It's Claire as mud

You think wearing a leather jacket makes me a murderer? Well thanks for sharing that, Mandy, but I don’t give a flying poo emoji what you think about my outfit and how did you enjoy your steak last night?

Oh you liked it better when my hair was longer? Well, I liked it better when you shut your food hole, but here we are.

You think g-strings are comfortable? Well you’re a freaking masochist and I don’t need to know about your underwear, John.

My mother once told me that opinions are like bums; everyone’s got one.

And just like bums – well most people’s bums – when it comes to opinions, no one cares about yours.

…said no one, ever.

When someone is on a right royal talk-back-radio-shock-jock level rant about something, do you think sharing your opinion is going to change their mind? Do you think they actually care what you think? Has anyone ever actually asked anyone else for their opinion and genuinely meant it?

If you feel like having an argument, go ahead, share your thoughts.  But if you’d rather keep the peace, and go to bed that night feeling smug and thinking, ‘Carol is such a wang, as if BBQ flavoured chips are better than salt and vinegar’ – shut up, Carol, you’re drunk – then keep your opinions to yourself.

I came to this realisation when I was listening to a friend pontificate to some other friends about the importance of breast-feeding. As a non-breeder, I was really only half listening, but as most of my pals had major troubles breast-feeding and this friend had not – I don’t think her sermon to people who had tried every trick in the book was particularly productive or helpful in any way shape or form.

In fact, it was hurtful and just a waste of time that could have been better spent drinking pink wine, making bitchy comments about other people’s outfits, and me telling  everyone about my hot podiatrist. Yeah, they exist and yes, I can give you the name of the clinic where the lovely Joel works.

So next time someone says to you, ‘well, in my opinion…’, resist the temptation to respond with anything other than a ‘hmmmmm’.  While they are wrong-wrongity-wrong that banana lollies are nice, Kylie Minogue is shit, and gingers are ugly – they don’t care what you think or that you are right. So leave them be, because it’s all well and good to stridently declare ‘it’s my opinion’ and be proud of voicing it and stirring the pot, but this is not 2002 and you are not an early-naughties reality TV contestant.

*Yes, I do realise in writing this that I’ve shared my opinion, but you are quite within your right to not read and if you do, you can also tell me you don’t care.

‘Oh hi, Claire. Nice to meet you. What are your interests?’

“Oh hi, Fred, lovely to meet you too. Thanks for asking. My interests include pink wine, yelling at my television, reality shows where the people are frequently drunk, making up songs about my pets, and murder. How about you?’

Come on, Fred. Can’t we just get along?

I wonder why I don’t get invited to parties anymore. It’s so weird.

But perhaps it’s the right time to ask, how much true crime is too much?

Is it bad that my immediate reaction when my husband stated, ‘you watch so much true crime, that I’m concerned you’re picking up tips to murder me,’ was not, ‘don’t be silly, Mr C!’, but ‘nah, watching this much true crime has taught me there is no such thing as a perfect murder and it’s really hard to get away with’? See, television does teach you things! Thank you, Forensic Files.

I am currently watching two television shows, listening to four different podcasts, and reading one book all of the true crime genre. As a little girl, I was strangely drawn to programs like Australia’s Most Wanted – despite not really being allowed to watch it. But now that true crime is so readily accessible via subscription television, podcasts on our phones, and online articles – and I’m a goddamn grown-ass woman and I can watch what I want – I’m on a bigger binge than a Hollywood actress after the Oscar’s ceremony.

I first wondered if I had a problem when I was walking home from the bus one night, with My Favourite Murder buzzing through my earphones. I had a sudden, irrational fear that the man walking towards me was going to abduct and kill me. Because, you know, a slightly chubby woman in her extreme twenties walking along bumper-to-bumper Kelvin Grove Road is perfect kidnap and murder fodder.

See? It’s not just me. A very valid concern.

The next time alarm bells rang was when watching Blind Date and despite being deeply distracted by Julia Morris’s fabulous disco ball-inspired dress, I proceeded to give Mr C a run down on the ‘Dating Game Killer’, Rodney Alcala. Yeah, I know you didn’t ask, Mr C, but you said you’d love me in sickness and health. This is my sickness!

Ok, I’m going to spend some time on my other interests. Imbibing pink wine, while I yell at the dummies on Vanderpump Rules seems like a valuable and efficient use of my time. And there is this awesome girl on there, Stassi, who talks about gruesome ways she could kill her fellow cast mates she doesn’t like…Oh dear. I might need help.

Tell me, what are your interests that are perhaps a bit unusual or unpopular? Or am I the only sicko here?

*A pre-read warning: this post is going to be littered with many 90’s pop-techno references, which might be obscure if you showed more taste than me in the time style forgot and listened to Triple J.

If you didn’t already know, because you might be blind or deaf, I am a giant dork.  And it has been confirmed by the fact I recently parted way with more than $65 to watch four semi-popular 90’s music groups tread the boards at a suburban function centre and tavern.  Let me preface this by saying, just because my friend Melly came with me, doesn’t mean she’s a dork.  She’s a very cool person just keeping her daggy pal company.

Who would have guessed that dancing around a popular formal venue on the northern outskirts of Brisbane to the dulcet Euro-dance tones of Dr Alban (actually a dentist, who knew?!), 2Unlimited, the Real McCoy and Technotronic could be such a learning experience?  I certainly didn’t, but I came away quite enlightened.

So here is what I learned at the Mega 90s night at the Eatons Hill Hotel (and enjoy the links to some 90s tunes for your listening pleasure):

No limits: Diversifying your skills will make you indispensable 

There’s no limits to the places you can wear a silver breastplate

So apparently, 90s reunion tours require an MC/ hype man to get the crowd amped up… as if the fact the majority of the people there weren’t so excited to have night away from their children, they needed assistance.

I’d never seen anything quite like this fellow.  The jauntily askew baseball cap on the man in his 40s wasn’t the weirdest thing, or the fact he had a saxaphone slung over his shoulder like a backpack… it was more that he was stomping across the stage and shouting along with the words of the pre-show 90s music the DJ was pumping out.  When he loudly instructed the DJ to drop the beat, Melly  dryly said ‘Thank God he’s here, I’m not sure he would have known what to do otherwise.’  When he was tired of singing along, it was apparently time for a stroll down Baker Street, and the sax came out to accompany Herbie’s ‘Right type of mood‘ and every other song the DJ played.  Okay.

Well, I guess if I ever had to hire an MC, I would want one that was more than just a hype man.  I would take the the one that could make things saxy.

Another night: 90s nights are like school dances with booze

Walking into the grand ballroom (I don’t know about grand, it was fine), with Melodie MC’s ‘Dum da dum‘ blaring, I had such a vivid flashback to a Terrace dance I attended when I was 14 that I could almost smell the Elizabeth Arden ‘Sunflower’… but this time there was alcohol being served (legally) and I wasn’t groped nearly as much.  In fact, not at all.  Awww.

This beat is Technotronic and this is a bum-bag

Pump up the jam: Honkies love techno

Man, crackers like some Euro-dance.  So much bad Mum and Dad dancing.

Get up (Before the night is over): The ecstasy trade is still alive and kicking in suburban Brisbane

It seems disco biscuits are the dinner of choice for folks – probably parents – attending a 90s reunion tour.   Melly and I could not understand how people who probably had at least 10 years on us were still jumping up and down more than a 13 year old girl trying to catch a glimpse over a tall fence surrounding a Beiber concert after three hours of pounding synths and drum machines.  That was until the extreme sweating,  human pogo-ing and communal cuddling suddenly made sense… all these middle-aged, suburban parents had dropped eccies.  I’ve lived a sheltered life and not done it myself, but I went to enough Fortitude Valley clubs and bars in the late 90s and early naughties to recognise the signs.  So here’s a tip friendly neighbourhood drug dealers, if you haven’t thought of it yet, you should be hitting the hotels and taverns on the outskirts of town on flashback nights.  People are keen to relive the heady days of the Family, when Y2K was a thing.

Runaway: 47 year old women are still keen for a scrag fight

Yipes, I didn’t realise that non-allocated ticketed events could potentially cause a turf war, but it seems I was wrong.

Our she-Hulk wasn’t quite this attractive or well-dressed

After returning from a quick bathroom break, Melly and I were making our way back to the spot we were standing before, but we found another near the sound booth where we could lean, because, you know, I’m a whiny, tired, lazy, old lady.

Finding a bit of barricade to claim, a frizzy, blonde banshee descended upon us declaring we needed to move immediately, so when her friend returned she could stand there again.

She didn’t seem all that enthused or responsive when I explained to her this was not an event that had allocated tickets and we were allowed to stand wherever we wanted and people were continually moving throughout the venue all night.

But watching the she-Hulk beginning to seethe, we walked away.  After a particularly bad week, I had no fight left in me.  And besides, being this far on the northside of Brisbane, she could have been from Redcliffe and I definitely would not have won that fight.

Sing Hallelujah: 90s techno groups and performers are my career heroes

There’s no snarkiness here, this is a just an observation by which I was pleasantly surprised.  While their heyday might be over, the members of these bands all looked like they were having the time of their lives.  The groups that had their original line ups, consisted of people in their late 40s and 50s and they looked fabulous, probably because they were really happy, making other people happy and enjoying what they were doing.   Good for them!

I stupidly made the decision about 18 months ago to head back to university. Not only has it caused me to seriously question my intelligence – I certainly didn’t find it this difficult the first time around, it has also has me spending a great deal of time thinking about botox and how to disguise a rapidly expanding grey streak in my hair.

Really, I don’t like to spend any more time than necessary on my appearance, but spending several days a week under fluorescent clinic and lab lighting with 19 year olds is making me feel like Jenna from 30 Rock lamenting having to audition for the role of a mother in Gossip Girl.  Yep, I’m old enough to be the mother of some of them… if I was a bit more like Spike from Degrassi Junior High.  Sigh… none of them would get that last reference.

You’re such a broomhead, Spike.

Now I don’t have children of my own, but that doesn’t mean there are slots open for people to step into that role.  I say this because there is someone at uni who seems strangely keen on me and it’s not the first time.

Last year, a young gent I was paired up with in a weekly lab would message me on Facebook at all hours asking for advice following a relationship breakup.  He was very sweet, a long way from home and helping me with a subject I hadn’t done in about the amount of time he’d been on earth, so I was happy to listen and sympathized with young love gone awry.  That was until he said he really enjoyed talking to me because I reminded him of his mother.  Yeah thanks.

It’s only the second week back of the semester and I have apparently adopted another lost puppy.  I was describing this situation to my own mother who declared that this person has decided that I’m their uni mum.

Patches (not the puppy’s real name), who does actually have a real mother, seems to think I have a better idea of what is actually going on just because I’m close to double their age.  And because of this, I seem to be on the receiving end of a barrage of questions I haven’t experienced since working with journalists or my last job interview.  Listen here, Patches, you’re really backing the wrong horse.  I’ve got no idea what’s going on most of the time.  I almost fainted in a lecture yesterday when I found out I had to learn 105 anatomy flashcards by heart.  I actually drove past a construction site the other day and thought, ‘maybe I could be a ‘stop/go’ person’, despite being what I’d describe as ‘really not an outdoorsy type’ and ‘chronically allergic to manual labour’.  I quit a perfectly good job and embarked on a career change in my shallow mid-thirties (I’m in my mid to deep mid-thirties now).  Yes, I’m obviously someone who’s got all the answers.

Sorry, Patches.

Patches, while standing disturbingly close to me – as they proceeded to do for most of the 10 hour day – asked me what I had for lunch, followed up with asking what I had on my Vita-Weets, and then if I had anything to drink with my Vegemite and avocado smothered crackers.  Worried that I’d have to recall what I had for lunch yesterday, what last year’s tax return was and when my next pap smear is due, I ran away and hid in the toilet.  I know I really shouldn’t compare myself to real mothers, because I know my girlfriends with little ones usually have to do that in front of an audience and I actually got a few minutes of peace.

So what’s the etiquette for breaking up with your adopted without consent uni puppy when you have to spend the next almost three years with them?  That’s right.  There isn’t any.  Time for me to pull up my big girl undies and be grateful that I have an adopted puppy at all.  Woo hoo.

When I’m in confrontational situation, I often have the overwhelming urge to act like one of those dickheads on Border Security, Real Housewives of insert city here, or Kitchen Nightmares, where you’re delusional, unreasonable and, more often than not, drunk.

I’m about to execute an award-winning table flip

Witnessing poor Mr C deal with a difficult customer who decided to slag him and his business off on social media, when he’d merely done his job and even given the wally a discount, made me realise that doing the right thing really bites the big one.

Now Mr C is just about the most decent human being you could hope to meet – I have to continually spike his coffee to ensure he doesn’t realise I’m nowhere near as decent as him – so watching him cop the wrath of a very unfair and undeserved bout of digital feedback seemed more than unjust. I mean this person did not use punctuation or capital letters at all, so really has no right to even have a Facebook account, let alone dish out criticism willy nilly.

Mr C asked my opinion as a previous ‘expert’ (translation: semi-retired mediocre professional dabbler) in reputation management and social media. Seeing as the Neanderthal in question didn’t even use the correct business name initially (doing business with morons does pay off sometimes!), I told him it was probably best to just leave it alone or just take a gently gently approach and thank him for his feedback.

Meanwhile, devil Claire was hatching a plan to start up fake Facebook accounts to befriend this poo poo head and start posting some interesting photoshopped images to his pages – I’m friends with numerous graphic designers you see. I was also keen get my grubby little mitts on his email address and sign him up to a few hundred mailing lists and websites.

I’m still considering the mailing list/website thing because thinking about him dealing with the barrage of erectile dysfunction emails flooding his inbox each day and having to explain the Ashley Madison account to his wife makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But why do we end up doing the right thing, when the wrong thing is so much more fun and probably deeply satisfying? Probably because most of us are decent human beings and know we’d be plagued by overwhelming guilt if we did take the low road. Oh to be a sociopath.

Taking the high road is so boring sometimes. It’s the salad and regular exercise of the ethical dilemma. Being a total arsehole looks like a crapload more fun.

Several years ago, I remember telling my manager in an annual review that I didn’t really believe in five year plans and she was horrified.  She was a wonderful manager; full of tough love, bad handwriting, a kind heart and she put up with me saying obnoxious rot like that.  The poor woman.  And although I’m still not a huge believer in long term planning, because anything could happen really, I definitely believed in non-plans, or things I thought I would never do.

But that has gone to poop recently, because while never have I ever played the famous drinking game; lately I’ve found myself doing quite a few things I never thought I would do.

Here are just a few:

• Sitting in lecture theatres where approximately 90% of the attendants are exactly half my age probably tops the list. But then again, I never fully morphed into the PR power bitch I thought I’d one day become, so it was time to retrain to become a podiatry power bitch.
  

  Oh Billy Madison, I feel your pain

• Working from home. Because I lacked discipline and the idea of pyjamas being appropriate workwear was so appealing, I was perhaps not the best candidate for this arrangement.  However, an opportunity presented itself, and it has meant the transition to superannuated uni student has been relatively painless.  And I surprised myself that I actually did the work and changed out of my pyjamas to do it… most days. In Skype meetings my hair might say ‘brushed and straightened’, but my feet say ‘Peter Alexander’.
• Working as a promo girl. Although the term ‘girl’ is probably a bit generous in my case.  A friend of a friend of mine runs a very successful PR/marketing company and needed some assistance with promotion at a large Brisbane shopping centre over the Christmas holidays.  It required the ability to smile, repeat the same information up to 100 times a shift and look sympathetic and concerned when members of the public decided to whine about the centre charging for parking.  Well go and park your four-wheel drive Beamer somewhere else, princess.  It also paid almost as much per hour as I earned when I managed a team of nine people.  So I’m not particularly embarrassed that I was the oldest promo person there – the other team members could have possibly been my children if I’d been a more interesting teenager – because it was the easiest money I have ever made.
• Worrying less about what certain people think about me. While promo-ing – yes it’s a new word, look it up – I ran into quite a few people I knew, but only one from school, which I sort of dreaded happening.  Going to one of Brisbane’s most high-achieving, sports-loving, academic-butt-kicking, doctor/lawyer-churning-out institutions does not make the transition to promo-girl the most obvious choice for one of its former students.  So when a school-colleague (mate would be taking it WAY too far) stumbled upon me while doing her Christmas shopping she seemed quite stunned.  She asked with great disdain if this is what I ‘did’.  Maybe it was the fact she was dressed atrociously.  Maybe it was because she had lipstick on her teeth.  Maybe it was because my eyeliner was on fleek that day.  Maybe it was the fact I’m a completely shallow cow… but I approached that encounter without a need to justify myself or explain what I was doing and little interest in what she ‘did’.  Although I do admit googling her later, so perhaps she got to me a bit, but she and her large backside don’t need to know that.
• Forgetting to attend a professional development webinar, for which I willing forked out my own money. I never forget meetings!
• Willingly forking out my own money for a professional development webinar instead of a pair of leopard print shoes that were 30% off on Click Frenzy. Being sensible and responsible is so dull.
• Thoroughly enjoying a cleaning microfiber party and spending almost $200 on cleaning products in one go. No, I hadn’t been drinking.  I probably would have ended up buying the entire very photogenic Norwegian family featured in the catalogue if I had been.
• Doing tequila shots at the age of 36 and then crawling across a banquette Beyonce-style because I thought all of my friends needed to see my choreography to ‘Crazy in Love’, even though I think Queen Bey has jumped the shark big time. I’m not really worried though. I’m pretty sure I looked amazing while I was doing it.
  

  It must be hard to slay in those tiny pants, Bey.

• As mentioned above, fall out of love with Beyonce. Sorry, but using feminism as your key marketing tool while slagging off your cheating husband does not sit right with me. Cheating didn’t seem to worry you when you were ‘Jumpin’ Jumpin’’, Queen Bey.  Yes, I be one of them haters you twirl on, but I’ll get over it.  My love for Kylie Minogue and Prince, however, will remain eternal.

I guess it’s nice to know you can surprise yourself sometimes, even if it’s not always in a good way.  You think I’m talking about the tequila drinking and Beyonce dancing, right?  You would be wrong.  I was thinking about the webinar.  So what things have you done, that you’d never thought you’d do?

My letter box is a drug trafficking hot spot.

So there.

My letter box is not only is a safe repository for my monthly InStyle mag (yay) and bills from Origin (boo) it also seems to be a hangout for Cheech and Chong, joined by the cast of That 70s Show.

Our new letterbox visitors

What does your letter box do?

What am I talking about you might ask?  Well, flashback to last Friday and Mr C and I happened to get the most interesting piece of mail we’ve ever received, but it wasn’t even meant for us.

On our way to the movies – Straight Outta Compton, since you asked.  And yes, I’m totally into gangsta rap now – and Mr C said he hadn’t checked the mail that day.  So I stopped off at the letter box on the way to the car and retrieved a lone envelope.

Taking off for the illustrious glamour of Indooroopilly, I took a closer look at the envelope.  It was addressed to a fella called Kevin with our address below.  Despite being in our place for six years, we still receive some mail for the previous owners, but none of them go by the moniker of Kevin.

Rolling the letter over in my hands I pointed out to Mr C that the envelope was lumpy with no return address.  Being the sheltered nerd I am, I’ve shrieked, ‘they’re pills.  It’s ecstasy.  Or it’s anthrax in pill form’.  Well don’t you think it would be far more convenient to transport anthrax if it was in neat pill form?  Duh.  And plus, Mr C and I are such political activists that of course we’d be the target for a toxic letter drop off.  I wrote a letter to the Premier and my local member about not axing Uber.  I’m practically Harvey Milk.

‘Oh dear, it accidentally opened,’ I said. A little anthrax doesn’t scare me. Yep, I’m a total badass.  I illegally open other people’s mail.  Next step: killing a man, just to watch him die.

It wasn’t pills.  It was more of a herbal nature.

In a Commonwealth Bank coin bag was what my husband, disturbingly the font of all MJ (not Michael) knowledge, estimated to be about $50 worth of weed and a small scribbly note, probably originating from Nimbin.

In the note Donny proceeded to tell Kev that ‘it wasn’t very much, but som (sic) is better than none’.  Apparently Donny didn’t like writing letters.  Well, let me tell you Donny, if you start using your hands, rather than trying to steer a biro with your nostril – the only explanation for the atrocious nose/handwriting – you might enjoy it more.  Donny was actually rather sweet though and said he’d love a visit from Kevin, but only when he was feeling better.

Suddenly it all made sense.  It seemed poor Kev needed the ingredients for a funny brownie for health reasons.  I felt quite bad for him.  So proceeded an evening of Googling and Facebooking Kevins in our suburb to no avail.  If only Kev’s friendly pot dealer could put their silly ciggie down and grasp their nose pen properly to take down the correct address, he would be sitting on his couch happily munching chips and thinking the Celebrity Apprentice is an anthropological masterpiece and not thinking his pal Donny had let him down.

Don’t listen to a word Kenneth says

What’s more surprising/alarming/amusing about all of this is that this letter made its through our national postal institution.  Perhaps the post office in Mullumbimby operates on a different set of rules to the one I usually go to.

So that is how Mr and Mrs C’s castle became the latest drop off point on the secret railroad.  My recommendation to those choosing these spots is to avoid letter boxes that see a lot of action with mail of the business account variety and homes inhabited by people with an online shopping addiction… like ours.  Because our mail box gets checked.  Every day.

What happened to Kev’s magic potion you may be asking?  Nothing yet.  Mr C and I won’t be imbibing due to formerly collapsed lungs and medication that, when mixed with ‘herbal based’ treatments, might conjure a full blown freakout.  I’m just about technically unemployed and there is a high school and skate park close by so I am well located to start a new career.

Happy New Year!  It’s only eight days into 2015 and are you as starving, exhausted, sore and underwhelmed as I am?  If you’re a believer in New Year’s resolutions you probably are

Please, don’t we all say this every Monday?

2015 has started off as a complete shit sandwich, but not one you can eat, of course, just a metaphorical one.  You see, Mr C and I have embarked on ‘Operation Sexy Bitch’.  What does that entail, you might ask?  Well, it means no fun allowed.  Evah.  Actually, maybe I should have made my new year’s resolution to stop exaggerating so much, because it’s really not that bad, but I can’t work out if not being allowed to be over dramatic is worse than pretending to enjoy vegetables as a snack.  I choose snack veggies.

In one of the universe’s most unfair acts, I can see that Mr C has probably already lost at least three kilos only four days into the Operation, despite still drinking beer and eating a meal with béchamel sauce the other day.  Meanwhile, I have lost 900 grams, have done exercise every day, given up drinking for the month and am lugging well-intentioned fruit to work in the hope it will save my workmates from finding me in a diabetic coma, covered in chocolate because the siren song of the fundraising choccy box became more than a mere mortal could resist.  The universe is a sexist twat.

I am pleased to see that I’m in excellent company though, with many of my workmates engaging in their own resolutions.  One of which includes not allowing people to each lunch with them if they have something unhealthy.  I was told I was not allowed to attend with my Diet Coke.  It’s diet!!  The carcinogens are only going to kill me, not you.  This person’s carb-blitzing regime also involves allowing themselves 14 corn chips a day – in addition to other food of a less carby-nature.   Luckily this individual is a complete delight and has taken my teasing and questions about the permissible number of crumbled corn chips surprisingly well.  But the point is, she doesn’t even need to watch what she eats because she looks like one of those gorgeous Vargas girls, so she’s back on my list.  Resolutions make me irrationally hateful because I’m not getting my regular afternoon Freddo Frog.

My workmate’s mantra

I totally understand why people think resolutions are a complete crock of caca, but I quite like the idea of starting anew on 1 January… anything to leave behind the disappointment of another over-rated, over-hyped, stinking hot New Year’s Eve.  Ugh, when will they die?!

I’ve had great success with New Year’s resolutions.  Oh wait, there goes the dramatics again… last year I stopped biting my nails and another year I got solar power.  Geez, I should write a book on how proactive and motivated I am.  No need to mention that the nail growth probably came from the calcium from all the cheese I ate in Paris, and biting my nails didn’t seem an attractive prospect after a gypsy spat on my hand and that a solar panel salesman got me at a weak moment.  But that aside, I totally kicked those resolutions’ backsides.

In addition to Operation Sexy Bitch, I’ve also entitled 2015 the year of learning, which has seen me enrol in a pet grooming course, because spending over $1200 in order to save myself $55 every three to four months seemed like a good investment, rather than a false economy.  Maybe I should have enrolled in ‘finance for morons’.  Anyway, I figured, when I win the lotto, I will still want an enjoyable part-time job.  Ideally one where the clients can’t talk back and think that everything you say is worthy of a tail-wag or a lick on the hand.  And I’ve always dreamed of an acceptable reason to walk around with cheesy treats in my pockets, so doing this course seems like a sensible investment in my future career, don’t you think?

So despite the discomfort and the rather ridiculous reasons behind my New Year’s resolutions, I will be back again next year, doing the same thing.  And it won’t have anything to do with the fact that I’ll still be a fatty boom batty, eating all my pet clients’ cheesy treats.

What are your New Year’s resolutions?

I’m officially on the countdown to an exciting and much-anticipated OS trip with my mama.  I can’t wait for our two week visit to London and Paris, spending my days eating scones and drinking champagne.  A bit concerned that all the activities I’ve thought of doing seems to involve food or drink, but that’s what holidays are for, right?  Come on!  I need to feel ok about coming back looking like fatty boom batty.

I am not looking forward to the hideous 300 hours flight there and back… it almost puts me off going, to be honest.  I’m a terrible traveller and I’m quite worried my mother might disown me by the time we land at Heathrow.  That is if I haven’t drowned myself by trying to flush myself down the blue-tinged aeroplane toilet.   I’m not scared of flying, but having to spend more than four hours in a plane makes sticking a hot fork in my eye and listening to Taylor Swift try to rap on ‘Shake it off’ on repeat seem like preferable activities.

It’s not just being cooped up in the cramped confines of a metal cylinder, hurtling through sub-space, with little understanding of how it stays in the air for many hours at a time.  It’s not just the swollen ankles and the food Lean Cuisine rejected.  It’s the flipping other passengers!

Flying is uncomfortable, it’s boring… I get it, but it’s no excuse for behaving like a total wang.

There is an Instagram account called @passengershaming that is exposing the atrocious behaviour of beings that should be considered humans, but I’ve seen gorillas act better than some of these people.  Poo flinging aside.

I wish there were more of this on planes… that’s what I call ‘in-flight entertainment’. I’ve actually been on a plane with Courtney Love, but she wasn’t this fun.

There’s the usual chair tilting issues, the rude passenger who thinks it’s ok to treat a hostie like their personal butler (hey, we all want a packet of peanuts, dude.  Wait your turn!), the screaming babies, the absolutely abhorrent state the bathrooms are left in, but so many instances recorded on @passengershaming seem to involve people’s feet.  Yes, their feet.

Look, I’m all for getting as comfy as possible, but this is a plane, not your bedroom, so let’s make a pact and a rule that EVERYONE must follow on planes: all items considered underclothing (bras, boxers, knickers, long johns, bloomers, girdles, socks, what have you) must stay on at all times!!  If I see someone taking off a sock on a flight, I may shove that cheese encrusted item in their ear and use it as a flossing device, because that piece of cotton/poly blend fabric is the only thing that is trapping the stench of feet that have trodden kilometres of airport terminal and that’s probably in the milder cases.

Maybe I’m a little touchy after a flight home from Japan a few years back.  Look the trip was ok, but not the best.  My poor Nanna passed away back home; I managed to somehow dislocate my shoulder on the flight over trying to take off my jumper (this was before I even got on a pair of skis, which was the point of the holiday); I got to experience the delights of the Japanese hospital system (oh my God, Medicare I LOVE YOU) to try and figure out if it was in fact a shoulder dislocation and not a pneuomthorax, which included a very sweet Japanese nurse miming ‘take off your bra’ so she could attach some EKG leads to my ample (only by Eastern standards) Western bosom.  This would have been easier if the male translator was allowed in, thank God he wasn’t, but fat lot of good you were, mate.

Stop the madness!

Anyway.  Rant over.  My apologies.  Yes, there were some obstacles, but we made it to the end of the trip and the flight home.  Settled into our seats, comforted by the fact that another flight to Sydney for a fundraising conference offering up questionable ethical practices and a funeral were awaiting me on my return, the gent across the aisle proceeded to remove his socks for what was probably the first time in numerous weeks.  I’m sorry, I thought this was a flight to Cairns, not a freaking stilton cheese sampling.  The air in a plane is stuffy enough, let alone adding the stench of what I imagine the nappies of 100 babies’ with intestinal woes would smell like.  My husband and I thought we might actually faint – we do not know how the man sitting next to him did not die from noxious gas exposure.  I was half expecting to see cartoon plumes rise from his feet.  It was the olfactory equivalent of an internal ultrasound – highly uncomfortable, seemingly unending and potentially vomit inducing.

So for God’s sake, next time you’re on a flight take that Valium and red wine, shut the hell up and put your flipping feet away.