You get what you pay for.

My sister Janey really loves me. You know how I know? Well, here's the most recent demonstration of her love. And trust. This is the way I view it. You might have a different opinion.

You see, she let me cut her longish, heavy black hair. She'd only wanted me to cut her fringe, bangs if you're American. I'd done this a couple of weeks ago, easily, successfully. But she has that hair that grows at about a millimeter a week so it needed redoing. (Here's a side note. There's a certain joy in being able to cut my sister's fringe as required. That's because she's just moved 'home' to Melbourne after thirty or so years interstate, the last ten a four hour flight away. Once again, we get to hang out with each other.)

I enjoy hairdressing. I'm the amateur family hairdresser; the aunty that was trusted to cut her nephews' hair before they discovered cool. (They're discovering middle age now.) In our youth, Janey and I always trimmed each other's long hair. I've cut husband Al's hair since I've known him, and still do. He did go to the local barber a couple of times, until in sympathy with Al's burgeoning baldness, the barber left Al a thready strand of hair to 'comb over'. Seeing his flap, lifting gently in the wind as he approached the front door, I promptly clipped the offending hairs and resumed being Al's dedicated barber..

I coerced Janey into allowing me to cut her hair.  'Freshen it up! Take some of the weight out of the back,' I said, very professionally lifting it and letting it fall, as hairdressers do. I was still in the after-glow of a quasi-adequate haircut I'd recently done for a friend who, rather than getting a professional cut, freely admits to hacking bits off her own hair.

Janey's trust didn't even waver when I set up my iPad next to the mirror, opened a YouTube video and asked her to pause it after The Salon Guy's every step. See I was giving her 'the short layered bob'. I'd watched the video through a couple of times. Looked easy on the human-haired plastic mannequin. Why shouldn't I be able to achieve the same awesome results as a seasoned expert hairstylist? I'd parted Janey's wet hair and found the hair-line at the nape and cut a good few inches off the length. I continued carefully following the steps until Janey reached back, had a feel and pronounced her hair too short. That was when my adrenaline kicked in and when Janey's hair started going inadvertently asymmetrical. Perhaps I'm being kind to myself in that description. Two and a half hours later, my arms were aching and my scissor-hand was cramped into position. Janey, not once raising her voice - she's very lovely - ordered me to stop. Recalling a bad haircut she'd had in 1984, she flew out the front door with her witch-mop hair to collect her granddaughter from school. Interestingly, it was Halloween.

There's a happy ending. The next day I shouted my sister a haircut at a local hairdresser as recommended by another friend, one who sensibly chooses to pay for a haircut. Janey now has fresh, funky short hair and looks like a million dollars. 

Kids' parties back in the day. Well, if I'd been your mother.

Twenty-two years ago, aged 40, pre-blogging, pre-internet, when I was an early adopter with a brick for a mobile phone, I wrote this.

"You're the best, mum!" says my ten year old son, who's scrounging in the pantry. He's just discovered the bag of goodies I've bought for his birthday party, including some nasty lollipops. He can't believe his luck. You see, I've ascribed an almost satanic aura to lollipops and their power to seduce children and seditiously rot their teeth.

Traffic light jelly in little plastic cups is further testament to my maternal greatness, as far as Tristan is concerned. And I must admit, there's a bit of forward planning required, given you've got to wait for the individual layers to set. But that's just about as far as I'm prepared to go these days.

I hate children's parties. Well, I can hardly stand my own kids messing up my house, let alone other people's. I've been wretched all week, living in dread of holding the second and final children's birthday party for the year.

My daughter's parties over the years have been only moderately more tolerable, given the sedate, self-contained nature of Bronte and her particular friends. But every year the boys' parties threaten my sanity. Tristan and his guests savage everything and tear around the house raising a flurry of scraps of paper, popped balloons and plastic toy components. The most innocuous items somehow transmogrify into an entire armoury. Amazing what they can achieve with clothes pegs, Lego and wrapping paper after a quick hit of sugar and artificial colours.

Tristan had his first party when he was two, the day I moved the vacuum cleaner permanently into a corner of the lounge. I vacuumed under four toddlers' little feet between courses of crumbly fairy cakes and hundreds and thousands sandwiches.

I'm so doubtful about my children's parties that I leave the invitations until the last minute, hoping for a reprieve. I felt a bit guilty early this year. Only three little misses arrived in their party clothes for Bronte's turn. Okay, so two days' notice wasn't enough for the young socialites. Though you wonder about the child who used the excuse that she didn't want to miss out on church. I expect my reputation for mean parties has got around.

I plot ways to cut corners. No time wasting on gourmet cake. It's strictly the packet variety. Either way you end up with soggy lumps of it floating in lemonade or covered in tomato sauce, spat out sausage roll and green jelly.

My kids' parties are minimalist affairs. Well, as minimal as you can get without succumbing to McDonalds, or any of those other fast food outlets. I gave in once to a pool party at the local leisure centre, but the soggy drooping clown assigned to play watery games with the girls was a bigger bitch that I am. Subdued children chewed bits of cardboardy pizza while this clown frogmarched around the table glaring at them. Woe betide any child who dared to ask for a refill of its plastic beaker of cordial. The wet-haired kids even cleaned up the room when they'd finished. Some parents were aghast. Not me. I was trying to pick up skills.

This year, for Tristan's tenth birthday party, the tent's up in the back garden. Not the marquee, the $25 plastic two man job. That's entertainment sorted. Well, as much as we're providing.

'You're ten,' I tell him. 'No Pass the Parcel. No mystery prizes. You can make your own fun.' And all that in a scant two hour session.

'You've forgotten the weenies and party pies,' says Al. 'Want me to dash out and get them?'

'I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN THEM!' I scream, hurling party favours into crass 'loot' bags. Well, I'm getting quite irritable with less than six hours until the hordes arrive. All five of them. 'They're in at three and out at five, ,right? Well, I'm not providing a three course meal.'

I must have inherited my aversion for birthday parties from my mother. I'm sure I only had one birthday party. And I can only remember that because a kid called David C had his finger up his nose when the flash went off for the one and only black and while photo. I was thinking my mother must have had some innate wisdom not giving us birthday parties.

'Why didn't you?' I asked her the other day.

'You had a party every year, Jude,' she told me.

There's something in that.

Obsessive-compulsive

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm obsessive. One of my mysterious compulsions is, ridiculously, counting, and that's despite my being a bit numerically challenged.

These days, I count in German, while I'm running a tap, watering a plant. I can't even wait at traffic lights or for a train to pass at a level crossing without counting: eins, zwei, drei... You get it. At the lights I rarely get beyond vierzig - forty. Could go a lot faster in English but I whisper the words in German to develop my accent. See I have to  move my lips, so it's a bit slower. (Don't suppose I look any stranger than people 'talking to themselves' hands-free on their mobile phones.) My 'theory' is that the lights won't change, the train won't pass, unless I count. (Hello. I know.) Recently, to distract myself from counting while we were waiting to cross at busy Bell Street, I shared my theory with husband, Al. He generously explained the logic of the lights changing because they're on a timer. You'd think he'd know me by now. I've certainly got his number.

I also count squats; the exercise kind. Fifty five seems to be my upper limit. And sit-ups on a Swiss ball. Ten. Not many because I've just reintroduced them and I'm in damage control. Wouldn't want to pull a muscle.

Don't get me started on counting AFDs - Alcohol Free Days, for those who don't drink. (Lucky you with your self-control and non-addictive personality type.) I even wrote a list of my AFDs in my journal at the start of this year, not for the first time. Bit of a New Year's resolution. Managed seven non-consecutive days. Stopped counting on January 19. Why beat yourself up?

Suppose that's why I decided to motivate myself with a new counting opportunity: an app; a diet tracker, because clearly that's what I really needed. So I downloaded the app, shared my age, gender, height and weight with another algorithm, or however it works. Skipped the steps where you log in through Twitter, Google or Facebook, to protect my privacy, which is evidently so important to me. After I'd entered all my personal stats the app gleefully calculated that I should aim for a target weight 20 to 40 kilograms less than my current weight. Gulp. But hey, it was a chance to count kilojoules, possibly in German.

I entered my breakfast 'data'. Now I shit you not, on that day this comprised 1 x Vita Brit biscuit + 200 ml of 'lite' soy 'milk'. Breakfast isn't where I overdo the ks but who's counting? Me apparently.

I entered my exercise targets but seemed the app wouldn't let me record these without  first downloading another 'free' app that could push advertisements at me. While considering whether I wanted to do that I drank a glass of water, 250 ml, and opened the app so I could click on one of the eight droplet icons that indicated that I was meeting my eight glasses a day target.

I was starting to hyperventilate thinking about it all so I clicked on another icon. The one that makes the app go all wobbly before I hit the x and made it disappear.

I still count at traffic lights. Old habits. The upside was my ease with numbers on a recent trip to Germany.

Saving the planet, one plastic bottle at a time

You can really get stuck into such projects when you have no other purpose. So here's my product review.

Decided to go commando with shampoo. That is, no plastic bottle. Bought a cake of shampoo soap from The Australian Natural Soap Company that cost double what I pay for my usual litre of shampoo when it’s on special – Tresemme, don’t judge.

Solid shampoo soap sales person assured me that using this natural product I’d only need to shampoo once a week. Well, that’d be because I’d dread washing my hair. It washed effectively, but after rinsing, my hair felt like something you’d scrub your pots with and it took a further fifteen minutes to detangle afterwards. Truly, my biceps were throbbing by the time I’d finished, and not in a good way.

To ease the process, couple of days later, bought an expensive bar of conditioner: Lush, ‘Sugar-Daddy-o Solid Conditioner Rich, Smooth and Naughty’. Let the buyer beware? It was a palm sized tablet. Purple. $10.95. Expensive, I know, but my pension had just been paid into my account.

Lush sales person couldn’t have been more helpful. ‘You wet your hands,’ she demonstrated in their purpose built sink. How else would one know what to do with a cake of soap, sorry, solid conditioner? Obediently, I followed suit. ‘Apply the product to your hands.’ Ooh, really? ‘See how they develop a creaminess the longer you rub them together?’ I stood there nodding, wringing my hands, developing the creaminess. ‘Sorry, have to take my break now. She (other sales assistant) will take of you.’ I watched her retreating back, hoping the buzz cut she’d decided on had nothing to do with the conditioner.

Bought the cake of purple stuff anyway. It was creamy.

Turned out to be mildly effective as a conditioner, but after two goes with it I donated it to our local Good Karma Network where it was snapped up. Who doesn’t like a freebie?

I dispensed it with a warning. 'You might like to wear rubber gloves when using this product.' Wouldn't have minded a similar heads up from Lush. That purple conditioner stains like a mother. Despite scrubbing, my hands looked like I’d peeled a bucket of unwashed purple potatoes. The staining seemed to intensify overnight. It took over a week for the colour to wear off. Curiously, it didn’t affect my hair colour.

I'm still using the solid shampoo. Seems to be lasting, therefore good value. Once I’d suffered the detangling process my hair dried beautifully. Yeah, I’d buy it again. Pity Lush sales person didn’t offer me one of their less permeating solid conditioners. Might have become a loyal customer.

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes - a review

One of the indulgences of my new gainfully unemployed life has been to read what I want. During one of my sleepless nights I caught the end of Marian Keyes being interviewed in Brisbane in October 2017. This prompted me to read some of her work.

Well, I've just read my eighth of Marian Keyes' books and what a treat. (Yeah, hello. I'm obsessive.)

The literati, the cognoscenti, whoever, are perhaps dismissive of humorous fiction about female protagonists. Keyes' work is categorised as 'chick-lit'; 'light' easy fiction. This irritates me. Seems to me it takes great skill to write a highly absorbing entertaining page turner while at the same time deeply exploring aspects of the human condition, albeit as it applies to young female protagonists.

Rachel's Holiday, published in 1997, is the story of an addict, Rachel Walsh. A woman in her late twenties, she has left her home in Ireland to try to make a living in New York. The story begins with Rachel's 'accidental' overdose. "I was offended by the drug-addict allegation because I was nothing like one" says Rachel. She treats her life as a joke; that in her case, God's having a laugh. "...I felt as if I was on Cosmic Candid Camera. My life was prone to veering out of control...God...was more like a celestial Jeremy Beadle, and my life was the showcase he used to amuse the other Gods." She claims her overdose was just an unfortunate accident. She hadn't intended to kill herself. Her concerned family intervene and return her to Ireland where she takes her 'holiday' at 'The Cloisters', a drug rehabilitation facility. Rachel, desperately searching for positives, thought at least she'd meet rock stars and be treated to massages and saunas. She was in for a shock.

Keyes, with what seems to me to be amazing insight, engagingly explores Rachel's life at The Cloisters. She takes us intimately through Rachel's rehabilitation and through that of other characters; other residents with a range of addictions to drugs, alcohol and food. At the same time the narrative explores Rachel's back story and along with Rachel, we come to understand why she is an addict.

The story is both compassionate and humorous. Rachel is an extremely appealing person, despite how frustrated I was by her denial of her addiction. She sees it in others but it takes a long time for her to join the dots in her own case. A novel is working for me when I really care for the characters, as if they are real. With my own somewhat addictive traits and growing up in the middle of sisters I found loads to identify with in Rachel's Holiday. Rachel is hypersensitive, very susceptible to the cavalier bullying of her sisters and ignorant remarks made by parents who didn't know any better. (Other Walsh sisters tell their own stories in some of Keyes' other novels.}

I loved Keyes' writing style which abounds in hilarious figurative language. Here's just one example: Rachel says "They say the path of true love never runs smooth. Well, Luke and my true love's path didn't run at all, it limped along in new boots that were chafing at its heels. Blistered and cut, red and raw, every hopping, lopsided step, a little slice of agony...The night Luke stormed out of my kitchen - oh yes, even though he'd done it with cold control, he'd stormed nevertheless - the course of our true love stopped running at all and actually came to a complete standstill. It spent over two weeks doing nothing but loitering on a street corner, waiting for dole day, half-heartedly whistling at local girls coming home from their shifts at the factory."

Keyes writes about the lives of women around the thirty age mark. She writes with intelligence, sensitivity, compassion and delicious humour. Her characters are credible. I particularly enjoy Keyes' political incorrectness. She often writes the stuff you might think but would avoid saying. Or maybe that's just me.

Getting a fix

Several rows of handbags are arranged according to colour along a wall. Some are blingy with weighty chains, studs and clasps or magnetised fasteners. Others are fringed or quilted. There's one in straw with embroidered flowers. Browns, blacks, taupes, faux animal skins, occasional leather amidst more common 'pleather'. Unknown 'designers' tag bags. 

Amidst all this a tomatoey-red leather satchel catches her eye. 

Our shopper's heart rate increases, just a tad. She's wary of another customer, over whom she's just tripped. A potential rival, another woman of a certain age. At first she hadn't seen her sitting at the end of a rack of Plus Size Women's After Five on a little stool. The 'competition' is preoccupied by a lemon sling-back with six inch heels. Still, our shopper turns slightly to conceal her 'find'. She's conscious of a frisson, reminiscent of adolescence and smiles inwardly. Her face remains nonchalant as she pops the strap over her shoulder to see how her red leather friend feels. 

Cue non-stop inner monologue. See, she must have a little conversation with herself before proceeding. Capacious, she thinks, good given the load she carries everywhere. Fifteen dollars though? Bit steep for donated goods. Some of these places are getting a bit above themselves, she reckons. Hardly a bargain, is it? Seems new though. And leather. Yeah, but you could get a brand new one at Vic Market for a few bucks more. Oh go on. Splurge. What else do you spend money on? It is for charity, after all. 

Still with bag over shoulder, she heads for bric-a-brac. Almost wets herself over a 1960s Arcopal of France baking dish. Picks it up. Only $6.25! Salivates. Turns dish over in her hands; hugs it to chest having been unable to conceal excitement.  You don't need this, she tells herself sternly. Remember clearing out your mother's house, she warns. You don't want to do that to your own children,  do you? Do you? Well, why not? They'll inherit the whole lot. Why shouldn't they clear out a bit of stuff? They can sell it on Gumtree. Nah, replaces item carefully on shelf.

Meanwhile, she keeps her face impassive as she dawdles amongst shelves groaning under glassware, china, silverware, all of which tells stories of exuberant hopeful homemaking, unwanted wedding gifts, downsizing; relentless consumerism and the inevitable passing of time. So much exquisite pottery, handcrafted, delicately painted, skilfully turned. She went mad over that stuff some time between the late 70s and early 80s, she remembers. Now it's a ticking clock breeding on op shop shelves. 

Her $15 bag sits comfortably on her shoulder. Looks okay, she thinks, checking her reflection in a series of old mirrors in the furniture section. She wends her way through to - heart skips a beat - second hand books. Is there any better value? she considers happily. Well, the public library of course. But then you have to return or renew books by a certain date. Irritating. Unless of course one borrows from one's school library. Now there's something she misses about her previous life: the freedom of the library, albeit a little heavy on the Young Adult fiction. Fair enough, she supposes. It was, after all, a secondary school library. She kept some of those books out for nigh on seventeen years, finally returning them when she quit her job. Smiles to herself; scans the titles. Eyes off the 'light' fiction section; selects an as new old Marian Keyes' page turner. Good for a laugh and a think at the same time. Thrilled with herself, imagining several hours of reading pleasure for $3.95, she strides back to the bag section and frugally replaces the satchel amongst its red fellows. 

Reduce, reuse, recycle? Reduce wins. Hands two two-dollar coins to the man on the cash register. Keep the change, she says, magnanimously.