Almost Old #1 My mother turns 100

Apologies for changing the name of my blog yet again. But I have decided to write elsewhere about child estrangement and to make this a place where I can talk more broadly, with a focus only on ageing, something that matters to all of us but starts to matter more, especially for women, after fifty, the age I am at currently, an age I think could be described as 'almost old'. 

My mother turning 100 last month hasn't helped, though the cake was nice or should I say cakes.

They tell you you are only as old as you feel but when your mother reaches three digits that makes you feel even older than your are. I have to hasten to add to everyone who finds out my mother is 100 and there mouth snaps open in disbelief that she had her kids LATE, all three of us in her forties, me the middle one but of course. 

Then there is menopause, the most self-harming age for women, statistically speaking. It's not just teens that are vulnerable. They have their youth to fall back on after all. Society is generally very pro youth. You don't learn that till you are over forty or fifty, especially as women. 

I don't want to go into too many details, but the blood situation becomes extremely erratic and intense before it stops. It goes down with a fight, why, nobody knows. Possibly to tell women they are done with baby-making.

But despite all the concerns of ageing and menopause I reckon there is an 'age edge' too, an idea I am working on for the stand-up stage for a show I might call 'Almost Old' too. I'll let you know how the idea sits in a week or so.

 

#3: Making men: Too sensitive; too smart

The Pikachu our son once loved

When my firstborn was four (and loved the Pikachu pictured), as his gifted-ed ('Small Poppies) teacher turned the number '99' over on her wooden abacus he leapt to his feet and in perfect ecstasy exclaimed: 'Oh my goodness! What an enormous number!' Only he lisped at that age, so 'enormous' became 'enormouth', adding to the wonder-boy vibe. 

It was an open day at the gifted-ed for preschoolers he attended and a dozen or so prospective parents, mostly mothers, and their possibly-gifted toddlers were watching. And when they heard this from my son who was small for his age their jaws, as one, dropped open. I, meanwhile, swam in an ecstasy all of its own maternal pride a child of your blood and body doing well. 

Then, in his second week at school, after he had just turned five, he appeared on daytime TV in a documentary on the gifted-ed centre. On that show hosted by a famous young mum he multiplied two double-digit numbers together on paper, carrying the ten, and then read the four digit answer out. Again jaws dropped, perhaps across the country. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder (and dog) as portrayed in 'The
Little House on the Prairie' TV series.

At eleven he came second in the country in maths in his year and also provided one of the winning answers in the national lit quiz as the only 11-12-year-old who knew Laura Ingalls Wilder was the answer. He hesitated long enough for others to give the answer if they had known. They had not.

Again my maternal pride soared when I learnt about this (I wasn't there), especially as I had read him and his sister and younger brother all of Laura's extraordinary US frontier memoirs, loving them myself and even learning my craft (of memoir) from her. The TV series 'Little House on the Prairie' I absolutely loved as a child is based on her memoirs. All children should read, or be read, these books.

At 12... he (my first) appeared on New Zealand's Brainiest Kid and made it through to a tie-breaker in the semi-finals. His question was which two countries built the Concord, and his opponent, a Chinese girl, had to give the word for memory loss. My son knew immediately he heard her question, after he had answered his incorrectly, that he had lost, and he was right. 

But he was so gracious about losing when interviewed on camera after the show that everybody loved him for it and he was invited onto Breakfast TV to talk about being on the show, just him and onne of the female finalists - a female won the title, NZ's Brainiest Kid - not the girl who beat him. He was funny and entertaining on that show too.

But after twelve, the usual story, in his early teenage-hood he began to change, not wanting to read so much, so getting bored and missing that substantial brain stimulus that only good books can provide, wanting to do more computer, not sleeping as much, and so on. We, he and I, the two kind of 'big picture', maybe you could say 'big brained' people in the house, argued increasingly, especially around the family dinner table, which was not good for his sister and brother. I knew that but I had to try to reign in his young male arrogance. It felt like my job. I did not, ultimately, succeed. I paid for that trying with estrangement. 

I also had to get him off the computer for two afternoons a week at least. I succeeded for a while, but he was so surly on those afternoons that eventually I had to stop policing them. Then he grew out of my ability to discipline altogether, though I still tried. 

He lived with us till he was 24 but at twenty-ish he imported a couple of MAGA hats from China and wore one to the Sunday dinner table. When I reacted predictably he laughed. It was very childish.

We fought constantly, though there was a breakthrough of sorts when I got him a job at a computer start-up and he loved it. The first computer job I got him he didn't like. But then the good job fell through after about a year and he drove over a stray tyre on the day he was told they were letting him go and his spirits never recovered from those two blows on one day.

That was in 2017. Then in early 2018 he moved to Perth to live with his girlfriend who he had met online - of course. He returned for Xmas that year, but when his brother returned from Dunedin where he, at 19, had spent his first year away living with a group of male friends, the brothers did not get on, the younger being cockier and probably more charismatic than the elder, though the elder was probably smarter. The younger's intelligence was much more creative, which is harder to both hone and measure. He might be even smarter than his older brother. He certainly knows more about classic cinema than his older brother does and than most other people his age do.

But both, I think it is fair to say, are too sensitive, even the cooler younger one, and too smart. Smart people are supposed to struggle to be happy. I think that is what our sons are doing, and so are we, being too sensitive and too smart too.

Ultimately the estrangement at Xmas 2018 of both of them was all but inevitable, especially when you add his brother's story, as they estranged us together. I will get to 'son 2' and finish 'son 1' another time, I am busy checking the proofreader's work on my latest book that I hope to have published in November. But proofing the proofs for 187 single-spaced pages is proving slow work. And it's getting late (8.58). I'd better get back to it. 

Till next time, 

S. Jones

#2: A smacking

Today, a reprieve-from-parenting poem. Though you are always parenting, whether writing poetry or missing your long estranged sons. In that sense there is no reprieve, even if they leave this world. You will be their parent until the day you die, hopefully long before they do. 

Still, you can and must lean out of the parenting world, especially if they are estranged, and lean into your own creativity and personal journey, for want of a better phrase. Tonight (Wednesday) I am leaning in to poetry...

A smacking

I love the lapping of the flames,

the crackle, a smacking of lips.

The wood so hot it burns enthusiastic

I love the cat, classic on the lap

coiled and mottled soft,

listening to the fire

I love the room, four walls plus anti-chamber                     

lead-light lanterns and Turkish rug,

two guitars, three chairs and a jug

I love the warmth, melting my muscles

soothing the cold out of its stiffness,

the silence out of its stillness

I love the man, Wordling on his phone,

stoking the fire with primal deft,

reading Sam Neil

I love the night garden beyond

lit in yellow here and there,

a leaf, a sturdy flower, a stare

I love the squabs wall to wall,

an invitation to flop,

to spread yourself out. To stop.

I love the children on the walls,

smiling...

 

#1: Sugar kills sperm

Welcome to the inaugural "'Dead' Parents Society" blog, a blog dedicated to my reflections as a long estranged mother of two sons now 30 and 24, and more recently one daughter (28) on child estrangement, the experience, the studies and some thoughts on what's to be done to lessen the pain and bring about change... I'm a parent poet and I don't know it - perhaps that's the problem...

Our parenting experience beyond our marriage (when I was 21) began with infertility. For three and a half years we tried and failed to make a baby. Many things were wrong the specialists told us. My husband's sperm had motility and quantity issues. My fertility was fine but not bursting, they said, considering I was only 23-6 yrs old. 

However they were wrong. My husband's sperm at a later test was found to be much more motile and the count average. And I was about to be retested when we had to move cities and decided not to pursue that. Instead I read up on male infertility and eventually came across the claim that 'sugar kills sperm.' As I was a crazy sugar-obsessed bulimic at the time I knew on the spot that no matter how much of my sugar binges I got rid of there must be enough sugar in my system to be killing or at least dizzying my husband's sperm. I gave up sugar and binging that was boring without it and three months later, the recommended detox period, I had conceived our first son.

Our three, circa 2001

We got lucky. Because none of the fertility experts we consulted or books read had thought to ask about my diet and I was such a compulsive bulimic still recovering from my years of obsessive ballet dieting, that if not for wanting to make a baby so bad I would never have been able to kick my sugar habit. So we got lucky when I came across that strange piece of information while researching, as it happens, for a university essay I was writing on eating disorders.

But as it turned out, that was the easiest part of parenting. The rest of it was one challenge after the next, relieved by much joy and parental pride and fun, but all culminating in the abrupt and brutal total estrangement of that son and his five-years-younger brother and partially his younger sister too. 

What went wrong? Well everything and nothing, really. That's what this blog is going to be about, reflecting on the whys and wherefores of child estrangement through my personal experience as well as some study of the estrangement phenomenon that one expert has recently described as 'the silent epidemic.' Certainly we are far from the only parents to have been thrust into this state of limbo and longing for our children, and to the point that it does feel a little like a death. As if we are only half alive while waiting to see if our children ever come back to us. 

But at the same time the four to five years since the boys' estrangement have been energised by a sense of life is short and there are things to do, by wanting to live as long as possible and keep fit to be there for them if and when they do change their minds and want to get in contact. One feels more alive too somehow. It's a strange business all up.

But that is enough on it for now. My hernia is playing up after our fish and salad dinner. I need a quick walk and a stretch to relieve the trapped gas. I'm healthy and fit but middle-aged and menopausal. That's the deal.

Hope there might be something here for other estranged parents out there to feel supported and free to share their experiences in the comments. I'll do my best to moderate and respond.

Sacha the sperm killer

#2 How to argue with a rainbow

It's not easy to argue with a rainbow, as I found out recently when I attended Posie Parker's 'Let Women Speak' rally in Auckland on the 25th of March with the hope of hearing her speak about the dangers of trans ideology for women and children and, if I could, to argue my own case for discussing, in civilised terms, how the claims of TQ+ activists, who now run the rainbow, might be fairly reconciled with the the rights claims of biological women that are being thrown under the bus by the TQ+. 

Protesters against the 'Let Women Speak' rally,
Auckland 25 March, 2023

But the rainbow did not want me or any other woman to speak that day, and ensured we didn't speak by making so much noise with blow horns, piercing whistles and mass chanting, then by breaking down the barriers separating them - more than a thousand angry and righteously energised, mostly young women and men - and us - barely one hundred brave, mostly older, not so energised, females. 

'NAZI' is one of the signs they held against us:

Marriage equality in Australia Nov 2017: Celebrated as
'The best thing that happened today' here as: 'The right to love' 

N for 'Nasty'

A for 'Angry' 

Z for 'Zealot'

I for 'Idiot'

Though they were the ones chanting hateful slogans at women just wanting to speak.

All the while they menaced and threatened us, shouting and shoving, while we waited for Posie to speak, then broke down the barriers and stormed her in their many hundreds, pushing forward to where she was in the rotunda until she and her security decided her safety was at risk and did their best, risking their lives, to get her out of the mob that were openly baying for her blood. The police stood by and did nothing. This image is of Kellie-Jay after she survived the baying mob, but only just. The police only turning up at the last minute. 

The rainbow that I heartily celebrated here in late 2017 with the above and other joyous images, after the Aussies finally granted their gay community the right to marry, is not the rainbow of today. No woman got punched in the eye by a man on that occasion, as one 70-year-old woman was punched, fracturing her eye socket, in Auckland 2023. Nor did any woman get tomato soup tipped on her head the second she arrived to speak about women's rights, or be made to feel genuine fear for her life for presuming to speak against trans extremism, as Kellie-Jay did in Auckland that day, as this image clearly shows. 

This new rainbow appropriates all the good will and gay pride of the old one to bash women, feminists in the main, and children's rights advocates, many of them lesbians, over the head with it, to weaponize the rainbow in what can only be called now, with 'trans women' (men) being the loudest, angriest leaders of the movement, a men's rights movement. It's a rainbow of rage, with a humongous pot of gold for the makers of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones at the end of it. It and they must be stopped, or all our rights will be washed away in the rain that that bow brings.  

Trans women are men

 

Sugar and Spite #1: Cake and estrangement

This is my new blog, 'Sugar and Spite'. I could change the url for this site too or start a new site, but for now I am keeping the old site and name. 

I have not run an active blog for years. But I used to be very blog active. For about seven years I regularly 'blogged', usually at some length. I guess I honed my craft that way. But I let the habit slide. 

Everything changes, however, and with all the 'gender' trans v. women politics taking off at the moment and me kind of right in the middle of it as a proud and out 'Terf', which really just means a real feminist, I just feel I must start talking about things with you again, and by 'talking' I mean of course writing, one of the old 'legacy media' forms.

I don't Twitter much but I Facebook probably too much. But I prefer the longer form of a blog if I can find the time.

The sugar is the fun, the memoir highlights, the gossip and the food, not least cake, that I will be discussing with you. Especially the food, as I have just submitted a 100,000+ words on diet and related challenges to Bloomsbury Books health imprint in the UK. Food and me go way back. I will reveal details of this project as we go along. I will probably have to self-publish. Perhaps I can do that here.

The spite of the title is all the less sweet bits of life, from the Terfery and politics more generally, to the spite that too many women have shown me over the years, to the spite my two sons (29 and 24) are currently showing me and their father by estranging from us more than four years ago now, without a word or even an image of communication from either of them since, neither of them being active on social media. 

It is also the spite I feel for them some of the time. I want to hurt them as they have hurt their father, who entirely doesn't deserve this treatment from his sons (I am a slightly different matter, which we will come to). 

Or perhaps 'spite' is not what I feel. Perhaps it is closer to resentment that I feel, mixed with anger, the most common of the emotions, for ripping our otherwise functional and even happy family apart. I have the photos to prove the happiness. 

They are much more angry than me but they got their anger from me, who got it from my father. I never expressed my anger physically, and my older son's anger against me was far louder and more spiteful. I never wanted to hurt either of them but it definitely felt that they wanted to hurt me. Of course they felt I had hurt them, and feel still. And I know I did. Just that it wasn't intentional and I was trying to help them, even if it didn't seem that way. 

I also love them of course, and I think I always will. But those other, less sweet emotions are there too and if they keep it up for many more years I think they will sour.

But for now that will have to do for my first Sugar and Spite. It's late-ish (8.15) and I need to do my after-dinner sprint walk before it gets too dark. It's part of my battle plan. 

Ciao, SJ  

 

Thick and twisted

 

thick, twisted trunks of time

compete for sweets

with timeless tweets

narrow-hipped cyclists

pedal careless confidence 

in the face of well-wheeled,

broader-hipped cars

green-red hedges clipped

thick and slick

stand solid, safe and proud

you want to take a loud bite,

leave your messy mark

on the narrow-hipped site

but you can’t afford another chip

Pink hair does not a woman make

Human females have a constitutional (disease-resistance) advantage over human males, an advantage that the Covid pandemic is appearing to prove , especially in older people but the advantage exists at all stages of life; while men have a structural strength advantage over women, an advantage that transwomen in female sports are consistently and increasingly showing up to everyone's ultimate cost. 

These differences are not political, they're poetical, if anything. We should each be playing to such strengths not denying and trying to battle them, as trans activism is increasingly doing. Mother Nature knew what she was doing in creating these strength differences that should ultimately be complimentary not combative. 

Sex 'transition' by all means, as far as you can, if you want to live the outward life of a person of the sex other than that of your birth sex (for 99.99% of humans at least), but accept that you will never be able to reproduce like a person of the other sex or to run or even walk or indeed to battle diseases, and many more things besides, like a person of the other sex. 

So don't expect to be a person of the other sex. It's never going to happen. And in reality, if it were possible, none of us would want it to be the case, as much of the charm and challenge of human interaction lies in these differences - and in the similarities - when interacting with people of the other/same birth-sex as our own. Vive la difference. 

Women and men are not meant to compete with each other in physical strength and endurance tests, only in intellectual and creative ones, the much more meaningful tests of our individual strengths and abilities anyway, tests for which we can appear however we choose to appear in body size, shape, dress and gender identity, without it affecting our chances, in fair intellectual and creative tests at least. 

Mother Nature knew what she was doing in creating our different strengths. We should listen to the Mother.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/21/biological-male-wins-womens-cycling-world-championship/

Pink hair does not a woman make, rather a spoil sport. Man up, 'Rachel'. 

'Telling the [trans] truth is more important than being nice'

I used to think I was good at puzzles, being able to put the right pieces together in the right way at speed, but the issues arising in recent debates around trans rights and what it is to be a woman specifically that involve far more than 1,000 pieces, have tested the puzzler in me in new and disorienting ways, such that I don't know if I can claim to be 'good at' putting things together to make a coherent picture, fast or slow, anymore... 

Then a couple of mornings ago on Twitter one of my preferred commentators on the subject, Dr H Brunskell-Evans, a respected and trained social-political philosopher, posted this article from The Spectator that made me think that maybe I, who agreed entirely with its puzzling (analysis), have not lost my puzzling mojo altogether. The article challenged the BBC's reportage of 'a woman' found to have more than 80,000 images of child porn, including rape, on 'her' computer, when 'she' in fact had a man's body and had only 'identified' as a woman for a year. But the BBC saw fit not to mention these  details. 

I posted the article with this quote about truth being more important than being nice on Facebook and got only one 'like' other than my husband's. That's not particularly nice. And the truth, I suspect, is that my FB people are afraid of telling or endorsing the trans truth, namely that when we let men call themselves women and force authorities to do the same, all sorts of abuses of girls' and women's safety and freedom are likely to occur. 

The article also says that the police are yet to decide whether  thos paedophile should be sent to a female or a male prison. Really? Perhaps if he goes to a women's prison the women there can do his gender 'reassignment' surgery for him on the cheap, saving money on anaesthetic.

Then a couple of days ago, I read the article that includes the above image  raising concern about the increasing 'corporate colonisation of human sex' and the growing commercial industry around body mutilation, especially the double mastectomies performed on the perfectly healthy young breasts of women and girls who have questions about their gender and will be susceptible to persuasion by ads such as this, as all young and confused people are susceptible.  

The article claims, with good evidence, that the number of young women identifying as men has 'soared' in recent years in western cultures, with many choosing this drastic route of having elective breast amputations as well as skin grafts to create fake penises at a young age, and that the whole thing is being capitalised upon by the multi-billion dollar beauty and fashion industries and being sold to kids as trendy, while the media and Hollywood promote it as 'progressive.'

Call me old-fashion or much worse, as many have called Brunskell-Evans, but I think we have taken a wrong turn when we are celebrating people, probably men, making money off of young women cutting their boobs off, as well as letting men pass as women to better hide their paedophilic impulses and urges, and for better access to young women and girls in bathrooms and other public places, and we have done this and much more in the name of being 'nice' to gender confused people, we are the confused ones. And we are not nice. 

Horizontal therapy

Flowers to celebrate a rare, somewhat spontaneous sexual encounter with my husband of 5000 thousand years last night -- that's the marriage of 5000 thousand years not him, though he could be younger..., as could I...

This is NOT us having sex

I've been meaning to bring in the new season pink-white camellias, but it took a little horizontal therapy for me to finally do it...

I reckon sex brings out the 'femininity' of a person of the female disposition, just as it affirms the 'masculinity' of a person of the male disposition, at least good sex does, bad sex is something else entirely. It probably brings out the worst in people; the worst of man, the worst of woman. I'm lucky I don't  much about it personally.

But at this point in time (30+ years married) we both need a bit of preparation ('warning'), though not always, and not last night. It's so much better without warning! Hence the celebratory flowers. They're the coda... and the entree...

Killing Comedy

'Ding-dong the witch is dead, the wicked old witch is dead...'

... is a celebratory song lyric written by a couple of musical men in the 1930s for one of the most popular films of all times, The Wizard of Oz. And for fans of this song, film and character – the Wicked Witch of the West, whose death they so joyously celebrate, a character widely voted ‘the best witch’ and female villain of all time – you will be pleased to hear that they have been resurrected recently by a bar in central Auckland called Ding Dong Lounge that hosts a regular Thursday night open-mic comedy gig known as Dead Witch Comedy. The witch may be dead – ding dong – but she lives on every Thursday night in Auckland.

As it happens I do a bit of stand-up comedy and performed fairly regularly at this open-mic venue last year, but that was before it was renamed for 2020 as Dead Witch Comedy. Then it was more innocently known as Comedy at Ding Dong, and on those occasions, standing up under a green light, with my big nose and pointy chin (and mic stand for broomstick when needed), I was probably the closest thing to a witch in body if not name, living or dead, on the premises. Probably; one never knows for sure with witches. But I was certainly the only woman over 40, the minimum age for witches ‘real’ and fictional in these line-ups that were routinely young-male heavy.

But with the re-naming to Dead Witch Comedy to bring in the new year and decade, along with a new logo depicting a young naked woman on a broomstick in rear view, I decided I was not comfortable performing there anymore and got in touch with the man who runs the gig, telling him that I would not return while this new name and logo were in place and requesting that they be removed. He replied that he had no control over the changes but defended the naked woman logo by telling me it was taken from a 1910 painting. Oh, so it’s art. That’s alright then. 

Except by my reckoning it is not alright. Art has come a long way since 1910, but it needs to come further still. And so I have not been back to do my funny dance under the green light at Ding Dong since these changes – their loss. Only it’s my loss too of course because comics need as much broom time as we can get.

The NZ Comedy Trust and Guild have just received a chunk of money from Creative New Zealand, some for Covid relief and the rest, they say, for working to make our comedy industry more diverse. But the Guild has regularly advertised this open-mic gig on its Facebook page, as has the Auckland Comedy Community online group, a gig in name and logo that brazenly panders to the juvenile and sexist sensibilities of some straight men, especially young straight men, the dominant comedy demographic by far, while sexualising young and demonising older women, the most underrepresented demographic in comedy by some measure. And sure enough the line-ups for these DWC gigs that comics volunteer to take part in continue to see far more men than women signing up, with the average line-up being 10 to 2 men to women, as well as a male MC. 

And these numbers are repeated across the vast majority of comedy line-ups for rookie and paid pro gigs in Auckland and beyond, because the problem of male bias in comedy is of course not only at Ding Dong. They’re just the most brazen and, you could say, honest about it. But the problem is global and in my observation increasing, not decreasing, as it should be with more women every year trying to break into the industry and ‘killing it’ on the comedy stage when they are given the opportunity.  

It does not help that our physical safety is at risk in this industry, as recent, and not so recent, sexual-harassment and abuse complaints by women comics here and in the Irish comedy communities attest to, as does the tragic 2018 rape and murder of a young Melbourne comic on her way home from a gig and the penis graffiti mocking her violent death that was drawn at the site afterwards by an established male member of the Australian comedy community. This is already more than enough to put women off turning up to perform at open-mics and other comedy gigs, without us having to do so in the name of dead witches and naked women on broomsticks.

I would like to end on a joke but I am a little out of practice. Also, I don’t feel exactly amused by this situation, not least because I have already had a previous complaint about it publicly mocked and shut down by men and women in the NZ comedy community. But if we are serious about making the industry more diverse and spending public money wisely and fairly, my two cents worth (I’m not making a lot of money here) is that we need to take active measures to ensure we have more inclusive and less abusive ways to ‘kill’ on the comedy stage than with bare bums  and broomsticks.  Ding dong. 

Published in 'Scoop' magazine today here:   https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2006/S00167/killing-comedy.htm

Mall withdrawal

So... it's June already and I've only blogged once this year, way back in Feb, before Covid (BC), at least before the globalisation of this worst pandemic since anyone living can remember, even my mother, who is 96 . Admittedly, she doesn't remember much (except for my loooooooooong list of crimes, of course).

Apologies to anyone out there who might have missed me, I have been neglecting you a long time now and cannot blame any virus for that. So I would not blame you in the least if you have long since given up on me and moved on. Indeed we have all 'moved on' since those deceptively innocent times in Feb, some, tragically, not of their own volition. And so no one can blame anyone - well except HIM (and him, and...) for anything.

As I write, the Covid death toll has topped 400,000 and the number of cases this morning reached a staggering 7 million across more than 200 countries, which is most of them, though a handful of countries are now - for now - Covid free, including NZ almost (we have 1 active case), numbers that just a short time ago no one would have imagined possible, except of course for the many experts who predicted the very thing and told us to STOP LIVE ANIMAL MARKETS and various other precautions in an attempt to prevent such an outbreak, but we did not listen. Instead, we went shopping, in our various live animal markets...

Until we didn't.

And you know something has changed at the heart of the capitalist world when the malls are closed for business for whole weeks and months, as they were here for 2 months and are still elsewhere closed, a totally unprecedented occurrence. Oddly, though we thought we couldn't live without malls, it turned out that we (the lucky ones at least) could and did - everywhere except Sweden that is - and survived, with a little or a lot more cash in our pockets and fresh air in our lungs.

They reopened their many doors here on May 15 but we only capitulated to their bright-lights lure last weekend to get emergency shoes for two of our crew of three, one a birthday present (one pair not one shoe. We're not that cheap). And the small, mid-range shop we ended up favouring, according to its manager had done more than $2,000 in sales that day, and it was only mid-afternoon, which she informed us was a lot! A lot of work! It wasn't our fault, we didn't spend that much, we only bought two pairs and the second was half price!

But never mind shoes. The queue for the makeup shop shamed all the other shops, even the shoes, and suggested its customers might have been suffering a degree of mall withdrawal during lock-down. Suffer no more, the mighty mall is back, with its many lovely lures. Just beware those live animals, they are not all as lovely as they (we) may seem and look, with or without makeup -- and heels.   

Douglas: One giant leap for womankind

As a fellow white Australian female comic...



and after a couple of good nights' sleep, I feel strong enough now to talk about Hannah Gadsby's latest stand-up comedy special, Douglas that I watched live with about 2,000 other woman-identifying humans and my husband (and maybe another 12.5 man-identifying humans, if appearances are anything to go by) in Auckland last Saturday night.

It was brilliant.

As I prepare to stage my own solo stand-up show in the same city in a few weeks time on a slightly smaller scale as evidenced by the much bigger title 'Joke She Wrote: The Egg and Sperm Race II',  I feel I am nonetheless more inspired than intimidated by Hannah's astronomical achievements on the global comedy stage and her unique comedic talents as seen on epic display in this second of her international comedy specials.

Douglas, as reviewed in rave terms - by a man! - in 'London is Funny'  last year, is a show first and foremost about the absurdity of being a woman in a world where men get to name your body parts (including 'the Douglas pouch' located in our nether regions, after which she says her dog is named, and I don't doubt it) and mansplain to you about the importance of positivity: 'Ya know it takes more muscles to frown than smile' in a dog park. I guess men feel they have to tell us to smile because so many of them struggle to make us smile by any other means. It doesn't work. Perhaps they should come to our shows to try and get a better handle on what actually makes us smile - and frown. Just a thought.

But Jack Whitehall was doing his goofy privileged white-boy thing on the same night as Hannah's show in a 12,000-seat stadium just around the corner, so that would no doubt have absorbed most of the comedy-minded men in these parts, and many of the women besides. Because women go to see men of all orientations and arts perform (I've seen a fair bit of Jack), but men, well, they haven't quite made that 'giant leap' that Neil Armstrong claimed walking on the moon was for their kind to be confident enough in their manhood to pay money to see a show with no men (and a bit of feminism) in it. And for my money that's the giant leap they need to take; never mind the moon.

And although Hannah received vicious criticism from men for her breakout tour de force stand-up show, Nanette, men who told her that show was 'not comedy', as if they knew better than she did what made women (and a few good men) smile and laugh out loud, and as if she hadn't been fairly upfront about the show's more serious aspects, which she totally had, the fact that she has taken that hostility and turned it into a seriously funny follow-up show that doesn't shy away from calling out men like that who think they can shame and shut down a woman - a comic - of her calibre, is encouraging for the rest of us and a potential giant leap for womankind, I think, and by 'womankind' I mean of course all of humanity.

Following in those giant footsteps of Hannah's is not going to be easy when my turn comes, but I am happy to be honouring and I hope contributing a very small something to the new tradition of call-out feminist stand-up that she, and a few other brave female comics, has helped launch by giving it a go. 

Baby steps.

Oh and happy Year of the Rat -- god help us...

Lambs to the laughter (and me)

This was me - a sheep in lamb's clothing - last night at around 10pm (my bedtime for a Tuesday) second last in a long line-up of lambs in lamb clothing who had come before me, dressed to fit in - baaa -trying to make the lambs laugh...

To be fair, it was a stinker of a night and the short skirt and bare legs that are a little young I can see now, kept me cool while sitting through the youngsters - mostly rams - doing their baahaha thing.

I think at the point this snap was taken I was asking the guy in white shirt if he masturbates in his car... From the rear side slice of his face you can kind of see he is smiling, which is just as well, as he was one of the few audience members remaining after most had left at half time (it was nothing I said!).

Still, you can sleep when you're dead, or so they say. I have my doubts. I struggle to sleep in just about any situation. No rest for the... and all that. But I made the barman laugh, which I figure is a special victory considering how much rookie comedy he would have seen and the fact that he was probably the only sober person in the room.

Also, I think that guy will think twice before masturbating in his car (which he confessed to), which is probably a small but significant public service. You're welcome. Hopefully that makes up for neglecting you for months. I've been busy! as you can see...

For Emily (a not so quiet passion)

Just got around to watching the 2016 dramatisation of Emily Dickinson's life, A Quiet Passion, by screenwriter and director Terence Davies and thought it might be apt to come out of my blog hibernation to write a few words about it, Seeing as Emily herself lived in a kind of hibernation. In part this was due to the times she lived in, times when women's words were only allowed so far through the golden gate by the bearded gatekeepers who doubled as the gate-builders, those with hammer and nail in hand failed to fully grasp the main difference between sword and pen, namely that the male advantage is lost with the latter.

Sticks and stones may hurt her bones, and did, but her words would not be silenced and shut out for ever. Her words did not rust or warp, as the nails and pales of the gate did. And so through 'the gate' to immortality those words took her and with her us, the women writers who followed her, quiet and not so quiet, indeed less and less quiet, if in her shadow still and always. But it is a warm and welcoming shadow. 

The poem I wrote last night was kind of written in her honour, though she would probably turn in her grave to hear it, so I don't presume it is for her exactly. In fact I wrote it in bed wrestling with wakefulness in the wake of watching her story portrayed with startling intensity by former 'Sex And The City' star Cynthia Nixon, a role for which she was nominated for Best Actress, and a story that made me feel, more than I had done before, that Emily, whose collection of poems I have only just last year begun to read with any close study, was a kindred spirit indeed.

So as her bright light and long shadow grows on me, a developing influence that along with lack of sleep probably shows through in this poem, I say cheers Emily Dickinson, a not so quiet passion.

A not so quiet passion

In the black and white night
the shadows come out
to shout
grey
the colour of  time
hangs about
grazing the mind
warm and cold mingles
double, not singles
in the black and white night
cruel can be kind

11 years ago today

April Fool's Day 2008 was the final submission day for my PhD in political studies, a date I found a little ominous at the time.

But it has proven quite apt, in fact, because even though the subject matter of my thesis was about as far from funny or foolish as you can get (violence, gender injustice) last year, ten years on, I found myself making good use of the old PhiD by mocking the stigma attached to it for those of us who fail to make proper use of it, as I have failed, in my Auckland Fringe stand-up comedy show: 'The Egg and Sperm Race' for the purpose of making people laugh, which people duly did. And laughter is the best medicine, so doctor I was and am indeed.

They say nothing is wasted and I think this outcome proves this true as well as anything could, even if the ten-year research and writing period leading up to that 2008 Fool's Day was time-consuming, terrible and tortuous for me and all other members of my family and several (former) friends too, and even if it now looks as if my comedy career is also all but over for the foreseeable.

But they also say there is no fool like an old fool, and I'm starting to see what that means, and that means that I am still learning, learning about some other letters as well as P, H and D, which means my brain continues to function and grow, which is a good thing, probably. My husband might have a different point of view; he doesn't call me doctor indeed (though sometimes Nurse).

Mosque magic

It felt right somehow that we were stuck in traffic for over an hour making our way in to our local city-side mosque (the country's oldest mosque, Ponsonby's Al-Masjid Al-Jamie, opened in 1979), a place the existence of which we had just learnt of earlier that day when it was reported that it and other other mosques in our city (Auckland) would be opening their doors for people of all faiths to pay their respects and show their solidarity with the Muslim community of Aotearoa New Zealand in the wake of the slaughter of fifty Muslim people, men, women, and children, whilst in prayer at their mosques in Christchurch the previous Friday. 

There was an armed police presence beyond the flowers and words of love and solidarity that gave me a jolt of unfamiliarity bordering on fear as we walked in through the double gates, having been greeted at the gate by a young Muslim man who told us 'thank you for coming' with a smile that was also disarming for its openness and warmth. We had been asked to dress 'modestly' whilst attending the mosque, though a head scarf for the women was not required, and I had chosen not to wear a scarf, after some considerable deliberation. Now, seeing that every other apparently non Muslim women, except one, later on I saw one more, had chosen instead to wear the scarf I felt my choice consistent with my faith in the ongoing fight for female freedom and equality was questionable in that moment when the purpose of our visit to the mosque was solidarity with Muslims and the scarf, worn so poignantly and I think rightly by our prime minister Jacinda Ardern when she spoke in the wake of the killings to Muslim people in Christchurch, has become one of the most public symbols of solidarity. 

It is not about me indeed and I did not intend for my bare head to be a political statement at all and hoped it would not be seen as that or make anyone uncomfortable - I certainly dressed modestly in every other respect. I just felt I could not consistently wear a scarf and hoped that my bare-headed attendance at the mosque, humble in every other way, and sincere in my solidarity with the suffering of the Muslim people of Aotearoa and outrage at what was done to them and their faith by a man of my race and country of origin, might show its sincerity all the more. In hindsight that was probably presumptuous, and standing out with my bear head was probably drawing too much attention to myself, though for me wearing the scarf felt more conspicuous and a little gratuitous, even culturally inappropriate on some level too. But it was not about my feelings, it was about the feelings of others, those who were inviting me into their place of worship in the wake of terrible violence done to them and their community because of their faith. That was what I should have considered more.

There is much to be learnt from this violent act of racism and anti-Muslim aggression, not least for those of us who take it upon ourselves to try and teach others and fight for what we believe is right, as I have done for much of my adult life, if on a very small scale, and visiting a mosque for the first time last night, being warmly welcomed by several Muslim people serving us tea and snacks, inviting us to join them in prayer, has taught me that as individuals we are small indeed, as factions we are divisive, but as one people fighting with kindness for each other, for peace, for tolerance and togetherness, we are powerful and strong. As-salamu alaykum, peace be upon you and us.   

Comeback?

It's a funny word 'comeback', isn't it? Perhaps not for everyone. I think it might sound funny to my ears because they still ring with Rose in Titanic calling 'come back!' so pleadingly and pathetically for the life-boat to pick her up before she freezes to death. Of course that was two words not one. But still. In my head they're similar enough. But they worked rather better for Rose that night than they did for me this Sunday night just gone when I attempted my comedy comeback...

In hindsight I probably made too much of the comeback concept, after having had only ten months off stand-up, if following a fairly big and traumatising brouhaha between me and the comedy boss and associated people. Have I mentioned the details of that here? I can't quite recall. But it was messy and life-changing for me, having waited so long to start stand-up and doing pretty well at it up until then.

'So this is my big comedy comeback' I said to kick off my Sunday night set at the small trendy inner-city bar with corner stage, 'well, medium sized', I added after a pause. That got a faint laugh from the FOUR people in the audience, one of them my husband, and whichever of the other comedians performing that night who bothered to watch from the shadows at the back of the room. I couldn't tell how many of them there were.

I was the only female on the line-up apart from the emcee - Mexican, cute, young and bubbly - and courteously sat through all of the other comedians' fairly samey young male comedy about dicks and dope. My all-new (not young) set about tree masturbation and horse clitorises was probably not quite so samey and seemed to throw and or exhaust the patience of the tiny audience, though they didn't respond much better if better at all to the dudes and emcee. Comedy really does need a crowd.

But my husband said heading home that my material was too absurdist and 'brainy' for a pub audience, not that the three people with him constituted an audience exactly. But he reckons I'll have to 'dumb it down' next time, and shorten it too. What me, long-winded? Noooooooo.................

We'll see, if there is a next time. The guy who runs these gigs and who coaxed me back to stand-up - which took some coaxing as I was (and am still) pretty battered and bruised by that brouhaha - didn't show up, as he had said he would and as he invariably does. He texted forty-minutes in to say he wasn't feeling well but might come in later. He didn't. And I didn't get his text till I got home (forgot my phone as usual), when I replied 'you didn't miss much.' But when he got back to that to say they 'usually have a good crowd' I couldn't help telling him that his presence there (he's a very well known local comedian) probably makes the difference. He hasn't replied to that comment, possibly assuming it came with some blame, which I guess it did, but only a little. If you're sick you're sick and there is a bug going round. The thought that that 'bug' might be me and that the fallout from the brouhaha was responsible for keeping other comedy people and friends and possibly even him away, I am trying not to entertain, though there is some strange comfort in it. At least I might matter, if in all the wrong ways.

If I do have another comeback after this, I think I might have to dumb down (or is it dumb up?) my outfit too. Not quite sure what I was going for there, I changed my mind to my dance shorts (cut off long pants) and tights (red) at the last minute for reasons not entirely clear to me. I heard an old and wacky comedian recently comment that when he dressed smartly the audience were more willing to accept his wackiness and laugh at it rather than cringe with worry that they were listening to the sad ramblings of a madman. I think I might have to take a leaf out of that guy's book, I'm sure people's tolerance of wackiness (and scruffiness) in women is even less than it is for the unfairer sex.   

'It's a bit like Louis C.K.'s comeback, only I don't like to use the term "comeback" in his case....don't want to encourage him' I also dared to say last night. It got another faint laugh. But I don't think I'll be able to re-use it; you can probably only comeback once.

Pussy Riot (Auckland)

Pussy Riot founding member Maria Alyokhina, imprisoned for her anti-Putin and patriarchal church-state protest

So I took my daughter to Pussy Riot in Auckland last night and it was an experience and a riot alright but we had to work for our riot (and our 'pussy'; there were a couple of blokes added to the line-up of five, in my view two too many).

First of all our tickets bought online were invalid, thanks to a scam run by someone called 'Dada King' and the booking agent Viagogo, though we thought we were booking through Auckland Fringe. And second, the female punk rock band from Wellington (forgot their name) who were on before Pussy were SO loud and ranting I had to rush out and buy ear plugs, well in fact the guy at the bar took pity on me and gave me a set for free. But still.

There is a common thread here I know, I am too old for this shit! The Dada King's of this world see people like me coming and people ranting at insanely high volume, girl, boy or other, is not anymore my idea of a fun night out, though the wild vibe was some fun with the bright orange, I don't look square at all, plugs in. And Dada won't see me twice! No sir. With our bank's help we are working to get our money back from Dada and Viagogo, who facilitated his (apparently he is a he, no surprises there) shameless thievery. I'm embarrassed to say how much he took us for, but hopefully we can get it back and he can go to hell with all the other false (and real life thieving) kings. We were not the only Riot fans he scammed either. There was a whole queue of us, and not all of them 'old' either.

But the show, despite these slight obstacles, was still worth going to (with freshly minted legitimate tickets) on a wet humid Friday night, standing room only, especially to see the principal Pussy and founding member, Maria Alyokhina, who was sentenced to almost two years in a Siberian prison for her efforts to challenge the corrupt patriarchal administrations of church and state under Putin. She makes for a compelling front-woman providing the main narration of the story they told with surtitles and video taken of their church-based protest and political aftermath that is drawn from her memoir.

I think they might have had their day though, Pussy Riot, and been co-opted a bit by the wider cause of fighting against church and state and political imprisonment -- they showed footage of a whole bunch of blokes, old and young, apparently former political prisoners now released; there's obviously a lot of that still going on in Russia -- at the expense of the feminist fight against the actual man that Pussy Riot was, or at least seemed to be, originally focused on, even if that apparently wider protest against corruption in high places is no doubt worth rioting about too.

It's just that we've had so many riots about that, indeed Russia practically specialises in them. And the extent to which what has happened to Pussy Riot is yet another case of feminist activists being sacrificed and partly silenced for the so called 'greater' good and purpose of serving one or other fight for power and justice between men, then I can't help thinking it is a bit of a sad sign and day for women of the world.

But let's hope this is not the essence of the situation and that Pussy Riot can still symbolise for women around the world the power and importance of our voice to stand up against corrupt men and the women who continue to put up with and defend this gender hierarchy and ignore the inevitable corruption that results from having too many men at the top.

Pussy Riot reclaimed the p-word from a term of female sexual objectification and demeaning used by men to a term of empowerment and solidarity for politically woke women. That is a great thing. Let's remember that and make sure that the riot doesn't become louder than the PUSSY. Riot on!

 

Loving Levy

Deborah Levy's second memoir The Cost of Living saved my sanity in Sydney over Christmas last year when our sons... well, let's just say there was a midnight visit from a man and woman in blue. It is too close to the blood bone to say any more than that now. Even this probably says too much. With my boys (now young men) I feel increasingly it is better I say nothing at all. I am trying.

It was a very emotionally expensive time, a time when the cost of family and motherhood especially rose steeply in my eyes and I felt I might fail to rally the emotional funds necessary to pay for it all. I had brought Levy's slim book (a pre-Christmas gift from my husband) with me to read -- if I had time, between all the festive family fun I had planned and organised from a great distance of time and place before this watershed moment. Badminton was going to be involved in these festivities, the best value family sport because nobody cares if they don't win and any number can play, even an odd number -- as we are. And a shuttlecock has no sharp edges and moves in such a playful way too, sometimes getting stuck in the strings before you realise it and give the thing that isn't there a great hopeful thwack with your racket. Ha, ha! What a great, easy laugh that never failed, or never did fail. There would be no badminton this festive season; there would be no boys in fact after the first night (22nd). And it was going to take more than a stuck shuttlecock to save us.

So after drawing breath the next morning with my husband, who was not spared but blamed for taking my side, I picked up Levy's slim book and it, she, spoke to me of motherhood and womanhood in my time, and time of life, and I felt immediately I could face what I was living, the cost of living my life in and through those terrible moments to find a way back, or forward, to... I don't yet know what or where. But Levy made me believe there would be a what and where.

And yesterday I finished her even slimmer, fantastically titled, first volume of memoir, Things I Don't Want to Know and felt again my breathing ease as the hope of recovery and redemption from the challenges ongoing with my boys (men) returned. This is what a good book, a good author, can do. It is better than badminton indeed.

And it did not matter that I had read her memoirs in the 'wrong' order, the second first, for this one is in part a long essay response to Orwell's 'Why I Write', and a stand-alone piece in that respect, plus one that plays with chronological time anyway.

She writes, she says, to 'speak in my own voice', which she knows is much harder to do than it sounds, harder for a woman, that is. She challenges Orwell's claim that 'sheer egoism' is a necessary quality for a writer, countering that 'even the most arrogant female writer has to work overtime to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.' I know exactly what she means.

Right now, January just done, I am not sure how I will make it all the way forward, and back, to December. Indeed I can't imagine how we will ever achieve another family festive season. But knowing that Levy is writing a third volume makes that imagining a little easier, and gives me the courage to figure out how I might find the words to write and fight my way out of the mire and back into the magic of motherhood. Perhaps it's time to turn down the volume a bit. Take a leaf out of Levy's book.