At home with Robert Smith from The Cure.

'Mary darling, there's a kitten stuck on the curtain again!' 

I went and saw The Cure on Monday night! They’ve always been my favourite band, Robert Smith was my first love and I’m not ashamed to say I would still have his baby, even though I’m 41 - there’s still an egg or two stashed in my ovaries that could be put to good use!

They’re not as fresh as they were twenty-five years ago mind you when I had his poster up on my wall… I dreamed of kissing those smudgy red lipsticked lips and tangling my fingers in his mop of teased black hair. These days he’s looking more like the spider from the Lullaby film clip, with a pudgy waistline and greying hair, not that I mind though, I fell in love with his lyrics and guitar.

But as I watched him on stage I did start wondering if his blood pressure was alright - I mean, a three hour set would be quite a workout, and then they took so many encores I started worrying about his prostate - running off and on stage half a dozen times in my mind means only one thing…

I looked around at the crowd, a few vintage goths still had died hair, the rest just looked like tired parents who’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to have a night out. Two middle aged men jumped up to sing Boys Don't Cry together, bless ‘em.

I wondered if Robert was still married to his high school sweetheart Mary. I’d read they never had children because they wanted to pursue artistic careers, they were a lot smarter than me obviously, they figured out before they became parents that children, as cute as they are, do kind of cramp your style…

A house with no kids I thought, but I bet they’ve got tonnes of cats - they must do, because he’s written songs about love cats and caterpillars and spiders - but there’s never been any song that mentions birds, obviously because the cats eat them all. All Robert’s got left in the garden to write about are insects - but not butterflies, the cats eat them as soon as they’re out of the cocoon.

Must be a super nice place to live if you’re a cat - three ply kitty litter, wall to ceiling carpet… Robert looks like he indulges a bit, he obviously likes his pudding. I bet he watches Nigella in bed with all the cats when he gets home from touring…

I wonder how often he washes his hair… Maybe Mary washes it when she can’t stand it any longer. Maybe she secretly runs a bath every six months or so on a nice sunny day, then goes around catching all the cats and finally lures Robert in with a trail of Nigella cupcakes… Then she throws them all into the bathtub, hissing and howling and spitting together and gives them all a good ol’ shampoo, before letting them out into the garden to sit in the sun together and lick themselves, poor old bedraggled cats and lovely Robert looking like Insy Winsy washed out of the drainpipe…

Tell me... which ageing rocker would you still get knocked up by? 

PS. Mick Jagger, if you're reading this, we're just talking hypothetically okay?

Grown Ups Do What??

Most parents are fanatical about capturing their child’s milestones… They’ve got their cameras out and ready even before they’ve lit the candles on the cake. Unfortunately that’s not me, I’m usually tearing through my handbag to find my phone at that point, panicking to get it unlocked and focused, then screaming to stop singing and relight the candles.

Strangely, however, when a note from my children's primary school came home about a sex education evening the first thing that went through my mind was - TAKE THE CAMERA!

So this is the exact moment that Tom found out about sex. ‘Grown ups do WHAT??’ he said, as he struggled to comprehend the vulgarity of what he was being told. His virginal innocence was popped before my eyes as blatantly as a teenager’s pimple.

Poor Tom, he was pure as the driven snow prior to that moment. He had no idea about conception other than scientific details, we’d talked about bodies in great detail of course, sperms and eggs, chromosomes and DNA. We’d talked a lot about biology, but never about mechanics. He’d seen me and my husband naked many times, but never together.

Thankfully I never saw my parents together either, unfortunately for me it was the other way round - but I’ll get back to that story...

I nearly laughed myself stupid when a friend recently told me she’d been caught in the act by her youngest. She was so embarrassed she was actually whispering into the phone. I could picture her, standing in a corner, cupping her hand around the phone, turning a deeper shade of crimson as I dragged the details out of her... The little face appearing at the doorway, the awkward untangling of limbs and then the words as she tried to take charge of the situation ‘Don’t worry! Mummy’s not in pain Darling!’

Snort!

Ah yes, the inexorable end of innocence… 

And so yes, here's the story of my own loss of innocence, or rather, my father's - impatient pervey blog readers that you are.

When I was about fifteen I was home sick from school, I did suffer a lot with tonsillitis but on this occasion I mustn’t have felt too unwell because I had snuck my boyfriend up into my bedroom. Somehow, we didn't hear my father on the stairs, we didn't hear a thing until the door opened and in that moment sheer, undiluted terror sliced through us both like an ice cold filleting knife. My boyfriend plunged down under the covers and I did my best impersonation of a person suffering with narcolepsy.

In the dim light my father came over and sat on the edge of the bed. 

“Are you alright Kate?” he asked. He put his hand on my forehead, “Oh, you’re awfully hot,” he said, “and clammy. You must have a temperature!” He tried to pull the covers back to cool me down. I tried murmuring I was asleep and to leave me alone, but there was no stopping the disaster that was about to unfold, the horrifying calamity that had been set in motion from the minute the bedroom door opened.

His hand found my naked shoulder. 

“Where are your pajamas?” he asked dumbly. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest like the creature in Alien. But it wasn’t my heart that burst, it was my naked boyfriend, who had scurried as far down the bed as he could before falling out the bottom dragging the covers off with him. He made a break for the door. My father screamed and also ran. And I was left alone, naked and trembling like a leaf, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.


So, your turn: TRUTH OR DARE! 
Have you ever caught anyone in the act, or been caught yourself?

Up Shit Creek Without a Paddle

Anyone who reads my blog knows I like to swear - I’ve said it many times before: It’s the only vice I have left.

And this week I might swear more than I usually do because our sewer pipe got well and truly blocked… To add to the complications it’s school holidays here in Australia, so there are a number of reasons that this has well and truly sucked. But in an effort to “stay positive” and not loose my mind, I thought I’d compile a list of surprising advantages… so here they are!

1. I now have a cesspit in my garden.
Cesspits are going to be the new water feature. Forget fire pits, vertical gardens and outdoor rooms - cesspits are about to become totally ‘on trend’ in 2016. Just think - you never need to waste money on fertiliser and your citrus trees will go totally berko with all the nitrogen - just think of all the extra margaritas you’ll be able to make!
I’ve also heard that raspberries grow really well in untreated sewage too, and if you have surplus you can freeze them and export to countries that don’t have mandatory food labelling in place yet!

2. Crapper Problem: We couldn’t flush a toilet for 3 days… 
On the bright side, we’ve spent a lot of time in cafes, parks and ‘dropping in’ on friends who have working toilets and who are having great fun sending me text messages with the ‘poo’ emoji. Thanks guys.

3. "Glamping" in Hunters Hill.
We’ve had to wash up in buckets, wear the same clothes for days and have gone through a hell of a lot of hand sanitiser… On the bright side, the kids are getting a feel for what it’s like to go camping, albeit with television.

4. Pauline's Verbal Diarrhoea...
Speaking of television - this has to be the most constipated election result in living memory. Can’t they just take a few Laxettes and get on with it all? The shit will most definitely hit the fan when Pauline gets going in the Senate, I just hope it doesn’t in our house... That would be my limit.

5. Position Vacant: Nightman
Here's some heartwarming history for you! New York in 1844, Manhattan alone produced nearly 800,000 cubic feet of excrement - it was collected in buckets by the person known as the nightman and carted away, some to be used as fertiliser on country farms, the rest dumped in the river creating a stinking, festering shoreline, or sometimes just in the street. This well paid profession continued until the end of the century when municipal sewers were built.

The bill from the plumber to fix our crapper problem is $5,000. I can’t think of a bright side to this, it’s just crap no matter which way you look at it.

Tell me, have you reached your limit yet these school holidays?

PS. If you're wondering why I'm wearing a suit in the picture it's because, inspired by Cleaver Greene, I thought I might run for the senate - why not? I'd represent working mothers, coz let's face it we fix everything most of the time anyway, don't we? And we are mean multi-taskers - we'd have the environment and the economy sorted in the time it takes to pack a few school lunches, and clean up this MESS of an election, just tell Pauline 'if she's got nothing nice to say then don't say it at all please'? 
And didn't anyone tell Malcolm 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me?' - tell him to stop sulking in the corner about the dirty Mediscare campaign and get out and have a bit of FUN with the people! As for that Bill Shorten, he's a cheeky one you can tell already, I'd keep a good eye on him, up to mischief he'll be as soon as you turn your back, but nothing a bit of time on the naughty spot won't fix, trust me! 
PPS. If you have a dog instead of a child that's okay too, you're definitely a working mum!