hot and spicy

Why, yes, I am still alive and kicking, and thanks for asking -- and I've just recently arrived on holidays in wint'ry, frosty, icicle-ly brrrr-y BrisVegas.

A freezy wind is blowing in from the tundra and I'm sitting on a white leather sofa in my bestest girlfriend V's funky townhouse in a ritzy mountain hamlet high on the range where it's a refreshingly raw sub-zero outside with sago snow fluttering down against the window, but a cozy 20*C inside, thanks to the modern miracles of gas heating.

It's Bloomsday and, in the apparent absence of the full Irish breakfast which I was expecting but which failed to materialise (and because, let's face it, as a long-term vegetarian I am not altogether enamoured of sausages, devilled kidneys, kedgeree, black pudding and kippers), I'm curled up sipping latte and dreaming of the Gluhwein and deep-fried camembert V has promised me later.

To look more "at one" (oh, as if) with the abundantly affluent locals 'round these parts, I've forsaken the Daisy Mae Scragg gladrags I've worn pretty much solidly for past several months at home in favour of swathing myself in suede, patent leather, cashmere, fur and velvet -- in fact, it's quite an excess of velvet even for me. I'm bedecked in my brand-new and ultra-divine swirling black cashmere cape edged with fox fur, which makes me feel not unlike Little Red Riding Hood. (Only blacker, obviously.) I'm wearing a huge Rocki Gorman silver cowgirl pendant, hooked onto a necklace that's fashioned from about a tonne of turquoise nuggets, and Rocki's "Goin' Batty" pendant on a long string of coral beads. My wrists are weighted down (so much so that my arms have assumed almost Simian proportions, perfect for a spot of banana-peeling) by enormous jangly silver rock-chick bracelets with peace signs and turquoise Navajo crosses dangling off them. My earlobes are drooping (nearly to my shoulders, actually) by enormous antique Mexican Oaxacan wedding earrings made of pounded-out silver coins and snipped into primitive dove-shapes.

My vintage-inspired burgundy Coach handbag has the loveliest coyote fur trim around the top of it (my husband says it's clearly the most vagina-like of ALL my many womb-substitute handbags and gets all wistful about just how much fun it must be to slide one's whole hand into it all the time) and I keep sneaking admiring glances at it and stroking the vulva-ic furry edge and feeling very much like an archetypal Woman Who Runs With The Wolves. A coyote fur headband is wrapped attractively around my newly-layered and shaggily-razored butch-dyke greying mane (I'm getting in early in embracing my imminent Cronedom -- I figure that way it'll be less of a shock later) and a coyote fur boa drapes elegantly around my neck. My feet are stuffed into rich-chocolatey slouchy fringed suede boots. I am a toasty-warm and delicious vision in brown, black, burgundy and turquoise and I feel exactly like a curious hybrid of Janis Joplin, Annie Oakley, Frida Kahlo, Bella Cullen, Nora Barnacle, a Snow Bunny, a Mountain Man and Miss Hiss, Cattle Queen of the Wild Frontier.

I look positively sensational, by the way. Gorgeous, even. You know, just quietly, sometimes my unassuming and effortless stylishness (not to mention my enduring ethereal beauty) scares even me.

And it would scare you, too. To be perfectly accurate, *I* would scare you. Especially if, say, I chased you with an axe.

Which I SO wouldn't, because it's not as if I've done that sort of thing before. Truly, I would never chase anyone with an axe.

Fine, so there was that one time with the slovenly and spiteful former flatmate, I admit. But technically it was a tomahawk and it's not as if anyone got hurt, is it? Other than those few lacerations on her neck which healed very quickly and only needed a couple of stitches. Twenty at the most. It's not like anyone's head actually came completely off and rolled around in the gutter, is it? Some people just like to complain. Picky prissy pussy-bum's-mouthed princesses. I'm not Lizzie Borden, you know.

And maybe the whole experience taught the lazy slagfaced bitch to pick the bathmat off the floor after she'd finished with it, you know?

But I digress.

Anyway, that's enough about things that may or may not go chopchopchop in the night, and about the fabulous things I may or may not be wearing. This was meant to be a very short entry and I promise to write a proper entry about my holidays REALLY SOON -- like, this very week.

Maybe.

I say "Maybe" because that's the kind of person I am: whimsical, capricious, unpredictable AND poss. a tad unreliable to boot. Also, I'm a busy woman. Got a lot of work to do around the couch, you know. (And around the refrigerators and cocktail cabinets of the various friends I'm freeloading off as we speak. But, in my defence, I will say that I arrive bearing FABULOUS hostess gifts. Seriously. We're talking Prada "Fairy" and Louis Vuitton "Mahina" handbags for my benefactors, kittens. Sure they're knockoffs, but they're near-perfect mirror replicas. AAAAAAA. And trust me; I know about this stuff. Designer handbags -- not unlike cowboys, in fact -- are my weakness. Also my one true area of expertise. My "Mastermind" topic, if you will. Go on; ask me anything.)

So just so you know, I'm quite the generousest of freeloaders, all things considered. In fact, you'd WISH I were your guest, if for no other reason than to get the handbags.

Plus I have the best dinner-party stories. With a virtual limitless repertoire. Truly, I've been dining off some of those yarns for years. And they just keep getting better with every re-telling.

Anyway, I've left my puppybabies and my darling husband behind on the ol' Kozmic Rancho, where he's beavering away putting the finishing touches on his booful new office which we've had built adjacent to our homestead, just a short skipnjump from the Very Authentic And Rustic Woodsy Adirondack Ski Lodge And Big Lake Wilderness Deer Park Nestled In The Pine Trees Offering Campsites, Cabin Rentals, Trout Fishing, Bear Hunting, Bird Watching, Snowmobiling And Canoe Hire (formerly known as the sleeping porch).

Do you realise -- and I know you'll find this as hard to believe as I do -- it's nearly eight months since I've left the ol' rancho for more than a single day or so at a time? Pesky things like fires and floods and deaths in the family and a shitload of cattle mustering and fencing and building work at home (oh, and my husband peskily setting fire to his own arm to prevent me from going anywhere for any prolonged period whatsoever because I needed to stay home to dress up in the Naughty Night Nurse costume and change his dressings hundreds of times a day) seem to have conspired to keep me chained to the stove cooking for cowboys, stockmen, ringers, drovers, stock and station agents, truck drivers, veterinarians and electricians.

And builders.

But at least Rancho Hiss is starting to look all spic and span (is that how one spells it?) again, if for no other reasons than that the pergolas that were damaged in cyclones a couple of years ago are no longer falling down into sad little heaps of rubble and matchsticks all around us.

And, miraculously, J and I did actually managed to run away from home TOGETHER for a couple of days a few weeks ago, to luxuriate on the coast and reawaken our long and passionate (but somewhat exhausted from all the interminable building projects) romance to the wonders of motel living (and the sensuous delights of the mini bar). We left the rancho in the immensely capable hands of my old student (and drop-dead handsome Beckham lookalike) Jay and his sweet little cowgirl-sheila Tee and three dogs and their pet baby kangaroo with the imaginative name Joey, who looked after our furry and feathery babies for us AND did some marvellously complicated Jackson Pollock-esque effects involving carefully-measured amounts of pigmenty-polymer-flakes and glitter and quartz-shards and epoxy resin on our front and back verandahs, and in the gazebo, and on the side verandah, and at the front entrance near the gate.

I'd selected a rather festive and particularly sparkly design called "Carnivale" from a sample that was about the size of a postage stamp, so I had to trust that my hitherto-impeccable design instincts hadn't failed me and that my choice was indeed sound and correct and that after their glorious efforts I'd be able to shimmy topless from one end of the house to the other in a frolicsome and gladsome fashion, not unlike all those times (which I'm sure you remember as fondly as I do) when I led the parade in Rio while riding an pink-tinted elephant and wearing only a tan, a few coloured beads, some sequinned tassels on my nipples and a winning smile.

And goshdarnit if I weren't absolutely, awesomely spot-on with the colour selection after all.

Jay also had the foresight to re-level the concrete first, which previously was a bit like an especially unthrilling rollercoaster in places due largely to the number of echidnas who for one reason or other seemed to have decided to make their burrows underneath it. Honestly, it was like living on top of the Wombles of Wimbledon Common except that echidnas don't recycle rubbish or wear knitted scarves and top hats (but, somewhat charmingly and just a tad rakishly I suggest, no trousers).

That I know of.

I often think that the Secret Life of Echidnas would be a wonderful thing to explore. (I mean, really. All those pricks! Just imagine! [And please forgive my incredibly cheap shot there.])

But I don't really know a whole lot about the process -- of resurfacing the concrete, I mean, not of being a Womble, although if the truth be told I'm possibly not up to speed on that one either -- largely because the minute Jay started saying words like cementitious and screed and activator and membrane and porosity and viscosity, and pretty much everything starting with "poly", and grout and mortar and pestle (although I may have misheard that last one) I scurried away because if there's one thing I absolutely do not engage in it's long-winded blokin' conversations about basic building materials and advanced construction methodologies.

So, anyway, once all the pesky visionary business for the design of the newly-levelled sparkle-darkle verandahs was completed, but before the job was actually done, my husband came up with yet another plan, as is his wont. "I've just had the most scathingly brilliant idea!" he exclaimed. "Let's pull down the old roof-challenged bushhouse/greenhouse adjacent to the washhouse, toss all of Miss Hiss's terracotta pots and plants and wire birdcages and completely priceless museum-quality collection of ceramic elephants and Buddhas on the rubbish dump and build me a brand spanking-new office on the foundations!"

But apart from the tiniest squeak of dissent from me at the thought of traipsing to and fro hauling back all those pachyderms and Siddharthas at some later stage, I'm completely thrilled. For one thing, this new erection (heh) places my husband squarely in a proper purpose-built outside office with attractive leafy aspect and dazzling views to the fishpond and the aviary, and beyond that the fabulousness of the pig sty and the horse paddock, and for another I'll very soon get my Goddess Room back.

You may remember that a few years ago I converted a spare bedroom into a deliciously frothy apparition in red, purple, hot pink and orange. (Just quietly, I suspect I may have been partially inspired by Satine's elephant-boudoir in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" and partially by a uterus. Yep, there's that pesky womb-business again.) I filled the Goddess Room with bookcases crammed with all my witch/goddess/spells books, moved my altar and all its accoutrements in there, draped gauzy sequinned curtains and fringed gypsy shawls on the windows and doorway, piled fur throws and mirrored cushions all over the sofas and, with a certain final insouciance I like to think, threw leopard-print scatter rugs all over the floor.

It was utterly divine and lush and magickal and all my girlfriends would scuttle in there to eat cakeys and drink margaritas and light incense and listen to rainforesty-mountainy-streamy-snowstormy-whalesingingy-sounds CDs and say, more than a touch pensively and in fact downright enviously, "Oh, how I wish *I* had a Goddess Room."

That period of breathtaking beatific bliss lasted approximately five minutes, by the way, before my husband cruelly cast me out of my little self-created Girly Eden and rudely commandeered my Goddess Room to take it over as his Bloke's Office. He moved all my fripperies and fringes and feathers and furs and flibbertigibbeties OUT and all his horrible black leather and chrome office furniture IN, hung his certificates and diplomas all over the walls and his big red Bumper Nuts on the door � I mean, BALLS on a Goddess Room, pish tosh! -- and declared his new Blokin' Room open for business.

In other words, he completely pissed (although not literally, I do hope) all over my sacred space and scrotumated, gonadified and encockised (my own words, but you are more than welcome to run with them) the place. And I was, as you can completely understand, I'm sure, shattered. (And, to be perfectly accurate, just a wee bit furious. And, as you know by now, I'm not a woman who angers lightly. With or without a tomahawk in my hand.)

But those dark awful days are now all behind us both, as the custom-built office is finished and in the middle of being furnished. There seems to be an unending supply of flat-pack desks, map tables, credenzas, returns, workstations, mobile drawer units, hutches, tower boxes, filing cabinets and bookcases being assembled on the concourse and moved in there, if the emailed photos my husband is firing off to me since I left are any indication.

Honestly, the little sausage is as happy as a dog with two tails up there decorating his man-cave -- or as happy as a man with two penises.

Or a wife whose husband has two penises.

Anyway, now that you know what's been going on at home, here's the story I really wanted to tell you:

Before I left to drive down here on holidays last week, I thought I'd be the fabulously considerate wife I am (but so rarely reveal the side of) and assemble a selection of appropriately "corporate" artworks for the walls of J's new boys' room. So I dug out a huge and valuable original watercolour of the Downs country where J grew up (a gobsmackingly generous gift from an art-collecting dear friend of ours who's dying from cancer as I write this) and a large black and white photograph of a sea of men wearing cowboy hats taken at the Cattlemen's Bar at the BrisVegas Exhibition (a wedding gift to us from J's ex-girlfriend).

I figured that these two pieces, along with a large framed property map of Rancho Hiss and all of J's academic qualifications and "Certificates of Participation" and his myriad "Can Tie Own Shoelaces", "Knows All His Colours And Most Of His Flat Shapes" and "Sometimes Remembers To Feed The Guinea Pigs" awards, would be the perfect accessories for his new office.

A few moments before I was leaving, though, I suddenly remembered a charming watercolour painting that J's father gave me several years ago, of J's grandparents' magnificent homestead and gracious gardens (complete with peacocks) deep in the heart of the finest stud-Merino wool-growing country of western Queensland. I dutifully scurried back inside and found the painting and re-read the lovely note inscribed in the neatest and most carefully wrought old-lady handwriting on the back of the frame: "To N and N, with the fondest memories of the times I've spent here visiting you both. Do remember you are welcome at my place any time. Your loving sister and sister-in-law, Joy. 1968."

"This is so lovely!" I exclaimed to J, feeling as I was a little misty-eyed and mellowly-familial. "I'd forgotten how sweet it is! Now remind me, who's Joy?"

"That's Pop's (J's grandfather's) sister, Auntie Joy," J explained. "She painted it for them after a visit there once."

"Tell me everything you know about Auntie Joy, please," I instructed (as I am wont to do).

"Um ... well ... I can't remember very much about her, because she was a lot older than Pop and we didn't see her very often and I was only a teenager when she died."

"But you must remember SOMETHING!" I shrieked at him. (As I'm wont to do when others do not impart information quickly enough to assuage the eternal boredom of my razor-sharp steel-trap mind, and when the highway is a-calling.)

"Um ... well ... she farted a lot, and she lived at Double Bay."

Well. After hearing this little biographical gem I rolled around on the floor wheezing with laughter and gasping for breath for a couple of minutes, although I do realise it might not have the same jarringly incongruous hilarity to someone who isn't Australian -- so I'll just explain it a little.

Double Bay is one of the most "desirable" and prestigious suburbs in inner Sydney. It's a stunningly pretty and chicly cosmopolitan village right on the harbour, with elegant leafy streets and the "smartest" designer boutiques, jewellers, hair stylists, beauticians, restaurants, cafes and street-side coffee shops. It's known as the most fashionable and expensive shopping district in Sydney. It's Sydney's answer to Rodeo Drive. Real estate there is monstrously expensive -- a classic Art Deco apartment unit with harbour views will set you back a couple of million dollars, a refurbished character cottage is about six or seven million and a grand family home (of which there are surprisingly many) will easily cost you 12 million or more.

Aunty Joy lived in one of the latter, apparently, right on the harbour. She was seriously rich -- a real lavender-haired flower-arranging society matron. She was also a stylish hostess, musician, painter, actress, writer, poet, antiques collector, patron of the arts, charitable fundraiser, world traveller, sailor, equestrienne, sculptor and gardener.

Presumably, too, the old darling had a teensy bit of a problem with flatulence. "You know, in that way old ladies have when they fart in front of people whenever they feel like it and just don't care or apologise for it," added J by way of explanation (and just a little defensively, I might add).

Well, to be brutally honest I really DON'T know about that peculiar (albeit quaintly endearing, I'll go out on a limb and say right here) quality of old ladies, but it's certainly gratifying and just a little consoling to know that I have that kind of gay sphincteral abandon to look forward to during my own scarily-imminent Senior Moments.

You know, sadly I just didn't have time to sniff that painting of Auntie Joy's, being as I had to leave for the drive down here -- and you girls out there know how it is when you're going away for a little while, what with all that last-minute packing, blowjob-giving and applying touch-up lipstick business -- so I do hope her masterpiece doesn't need a bit of a haz-chem hose-down or a jolly good dousing with Chanel No. 5, at the very least, before he puts it on the wall.

But it is a very nice work of art, all things considered, although I have no idea how Auntie Joy managed to fit it into all her other accomplishments in her hectic farts-filled life. (Plus, unlike me, she was the kind of woman who would not be caught DEAD in the same room as a knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag.)

Yet, despite all of dearly departed Auntie Joy's admirable artistic and humanitarian achievements, how is this remarkable old lady summed up by my silvertongued, complex, sensitive, minutely-attentive-to-detail, mysterious, esoteric, abstrusely philosophical, deeply insightful husband, a.k.a the James Joyce of commemorative literary prose?

"She farted a lot and she lived at Double Bay."

What an epitaph. It's sparse reductionism at its finest.

I can't wait to hear what he plucks out of his arse for me, when the time comes.

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