that were his main priority until that point. Now someone had told him that even though he felt reasonably well, he was riddled and there was not much they could do other than pump him full of cyto-toxic drugs to prolong his life by a couple of months.

So I allowed him time to process his fate and I didn't force him if he didn't want to do anything that had to be done just because it was on 'my schedule'. I'm a terrible believer in hospitals being about the patients rather than the nurse. This is probably the reason for my terrible time management skills! Anyway he complied more with me than anyone else and after a few days, guess what? He wasn't a rude and unpleasant man as this other nurse had labelled him. He was intelligent and kind. (I love being right!)

When it came to the end his family camped out in his room and supported him and cared for him through the day and night. Their strength was amazing, but I suppose a natural thing to do when the husband was him. He passed away this week and hearing the news still felt like a kick in the gut.

I am so lucky to be doing this job (someone remind me of this when I'm complaining of stinky, pee-sodden confused old buggers next week) as the people I meet enrich my life so much. The bravery and 'you'll have to catch me first' attitude of these people astound me every time. I'm not sure that I could ever be that dignified and courageous if faced with the same. As someone once said to me I feel priviledged that patients and their families allow me to go through this journey with them.

Two of my friends are also going through a similiarly but separate shitty times. One as a relative and the other as a patient. I have so much admiration and respect for these two young women that I couldn't possibly put put it into words. All I can say is that I'm thinking of you both constantly even if I'm crap and never call!

K-I know you're still hurting. She'll always be with you. It just means you can never do anything naughty ever again. Say goodbye to the dreams of champagne and coke parties. She'd never allow it!

H2- Never accept a booking for the 'Hotel D'Anchor' again and for heavens sake, eat some licorice allsorts!

Brainiac

We here in Australia have just had the first seasons of MythBusters and Brainiac...

....Jon Tickle, how I have missed you!!!!

Celebrity Dinner Party

Six guests, dead or alive, and someone to serve the wine!

1. Polly Jean Harvey- although am perhaps a little too superficial to be able to converse fluently with this obviously deep thinking rockstar. Afterwards she could strum a couple of her biggest hits and we could all screech along to the chorus!
2. Indiana Jones- Only if he came along sporting his ripped shirt and rippling muscles...swoon. He'd dazzle us with tales of pretty girls and the jungle.
3. Alan Rickman- That chocolate voice, that obvious intelligence. I could could listen to him all night. And afterwards he could tango me around the living room.
4. Belinda Jones- Author of fluffy chick-lit. Some of her stories feel so familiar that I often wonder if she is in fact my long lost sister!
5. Frankie Poullain- The best looking 'tache in the business. How dare Justin and the boys kick him out of the band?
6. Ruth Edmondson- Pauls sister. Will forever be a celebrity in my mind and she is far more fabulous in real life than in fiction

And serving the wine: Matthew McConaughey- Just because he's so pretty!!

(list subject to change along with the seasons!)

Massage Update

(Kirsty and me)

Well at least she didn't hand me the paper pants!

Am coming to realise that massage is all about trust. It was lovely but I feel more sore now than I did before. It obviously didn't help that every time she touched the left side of my back, I twinged and a spasm ran though my spine. Ticklish, moi?

She must have thought I was a freak!

I think it takes an incredibly confident person to allow someone to wobble their thighs intentionally and not worry about the obvious 'fat slapping' sound coming from the room (with no ceilings...why would you not have ceilings in there? Everyone could hear!) when the therapist is doing that 'cuppy slappy' thing.

All I could think about when she was massaging my legs and feet was 'oh my god, where did I put that pumice stone? My tootsies are like old womens. Did she see the saddle sacks? Of course she did. She must be glad she doesn't have my hips. Did I wear the right pants? Maybe diamante palm trees on knickers are so last season. I sooo should have worn the lacy brown and turqouise pair, but I can't find the matching bra and everyone knows that "unmatching underwear means an unmatched life"!'

It's no wonder I didn't relax that much.

I promise you Kirsty, when I'm rich and famous I will ship you, Jim and whoever else (the whole scooby gang?) out here, put you on the payroll but only make you massage me twice a year. The rest of the time we can spend on the beach-side glass painting and trying desperately to sell our wares!

Massage Therapy?

(Outside the offending salon!!)

Have booked myself in for a massage tomorrow. There are thousands of places to choose from over here leading to the inevitable feeling that massage is as common as!

I have not entered a 'Beauty and Health Salon' in over two years. There is good reason for this. The first time I came to Australia with Dave, we stopped at Kuala Lumpur for a few days to stay with a couple of friends of his. The wife of Dave's school buddy suggested we treat ourselves to a couple of hours of indulgent massage, saunas and facials. I readily agreed. I am not one of those masochistic self deprivation type birds after all.

I, however, changed my mind when on entering the establishment I was handed a pair of scrunchy see through paper knickers to wear and told to strip off and adorn the forementioned garment! Being naturally prudish and self concious (hey I have spent years learning how to conceal my cellulite and wobbly bits to not let some jumped up gorgeous malay woman with noo cellulite try and scrub mine away!!) I was a little perturbed. I did strip off, and I did put on the offending underpants (after first checking they were in fact one use only and completely throw-away-able!) and attempted to sit on the massage table in a manner which would conceal my modesty. Very difficult without mermaid long tresses (reason for my sudden liking in long hair? Discuss!).

I breathed a sigh of relief when someone walked through the door who was not a; a bloke, b; not a gorgeous malay woman but a chunky canadian, and c; obviously not put off by the sight of an english bird cowering in the corner wearing nothing but paper pants! She also had an irritating laugh which I found comforting at first but wore very thin when after twenty minutes of pummelling she still wouldn't let me relax and listen to the tropical birds twitterings or dolphin noises on the 'relaxation' tape playing on the cheap CD player in the corner!

Anyway the Canadian ground some sea salt grainy scrub stuff into my legs and body (thankfully avoiding the whole boob area. Would have grabbed my tshirt and ran if she did) and rubbed it so hard into my skin I felt like I was some surfer dude washed up on a very forbidding coast line. Did anyone tell me that beauty would hurt? No! So with my body smarting from the salt she told me to 'geddinta the sahna, but, hehehe'! There I languished for a few minutes trying to gulp down mouthfuls of hot euculypt air. I was still wearing the paper knickers when I see Dave's friends wife clamouring to join me! I grabbed a towel and sat petrified in the corner until we had to get out!!

Afterwards came the facial and gentle body massage where I swear the Candian tried to tickle my feet to the point of nausea, pummel the knots from my spine until each vertabrae cricked and gave me a facial which would have been relaxing if I hadn't been subjected to the whole story of how she married a malaysian man and had bucket loads of kids only to leave him and had to work sixty hours a week to put all the children through school whilst living in a two bedroom flat!

I swore never again but here I am contemplating putting myself through the same thing again. Am thinking I was spoiled when I volunteered to be Kirsty's case study years ago when she was doing her massage therapy course! She never made me feel vulnerable and when I gazed at the floor through the handy hole in the head of the massage bed I swore she was leaving yellow footprints on the carpet with her stockinged feet! I maintain to this day that I was seeing her 'aura'. Am sure yellow= healing somewhere in the world!

Just wish me luck and I will try and endeavour to ask only for the back massage and not be tempted into having one of the 'specials' which everyone knows is just a ploy to grab many bucks from clients while making them lounge around naked wearing nothing but paper pants!

Hair Don't

Of course I blame it all on Sparkle.

If she hadn't tried so hard to tempt me to stay in Blighty by booking an appointment with her favourite hairdresser then I wouldn't be in this mess now!

Now all those that know me know that I am not adverse to clipping my hair into different shapes and dyeing it various shades from hot pink to near-on ebony. It started years ago when Nicky and I used to buy copious amounts of shaders and toners from the Broadway and attempt to transform our hair into the pictures on the sachets (we never did grasp the fact that the colour change wouldn't automatically turn our hair into the actual picture replicating cut, texture and pretty model like faces!). I also had never until that fateful day in May, come away from the hairdressers and not 'improved' on the cut by snipping further bits from their unlevel efforts.

Sparkles hairdresser Jamie, is no such amateur though. He turned me into a sleek goddess in just under four hours (ah, I see now. I have only ever allowed 45 mins to get myself coiffed). So as I became accustomed to the bouncy, shiny highlighted hair, I became more reluctant to change his vision. To the point last week when I looked at my trailer trash roots and tired, flat, grown out fringe and decided to take drastic action.

Of course I couldn't go to a proper hairdresser. Lord knows you can't trust them. I have spent my adult life searching for the holy grail in hair design to know that two Jamie's don't exist. So I did the next best thing. I found Dave's sharpest scissors (at least I have come a long way from the days when I would take to my wee brothers hair with gusto and a pair of pinking shears! They did give a delightful zigzag effect though!) and bought a job lot of hairdye.

The trimming went fine enough and I managed to copy Jamies original work reasonably well (in an amateur way at least) but the hairdyeing was another matter. I have long thick hair and so dyeing it is a labourious task in itself. Especially when you have to dye it, wait twenty minutes, rinse, towel dry and then highlight. Needless to say I got bored towards the end and had to dance around singing into the highlighting wand to keep myself amused. During an especially soul rendering version of The Choirboys 'Run to Paradise' I managed to give myself a 'badger streak'! A horizontal streak of blonde about a centimetre away from my hairline. Tres chic.

However am considering keeping it for a while as am growing strangely attached to it's imperfectness! Although on second thoughts maybe all I need is regular (three monthly) visits back to Plymouth for the weekend to visit Jamie. I need someone to save my poor hair from a life of ridicule.

How?

A girl at work told me about a friend who lost her voice but didn't realise until she arrived at work for an afternoon shift and tried, unsuccessfully, to speak. How could you not realise that you have no voice until lunchtime?

Does no one talk to themselves anymore?