Thunderclap

My father retired recently. He's still working the odd job as a marine pilot, but he now finds himself with a whole lot more spare time to spend at the pokies beating The Man at his own game.

I am being cheeky here of course; my Dad is the eminently sensible kind of person who insists I put extra money into my superannuation, and so I'm sure his trips to the Kedron-Wavell Services Club are kept entirely within affordable means.

One of his retirement gifts was an Apple TV which, being a gadget nut, he had set up within 24 hours of receiving it.

I popped over this evening for dinner and to welcome my Gran, the esteemed Queen Pat herself, into town on her latest visit. She assures me that her arrival from Vanuatu was all about seeing family, and absolutely nothing to do with the recent seizure of 750kg of cocaine in Port Vila.

Après le dîner, my Dad busted out the YouTube app on the Apple TV.

"Oh! I have the YouTube," said my Gran cheerfully, still impressed with her recently installed broadband WiFi connection. "I've been watching Yes, Minister, and The Two Ronnies."

Gran picked at her cuticles as she told me about the YouTube - that's Yoo Tyoob in her English accent, not the ocker Yew Chube - and I picked at my cuticles as I listened.

The family resemblance is strong.

Dad found the clip he was looking for, and it started playing.

"The Grom!" he yelled triumphantly.

"The what? Your Daddy was on the Grom," said Gran.

"Yes, look, here it is!"

My grandfather, Maciej, was an officer in the Polish Navy, part of the section that escaped after the German invasion and put themselves under Allied command.

Floods on the First Floor

You guys, I've found this wonderfully relaxing hobby called "renovating".

You should all try it.

I went into this process with the mantra that everything would probably take a bit longer and cost a bit extra than I predicted.

It has, and that's cool. That's renovating.

Chez Clumsy: The Search for Nazi Gold

You expect, when you renovate, to make a few little discoveries here and there.

For example, it turns out our kitchen water pipes all run from the ceiling down, not the floor up. This means rejigging a few things, but it's one of those small hurdles that are simply a part of the renovating experience.

What we did not expect to discover, on a sneaky Tuesday evening reconnoissance, was this:

"Is that.... is that a swastika?" I heard The Wah say as I was checking out the space where the kitchen used to be. I spun around and stared at the ground.

"Ah... that's ... that's a swastika!" I confirmed. Then shock. "What is a swastika doing in my house?!?!"

But there was no denying, there was a swastika in the house.

Painted on the concrete, then tiled over.

For six years, The Wah and I - and all of our friends and family members - have been walking upon the world's most infamous insignia.

Our urbane, sophisticated inner-city unit had all over a sudden become an Anti-Semitic hate den, or perhaps a repository for hidden Nazi gold.

Of course it begs the question: WTF? Who PAINTS A SWASTIKA ON A FLOOR?

We know our apartment building used to be an office building before it was converted into flats in the early 2000s. We don't know who did the conversion - but we think they, or their sub-contractors, might have had at best a terrible sense of humour, and at worst, DIY tattoos and a dire need for therapy.

The problem is of course - how do we get rid of it? Sure, we'll be re-tiling, but if we don't destroy the swastika underneath, we will forever know it is there, lurking, like a Gestapo officer in a ghetto. We will be compelled to blurt out to anyone unfortunate enough to walk over that spot "DO YOU KNOW YOU'RE WALKING OVER A GODDAMNED SWASTIKA?" and then people will start questioning whether we're obsessing a bit too much about the swastika, and they might think perhaps that we sympathise or share those views, and the next thing you know A Current Affair will be bringing in a hidden camera and we'll end up on hate crime charges and that Girl Clumsy and The Wah always seemed so nice, but then it's always the nice ones who turn out to be rotten fascists...

NO! Like Churchill, I will not surrender.

We need ideas. I'm not a big believer in negative energies and whatnot, but I am a big believer in not having a f***ing swastika under your tiles. So what image should we paint or scribble over the top?

A Bubbling Source of Inspiration

Chez Clumsy is being renovated.

Starting within hours, in fact, of me typing this.

It's been months in the planning, and now we're at a point where most of the to-be-renovated space is clear, a metric f*** ton of clutter has been decluttered, and the old bordello is ready for her facelift.

Here's a picture of the kitchen with a slice of the balcony area as it was mid clear-out - you can get a sense of the mess:

If you're my father reading this, you will be currently on a boat somewhere off the west coast of America yelling "What mess? That's how it looks normally!" and feeling very proud of your joke. 

If you're my mother reading this, you will be on the same boat, probably rolling your eyes at my father's joke, but secretly agreeing that you're not sure how the daughter of two neat-freak parents managed to turn out a slob.

Well, slob I am, slob I shall probably always remain.

However I have been taking a rather perverse pleasure in the act of decluttering. 

Every bag of rubbish taken down to the bins is a small victory in the never-ending war against stuff.

I'm not even being as brutal as I probably should be. Once the renovation is complete, I can see myself ditching more things because they a) don't suit, b) are shabby or c) I just don't need them.

It can be hard to part with certain things - particularly travel mementos or little personal trinkets received   as gifts or picked up randomly somewhere.

And it's not to say I don't like stuff. I'm just seeing the attraction of less stuff. I want to be more agile in the spaces where I exist. I think I just want to be less. It ties in a bit with my desire to lose weight (not that anything has happened there; if anything living off mostly take-out and having no time over recent weeks probably means I've stacked on again). Some part of me feels that by being less, I will actually be more - more active, more creative, more capable of managing my time and more of a contributor.

It would also just be nice to not live in a midden.

Another experience that is relatively new for me is the willingness to shell out for more expensive items even though there are cheaper options available.

I realise I've become a bit of an appliance/fitting snob.

It's not that I'm flashing cash around willy-nilly - I'm still wheeling and dealing and buying on discounts and specials. But when The Wah and I visited a big builders' discount-type warehouse recently to look at taps and sinks, all I could really see is how.... cheap... they were. 

You start to think - I'm paying out a fair slab of the folding to get a custom-made kitchen. It's not the Rolls Royce of kitchens, sure. Maybe the high-end Hyundai of kitchens. But I still don't want to fit it with Bargain Bob's Retreads 'R' Us tyres, you know?

So all of my appliances are Smeg.

Heh. Smeg.

And I've forked over more to get some swish Swiss fittings.

Look at this baby - my new tap, Eve.

The instruction sheet for Eve refers to her as "a bubbling source of inspiration" for your kitchen.

It's airy promotional material, sure, but you try brushing your fingertips across Eve's stainless steel curves and tell me she isn't one sexy culinary muse.

I look forward to sharing the final results of the renovations with you - a few people have been laughing at my optimistic attitude that it will all run smoothly, but I have no reason to fear at the moment.

We shall see.

Stop the Bookshelf Porn

Everyone on the internet loves bookshelf porn.

You know what I'm talking about.

That constant stream of photos that do the rounds on social media, attracting drooling "likes", adoring retweets, and gushing comments:

OMG IT'S A PACMAN SHELF CAUSE PACMAN
WAS RENOWNED FOR HIS LOVE OF CHERRIES & BOOKS

It's a bookshelf that says READ, because that's insightful
and encouraging, you know?

I'm going to get a pointy house just so I can build this!

ARGHGHGH IT'S A POD A READING POD SO ERGONOMIC

It's an ideas tree, can you FEEL your creativity GROWING?
Also books are made of trees so it's like a life cycle.

I realise I sound like a bitter illiterate (billiterate?) sow, but honestly, have you people never heard of dust?

Sure, these bookshelves are marvellously creative and appeal to our collective sense of whimsy, but let's think of the practicalities.

You show me one of these bookshelves IN REAL LIFE, and I'll show you a warren of so many dust bunnies you could re-enact Watership Down.

Honestly, all these internet people with fancy bookshelves must live in hermetically sealed, climate controlled environments, where no dust can permeate.

Or maybe they clean regularly or something. Whatever.

All I know is that it seems sometimes that these pictures appeal to people because they fancy themselves as "book people".

You know, the kind of people who imagine themselves as thoroughly literate types, with iced tea and organic mini-muffins on hand as they tuck themselves into their bohemian book nook to take in the latest insert 'posh' or 'cred' author here.

Bless you, if you are one of those people. I often wish I could be like you. You probably wash your hair in pure mountain streams and knit your own hemp trousers. All very admirable, until your allergies play up from all the dust collecting on your stack of Frankie magazines.

Me? I'm trying to clear out books from Chez Clumsy. I've got too many. Of course there are a few favourite fictions and cherished non-fictions that I'll always hold onto, but the vast majority have no re-read value. They're just dust collectors.

Before you slam me as having no romance in my soul, please remember that bagging books does not mean I'm bagging reading.

I bought myself an iPad before heading to Burma last year, and I can tell you that the main thing I've used it for is reading eBooks. The damn thing's a bloody marvel. I don't even have to dog-ear a page to remember where I'm up to. THE iPAD REMEMBERS.

And sure, while the first books I read on it were Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy, followed by A Clash of Kings (aka Game of Thrones Series 2), I have just finished Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, and that's PROPER literary.

Also, you can't get paper cuts from iPads. Paper cuts frighten me on a level only topped by geckos. Just consider this for a moment: getting a paper cut ON YOUR EYEBALL.

Yeah.

I once thought of that, and then almost vomited. The thought has haunted me ever since. I shouldn't even write it here, lest the mere noting of the fear helps it manifest in the form of outraged hemp-knitting, Frankie devotees baying for my blood in between cups of dandelion tea.

Point is - is it OK to not like having books around the place anymore? Have I completely lost my soul because I want less dust in my house?

The Most Amazing Shop

It wasn't always The Most Amazing Shop.

"Originally it was Carol's Shop," says Carol, owner and manager, cutting plastic-covered sea shells from protective foam wrapping and placing them onto the counter in front of her.

"But people kept coming in and saying 'This is the most amazing shop!', so eventually I changed the name.

"People come in here for something odd. Something different."

The Most Amazing Shop delivers.

House Inspection

SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING

Please do not read this post unless you have seen the new James Bond film Skyfall.

Tom: It wasn't like this before.

Deborah: Definitely not like this before.

Tom: Oh, here's the agent.

Mr Forster: Tom, Deborah! Great to see you! Welcome to your new home.

Deborah: Yes...

Tom: ...about that...

Mr Forster: I've got the keys right here for the final inspection and handover.

Tom: I'm not sure you'll need those.

Mr Forster: Ahhh... I see the cleaners have been through. Must've forgotten to lock the front door.

Deborah: The front door's in the front yard.

Tom: On fire.

Mr Forster: And doesn't that oak burn well? Quality hardwood there.

Deborah: And the Aston Martin?

Mr Forster: I'm sorry?

Deborah: The Aston Martin. Strafed with bullets.

Mr Forster: A classic British car.

Tom: Also on fire.

Mr Forster: It's post-modern artwork. Possibly a Banksy.

Deborah: It just seems there's a few differences since we first inspected.

Mr Forster: Nothing unusual, just a customary going-over by the departing family.

Tom: I thought the owner was dead?

Mr Forster: Yes, yes, that's what we understand, terrible thing. Not sure what he did. Something for the government. Inherited the estate from his parents, but hasn't been here for years.

Deborah: Are you sure?

Mr Forster: Why?

Deborah: It just seems there's a few things missing.

Mr Forster: Like what?

Deborah: Like the roof.

Mr Forster: Ohhh... no, no, that's just a trick of the light. It's these Scottish glens, you know, all misty. Let's head inside. Just mind the smoke... that is, the mist.

Tom: It's awfully drafty.

Mr Forster: It is well ventilated for such an old manor house, isn't it?

Deborah: There's a lot of nails on the floor.

Mr Forster: Perfect for DIY fixups.

Tom: And these bodies, stacked like cordwood over here?

Mr Forster: Poachers.

Tom: Right.

Mr Forster: Let's head into the drawing room. Just mind the blood.

Deborah: Now see, this is new.

Mr Forster: What's that?

Deborah: The helicopter.

Tom: I don't remember that before either.

Mr Forster: It's not a new feature, it's just been cleaned and restored.

Deborah: It's a smouldering wreck.

Mr Forster: So what you're saying is that it's not "Apache" on what you thought you were buying?

...

...

Mr Forster: I'll cancel the deposit.

Remember November: Rhyming Household Products

Back in the late 80s and 90s, there was a fascination with creating products of convenience that filled a gap you didn't know you had.

For example - sitting on a chair just not comfortable enough?

Plop your hoofs onto the Feet Seat:

Eating on your lap creating too much kinetic tension between your food and your pants? 

Whack your plate on a Stable Table:

At the end of the day, they were selling us ottomans and trays, products that have probably been around since the Stone Age. One can imagine a cave man sitting on one rock and putting his feet up on another; while his recently-gored-by-a-mammoth mate watched ochre paintings while scoffing berries from a piece of slate.

Like my Dad thousands of years later, the cave men would probably even giggle whenever somebody said "Where's the pouffe?"

But throw a silly catcy name on it, and watch the cash roll in. The only difference with these new-wave ottomans and trays was that both were full of beans. Bean bag beans. The kind of beans that once spilled, could never be recollected. For years after a refilling mishap, one would find tiny white beans under couches, in the corner of living rooms, wedged between carpet fibres.

Ultimately, I think it was the beans that led to the rhyming household products' demise. They were just too easily eaten by small children, pets, and people mistaking them for floor Tic-Tacs.

But I sometimes miss the days when you couldn't walk into Kmart without ploughing headfirst into giant pyramids of Feet Seats and Stable Tables. Somebody should bring back modern versions - sit on a "Flair Chair", have your baby on a "Pushin' Cushion", or whip up a truly electric stirfry in a "Shock Wok".

I should get paid for this kind of brainstorming, I really should.

Commune Savours the Bold

Devastating news emerged from Hollywood over the weekend: Ronn Moss, beloved star of long-running soap The Bold and the Beautiful, will leave the series after 25 years.

Ronn Moss, for those of you living under a ridge, played Rock.

No, wait. For those of you living under a rock, he played Ridge, the most wonderfully foolishly named character in a show full of wonderfully foolishly named characters (Thorne, Storm, Whip, Bill).

In reacting to this bombshell, I certainly went through the five stages of grief. And I did it in true soap opera style:

It may surprise, nay, horrify you, dear readers, to discover that I am in fact a secret Bold fan.

But before you judge me, sit down and hear the tale of how this program can entrance even the most cynical of hearts.

In Australia, Bold screens at 4:30pm on Channel Ten, just before the 5pm Ten News.

For us journalist types - and for other news groupies - an evening of news-watching begins with the 5pm Ten bulletin. It means TVs start being flicked over to Channel 10 around the 4:55pm mark - just in time to see the last few moments of The Bold and the Beautiful.

For me, this means around ten years of casually dropping in on the glamourous world of fashion, around which Bold revolves. The brilliant thing about the soap format is that the last five minutes is more than enough to give you comprehensive character and plot information. A few of these every week sees you starting to learn characters' names. A few months of this, and you might start working out the incredibly complex and close-to-incestuous nature of the relationships. Brooke, for example, has married Ridge at least 14 times; and also had children with his father; and with her daughter's husband.

Oh yes, my friends, when Shakespeare coined the term "tangled web", he was foreseeing a Bold future.

Of course, I kept this habit under wraps, not even admitting to myself that I might be flicking over earlier and earlier. Soap opera magazines in the supermarket may have indicated that Bold had a very popular following; but I was a sensible, clever media type. I didn't watch soap operas, I'd tell myself as the square-jaw of Ridge Forrester started flashing up onto my screen at 4:45; 4:35pm. "It's just important to be ready to watch the Proper News."

Very few people can pull off a turtleneck.
Ronn Moss is not one of them.

However, over the past year, and thanks mainly to Twitter, I've discovered I'm not alone in my habit. The hashtag #5minutesbeforethenews brought a whole bunch of secret Bold fans out of the designer closet. And for the more hard core, #ohbrookeohtaylorohbrooke is a feed of fans live-tweeting each episode as it airs in Australia.

And now I know why there are so many of us out there - intelligent, hard-working people - who revel in the hot goings-on at Forrester Creations.

Did you ever hear the reason why the jokes in Christmas crackers are so appalling? It's because while everyone's idea of a good joke is different, everyone's understanding of a bad joke is immediate and shared. At a time like Christmas, it's far better to engender a spirit of goodwill and fraternity by uniting against the bad jokes; rather than dividing opinion because Auntie Gina didn't think it was funny.

The Bold and the Beautiful is the daytime soap opera version of this.

We all KNOW it's bad. The plots are unbelievable, the dialogue corny, the timelines wobbly, the love triangles maddening, and the use of extended close-ups egregious. But when we all share in its ridiculousness, we bond as a community, a family. Our gentle mocking of lame facial hair and botoxed leading ladies (Oh Taylor, why did you do it?), and our delight in over-the-top displays of emotion allow us to feel superior together. The affection that springs from our negativity turns the whole experience into a positive one.

And the best part is, it's a community that demands nothing of you. I'll be travelling overseas in September and October, and will happily go about my business without a Bold vision, safe in the knowledge that a flashback or a few tweets on my return will be more than enough to fill me in. So much TV these days demands your undivided attention, lest you become lost in intricately-laid plots and machinations. I love that kind of TV - but sometimes it's nice to know you don't have to follow obsessively; because the show will keep you in the loop.

So goodbye and God bless, Ronn Moss. I don't know how the clan Forrester will fare without you. But at least for now, the social media commune will savour the Bold.

The Infestation

I don't know when it began, but it feels like it's been going on for months, like the Republican primaries or the reality TV shows about weight loss.

The Infestation.

Google tells me they are Indian Meal Moths, and they are damn hard to be rid of.

I've had them before in my pantry, but never as bad as they seem to be at the moment. They're in everything, these tiny winged terrors. Worst of all, they tend to like foods they actually physically resemble, like oats and rice and motherf***ing sunflower seeds:

Is this part of my breakfast? Or part of a nightmarish scenario where I eat moths and moths grow in
my stomach and have baby moths and eventually turn me inside out into a foul demonic humano-moth?

I think the meal moths have overtaken geckos as my new freak-out-creating creature of choice.

Voyage of the Damn Treadmill

Many years ago, back when I still lived under the wide expanse of my parents' roof, I bought myself a treadmill.

"I will walk everyday and get fit!" was my declaration.

"That thing has to go in the lounge room?" was my mother's.

Horrible treadmill is horrible.

Randomousness

Some random photos:

The Bendable Candle Lighter is apparently "Great For Candles!" By the way, did I tell you about my "Waterproof Bear-Hurling Trebuchet"? It's "Great for Bear-Hurling!".

What the f*** is this bulls**t? Mars Caramel? What do Mars take us for, fools?

It's pretty simple. Your Mars Bar is made up of THREE components - a crispy chocolate coating, a delicate layer of caramel, nestled above a bed of delicious nougat. The Mars Bar REMOVES THE NOUGAT. I'm sorry Mars, you just can't DO that sort of s*** and still call it a Mars Bar. Would Christians like it if you deep-sixed the Holy Spirit then insisted the God/Jesus combo was still a Holy Trinity? NO THEY WOULD NOT.

And this is a wider message for chocolate companies. Stop muddying the f***ing waters already. Isn't it enough that we have Cadbury blocks in every conceivable nut and filling combination - do we have to have them as ice-cream versions as well? Isn't it enough that we get our bubbles of minty Aero goodness from a block of the stuff, rather than a flimsy dairy dessert? I CAN'T COPE WITH ALL THIS MODERNISATION.

I thought I should try oatmeal. You know, porridge. You can see for yourself above how humourous The Wah found the whole idea.

I tried to microwave the porridge twice last week at work; on both days it exploded in a gooey milky mess.

I was following the instructions, I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe the microwave was too powerful. Maybe the milk was laced with nitro-glycerin. Damn explosive-uddered dairy cows.

#30before30: Hiring Cleaners

I’m not a tidy person.

The rest of my family are neat freaks. My mother is so clean, you could eat dinner off her.

On second thoughts, don’t eat dinner off my mother.

I’m not sure why I’m so messy, when my genetic predisposition should be towards cleanliness. I guess I’m pretty lazy. Also, cleaning is HARD. And not FUN. The only household chore I enjoy is the ironing, which apparently makes me a freak – even according to my mother.

But doing the #30before30 project on top of working full-time and my regular extra-curricular activities meant a whole new level of mess entered my sweet little apartment.

Made of Iron

Australia's erstwhile Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has tickled the nation's funnybone/moral outrage button again: this time for suggesting ironing is still the primary domain of the womenfolk.

Should we be surprised that Tony's missus is the one picking up the Tefal Aquasteam more than People Skills himself? After all, his preferred attire is Coogee-special budgie smugglers or skin-tight Lycra bike wear - neither of which require much pressing. By anyone. In any way. Ever. Ew.

Cooking with Gas

One of my Dad's well-thumbed recipe scrapbooks contains the prized method for cooking chicken breasts in brandy. Ever since he plucked it out of some sort of French cuisine magazine in the early 90s, it's been a family favourite. We used to have it with skin on the chicken breasts, which comes up lovely and crispy after the brandy flambé, and we used to use full-fat cream to make the delicious sauce. But in the interests of "health", these days we opt for skinless chicken breasts and light cream.

It still tastes damn delicious.

You start by seasoning chicken breast pieces with salt and pepper, then frying them in a little butter. Keep the cooked pieces warm in a baking dish in the oven, until they're all done. Place all the pieces back in the pan, then heat up your brandy in a ladle - or, if you're like me and don't own a ladle, in a small saucepan.

Then comes the fun part. We turn now, to Girl Clumsy Birdseye Kitchen Cam:

To make the sauce, throw a small tub of cream into the pan after taking the chicken (and tofu if you're also catering for vegetarians who don't mind you cooking in the same pan as tasty animal flesh), and stir it up with the brandy residue. Add in a spoonful of capers, and salt and pepper to season. Stir over low heat until it boils, then pour over the chicken in the baking dish.

Voilà!

Gift Rapt

Question: Creative recycling, darkly satirical statement on the nature of the commercialisation of the holiday season.... or simply shabby stinginess?

See, I'd thought we had enough wrapping paper, but it turns out we didn't. The Wah drove to three different convenient stores on Christmas Eve looking for some for me, but couldn't find any.

So I had to improvise. And you know, I figure the Christmas wrapping paper winds up in the rubbish bin anyway. And it turns out that a double page spread from a Snooze catalogue is just the right size for wrapping up DVD box sets - without the need for a dodgy scissor job.

I was a bit worried my mother, father and brother would be unimpressed at my dodgy wrapping, but they laughed, and thought it was quite sensible and looked reasonably cool. So, hurrah! Christmas crisis averted.

I'm thinking of doing it more often now. After all, it's not the wrapping that counts, it's the gift that counts. And after all that, it's not the gift that counts, but the thought that counts. And I'm thinking of the environment, people.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Emperor Funghi

The Wah has a habit of buying me incredibly clever birthday presents - ones that I would never think to buy myself, but really love when I open them.

This year, it was a Mushroom Growing Kit.

It's a simple, one-box system - you empty a bag of soil and spores onto a layer of mulch/compost, keep it moist and in a dark place, and voila - your own home-grown mushies.

Just over three weeks ago, we set up the kit, and placed it under the sink. For two weeks, nothing much happened, except for the appearance of tiny white spots, the size of a pinhead.

Then about a week ago, we got some mushie action:

 You can see that a decent sized baby mushroom popped out of the soil, with an even tinier brother next to it.

We kept up our watering, and the mushie seemed to get a little bigger every day. But in the last day or so, it's experienced a massive growth spurt, resulting in this today:

That's right - I am growing the Emperor Funghi under my sink.

The baby brother mushie has also increased in size, but we don't have any others poking their heads up yet. Hopefully they'll make an appearance in the next week or so.

I'm not quite sure when to harvest the Emperor Funghi. Part of me wants to get that bad boy out right now, cover him in some herbs and pan fry with some haloumi. But the other part of me is much more interested in seeing exactly how big he'll grow...

Latex in the Bedroom

I have been a very busy person lately. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of the things I've been spending all my time on with you soon - if only to prove to myself that there are end results to show for all the effort!

I don't know when I'll next get a bit of a break. But you know what? That's cool.

Because I have a new bed!

No, not that bed. That's the old bed - well, the mattress and bolted-metal slats of the old bed - resting up against the wall of my bedroom. The bed was actually The Wah's, and while it's been in Chez Clumsy for close to three years, its story is much older.

This bed!

It's a king-size! Do you hear that? A king-size! That's so much room, it's barely sensible.

The top layer is all latex; so I'm hoping to hook into some lovely, comfy, body-contouring sleeps. Starting tonight!

These boots?

Why, they're made for whorin':

Extremely stylish whorin', mind.

It's been years since I've been brave enough to wear boots outside the theatrical sphere. But this year's my year, damnit.

Boots are one of those fabulously evocative items of clothing, aren't they? I remember the first pair of boots I wore belonged to my mother back in the 1970s. They were deep dark navy, almost black. Dad sheared off the sky-high heels so I could totter around in them with a minimum of falls. They didn't fit properly until I was about 14, but that didn't stop me wearing them in virtually every game of dress-up that went on back at "Tara" - my childhood home in Albany Creek. My favourite was teaming them with a skirt, red cape and a sword shoved down the back of my shirt, and getting about the place as She-Ra, Princess of Power.

"For the honour of Grey Skull!"

Everyone's got a story about a beloved pair of boots - even here in sunny Queensland. What's yours?

The Tale of Mr Squeaky

A few weeks ago, I heard a rustling.

Then I saw a flash of shadow, darting under the front door.

Then, one night, I saw it long enough to realise what it was.

A mouse.

It's not an easy thing to admit to the wider world that one has a mouse in the house. It's something of a poor reflection on my standard of house-keeping. Now that I know my parents read this blog, I fully expect a judgemental yet slightly confusing email from my Dad's Palm Pilot, stating that if I only went to bed earlier, none of these things would ever happen to me.

Not to mention the fact we're in a second floor apartment - hardly what you'd describe as a typical mouse hang-out. Obviously our mouse was an urbane mover and shaker, one of the hip vermin groovsters normally found snacking on boccocini at a James Street cafe, or catching The Adventures of Despereaux at the Palace Barracks cinemas.

After realising that I was not, in fact, having a lend of him, The Wah named the mouse Mr Squeaky.

A week or so ago, we found him in the back of the fridge:

He'd found a cosy little cubby hole, and was in there nibbling on an errant pasta shell.
The noise was deafening.

We tried to capture him, but the little bugger was fast. He dashed out of the fridge and shot past our hastily assembled barricade of cushions and laundry baskets. The Wah then turned the lounge room upside down attempting to outflank Mr Squeaky with the kind of military precision General Montgomery would celebrate with a G&T and a fat cigar:

No luck. Mr Squeaky had foiled our attempts at capture - he was the Tom to our Jerry. Or Jerry to our Tom, I can never remember which is which.

We gave up, and considered the mouse trap option. Despite his vegetarianism, The Wah retains the Hard Edge required to embark on homicidal missions against rodents. I, however, am a Complete Coward, and wondered if we could just capture Mr Squeaky and set him free to roam in a park near our house, but far enough away to discourage his return.

Fortune smiled on us a few days ago, when we came into possession of a proper humane mouse trap, and set it up near the fridge with a few sultanas in it. The next morning brought no news; the trap had snapped shut but there was no Mr Squeaky inside. That meant either the trap had been set off by the overnight vibrations of the Westinghouse, or we were facing a very clever adversary indeed.

Last night, I saw the now-familiar flash of grey fur, and called out to The Wah that our Mousey Moriarty had returned. He soon heard a rustling in his beloved Bat Cave, and moved heavy bookshelves and filing cabinets out of the way to try to find Mr Squeaky. Before he knew it, the critter had zoomed out the door, and straight into the spare bedroom.

Curious, The Wah attempted a impromptu capture attempt, throwing pillows in front of the doorway to prevent an escape, as Mr Squeaky buzzed round and round the room. After a few seconds, Mr Squeaky disappeared, leaving The Wah confused and intrigued.

At this point my preparations for bed were interrupted. "Nat, come here - we have more mice!"

You may, at this point, be able to see where this story is headed.

I poked my head around the doorway, still buffered by pillows and doona covers. The Wah had lifted the entire double bed onto its side, revealing a bundle of ruffled white paper, and something else:

That's right. It turns out Mr Squeaky was, in fact, Ms Squeaky. Hard-working single mum of two little baby mice. Despite the two flights of stairs, she had chosen to give birth in our apartment, carefully constructing her nest out of toilet paper. I don't really want to think about where she got it from. I still can't decided if I'm a little heart-warmed by her feeling secure in my home - or revolted by the whole process. I think maybe I'll just try to ignore it all.

People are just never going to talk to me again, are they?

But all of this complicated things. Our simple plan to catch and release Mr - sorry, Ms - Squeaky didn't take into account two babies, still blind and reliant on their mother for survival. We could have picked the babies up there and then, but with Ms Squeaky still in hiding somewhere, we decided to replace the bed, turn out the lights, and hope she might come back, so we could attempt to capture them all together.

This evening we spotted Ms Squeaky again, so we know she's still around. We've reset the trap, and really hope she'll take the bait this time. Because we can't leave two baby mice in the spare bedroom. For one thing, I'd like to get in there to do a massive clean before I lose the last remaining piece of house-keeping respect my mother has for me.

And secondly, their eyes will open soon, and the next thing you know I'll have inner-city trendy mice raiding my cupboard for cous-cous and soy & sesame water crackers, and demanding we watch At The Movies re-runs on ABC2.