Building, burying and stupid dogs

It’s hard to believe it’s January since I last wrote much on here but I know it’s been too long as I’ve had quite a few people contact me to ask me where I’ve gone. Very flattering, I didn’t know anyone on the Internet even cared!

Of course it probably sounds silly to say that time’s just flown by, but for these last few months life has simply got in the way of life. Or rather, there’s been so much upheaval and mayhem that even sleeping has been something of a luxury recently. Of course everyone gets tired, but you know you’re beyond knackered when you try to take your eye makeup off with nail varnish remover and brush your teeth with Canestone. The first painful mistake was mine, the second disgusting one was that of my rather unfortunate husband.

So what on earth can cause such an extreme form of exhaustion that you’ll strip the skin from your eyelids for several minutes before you even realise what you’re doing?  To break it down: buying, building and burying. With a little near canine death in between.

Back in January we bought a house. We gutted it of pretty much everything that could be removed and then re-built it from the roof down and the floor up. With so much to do and something of a self-inflicted time restraint placed upon us (moving 2 kids, a dog and a house full of stuff into said house a mere 6 weeks after demolition begin) there wasn’t really a day, hour or minute where life didn’t revolve around lists of things to buy and jobs that all involved some type of hardcore machinery and cement.

Over the last few months we’ve pulled down walls and ripped out bathrooms, plastered up stinking rats nests and ripped out old ceilings, rebuilt kitchens, added rooms, changed windows and discovered fireplaces we didn’t even know we had. All, I might add, in sub-zero temperatures with snow falling outside and icicles forming on my nose. So cold was it that I do believe the only time I didn’t need to wear 3 layers, 2 pairs of gloves and a scarf to work on the house was the afternoon I spent stripping wallpaper in a room filled with steam. It was a welcome facial indeed.

The moment the Norfolk ice caps melted and the sun showed the slightest hint of appearing, we moved outside to tackle what was meant to be the garden. We cemented in what seemed like 100′s of fence posts, lugged 9 foot sleepers, dug out vast quantities of earth, shifted 4 tonnes of gravel and 2 tonnes of sand by hand, put down turf and laid some sort of patio.

Yes, all in all it’s been a rather manual time to say the least.

And then, right in the middle of all of this physical exertion, my emotions took an almighty battering. With one short phone call and those dreaded words of  ‘you’d better sit down’ I found out my grandmother was in hospital. A frantic dash across the country to Weymouth followed by possibly the worst night of my life and the worst case scenario happened.

Thankfully death isn’t something we come across much on a day-to-day basis, but the downside of this does mean we’re not really equipped (or prepared) to deal with the fall out. Because, much like love, grief is an extremely complex emotion that unfortunately has to be experienced to be understood. It’s a surreal time when nothing makes sense, the world seems unfair and life is basically nothing but a bitch.

Two weeks later and one rather emotional funeral behind us, I finally returned home to the world of small children, half-finished houses and living. The following morning, before I’d even had a chance to unpack or regroup, Charlie (the rather dim-witted Spoodle of the house) decided to make a bid for freedom. He flattened himself to the thickness of an envelope and somehow squeezed under the wire attached to the bottom of the gate.

Who knows why he felt it necessary to play chicken with the traffic. Perhaps he felt he needed a little more adrenaline in his life that morning, or he’d been watching The Shawshank Redemption and had been digging out the drive with a stick for the previous few months. Either way, bloody stupid dog.

An hour later and I’m speeding down the road in the car with a near-dead dog in my arms, frantically looking for my husband who’s out looking for us. I eventually find him, somewhere between the pavement and the warpath, all ready to kill the escapee dog.

And so we headed off to find a vet in a town that we didn’t even know, with Charlie sneezing blood all over the place and looking like he’d been kicked in the head by a horse. Mainly because he had been, the dim-witted dog. Needless to say he’s still alive, one ambulance, 2 nights in hospital and a rather large bill later. All I can say is thank god for pet insurance, anyone who says it’s not worth having obviously has better trained animals than us.

So there you go, a whole list of reasons why I haven’t had much time to write this blog lately. I’m hoping the second half of the year is slightly easier than the first. I really fail to see how it can’t be, although saying that 6 months ago I had no inkling that any buying, building or buying was on the cards for 2011.

I can’t say I was exactly surprised about the near-dead dog bit though, it’s not the first time he’s thought with his paws instead of his brain and I can guarantee it won’t be the last.

Ready. Steady. Pack

Moving house is considered one of the most stressful things you can do in life, along with illness (tick), death (tick), divorce (tick), marriage (tick), pregnancy (tick), changing jobs (tick) and debt (tick).

Yes, over the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to experience them all. Some several times over in fact. Actually, when I come to think of it, most of them several times. How depressing. There are however a few situations I’ve managed to avoid thus far (including retirement and jail time) but there’s still 6 months left of this year, so best I not count my chickens before they’re blessed.

Strangely enough ‘moving country’ has never featured in any Top 10 stress list that I’ve seen. A major oversight on someone’s part surely. Anyone who’s ever tried it knows that there’s nothing quite like packing up your family, baggage (emotional and household) and pets, and then relocating them all around the world. It really does get those grey hairs a growin’.

So why, when I’m fully aware that the combination of packing boxes, shipping companies and small children make for newly formed wrinkles, do I keep on getting itchy feet and moving?

I blame my parents. Naturally. Most things in life come back to our parent’s decisions, choices and wrongdoings. It’s not the fault of the parent necessarily, just the way it is. As a parent myself now, I fully expect to screw up my own two children along the way and be held to account at a later date.

So why do I blame my parents? By the way, if either of them happen to read this, which is unlikely I know, I use the word ‘blame’ lightly. Because when I grew up I never called anywhere home for more than a few years at a time.

When I was born, a good 35 years ago, I emerged from the womb with a suitcase clutched in one newborn paw and a boarding card in the other. I had a monogrammed luggage label securely tied around my neck. Well actually I had an umbilical cord around my neck, but you get the gist.

Having been plopped straight onto the luggage conveyor belt at Heathrow I’ve  spent the majority of my life since bouncing from one country and continent to the next. I’ve lost count of the homes I’ve had and even the number of countries I’ve visited over the years.

We started off in Africa, as all self-respecting, jet-setting babies do. First were those early years in Nigeria, with its crowded marketplaces and beautiful beaches  – except for the one where they executed criminals every week. Not that the beach wasn’t lovely mind you, it’s just that there’s nothing like the sound of gunfire to really ruin the atmosphere when you’re having a picnic on the sand.

This was later followed by time amongst the animals and spectacular waterfalls of Zimbabwe – in the years before Mugabe decided to exorcise his ‘rights’ to be an arrogant, murdering dictator.

Those years, combined with the many visits to neighbouring countries installed in me a great love of the sounds and smells of this continent from a very young age.

Next on the list came the Middle East, with 3 fun-packed years in Bahrain and a short stint in Oman. Then came Asia and the hot, humid shopping mecca of the Far East – Singapore. Twice I moved there to be precise. The second time with a husband, child and two cats in tow.

3 years after that I returned home (minus the husband and the feline friends). Turn the clock forward another 3 years – having added a long-lost love/second husband and extra child to the brood – and I set off for Australia. Perth to be precise.

And that’s where I’ve been until now. Or should I say up until 2 weeks ago.

Not wanting to buck a trend, 3 years after touching down on Perth’s dry and incredibly sandy soil, my boredom threshold was crossed with military precision. So the movers were called in, boxes were packed and I left -  one husband, two kids and a dog in tow. Yes, we’ve now gone canine.

That probably all makes moving sound like a breeze I know, but it really it isn’t. This last upheaval has involved sifting and sorting our belongings with great brutality, huge garage sales and months of living in, on and around packing boxes. It has also involved a flying dog and coming up with a great pile of money to pay for it all.

The process came to an end three weeks ago, when an empty container turned up early in the morning with 3 packers – who, no word of a lie, closely resembled Beavis, Butthead and that gangly, useless looking one from Scooby Doo. They drifted around the house, wrapping furniture like they were stoned (strong possibility). They then told me, with at least 30 items in the garage still to go,  it wasn’t all going to fit in the container.

Now if I hadn’t heard this from packers 1000 times before I might have been more concerned than I already was. Though I have to admit that ‘concerned’ at this point meant pacing up and down the road, flapping my hands as I watched them roughly shove in our precious cargo and calling my husband at work every 4 minutes to shriek “It’s not going to fit, what the hell are we going to do?”.

Of course his response went along the lines of “I’m not there I can’t really tell you what to do – tell them they’ll have to re-pack it”. My response to that was… well it was a response of a sorts.

Recounting all of this makes me realise two things. Firstly that I must have spent an exorbitant amount of money shipping ‘stuff’ around the world. The sort of rubbish that usually goes into the kitchen bits drawer and never comes out. Only on a much larger scale, like a kitchen drawer the size of a 20 foot container.

Secondly, this latest moving experience has made me realise that I only seem to last anywhere for 3 years at a time. And 3 years, let me tell you, is barely long enough to get in, unpack, decorate and start living. And that brings us nicely back to why I blame my parents.

They brought forth a child with wanderlust in it’s veins and the complete inability to put down anything resembling a root. It may not sound like a bad thing, but life as a serial expat can be tiring, and rather unsettling to boot. It can also prove a very hard life to give up. I know, I’ve tried. A good many times.

Not that I’d ever want to change the life that I’ve had I hasten to add. It’s been amazing so far and I feel incredibly lucky to have seen, done, experienced and enjoyed all the things that I have. But really, enough is enough.

So, in two weeks time I’ll be re-packing (for the 8th time in 6 weeks) and waving this particular continent goodbye. Then, after a brief pit stop in KL to recharge in the sun, it’s back home we all go.

This time when I say I fully indeed to stay put, I really mean it. So if you’re driving through Norfolk in 3-years time and see a strange-looking woman shackled to a fence and eating something that looks suspiciously like a passport, then that will be me.

Please don’t stop to help.

For richer for poorer, till death do us part

With the winter now behind us and my muffin top threatening to morph into a Brioche, this morning I took myself off to a spin class.

It’s been over a month since I last graced the gym with my presence – a chest infection and school holidays have kept me at home, and in a distinctly weakened state. It’s hard to say what caused my state to weaken more, the chest infection or the school holidays, but either way I haven’t been able to get within sniffing distance of my trainers for a while.

So there I was, back in the darkened room and safely impaled on the ‘cushioned’ seat. I have to say it took me a while to remember how high the seat should even be and which way the peddles were supposed to turn. As is always the case at the start of a class the room was completely silent, except that is for two women near me who were in the middle of a deeply depressing conversation. Seeing as I was already strapped on the bike and had nowhere to go, I naturally tuned in my ears to listen.

One of the women was recounting the tale of an incredibly unlucky friend whose husband had recently suffered a heart attack, and dropped down dead in front of her. To make matters worse, he had no insurance, and as a result, the family home now had to be sold.

With this new and rather unsettling information sinking into my mind, and wishing I’d tuned my ears in the opposite direction, the class began.

For the next 45 minutes, as I sweated away like a beast and used all of my powers of self control to stop myself throwing up over the woman in front, part of me kept wondering why I had ever thought it a good idea to come to the gym this morning. The other part of me – the more dominant bit, that tends to mess around with my concentration – couldn’t stop thinking about this man. Or rather the widow that he’d left behind.

Like most people I suspect, the two things that I fear the most are the loss of my children and my husband – losing either would turn my world upside down. The very idea of some terrible happening to my family is something that doesn’t even bear thinking about. Yet I do. Probably far more than is considered rational or even remotely healthy.

For some unknown reason I have a tendency to keep living out these worse case scenarios in my head, and in doing so, making myself feel sick to the core. I wish I wouldn’t do it, but when my paranoia is triggered by distressing headlines or other people’s bad news, I can be like a woman possessed.

So as I’m peddling away, climbing imaginary hills and racing other stationary bikes, my brain is spiraling into a panic induced overdrive. What would I do if this happened to me? How would I deal with it? Where would I find the strength to get up in the morning and get through the day?

Several gears later and these questions are replaced by guilt – for not appreciating everything that my husband already does for me. Vowing to be an all round better wife, I peddle on with renewed vigour. Oh how my husband – who was at that time sitting in his office and as fit as a fiddle – would have laughed his coffee up at these irrational and melodramatic thoughts. He’s simply not enough of an emotional basket case to take it to these levels, and for that, and the fact that he has a truly proactive approach to death, I am incredibly grateful.

For what sets me apart from this other poor woman is that I know that even if I were to lose my husband, I would never lose my home. Being the ever practical man that he is (and working in the industry, which always helps), we are both insured up to the hairline, and worth far more dead than alive. Cheery thought that, but not terribly helpful it has to be said when it comes to paying the credit cards in life.

So now, whenever I get a bee in my bonnet about some hypothetical tragedy, he is always quick to point out that if he dies, whilst I may be alone, at least I will not be poor. And while I do of course protest that this will not make up for his absence, I know what a difference it would make. Of course I would still grieve and weep and wail, but at least I wouldn’t be forced to do it out on the street, or without a clue about how I was to house, feed, clothe and educate our kids.

That said, I still mutter loudly about the large amounts of money that leave our account every month to pay for the host of different insurance schemes, covering loss of life, limb and hubby’s income. It’s always galling to pay out for something that may never happen, but as my ever sensible husband would say, if you can’t afford to pay for your insurance every month, then you certainly can’t afford not to have any at all.

So to cut a long story short – the spin class ended, my heart rate returned to normal and I proceeded to extract the ‘cushioned’ saddle from my left Fallopian tube.

Somewhat short of breath and damp around the edges, I calculated that in the space of 45 minutes I had not only killed off my husband, mourned my loss and appreciated his knowledge of life insurance, but I had also lost just about enough calories to counter balance the Yorkie I wolfed down the night before. Quite an exhausting morning all in all, and one that I decided called for a Kit Kat to calm my shattered nerves.

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Don’t lie to me

Any parent worth their weight in low sodium salt would probably agree, that children should be brought up knowing that it’s wrong to lie. Especially to their parents. But teaching this particular right from wrong can be tricky, especially when trying to push the message home to your child often entails telling a whole range of elaborate and complicated lies to begin with.

Believe it or not, the reason that we lie to our children in this way even has a name.  It’s called ‘Parenting by lying’.

So why do we even lie to begin with? Mainly to shield our children from the harsh reality of the world, and to protect their innocence for as long as humanly possible. Children already have quite enough on their plate, trying to get a grasp on their own tiny world, without also needing the complete low down on war, death, natural disasters and the wonders of childbirth.

We also lie to encourage their imagination; to teach them how to fabricate new worlds and interesting characters in their heads, so that they in turn will grow up to concoct intricate tales to tell their own kids.

And of course there are also those lies that we tell because we don’t know the answer to a question, or because we have already lied once, and have to carry on just cover our tracks. And those lies, that if the truth be told, just make our day-to-day life that little bit easier.

Oh what a tangled web we do weave.

“I’ll know if you’re lying to me” is a classic parenting approach that I often use myself.

Of course I won’t know, so that’s a lie for starters. All I’ll actually be doing is fine-tuning my Mummy Radar, making an educated guess and relying heavily on the fact that my trusting daughter still believes that I know everything that she does, says, thinks and feels.

Like a lamb to the slaughter, I’ve seen the fleeting look of panic pass through her eyes when employing this rather underhand tactic. I can hear her brain frantically ticking over as she quickly tries to weigh up whether she’ll be in more trouble for having finished off all of the biscuits, or for pretending that she hasn’t even been near the tin.

Luckily for her on that particular occasion, as she stood there with the last biscuit hidden behind her back, good sense prevailed. She confessed, apologised and promptly offered to make me a cup of tea. To go along with the last surviving biscuit.

Good sense wasn’t even in the vicinity however the time that she blamed her baby brother for the cup of juice spilt all over the floor. The fact that the ‘accused’ was strapped into his bouncer on the other side of the room, and come to think of it, unable to do anything more than wobble, didn’t exactly help her case. As I watched her suddenly clock her serious lack of judgement, the part of me that wasn’t telling her off actually wanted to take pity and explain that there’s no point telling a porky in the first place, if your story doesn’t even stack up.

Maybe I felt sorry for her because I’m probably to blame in the first place. After all, I’ve already shaped her whole childhood with white lies, fiction and complete fantasy. It’s what parents do.

It starts straight out of the womb. As babies they howl and cry. So we jig them around, rub their backs and say “It’s OK, it’s OK” over and over again.

“No it’s not OK”, the babies are probably thinking. “My tummy’s sore, my nappy’s full and quite frankly I’m starting to feel sick from all this bloody rocking”.

From that moment on the lies come thick and fast, tripping off our tongues like seasoned politicians.

Firstly there are those lies that fall into the category of far fetched and thinly veiled threats – If you don’t eat your vegetables you won’t grow up to be big and strong. If you eat your carrots you’ll see in the dark.  If you eat your crusts your hair will go curly. If you don’t look after your toys I’ll throw them away. If you hear the ice cream van playing a tune, it’s run out of ice cream. If you say another word you won’t get dinner. If you don’t go to sleep you’ll never wake up tomorrow. If you don’t stop that now I’ll take you straight home. I won’t tell you again.

And my personal favourite – Mummy’s can’t hear when they’re sleeping.

Then there are the 5 main brush off lies that I’m sure most parents tell on average at least 10 times a day.

I’ll think about it – loosely translated to mean ‘It ain’t ever going to happen’
We’ll see – loosely translated to mean  ‘You’ll have forgotten in a few hours’
Maybe – loosely translated to mean  ‘Never, never, never going to happen’
I’m listening loosely translated to mean  ‘I’m not even remotely interested’
I’ll be there in a minute  – loosely translated to mean ‘I’ll be there in half an hour when I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing’

And then there are the Mother of All Lies. The ones that involve a fairy collecting teeth, a bunny dropping off chocolate eggs and a large fat man squeezing himself down the chimney (regardless of whether you have one or not) and leaving a suspicious looking package at the end of your bed.

That last one is actually the stuff of nightmares, is you leave out the flying reindeer and the ‘Ho Ho Ho’. After all, we drill into our kids the danger of talking to strangers, particularly big, bad men. And then we tell them that if they are good, one will be coming into their bedroom late at night and watching them while they sleep. Probably the worst case of mixed messages if ever I heard one.

But of all the lies, the best one that we parents have up our sleeves must be the one regarding those clever little eyes we have in the back of head. This one works especially well when you have as many mirrors in your house as we do. In some parts of our home I really can see round corners, and that includes the fridge, the food cupboard and the biscuit tin.

A few years ago, quite out of the blue, the very existence of my second set of eyes was even confirmed.

My daughter and I went for our visa medical check up, and the doctor in question was giving my eyes the once over with a torch. “So how are my other set of eyes?” I asked him, with a straight face and a hidden smirk. “The ones in the back of your head?” he asked immediately “Oh those look fine too”.

My daughters face was a picture. A mixture of complete disbelief and total awe. “Would you like me to check your other eyes too? he asked my daughter. “But I don’t have any,” she said.”Oh but you do,” he replied “everyone has them, they just don’t work properly until you have your own children”.

He peered into her eyes. “Yes, yours are growing quite nicely.” he confirmed.

My daughter was practically buzzing with excitement when we left the surgery. “I never really believed you Mummy, but the doctor saw mine growing so it MUST be true.” God bless child friendly doctors, they earn every penny and more.

That was of course only a harmless little white lie, the sort which are sometimes said just to be kind. But where I wonder do you draw the line, and how can you teach kids to know the difference between those lies that are ‘OK’ and those that will be categorised as a ‘lifetime grounded to the bedroom’ type offense?

Like when Mummy asks how she looks in her new dress, obviously it’s best not to tell her that her bottom looks like the back end of a bus. Or that the dinner she spent hours cooking tasted horrible. Or that Daddy is definitely loved more because he shouts less.

Needless to say I’m dreading the day that my children find out Father Christmas is just Daddy, a red suit and 3 cushions. Or that the lost teeth that were supposed to become stars, ended up at the back of my jewelery box. Or worse still, that the Christmas Elf that follows them around and watches their every move from October onwards doesn’t actually exist.

Oh how my life isn’t going to be worth living, not least because my daughter (who always likes to state the obvious) will undoubtedly be very quick to point out that not only has her life been one long lie, but I’m the one that’s been telling them.

I feel my payback may be right around the corner, just about the time when the hormones kick in.

Taxing the fat to pay the thin

So, finally a doctor in the UK has been brave enough to speak out and voice what many people already think  – that instead of pandering to the needs of the morbidly and super morbidly obese with free mobility scooters and Disability Living Allowance, they should be made to contribute towards the massive strain they are placing on the health system, by paying more tax. And in turn, those who work hard to remain fit and healthy should be financially rewarded for their effort.

With obesity related issues draining every last penny out of the already overstretched NHS budget and £6.3 billion being spent fighting fat, this scheme sounds about on the mark to me. No doubt it’ll be met with cries of “You can’t say that”, but it has nothing to do with being judgmental or ‘fattist’, it’s just common sense. As is Dr Chand’s proposal to add tax to the type of fattening food that offers little or no nutritional value, yet guarantees maximum ‘junk in your trunk’.

Such a tax would of course cause outrage amongst the loyal Happy Meal brigade, all of whom would shriek loudly that it’s unfair to target those on lower incomes, who consider fast food a cheaper alternative. Quite frankly, tough. Tobacco and alcohol are already taxed in an effort to target smoking related illnesses and binge drinking, so why shouldn’t unhealthy food be too?

And as for the argument that junk food is the cheaper alternative, what a load of rubbish. It’s the easier alternative. With every supermarket offering cut prices bargains and more BOGOF offers than you can shake a stick at, it’s far cheaper to cook simple healthy food that it is to buy in a round of up-sized burgers, chips and coke. Even if you do have limited funds and an army of hungry mouths at home to feed. People who choose takeaways every night over cooking are just lazy, and parents who feed their kid’s junk for breakfast, lunch and tea should be done for child abuse. (see related post).

Strangely enough, many of these parents who claim they can’t afford to buy healthy food for their kids just so happen to smoke and drink. They think nothing of puffing £5 into thin air or pouring it down their throat, but they can’t stretch the family budget enough to incorporate something that hasn’t been regurgitated out of a deep fat fryer and into a styrofoam box. For £5 you can buy an entire chicken. So do you spend your money on 20 cigarettes, or a whole birds worth of protein to feed the kids? There’s the difficult decision of the week.

The argument that fast food is even fast is the biggest myth of all. At tea time it takes less time to scramble an egg, microwave a potato or even cook some pasta than it does to climb into the car, drive to the nearest nugget dispensing outlet, queue up, order, collect and scoff. Of course most children would probably prefer the nugget option, and as such be more likely to eat it up without a moan or a struggle, but since when was feeding them meant to be about taking the path of least resistance?

Children are just that, children. They should be eating what’s right for them, not what’s easiest for the parent, no matter how much money they have, how brain dead they are in the kitchen or whether by the end of the day they’ve simply lost the will to live. God knows I could well do without the constant battles about how many vegetables are lurking on my kid’s dinner plates, but I’d rather deal with the fuss they sometimes make than watch them both turn into Weebles, and wobble right off their Trip Trap chairs.

So is the idea of taxing the morbidly obese ever going to work? Nope, not a chance in hell. Why? Because many of those who fall into this category probably aren’t able to work in the first place. Their size, and the associated health problems that comes along with it, prevent them from carrying out even the simplest day-to-day tasks, never mind holding down paid employment. So if they were forced to pay more tax, they would no doubt need to be awarded more disability allowance to afford it.

Obesity is a problem that will carry on for many, many years to come. In part this is because many of those individuals who are contributing to the problem, simply refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions. Instead they prefer to blame the government for its lack of support in helping them to lose weight. They complain about the shortage of free local sports centres and wide open spaces in which to jog. They claim that a bunch of carrots are exorbitantly priced and no one ever taught them how to cook.

In answer to that. It’s not up to the government (who lets face it can’t even run the country properly never mind a weight loss club) to prise the fork out of each and every chubby little hand across the land. There are 1000′s of miles of free pavements in the UK, go walk on them. If you can afford to upsize your £4.50 McDonalds meal you can afford a bunch of carrots. Go buy a cook book, or cheaper still, turn on the TV and listen to Jamie Oliver.

It seems incredible that so many people simply refuse to put two and two together and start addressing the problem, instead of comfort feeding and making it even worse. Even with all the fat fighting campaigns, health lectures and awareness raising TV programmes out there, all trying to ram the obvious message home, it’s hard to see what the solution will be.

Perhaps if those who need to shed the weight actually climbed out of their complimentary buggies and used their feet, they might be surprised to find the weight starting to drop off. Obviously there’s no miracle cure to losing this amount of weight, unless you see stomach stapling as a viable option, but it has been done, and is therefore not impossible.

I’m not even going to pretend to have a clue about the horrible vicious circle of a situation that you’d find yourself in, when you reach this sort of size. Or how demoralising and depressing it  could be to live with everyday.

I’m pretty sure that getting the weight loss ball rolling would indeed be painful, and a tremendous struggle of mind over matter to say the least. But any type of exercise was never designed to be easy, it was designed to be exercise. And anyone who’s ever tried a step class (and failed miserably) will know that exercise can be painful, complicated and downright humiliating whatever size you are.

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Long live the King, the King is dead

Michael Jackson’s death will no doubt go down in history as one of those moments when everyone remembers where they were when they heard – just as when the first man walked on the moon, the Berlin Wall came down, Princess Diana died and 2 planes flew into the Twin Towers.

I was in the gym, peddling furiously away on a bike when I clocked the 3 TV screens above me and realised that something was amiss in La La Land. It took a moment to figure out exactly what was going on as the volume was turned down and my lip reading skills aren’t what they should be.

I immediately sent an SMS to my husband (which is not an easy thing to do whilst going uphill on Level 7) to ask him if he’d heard. He simultaneously called me to tell me the news. Apparently by this stage we were the last 2 people in this media led world to have heard the news.

Unsurprisingly enough, what has followed his death has been nothing less than the full blown media circus that you might expect. Every single TV channel has so far leapt with both feet onto the bandwagon, and bled the story dry for every last sensationalist drop. Tasteless jokes flooded the Internet before his time of death was even called, and desperate ‘comedians’ and talentless talk show hosts thought that the news was the perfect fodder for a few quick and cheap laughs.

Oh what a charmed and hypercritical world we live in.

A place where no matter how famous, successful or talented you are, the media would rather look for a way to break you down and pull you apart. That is of course, when you are alive. Should you die, preferably in an untimely, or even better, dramatic fashion, then every red carpet commentator and entertainment presenter will sure enough have something to say.

They will stand there, all primped, preened and ready for their moment in the spotlight, as they sing the praises of the dearly departed and talk about the travesty of a life lost. Oh please, what a load of cra*p.  These headline loving vultures are about as sincere in their grief as Hannibal Lector would be giving a rousing speech at a Pro-Vegetarian Convention.

If Michael Jackson had been in the news the day before, it would have been to make some snide reference to his weird appearance or spiraling debt. A chance to snicker over his eccentric behaviour, dredge up his checkered legal history or make even more assumptions as to why he did what he did.

If he had been on the news the day before, it certainly wouldn’t have been to commend his genius lyrics, his skill on the dance floor or the 5 decades worth of contribution he has made to the music industry. These sort of accolades, sadly, only come with death.

It would be nice to think that a man who has provided so many people with the musical backdrop for a lifetime of memories, be remembered for what he has achieved and not what he so royally buggered up.

OK, so maybe he did look rather odd, and for some strange reason chose to sleep in an oxygen chamber with a chimp called Bubbles. But for heavens sake, the inhabitants of Hollywood are powered by silicon and Botox, and half the stars are already onto their 2nd face. Joan Rivers certainly looks like an extra from Thriller, and no one seems to give her such a hard time.

And perhaps Michael Jackson did somehow manage to get himself into millions of dollars worth of debt, and then have to sell off his ranch and glittery glove to bring in some cash. But so what. Who are we all to judge? After all, those who live in houses built with credit cards, wear clothes bought with store cards and drive cars paid for by legal loan sharks, really shouldn’t throw stones.

Really, if you take comparative salaries into account, Michael Jackson buying a Ferris wheel and a couple of tigers, or a pair of 6 foot solid gold flamingos for his front lawn is really no different to the average person slapping a $1000 handbag or the latest Plasma on their plastic. Especially when they know all to well that there isn’t a hope in hell of ever being able to pay it off before the interest charges double the actual cost.

Michael Jackson lived his life on the stage, lost his childhood as a result and probably never really had a chance to grow up and experience the real world. Many would say that that was his choice, that he chose the life he lived. But those same people were also probably happy to sing along to the music he made and try their hand at a spot of moon-walking.

So lets hope, that instead of dragging his death through another media rumour mill, with endless ‘explosive’ new allegations and ‘shocking’ breaking headlines, he will finally be given a little respect and laid to rest in peace, and we can get back to our regular TV viewing.

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The JOY of marriage & the REALITY of divorce

Marriage is without doubt an incredibly tough nut to crack. If you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match it can be the best thing since Google. But even if you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match, marriage can still push all your buttons and drive you up the wall, make you question your judgement, and sometimes render you completely insane.

Unfortunately for the majority of people who pay a small fortune to merrily skip up the aisle and say ‘I Do’, a few short years later they will likely find themselves slinking into a solicitors office, handing over their life savings and 3 pints of blood, and snarling ‘What was I thinking, no I bloody well don’t’.

Divorce is everywhere, it’s a sad fact of life. It has probably joined ‘death’ and ‘taxes’ to become the 3 things in life that are depressingly inevitable. In many countries, 1 in 3 marriages now end up in costly court battles – fighting over child custody rights, the dog and the CD collection.  On the upside, now that CD’s have all but been been outed by the MP3, this particular dilemma will become easier to solve.

It is sad that so many marriages don’t even last long enough for the dishwasher to remove the last traces of the sticky label from the new dinner service. Or for the extortionately priced wedding albums to be filled with photos from the happy day. But hey, this is the reality of it all, and, as someone who has already trodden down that particular path, I can’t say that it necessarily a bad thing to be able to get out before the ’till death’ vows have a chance to kick in.

Maybe I have a very cynical view on marriage, (though I like to see it as being realistic) but I strongly believe that if something is really not right, then nothing is going to fix it. Not even hours of counselling, or resigning yourself to a lifetime of ‘doing the right thing.’

And yes, even if children are involved, I still believe that it’s better to be out than in. Nothing interferes with happy childhood memories more than miserable parents, slamming doors and death stares across the breakfast table. I think any child would plump for smiling parents and less fighting if given half the chance.

In the run up to my wedding, and that would be the first one that didn’t work, not the second one that is ticking along just perfectly, I told my then husband-to-be that I was a great believer in divorce. Romantic? No. Honest? Probably a little too much, given the money already spent out on the hot buffet for 50. But then what’s the point in mincing words.

Coming from a family history based in divorce and bad feelings, I knew that I would never be able to stick something out if I wasn’t happy. After all, life’s just too damn short to be depressed and hating the person you wake up next to. Luckily for me my ex was a very understanding man, both then and 4 years later, when we agreed it was never meant to be, called it quits and went our separate ways. Luckily for me we also had the friendliest divorce in history, with not one ounce of bad feeling or back stabbing bitterness in sight.

Some people of course aren’t so lucky, especially when the ‘injured’ party goes hell for leather to try and make life as difficult and complicated as possible. Whether this involves cutting up clothes, hiding rotting fish around the house before leaving or just trying to suck every last bit of energy, life and money out of the person doing the leaving. Some people simply refuse to draw a line under the past and ever let it go.

Of course now that I am older, wiser and blessed with hindsight, I can now admit that I knew at the time that I should never have got married in the first place. But that’s one of those things that’s hard to voice out loud, especially when the wedding ball is rolling at breakneck speed and you’re clinging on by your fingertips for dear life. Or when you’ve already had your dress altered 5 times to accommodate your diminishing weight (through the stress of knowing it’s not a good idea) and haven’t the heart to tell the seamstress her work was all in vain.

So all that aside. Knowing how hard a marriage can be to hold together behind closed doors, where no one can witness the pointless hypothetical arguments and the bread knife whizzing through the air, what hope has anyone in the public eye got of actually lasting the distance.

None really. Celebrity marriages are pretty much doomed to fail from the start. From the young and stupid who hotfoot it Vegas, 13 hours after falling desperately in love at an MTV after-party, to the veterans of the screen, such as the once lovely Mel Gibson, who hook up with someone young enough to be their granddaughter, and then flaunt them down the red carpet.

So when Katie ‘Jordon’ Price and Peter ‘One hit wonder’ Andre announced they were separating, it was hardly much of a surprise. Yet the celebrity watching world went “Noooooo, how can this be?”

Hmnmm, now lets think. They met on screen, they fought on screen. They married on screen, they fought on screen. They had kids on screen, they fought on screen. They moved to the States, they fought on screen.

The common denominator here? Well that would be the fighting.

Add that to the fact that every day of their life together was docu-soaped. And every word, thought and insecurity they felt was no doubt taken, twisted and exaggerated, just to up the viewing figures and satisfy the drama hungry audience.

So did they stand a chance? The words hope and hell spring to mind. I would have had more chance of winning the Lotto – and I don’t even buy any tickets.

Still at least they can now both guarantee a 10 page spread in Hello magazine, to discuss, dissect and detail their marriage breakdown. And then they can both star in their own new reality shows about how to bounce back, recover from a broken heart and go on to make pot loads of money.

Cynical? Me? Never.

The Winning Loser

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The Australian ‘Biggest Loser’ final took place the other night, and what can I say but ‘WOW’. What an inspiration these people should be to every person sitting on their sofa-loving backsides in front of the TV.

Whilst most reality shows are all about that 15 minutes of fame, this show actually sets out to achieve a really worthwhile end goal. And that’s not just for the person who wins and pockets the much deserved prize money (well as much deserved as it is possible to be when you have won and not earned it). All the contestants who take part, come out of it better off for having been there.

For while there is money at stake, and a lot of it, for once the show isn’t all about what you get at the end, but what you learn and achieve along the way. There are no record deals or big shiny cars on offer here.  The contestants aren’t expected to battle it out on a deserted island, or pick out a new mate to marry. They don’t have to decorate a room, design an outfit or beat a poly-gram test to do well. The show doesn’t dangle a ‘jump on the celebrity bandwagon’ carrot in front of their nose, or even teach them how to peel one.

No, the ‘Biggest Loser’ gives contestants a little bit more. It allows them to take one big fat foot out of the grave and start looking forward to living a longer, healthier life. A life that they can actually start to participate in, not just observe from the side lines.

Turning someones life around like this is no mean feat. For 3 long months the contestants are made to eat, sleep, think and exercise  ‘healthy’. Life long bad habits are stripped away and their approach to their food intake, mental attitude and body image are rebuilt, from the plate upwards. At the end of every week they face a public weigh-in, and those who drop below the ‘yellow line’ are voted off the show.

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By the end of the 3 months, the proof was very much in the low-fat pudding and the results achieved were nothing short of jaw dropping. Bob Herdsman, the oldest contestant and the winner, lost more than half of his original 167.8kg (26.4 stone) weight. He dropped a massive 87.6 kg (13.8 stone) along the way and now tips the scales at just 80.2kg (12.6 stone). Tiffany, his daughter-in-law, came in at second place with a weight loss of 54.1kg (8.5 stone).

Without a surgeons knife or gastric band in sight, their weight loss was achieved purely through good diet, hard work and a dogged perseverance to be there at the finish line.

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At a time when the whole world seems to be doubling it’s waist size every time the World Health Organisation release new statistics, this TV programme is certainly trying to do it’s bit to help get the message through.

Something certainly needs to be done before the entire population slips below the ‘yellow line’ and ends up getting eliminated from the race.

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mindtripping pictures

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I was sent these 2 pictures recently, both of which I have to say were enough to make me do a double take.

The 1st picture makes you wonder what you would do if you opened this bathroom door while drunk, completely hung over or suffering from a bout of vertigo.

The 2nd picture makes you wonder why this image isn’t used as part of every governments anti-smoking campaign..

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A week from hell

People throughout Australia, and no doubt around the world, are right now reeling in shock at the devastation caused by the terrible fires burning across Southern Australia – fires that have so far left some 500 people injured and claimed the lives of at least 181 people, a figure that is expected to keep rising.

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With soaring temperatures and strong winds helping the fires to quickly spread, nearly 1,000 homes have so far been destroyed. Whole towns have been wiped out in a matter of hours and 365,000 hectares of land have already been burnt and blackened.

What makes this disaster even worse, is that many of these fires have been started deliberately by arsonists, or firebugs as they are known here.

Intentionally causing a bushfire in Australia carries a sentence of up to 15 years, or 25 years if the fire results in a death. Somehow even this doesn’t seem enough of a punishment for those who think they can play God with a box of matches. The actions of some this week have resulted in a country going up in smoke, and seen whole families being burnt alive while they try to escape in their cars. What possible punishment can be dealt out to fit such a heinous crime?

Sadly burning at the stake is no longer an option for the guilty party, but maybe the punishment should indeed be tailor made to fit the crime.

Pictures can always be used to speak 1000 words, and I think this SLIDESHOW from the BBC website completely sums up the magnitude and horror of this natural disaster…

Please CLICK HERE to make a DONATION to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal