Shock! Prime Minister to contest next election.

My mother did not teach me that 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything'. She taught me to just let fly.

But I haven't got anything to say about the report I have heard on the radio regarding the Prime Minister's decision to stay on to contest the next election.

Excuse me. I am off to sit in a dark room with my hands over my ears and my eyelids down.

Yes, I paid slightly too much, but...

Did your mother sing you what shall we do with the drunken sailor while you were in the bath?

Apparently, not all mothers did.

37 years old, and still learning.

Well, that was unexpected. By 'sometime' I just meant, you know, it would take a while

'I don't think it's any coincidence that cleaning the bathroom was followed by four days in bed with the worsest virus I've had for years. It's your turn next time.'

'Yes, I'll mark it on the calendar now,' he said, flicking through to December the twenty third.

If it's not one thing

I am off to scrub the bathroom. I may be gone sometime.

Is that the time?

It is that time of the day at that time of the year.

It brings on dreams of assignments that followed you around and menthol cigarettes you hid under your bed; of afternoon feeds and your baby asleep on your chest; of the CD you played on the road trip you couldn't afford but will never regret; of the one unrequited love that haunts you still; or of the two hangovers that really were worth it for the night before.

And then you dream of all the things you could still get done. Before tea, before bed, before life ends. But because it is that time of the day and that time of the year, it won’t really matter if you don’t.

a week in the hall

On its own, a vacuum cleaner can't do anything except trip you over and piss you off.

White sauce

To make a really, really crap white sauce you should first spend the entire day shouting at your children. You should take care in particular to shout such things as ‘I said don’t shout at me’. This last should be done in the backyard so that you can be sure you sound like a complete idiot to people you have never met. Your hair should be at the exact length and at the exact time in the washing cycle where it hangs in your eyes but can not be brushed away. You should be wearing clothes which did not have one last wear in them, and should have been put in the washing last night.

Take your saucepan out of the sink and wash out the guck from two nights before. Use the dishcloth which is starting to get that certain feel and that certain smell. Don’t make the saucepan sparkling clean, just clean enough so that you can be fairly sure you won’t get botulism. Leave the cloth in a wet mess on the bottom of the sink to be dealt with later on.

Just before you are about to pour in the milk, answer the phone even though no one you know or love would be ringing at this time. Let the person on the other end make you feel badly for cutting them short. Have another glass of wine, even though you have told yourself that this is the week you will not drink, of course you do not need wine to get you through the night.

Return to the saucepan, add the milk, watch the lumps form, make a half-hearted effort to squeeze them out, pour a bit more milk in. Rinse the spinach while the sauce overheats. Give a half-hearted stir with a metal soup spoon. Let the sound grate on you, but do not stop straight away. Allow every black thought you have ever had about yourself to swirl between your ears. Invent a few new ones. If you have trouble with this, you aren’t trying, and your white sauce will not be truly crap.

This white sauce will destroy your lasagne. To end the evening, curse yourself for ruining a dish which takes a fair amount of time and a large portion of your week’s best vegetables.

On the other hand, to make a good – a very good – white sauce you should take the perfectly-sized saucepan which you will find washed and put away exactly where it should be. As is the lid, although you do not need it tonight. Turn the radio down. Further down. Just a little bit more.

Do not worry that the children are being exceptionally loud. They are enjoying each other’s company and spending the kind of time from which they will one day draw their motivations to succeed or otherwise, the strength they will need to mend their first broken heart, and the odd dinner-party laugh.

Heat the saucepan over a gentle flame, and scoop the butter in at exactly the right time. Watch its colour change as it melts. Take in the smell. Close your eyes if you wish, but only for an instant. That is all you need. Sprinkle in the flour, and although you have not measured either the butter or the flour, you will get it exactly right. The flour does not have the maggots of pantry moths. Pour in half a cup of milk and watch as no lumps appear. Feel it thicken. Add a little more milk, and then a little more. Listen to the gentle rub of the spoon against the bottom of the saucepan and watch the trail of the spoon through the sauce. Stir and watch and stir and watch and stir and watch some more. Listen to the sound of the flame and for no reason at all think of camping trips.

Remove from the heat at exactly the right time. Use to make a tuna mornay. Pay no attention to the parts of your brain which normally tell you that the oceans are over-fished and that tuna have dangerously high levels of certain heavy metals which you would prefer that your children didn’t ingest.

Enjoy your meal.

Back to the wall

Oooh.

Chrissy Amphlett on Andrew Denton tonight.

Chrissy Amphlett beats Grey's Anatomy, but someone needs to bring this house into the technological age, because apparently there's this way you can watch two shows even if they're on at the same time.

Melancholy wallow

Because the chocolate cake at her father's house is made by the same person who, thirteen years ago, brought the first lasagne around, she goes home, and she wallows in melancholy.

She sits in the corner of the couch, the sound of her knitting needles and the feel of the wool for company. And she thinks of the lasagne again. She knows that time and her mind have made the lasagne much bigger than it ever was. But still, she thinks of lasagnes, curries, stews. Biscuits, cheese and fruit. And two days later the birthday cake. Vanilla sponge, iced in blue, and her brother's name on top.

She thinks while she knits and she knits while she thinks. She is teaching herself to knit socks. She finishes the light blue stripe, the dark blue stripe, the green stripe, the red. Her mother left patterns for cardigans, jumpers, ponchos, mittens, hats. But not a single pattern for socks.

She thinks while she knits. She thinks of grief which rolls through life in waves. She thinks of all the years that have been and all of those to come. She thinks of the people she hasn't met and the people who won't meet her. She thinks and she knits.

She puts her knitting down, climbs into bed and wishes the sheets had been changed. And then she hopes for one of those nights. A night when spirits haunt, when dreams are real, and a mother gives strength to her child.

Florablogging

'Hey, they look like the sunrise.'

And out of the mouth of a five year old boy, it's not such a naff description. Sunrise or not, they're glorious.

Rainy day fun and games

Based on the morning's experience of trying to be a good mother of children home on holidays and playing firstly snakes and ladders and then trouble, it can be stated with absolute surety that monopoly will not ever, never, ever, never be a feature of this family's family activities.

Now that the lights are (nearly all) fixed

'The floor's very grubby, isn't it?'

'Yes, but I do like being able to see the dust dance again.'

Not purple

When I look at the small pile of things I have bought myself this week - a pencil, a pen, a notebook, a brooch and a cardigan - I'm surprised to see that they are all one colour.

Red.

It is not a colour which has ever been mine.

Lavender Lady

The Lavender Lady at intensive care has silver hair done in large waves too big to be curls. Her badge is purple and gold and her tissue box is blue.

She says and you are his daughter with a question mark, but and you are his son with something more of a full stop.

It's doing the job

The man down the street with the thin alsation dog has a sign on his door. It is an A4 sheet in a plastic sleeve and it is written in arial bold.

PLEASE
DO
NOT
DISTURB

In the two years we have lived here, I have never seen anyone open the gate or walk down the path or knock on the wire door.

The unasked questions

Chanel Ten, Big Brother, Gretel and those two guys would have a lot more credibility, and the story would be fuller had there been some extra questions. Just a few for starters:

So, do you think you have a better understanding of why those dratted rules might have been developed in the first place?
Oh, and do you (Gretel, scriptwriters and those removed from the house) see no inconsistency between throwing yourself into Big Brother and then banging on about how poorly you've been treated by an evil media that takes a story and runs with it?

Youse would have done well to be watching Boston Legal last night.

And another point of interest: hold up a sign saying free the refugees and incur the wrath of Gretel and even Rove; carry on in a manner such as this and let the waves of sympathy wash over you.