Conversations from the Fibro #4

WHAT I TALKED ABOUT THIS WEEK: It’s that time of the week, when I share some of the topics of conversation that came up through work or play (I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which) in the course of life in a pink fibro.

"Emperor Palpatine (and how he’s really not real and therefore can’t be too scary…fingers crossed), The Wire, The Killing, small houses, Relay for Life, the Wimoweh song, Jimmy Giggle (that's him with his owl on the left, ABC-2), photography, Tony Abbott, Angela Shanahan, the hot water heater, plumbers, lock configurations, Sven the world’s unluckiest speed skater, online dating, superannuation, credit ratings, lawn mowers, Lydia Lassila, mulch, memories of childhood friends, Eddie McGuire, gumboots, blogs, the making of friends, the keeping of friends, what to do when friends no longer want to be friends, turnips, stationery, new books, old books, great books, twitter, nappies, Buzz and Woody…the end of FebFast (so close)."

It's official: I'd get lost in a shopping bag

Fibrotown is a town of plenty when it comes to supermarkets. There are three within spitting distance of each other in the main shopping strip and two within a block of that. Five. In the inner-city suburb in which I used to live there were two, to service probably three times as many people. Not too sure what the collective noun is for supermarkets – a cashola of supermarkets? A clutch of supermarkets? A ker-ching of supermarkets? – but we have one right here.

In theory, then, we should be a hotbed of competitive shopping. The residents of Fibrotown should be at the forefront, the pointy end, of ‘keeping the bastards honest’ (to borrow a phrase) and supermarket prices down.

Only, if I’m anything to go by, we’re not.

Mr3 and I were out getting some exercise today (aka, avoiding the housework) when he remembered he needed a juice and I remembered we actually did need milk. And garbage bags. And…well, you probably don’t need my shopping list, but suffice to say it wasn’t all going to be found in one aisle.

Being in a cheery, ‘what a nice day’ kind of mood, I didn’t go out of my way to go to my usual supermarket (admit it, you have one too), but just wheeled on in to the closest one. Big mistake.

A different supermarket is like a foreign English-speaking country. Think the US, where they talk our language but drive on the wrong side of the road. Or England, where they call soccer football, and football rugby, and AFL a very strange game. Or Scotland, where they deep fry perfectly good Mars Bars. In other words, it’s all strangely familiar, but you can’t quite get your head round it.

It took me three times as long to buy my few items than it would have done if I’d taken the time to walk across the street and go to my ‘usual’ supermarket. And we forgot the juice because I was so flustered by the time I found the garbage bags, in the cooking aisle (?), that I just needed to escape the place. (I know, I really need to get out more.)

We get mountains of junk mail every week. Catalogues and brochures and special offers. Each week, I go through them, noting that olive oil’s on special at supermarket A, coffee’s reduced at supermarket B and you can buy a vibrating armchair and bag of mulch at supermarket C (no prizes for guessing which one that is). I kid myself that I will make like a true budget shopper and chase those specials up.

But I won’t. Because it just takes too long. I refuse to lose an hour of my life wandering around a strange supermarket to save $3 on Vittoria. Sooner or later that $3 special will come to my supermarket and I’ll just save it then.

Which is why I want the ACCC to keep watching those supermarket Big Boys with a beady eye. Somebody’s got to keep the bastards honest.

{image: Mat Hayward}

Memories of a childhood friend

Yesterday I heard the news that a family friend had died. He was 37. A bit younger than me, someone I grew up with. I haven’t seen him for at least 20 years. My overwhelming memory of him involves turnips. It was his fault, you see, that our entire family ate turnips for what felt like every night for what felt like years.

He would come to our house after school and stay for dinner. His mum asked my mum to serve him up turnips every meal because he needed some vitamin or other (I’m hazy on detail – I was about 11 at the time). Because he ate them, we ate them. The only vegie I hate more today are chokoes, but they deserve a post of their own, so I’ll leave those.

He was a sweet little boy with a mile-wide smile and a streak of cheekiness. As he grew up, he chose a few alternate paths on the journey through life and things didn’t go too well for him.

Now he’s not with us anymore. And even though I haven’t laid eyes on him in forever, I feel the ripples of his absence. The people you grow up with are always the ones you remember best. And they’re the ones who remember the best of you.

I’ll think of him fondly every time I see a turnip. (Note I say ‘see’, not ‘eat’. Won’t be doing that again.)

Are you thinking the grass is greener?

If you’re considering moving out of the city for a quieter life may I humbly suggest that you stay put. Yes, there’s less traffic and the silence at night is black and velvety. But the days…good grief, the days are a whole different ballgame.

When you don’t have concrete, you have grass. And when you have grass, you have to mow the stuff. And the good citizens of Fibrotown could mow for Australia. Well, in my block they could anyway.

I say block but I could say blocks. I can hear every mower start up within a 3K radius. There’s no other interference, you see, and not much competition to occupy the sound waves around here. I swear that there are residents of this area that are mowing daily. They must be. There’s no other explanation. If the grass grows a millimetre, they’re on it. Perhaps they’re practising lawn bowls in the backyard, who knows?

All I know is that the quiet of my days is shattered regularly by the throaty roar of a petrol mower and the whine of a whipper snipper. They start as early as 8am and last until dusk (that’s usually us, admittedly). In a strange phenomenon, you never hear two at once. It’s as though they can’t bear to challenge each others’ noise superiority. Like soul divas, each awaits their turn in the spotlight.

The only consolation is that the blower is not in fashion in these parts. The preferred method of clean-up is the mower with catcher and the good old-fashioned rake.

Small mercies.

All I’m saying is that the grass may be greener on the other side of the fence – but there’ll be someone waiting there to cut it.

FebFast finally hits home

It’s taken three weeks, but FebFast got difficult overnight. Possibly because I finally left the Fibro and had to venture out into, gulp, society without the benefit of a bevy.

Friday night saw me in one of the local establishments with a group of girls from school (we are actually all women now, technically, but, you know, they’ll always be the girls from school (GFS)) and without a drink in my hand. It’s the first time I’ve been in said establishment without a drink in my hand since the first few times I went there – and then only because I was underage and actually cared about that. (I know, I know, total nerd.)

So there I was, familiar faces, familiar places, even familiar music – it was ‘retro night’, which means they were playing all the songs from my youth…when did my youth become retro? I don’t feel old enough for that.

Apparently, I am old enough, however, to qualify for Cougar Night. Retro Night in Fibrotown equals Cougar Night (or so a well-meaning male friend informed me), when the ladies of uncertain age stalk out into the night to once more shimmy to the well-named John Cougar Mellencamp (or possibly just Johnny Cougar, now I think about it – we were getting pretty damn retro there for a while) and mix it with the pretty young boys.

Had I not been FebFasting would I have shimmied? We’ll never know, because I was FebFasting – or, as I explained to the GFS, practising being ‘scintillating while sober’ – and shimmying never came into it. I definitely wasn’t a practising Cougar, and neither were any of the GFS, being either in relationships or not interested.

There was a lot of discussion about the Cougar phenomenon though. One friend, R, is affronted by the trend because, as she puts it, she’s been doing it for years and never got a label before. The two other GFS at the table thought they were cool with the whole thing – until they actually saw it in practice in our old stomping ground. As M put it: “At what point does Cougar become Mutton?”

I tend to come down on the ‘whatever gets you through the night’ side of the debate, though I do think that a smaller playing field requires a different approach. In the city, you can strut your stuff in a new watering hole every week. Not so in Fibrotown. Some of the Cougars shimmying away on Friday night must have been hitting that same dance floor for a long, long time, as drinks fashions went from West Coast Coolers to Bacardi Breezers, and the guys drinking beer against the wall got younger and younger.

Women in the city complain long and bitterly that there are no men there. How much more difficult must it be to be single in a smaller town? If the choice is between staying home every night with a cat and going out to the same places you’ve been going for years, what would you choose?

I tip my hat to the Cougars of Fibrotown, shimmying til they drop to a little ditty ‘bout Jack and Diane.

But I was even happier than usual to see the pink fibro at the end of the night. No alcohol high required.

Did Terrence Trent D'Arby come up at your place?

WHAT I TALKED ABOUT THIS WEEK: Every Friday I share some of the topics of conversation that came up through work or play (I'll leave it to you to figure out which) in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Grow-Your-Own red roses for Valentine's Day, cleaning my office, Terrence Trent D’Arby, lawn mowers, The Wire, whether blowers have catchers (confusing unless you were there), paint, guitar practice (several times, getting louder each time), revising, Family Assistance forms (how does anyone fill them out, let alone rort the system), the ATO’s malfunctioning computer system, The Wire, The Killing, vintage maps, small houses, superannuation, online dating, sales coaching, revising, slugs, rhubarb, raised garden beds, the DVD instruction manual (as in, actually opening it, rather than trying to take in the contents via osmosis), dodgy oven, dodgy microwave, dodgy toaster, what I’ve been doing since I left school (in five minutes, over coffee, with former school mate). Twitiquette, elimination communication, revising, The Wire, revising.