My Lord – Why Have You Forsaken Me?

I have sad news to report.
But first I must set the scene.

Flashback to the year 1976. I was a young, bright-eyed 7 year old kid absorbed by Saturday morning telly on the black and white box. We had only 2 telly channels in Tassie at that time – the ABC and Channel 6. I eschewed the light-weight fluff of the ABC, whose shows centred around a bear with no knickers on and a puppet with a pencil up his nose, in favour of the realism of Channel 6 and one program in particular – HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff.

For those of you unfamiliar with the program it was a gritty real-life drama of an elderly cross-dressing transgender woman named Witchypoo and her torment at the hands of the asexual young mannequin named Jimmy. As could be seen by the gonad-crushing pants he wore, Jimmy had no genitals, preferring instead to hold his phallus in his hand and call it his “flute”. Witchypoo was forever trying to get her hands on Jimmy’s “flute”, the symbol of masculinity that would finally resolve her sexual confusion.
Luckily, we never got to see Jimmy blowing his flute …

One episode in particular I remember vividly. In order to get her Witchypaws on said flute, our struggling heroine entered the local talent competition in disguise, knowing that Jimmy would also enter cos the poncey little show off could never resist the lure of bright lights and makeup.

From the minute she started to sing, I was mesmerised. With my exceptional musical talents and innate sense of theatrics I knew that Witchypoo’s act was extraordinary. The tone, the projection, the warbly bit you do at the end of a long note – she had it all. But by far the best part of the performance was the words of the song which were so poignant I remember them to this day:
“Oranges boranges, who says, oranges boranges, who says, oranges boranges, who says there ain’t no rhyme for oranges?”

Flash forward to 2006 and I am wandering along the street with my husband and my arms full of groceries.
And suddenly I see it.
I am stupefied and dumbfounded. I drop my groceries in a heap on the pavement and shriek “NOOOOOOO!” to the heartless sky encircling my now pointless existence. My head spins and my eyes bleed tears of despair as they focus on the name of the Real Estate Agents in front of me:
Roland Gorringe’s Real Estate.

OH MY GOD! There IS a rhyme for oranges!
The next thing they’ll be telling me is that C is NOT for Cookies and that’s NOT good enough for me!

Was everything I was ever told a lie?
Is there any real truth in the world?
Could anyone else possibly understand the despair I feel?
I am so alone.

Flights of Fancy

There are good things and bad things about being married to a musician.

The advantages are that the Drudester does the housework and I get breakfast in bed almost every morning. The Drudester, who has never had an office job in his life, believes that working in an office is reely reely hard and I shouldn’t exhaust myself with all that cooking and cleaning stuff. (Where did he get that idea? Gosh, I really don’t know…)

The major disadvantage to being married to someone who spends his life fingering cat gut is that his grip on reality is less than firm.

Four weeks ago he wanted us to buy a run down place in England, fix it up and sell it on for a mint. I just nodded and smiled. I didn’t mention that renovations on our bomb site bathroom have been motionless for 2 months, and that if our track record was anything to go by, it would take us exactly 177 years 9 months and 13 days to fix up an entire house, not including the garden.

Three weeks ago he wanted to buy some land in Australia and build an eco-house from scratch. I smiled and nodded. Two weeks ago he wanted to go on a mega-cross-county adventure like cycling from England to Australia (after which we would, presumably commence the building of the aforementioned eco-house). I smiled and pointed out that there were only 3 things he had to get over to achieve this one:
1. Several impenetrable mountain ranges;
2. An ocean or two;
3. My dead body.

Last week he wanted to move to France.
“But honey, how are you going to get work – you can’t speak French” I pointed out. I have tell you that the Drudester is no linguist. He believes the Arabic greeting “Salam Alaikum” translates as “Would you like some salad”.
“I can speak French” he said.
“How do you say ‘I play the guitar’ in French?” I queried.
“Easy” was his reply “Je suis le guitar”.
I smiled and nodded. Great, I am certain he will get a lot of work by walking into bars and saying “I am the guitar”.

But wherever we live it seems we won’t be alone. Previously he has suggested buying a pig for the backyard (or the back garden as they apparently say over here) and last week he got carried away at an auction and bid on a horse.
Unsuccessfully. Luckily.
I’m not sure if either the pig or the horse were meant to join us on our journeys …

On the bright side, I am not concerned at all about the Drudester having a midlife crisis. I figure that if he does, he’ll probably go completely straight and try to get an office job.
And the only thing I’ll have to worry about then will be, who’ll make the breakfast?

Eating my words

I have been reading the dictionary.
Yes, life in Seaford is that exciting.

The purpose of the exercise was to see if, technically speaking, the Drudester actually eats. My theory was that he did not eat because eating involves chewing and tasting.
But apparently I was wrong.

According to Yahoo dictionary “to eat” means the following:
- To take into the body by the mouth for digestion or absorption;
- To destroy, ravage, or use up by or as if by ingesting;
- To bother or annoy (eg “what’s eating him?”);
- To perform oral sex on.

I can confirm that the Drudester definitely does 3 out of 4 of the above to his food.
Actually, come to think of it and the way he eats an icecream cone, it could be 4 out of 4.

The Drudester “eats” like he has a personal vendetta against every morsal on his plate, and they must all die, die, die. The moment the plate is placed on the table is like the starter’s gun. His sole purpose is then to stab as many pieces of food or to load as much as food as possible on his overladen fork and shovel it into his mouth, load after load after load, like a perpetual suburban Guiness Book of Records contestant. Breathing is a violation of the rules, as is using your taste buds or letting food touch any part of the mouth cavity as it is catapulted down the gullet. And although is not a technical violation, talking is frowned upon, unless you can multitask without dropping speed. In what can be seen as a mixed blessing for our relationship, the Drudester has managed to master that skill.

“What does your food taste like?” I once asked the Drudester, interested to discover what salad plus quiche plus rice plus garlic bread tasted like in the same mouthful. Was it an explosion of different tastes around the mouth, or was it one strong taste with subtle undercurrents of others?
“I dunno” he replied through a full mouth. “Food”.
I observed Neanderthal man in silence for a while. Stab, stab, stab, shovel, stab, stab, stab, shovel, stab, stab, stab, shovel. After a few minutes the Drudester displayed a mouthful of pasta, chocolate, salad, chips, cheese, icecream, pizza, toast and a hotdog as he concluded the issue.
“I know you are laughing at me” he said “But I will rise above it”.
Yeah, I thought, and stab it from a great height with a reeelly long fork …