Wild Sovereign Development Site

Category: funny how

  • tall

    The other day we found a bookstore which has a cafe in it. These are little paradices, or is it paradie. What a sweet cool feeling to leave behind the clamour of the street and let the doors close on a spacious room whose wall to wall shelving is interrupted only by a serving counter, an espresso machine, a stack of cups.

    We separated and began foraging round the overfull shelves like fish nibbling at the walls of a fish tank. I pounced on exactly the book I wanted, Alan Bennett’s diary extracts and essays; he carried to the table a small pyramid of Marshall McLuhans. Our coffee arrived. We began to read. The older couple at the next table got up and came past us on their way to the counter. The man, a bluff, rural Queenslander type, addressed me across my companion’s back. “So. How tall IS he?”

    I said, “He’s right here. Why don’t you ask him yourself, if you want to know. Don’t you think it’s rude to talk across somebody about them, without addressing them directly?”

    He was hurt. “I just noticed as he was wandering round the shop. I kept wondering, how tall is that bloke.”

    I put my hand on my companion’s beautiful shoulder. He closed his book. “Imagine he gets asked that question a lot. Imagine we both do. Maybe it feels dehumanising to constantly be asked about something you can’t do anything about. I get asked it, too.”

    His wife said, “Our daughter’s tall.”

    I said, “Well, then, she will know what it feels like. It’s amazing how people feel entitled to ask that question when we are not even in conversation, we haven’t even spoken. I’ve even had people ask me my height, and then refuse to give their own – as though mine were some kind of freakish public statistic but theirs is personal information.”

    “Our daughter’s six foot two,” she said, gamely. “Me too,” I said. Her husband said, across me, “Seven feet?”

    “Nearly,” said the Marshall McLuhan fan.

    “He’s about six foot eight,” I said. A series of fresh questions ran through my head: How old are you? How much do you weigh? Have you measured that beer belly, what’s its circumference? But the poor man was labouring so hard to restore the goodwill he imagined he’d lost, was so awkward in his warm-heartedness, that I didn’t want to make the point because clearly he would think I was being hurtful, he wouldn’t get it, he would perhaps even not have the resources for self-expression and processing his emotions that some of us have worked hard for, and I didn’t want to leave him with an insect sting all the rest of the long hot trafficky afternoon. The only thing I feel certain of in life is this: you don’t gain ground by hurting the people who have hurt you.

  • beekeeper

    @…………..

    Sister-in-law: “Yeah that was my uncle who used to be a beekeeper. But then he lost all his bees.” Brother (mournfully): “Yeah. ‘I used to be a beekeeper but now I’m just… a keeper.’” Mum: “But he didn’t keep them, he didn’t keep them at all!” Brother: “‘I used to be a beekeeper, but now I’m just… a bloke.’” Nephew: “We have four chooks. Salty, Fairytales, Slippers, Goldie, and Superchook.” Second brother: “Only Salty turned out to be a rooster so we sent him out to a farm. He’s died now.” Me: “Really?” Brother: “Yeah. And the neighbours have two chooks that turned into roosters. The neighbours closer to town.” Nephew: “We could play chess. But there’s too many of us.”

  • bigness

    bigness

    Deciding not to put up with the height shite any longer has been inneresting. 18 months’ Northern Europe offered a break, I suppose, from the constant commentary that has been part of my life uninvited since I was 11 or 12 and now I see it so sharply and can’t stand it anymore. It’s not so cruel I think as the more dangerous kinds of discrimination and prejudice people encounter, for example on the basis of race. But its essence is the same. You are different to me; what I am is the norm; that gives me the right to comment uninvited and pass judgement on your qualities that are not behavioural, are simply genetic, that exclude you and you can do nothing about.

    “How’s the weather up there?” reminds me that to some it’s surprising to realise we are both living in the same shared world. “You are both too tall!” as the girl at the fruit shop blurted this afternoon invites only one answer, “Too tall for what?” and it’s simply not convincing when she smiles encouragingly, comfortingly, and assures me, “Good! I meant it’s good!” No, you didn’t. Any more than the oft-repeated “Jeez, you’re a big girl! How tall are you?” is persuasive when followed with, “No, no, it’s a compliment!” I get that great height brings with it presumptions of power and influence, particularly for people who are still responding, in their hearts, every time they look up at someone, the same way they felt when they were tiny and everyone taller than them was a teacher or parent or adult and thus had mysterious power and authority over them. But the compliment, if there is one, is something like, “You are enjoying an unearned advantage, you have a natural wealth that I don’t share in, I am envious, your life must be somehow easier and more pleasurable because of it and I imagine you coasting into things I have to work for….”… “You are different from me, I resent that.”

    I can’t imagine tackling some stranger with their back turned to me on the bus with a question like, “Jeez, you’re a big girl, I’m not sure I’ve really ever seen a girl as big as you…. How much DO you weigh?” And then persisting when they say they’d rather not say, with “Oh, no – it’s a compliment.” I learn a little something about our rudeness to each other every week of adulthood. And strangely I have no regrets about not getting to know the very short, very bald guy who came up to me on the dance floor when I was all lissom and loose and had forgotten my height, weight, age, address, ambitions, and day job and only the sweat held me down beneath the floating plastic ceiling of the music and smiled greasily and said, like he was making me an offer, “I’d like to climb you.”

     

  • the drug of war

    the drug of war

    War on drugs is not working. Except, of course, as a war: dispute over territories, profit for those who manufacture destructive products, wasted expenditure, huge casualties. I wish compassion could be administered as machine-gun bullets can but it’s a laborious infantry, a science in its infancy, a sophisticated machinery many of us are too fearful to use. What is the point of making war on one another and war on our own weakness. War is war.

  • are you calling me a racist?

    are you calling me a racist?

    Got lured into a conversation tonight that reminded me of the old truism: that in some circles it is ok for white people to say whatever they like about black people, as long as no people say about those white people that those white people may be racist. Cos, like, that’s the *real* insult. That’s the really unforgiveable prejudice.

    This is my suggestion for a new Australian flag.

     

     

  • so much spoilt

    It’s very nice to “take time every day to think through your day and see if there’s anything you can be genuinely grateful for”. But such advice also makes me a little sick. Why don’t our social-media lists of “today I am grateful for…” start with breathable air (thank you, Shanghai), clean running water (thank you, Sahara), and supermarkets overflowing with foodstuffs? How numb do you have to be before it requires a deliberate hunt through your day to see “if there’s anything” you can be glad of? If there’s anything? Anything? How slowly and creakingly does this process have to run before it will effect an actual change in our over-consuming, greedy, wasteful, polluting and entitled habits? We are wrecking our globe. Very fast. Not just for us but also for the people who have no clean running water and for the children of the children who work in toxic factories making our iPhones. There is no point blaming ourselves for the lassitude and ennui, the misery of depression and anxiety that too much meaningless abundance and a dearth of social connection and life’s meaning inevitably creates. I get that reminding ourselves to be grateful is a huge improvement on whinging and complaining, like the woman on the home renovations TV show who wailed when her house was passed in at auction This Is the Worst Thing That’s Ever Happened In My Entire Life!!! But I want us to change faster and wake up more thoroughly. And glib phrasings like this one on Upworthy “Add #365Grateful to your Instagram photos and instantly be part of the gratitude movement!” make me feel ashamed. How bleak would that sentence feel to a hungry person, a person without land or a roof, someone who’s living out their adulthood in an endless refugee camp that stretches in tents as far as the sandy horizon. How they must wish that people who have enough disposable income to give each other cards and presents on so many occasions annually that two weeks from Christmas we are already complaining about Valentines and Easter merchandise in the shops ~ ~ ~ would be more than grateful.

  • new year’s stain

    I was uncomfortable at Woodford to hear the Tibetan monks who had been hired to chant the festival’s “Dawn Ceremony”, alongside the thrilling singing of Tenzin Choegyal, being largely ignored or at best treated as background muzak while many people chatted and caught up, hugged loudly and with much syrupy performance, anointed one another with detergent bubbles and photographed one another. As the sun slowly rose and Tibrogargan was revealed giving the eternal thumb to the sky I wondered whether any other performers of the 2000 who comprised this six-day event would have been treated so rudely. Drunken revellers walked and stood in front of seated and even meditating patrons just in time to catch the peak moment – the sun’s disk coming up over the horizon – and with no sense of quietude or of having intruded on a gathering that had formed hours earlier. The main aim seemed to be to get a good seat. I kept thinking, people have no sense of the sacred. Then after a while I began to marvel that even the most oblivious people, even people who will ensconce themselves right next door to non-smokers and then light up, even those who call across a quiet crowd to their friends and then unfold crackling groundsheets right in the “front row”, really do have some sense of the sacred, however deteriorated – otherwise why would they be there? why not stay on at the Pineapple and dance some more? why not go home to their tent and fill the campground with dubstep? We were all drawn to that hillside to see in the year. We were all there to observe something – but I had a feeling that something was more observant than us.

     

     

  • meatbags

    meatbags

    It’s Monday afternoon and we are eating meatbags for lunch. This is because we are in Brisbane and have a German visitor. This German visitor has only been in Australia once before, in Melbourne for two weeks last year, during which visit I made him eat a meat pie from the local 7-11. Bad move. He got their name mixed up and months later, when I was marveling at the disgustingness of a German breakfast staple known as ‘builders’ marmelade’ (raw mince and chopped onions eaten on a bread roll), he burst out, “But what about those disgusting Australian meatbags?” Today it was time to reconstitute our culinary reputation, much as oranges will be reconstituted to make what we call fresh orange juice. We went to the local bakery. Standing in front was a line of people who amply illustrated what a lifetime of bakery products will do to your body. They were all having long, yarning conversations with the girls behind the counter, it was evident they all queue there every week. We got our pies and sat down to eat them in the shady courtyard. Afterwards my German visitor said, I feel like drinking a cacao. I said, a chocolate milk? Excellent notion, it will degrease our gullets. We took our chocolate milks across the parking lot and started towards home. Then my mother and father turned up. They too had decided it was time for a meatbag lunch for everyone and in addition they were hunting down a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald so that their sensitive liberal visitors would not have to suffer through The Australian every morning. For some reason the German visitor could not be persuaded to eat a second meatbag. “Maybe he’s full,” said Mum.

     

     

     

     

  • ice cream man

    ice cream man

    Something I dig about the guy I’m travelling with. We are staying with my folks and Mum, fielding a houseful of hungry guests, sent us down to the supermarket with her credit card, and her pin number written on my wrist. We did the shopping and then looked at one another. I said, “Hey! We’ve got Mum and Dad’s credit card! And access to everything they own! Mwahahah!” I was just about to make a joke like, “Wanna go buy a car?” when my Berlin companion opened his mouth. He said, “Wanna buy an ice cream?”

     

  • buying the cow

    The guy before me loaded five litre bottles of milk onto the counter at the BioMarkt, the organic store. I said, You know, it might be cheaper to buy a cow. He said, Well, we thought about that, and the two of us smiled at one another. The girl who was serving has prominent front teeth and a mousey, rather shy face. She started laughing and couldn’t stop. She was still laughing about the cow when I packed up my groceries and bad her goodbye and the guy with the milk had let the door swing behind him. I guess because of the link with the dairy products this reminded me of an incident when I was working on the cheese stall on an outdoor market in Britain. I was 23 and my boyfriend had that day turned 32. He was a bit of a drama queen and spent the day sagging and sighing. Two tiny old ladies who used to visit every week to buy “a quarter of a pound of mild white” cheddar asked him kindly, “What’s the matter with you, love?” He looked downcast. “I’m… *thirty-two* today.”

    I will never forget their reaction so long as I live. Unless Alzheimers. Well, they laughed. They cackled. They slapped each other. One of them fell against the butcher’s glass opposite and banged herself on the thigh repeatedly, crying tears of laughter. It was the funniest thing they’d heard in months. My boyfriend looked foolish and I began, or so I hope, to look at him differently, more narrowly; in between bouts of mirth the ladies were gasping, “Thirty-two! You’re a child! You just wait! You know nothing!”