Well I started the new year with a first date that turned into a ten month relationship. It was highly unlikely by all standards, most specifically because we live three and a half hours away from each other.

But before I knew it we were inseparable and I was going to nude beaches and he was coming to Lost Evenings.

Not long after coming back from LE the differences that made things interesting became insurmountable apparently and that relationship came to a very sudden end.

I’ve got ahead of myself.

In between there was lots of music.

Two servings of Beans on Toast (where I also discovered the fab Great Job), Monkey Spanner, Melbourne Ska Orchestra, The Allniters (including their last ever show), NOFX, The Menzingers, The National Folk Festival (where I got to see the wonderful Grace Petrie perform numerous times and discovered other great acts). Others I’ve forgotten plus lots of theatre and musicals.

Of course the privilege of another year at Lost Evenings, this time in Toronto, where I hung out with some of the wonderful peeps I met in LA in 2023 and met more members of the cult. Where I saw Henry Rollins perform and speak with FT and where I discovered more awesome performers like NOBRO and Bedouin Soundclash.

Ok I’ve skipped more bits like the amazing Japan to Alaska cruise I did with my friend Gab and she who will not be mentioned. What an experience! Cruising is not my favourite thing and the days between Japan and Alaska where we literally didn’t see land for seven days were challenging but I got to see things I never thought I would and I’m so very lucky.

Returning from this trip straight into a period of family sadness which evolved into my mum deciding to sell her home and move closer to me… which meant many months of sorting, throwing and packing. After the grief and the hard work she is now in walking distance in a beautiful new home , and while she has a lot of emotional adjusting to do I am very glad for her move.

Oh, somewhere in there, or before all of this, I changed jobs again…going back to my old admin job and leaving my cooking job. Probably not my best decision and I can argue both sides but overall it’s more money and I was really disliking the organization I was working for at the childcare centre.

Where am I? I’m jumping all over this year. But it’s been one of those years I guess.

My now adult kidlets continue to make their way in the world and I’m incredibly proud of who they are.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the mental and emotional strain of following the US elections this year. What a monumental shitshow. In hindsight I probably didn’t do myself any favours by listening to the amount of podcasts I listened to on the topic. I really fell into a vortex and it wasn’t good for me.

So much I’m omitting or forgetting or skimming over. Another year of incredible privilege, joy, sadness, bewilderment. My family, friends, lovers and fellow cult members keep me moving, fulfilled, laughing, crying, feeling and thinking. What else can I ask for.

Twenty twenty three is hurtling to its inevitable conclusion so a summary of sorts is required.

It started, as all years do, at the beginning – January. NN and I were in Port Macquarie for a brief holiday with friends when news came through that my strata committee were going to be difficult regarding the pet by-laws and I, as I sometimes do, made a snap decision to sell and move.

I had been in my beautiful, waterfront apartment for 16 years and had convinced myself that I couldn’t live without the view (or perhaps the perceived prestige of having that view, though I do not consider myself a wanker of that magnitude). Anyhow, I made that decision instantly and the wheels were set in motion.

The next five months were spent preparing the old apartment for sale and that involved sorting, throwing, giving away and selling a mountain of stuff. Stuff that represented my children’s childhoods and the various stages of my life during the many years we had lived there.

It was then spent selling the place and looking for a new apartment. I had decided to stay in the area and downsize to something smaller… which sounds simple but really isn’t. Every Saturday and some weeknight evenings were spent looking. There were many two bedroom apartments to view but very few that suited me or inspired my imagination.

Finally my place sold and I found an apartment I loved. I wrangled the logistics of a simultaneous move which is harder than it may appear.

Oh hang on… somewhere during this process my relationship fades to grey right in front of me. Over a period of time I realized NN was basically there in body only. He barely spoke to me and was completely uninterested in the moving process. One day I asked him if everything was ok and in brief, because it was exactly this brief, he said “I just don’t feel it anymore”… and a few days later he was gone. There was no conversation, no discussion, just gone. I often wonder how long this nonsense would have gone on if I hadn’t asked the simple question.

It was an enormous relief. Living with someone who doesn’t want to be there is a horrible psychological strain. It’s confusing and it’s a total mental and emotional fuck. I felt light as a bird when he left.

I moved in mid June and my new life began. A life without a mortgage and, for once, money in the bank. I had a job within an easy walk from home. I was free and happy.

Free to plan the second half of the year and that, unexpectedly, meant going to LA for Frank Turner’s sold out Lost Evenings. It had sold out in days at the beginning of the year and I had thought it wasn’t a possibility. But a ticket came across my path and suddenly the much longed for Lost Evenings was on the agenda.

The US trip came together for September. A visit to Martha’s Vineyard to see my sister, my BIL and her relatively new home. Five nights in NYC, but not just in NYC… at the fucking Chelsea Hotel, a place I had always reverently visited on each trip to New York. I can’t admit out loud how much that cost but it was worth every cent. It was magical walking through those doors and down the corridors as a guest.

MV was gorgeous and we had a wonderful, relaxing time. Hanging out, eating amazing meals and drinking Dirty Bananas at Nancy’s. Then Jules flew to New York with me and we met up with my friend Rebecca from Oregon for a week of walking, sightseeing, eating and shows. We were even joined by my dear (almost) lifelong friend Fiona who flew in from Chicago for a few days. Sleep No More was an absolute highlight. As was a night of comedy next door to our hotel at Gotham Comedy Club.

Then onto LA and the mythical Lost Evenings VI.. My friends are already sick to death of my constant Frank Turner references #notacult so I’ll keep this brief. It was four days of utterly brilliant goodness. Frank Turner fans (generally speaking) are the best people and I made many instant friends. We were immersed in ideas, talk, music, laughs and love. What a fucking high.

While I was bereft when it ended I had a carrot to move towards… Frank’s upcoming Australian tour. Which involved my bff Sandy coming to Sydney and me going to Melbourne to see his shows together. There’s nothing like a Frank Turner show for me. That feeling of being on the rail, up close, feeling the camaraderie of the crowd, singing along to every word, feeling that energy through your body… it’s magical.

Anyway… there were other highlights and lowlights to finish the year. Doomed mirage love affairs (well, one). Lots of other music and theatre. Great times with great friends.

The now grown up kidlets are making their way in the world… and require much less input from me. The pets seem to require more and more input from me…dear god, the never ending kitty litter…

I’m sure I’ve omitted or skipped over lots of things but this is the year that was in broad strokes.

I go into 2024 with an amazing Japan to Alaska cruise and another Lost Evenings, this time in Toronto, to look forward to. Family, friends and resilience is everything and (to paraphrase Frank) I plan to get better, because I’m not dead yet.

What a forking shitshow the last few weeks/months/years/decades/forever has been. But let’s just narrow it down to the last couple of months with the Parliament House rape / Chrsitian Porter rape shitshow because I don’t have enough words in me to cover the whole lot.

Or should I say I’m going to cover the whole lot in sweeping terms? On Monday I made the decision to go to the March4Justice protests in Sydney (which was hard because I’m really loving my course). Some things are more important than cooking retro food…. who knew?!

I think the (not so) recent sexual assaults in Canberra have been extensively covered and the marches have also had extensive coverage (though my boss, when I was telling him I had gone to the march on Monday, asked “what march?”…. um…sigh…). What has really stopped me in my tracks and got me angry/ier is all the stories. It is not a joke or an understatement to say ALL WOMEN HAVE A STORY. I have shed many tears these past few weeks as I’ve read very personal, long buried stories of what has happened to women… women empowered, angered, agitated, motivated by recent events.

I don’t think a single woman has not had a pounding heart walking through a dark street or a silent car park on her own, not had a sleazy comment or 20 directed at her by a random stranger, a boss or a “loved one” apropos of nothing, not had to smile through gritted teeth at a colleagues propositions while she contemplated resigning. I’m not even talking about the actual violence many women live with in their daily domestic life; I’m not talking about the actual rapes, whether in a dark alley by a stranger or in their own teenage bedroom by an uncle or a “boyfriend”. So many forking stories. So many shameful secrets (though the shame is never theirs to carry).

When I stood waiting for the bus to take me to the march on Monday morning I noticed a woman probably ten years older than me waiting at the bus stop with me. She held a piece of brown cardboard under her arm and had a determined look on her face. We started chatting about the absent bus, moved onto the fact that we were both heading to the march and then she was telling me about her violent marriage at the age of 19, over 40 years earlier…and the anger unleashed by recent events.

She is the woman in front of you at the supermarket, the grandma waiting outside the school… just an ordinary woman… and she has a story of violence and fear. A story she’s carried for a very long time, told almost no-one, but it has burned inside her and she had to travel from the far North Coast of NSW to stand should to shoulder with her sisters to let the world know that enough was enough.

We had a lovely trip into the city together, chatting and getting to know each other a little. It was such a privilidge to meet by chance and have this time together.

But before, during and after the march all I could think about was why and can this really stop? Why has it always been women and continues to be women who must alter their behaviour to “stop” rape and violence? Why is it always the short skirt, the cleavage, the “too much to drink”, the walking alone, the being in the wrong place/wrong time… always the woman to blame. I grind my teeth as I reel off the list. It’s never about skirts or drinks… it’s about men making a choice, a choice based on power, strength and opportunity, to assault a woman, generally a vulnerable woman. It’s stupidly simple.

In the infamous words of Ozark’s Ruth – I don’t know shit about fuck – but I know nothing will change much while we’re talking about how women could have/should have prevented their own rape and assault. Maybe something will change when we start talking about women’s fear of men, men’s fear of other men, about why men won’t challenge other men who are violent towards women. I am fascinated/horrified by the idea that men fear other men and this is a lot of why they haven’t historically stood up on this “women’s issue”; why they haven’t shot down the wiseass at the pub or the party; why they have turned their back rather than participate in the discussion. Only when it’s something that could or has happened to THEIR daughter does it become meaningful to them. Are women still just a man’s property?

There is talk about Consent Apps (FFS! Seriously!), about harsher sentences, about tone deaf Prime Ministers… but in the end men are violent with women because they can be, because they are mostly stronger and because they still have the power in terms of brute strength and employment and finances and housing.

It occured to me that the entire Kings Cross economy was shutdown, almost overnight, because some young men were tragically killed by other young men in horrific acts of senseless violence. Yet women have historically and currently been violated, humiliated, beaten, tortured, financially controlled, raped, cruelly tormented in ways that are hard to comprehend, the list goes on and on and on…and the public and governmental response has always been piss weak and tokenistic at best. The women’s shelter I volunteer with is a tenuous affair because there is no consistent funding for wages or housing so we struggle on month to month, applying for grants, hosting tiny fundraisers. It simply beggars belief.

The contempt for the issues shown by our *cough* leaders these past few weeks is devastating. We seem to be going nowhere fast and while I joke about why do we need to keep protesting this shit, the answer is simple. Because nothing ever fucking changes. The bullies and the boys at the top of the food chain continue to win, continue to use their physical, financial and social power to get what they want at any cost.

Before you say #notallmen (yes of course not all men) please go look up that there is, in fact, an International Men’s Day and deal with the reality, the ongoing, never ending reality, that most of the women you know, work with, stand in line at the bus stop with have either been sexually assaulted, physically assaulted or threatened or are even simply scared to walk to their car at night. It’s 2021 and yes we still have to protest this shit.

As I live most of my public life on Facebook (much to my own moral repulsion) these days this blog is well and truly neglected. But I’ve had a fun little interaction with a fellow blogger today (thanks Jonathan) which prompted me back here for a catch up.

This time last year life more or less ground to a halt on a global scale. For me work life carried on as normal (my company was at the tail of end of three major construction projects and it was full steam ahead). As I work in close to solitary confinement in my little office and drive the 10 minutes to work I carried on as usual. None of this working from home malarkey.

But my social life evaporated overnight. The planned US trip was cancelled and refunded. As were all the concerts, plays and musicals. We went from being out 3, 4 nights a week to just being IN.

N moved in which seemed prudent (isn’t that a romantic way of puting it… but who am I kidding, romance was stomped out of me years ago). Autumn and winter rolled on and we spent our nights at home, binging all the tv (if streaming services weren’t invented for a global pandemic I’ll be a monkey’s uncle – WTAF does that saying even mean???!!).

But the dust settled somewhat and I have found myself extremely busy again. In no particular order:

• Through some deeply serendipitous social connection Will found a perfect supported accommodation situation and slowly, gradually moved out of home. That sentence glosses over an amazing, wonderful, exciting, stressful and on-goingly time and bandwidth consuming process. While Will has settled in beautifully into what can only be described as a little piece of suburban paradise I have had to battle the NDIS gods in an exhausting battle involving my local MP and a number (greater than my fingers) of IRL and Zoom meetings, phone calls, emails and regular banging head on wall sessions. Still haven’t got to where we need to be but I’m a tenacious little creature and good will prevail.
• Miss M started Year 11, her penultimate year of school. Like most mothers I’m perplexed at how we’ve got here, given she just started kindergarten about 3 weeks ago. However she’s now a senior, which required a new uniform, half of Officeworks and a newly superior attitude to those in the younger grades. She appears to have much more work than I ever did at university – work she does while chatting to a minimum of three friends online and watching a neverending stream of chattering buffoons on a video platform outside of my geriatric field of understanding. Aldus Huxley didn’t get close to how it was really going to be.
• Speaking of studying, I’m now a student again. Towards the end of last year two things merged in my mind. 1) Did I really want to/could I even turn my love of cooking into a job? 2) How would I survive an already super boring job when our workload had crashed from very busy to nothing at all going on? So I asked my boss if I could work 4 days a week since work had dried to a trickle for the foreseeable future and then I enrolled at TAFE. So I’m now working on my Certificate III in Commercial Cookery at the local TAFE and LOVING IT! I love the cooking (though this stage of the course does seem to involve a lot of very basic retro dishes which are almost funny) but I love the different environment, learning new things, being with new people and NOT being at work five days a week.
• I’m reaching out to local cafes for work experience and hoping that they don’t laugh too hard when they see I’m 52 years old. I have my first shift tomorrow morning so stay tuned for a yay or nay update.
• I’m also deeply involved with the Parramatta Women’s Shelter as I’ve joined the board. This grew out of an initial contact with a desire to help the fledgling organisation to now being actively involved with the newsletter, bookkeeping (though I’m stepping away from that one), volunteer management and fundraising. There’s so much to do. We shouldn’t have to have such organisations but we do. We should have government funding for such organisations but we don’t. So I could complain or I can do what I can, which is what I’m doing.
• Our social life has gradually been returning as Covid is currently (could change at any moment/taking nothing for granted) under control in Australia. So we’re back to being out 3 or 4 nights a week and while it’s brilliant it’s also exhausting. I’m finding myself thinking back wistfully to last year’s lockdown. But I’m just a girl who can’t say no (wow doesn’t that song title seem outrageously out of place in the modern world?) so I will apparently keel over from exhaustion before I choose to stay home rather than go to a movie/play/musical/dinner/book launch/opening of an envelope.

I believe you’re all caught up. Hopefully less than a year until the next post. Eye roll.

Yesterday N and I went to a family lunch at his brother’s place. There were little children there. I don’t often spend time with little children any more. Life stages.

There were gorgeous little brothers, 4 years old and 15 months old. The older one a confident little man full of information about dinasours. The little one shy, all huge blue eyes and cuddles. I haven’t cuddled a little person like that for a very long time. He quietly nestled his head into my shoulder and woosh, lots of memories and emotions.

Fucking emotions.

Anyway. It was one of those days where lots of generations merged. From N’s elderly mother, to his brother and wife (about 10 years older than us), a few around our age (including N’s sister, her husband and N’s ex partner and her partner… are you keeping up). There were the young adult children and their children.

As the sweet little dude cuddled up to me (and later as the thoughts percolated down) I thought about how much I wanted to have children. So much it hurt, a lot, almost all the time. Not being able to have what most people took for granted turned it into an obsession of sorts I guess. To be honest it’s hard to remember the exact feelings, they are ghosts, faded… just a shadow now.

But now, more than twenty years later, it occured to me how different actual parenting is to what I had longed for. I so badly wanted that little head nestling my shoulder and I had years of it and it was sweet. That is such a tiny part of parenting, as I now know. I look back at who I was and I realise how pathetically naive I was.

There is not much point putting into words how I feel about parenting now. People say it’s the hardest job and that is a total understatement. The rollercoaster than never stops to let you have the much longed for upchuck. You just hold it in and hope it doesn’t ooze out of your ears.

Yesterday I had a few hours with a smograsboard of the generations and it made me reflective. The working mum with the little kids, worrying about childcare fees and finding the energy to keep all the balls in the air. The young pregnant woman, hopeful and probably scared (because of previous life experience). The grandparents, watching and worrying.

Most of all I think of the sweet little head on my shoulder and I try not to cry.

I’m going to be straight up and say I haven’t always cared much about Australia Day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always enjoyed the public holiday because a day not at work is a day worth celebrating. But I haven’t given much thought to what or why Australia Day was. I haven’t been particularly sympathetic or empathetic or any other -etic to the Invasion Day part of the debate. Hey, it was day off and that’s all I was interested in.

These days I have my old spark back. I’ve got my cranky pants on about a lot of things; let’s be frank… there’s a lot of things to be cranky about. Politics, the environment, climate change, politics, asshats masquerading as global leaders, gender issues, religion (and it’s dirty snout in social issues)… um, that’s probably sufficient for now.

So I’ve been thinking again about Australia Day and why we can’t just change it. Australia wasn’t in any way “discovered” on 26 January. It was already here and being managed quite well for a bloody long time. On that day things started to turn just a little bit shit for the people who’d been here before the white folk came along and “fixed it”. So it’s understandable why the indigenous people of this land don’t find it a great date to commemorate. They call it Invasion Day and I think that’s fair enough.

I heard a man on the radio this morning saying we should keep the date because it’s a date to reflect on the shit white folk have done to the people and the land we now call Australia. A date to maybe rub our noses in it, so to speak. I think that arguement has a bit of merit. Most public holidays are actually days for reflection if you think about it. ANZAC Day (war), Easter (something about baby Jesus on the cross, biting off chocolate bunny ears), New Year’s Day (massive hangovers).

But if Australia Day is meant to be a day of celebration, a day of saying “look it’s not perfect, lots of fuck ups along the way but here we all are muddling along, doing best we can” then I think we need a date everyone can get behind (OK, there’s always going to be someone who hates any particular date for their own personal reasons – but I think we can come to some sort of rough consensus).

Maybe we can pick some suitable dates and have a plebiscite (fuck knows we’ve got all the spreadsheets and envelopes ready to go on that one). Maybe we can go with the date the Swans won their first grand final, just a suggestion people. Maybe we can go with Frank Turner’s birthday… OK he’s not an Australian so I may be out on a limb here but just offering ideas.

Or maybe we can just enact my general Public Holiday Revamp Scheme whereby all general Public Holidays are scrapped and we just get the extra days as annual leave to use as we please. Day off for your birthday? No problem. Long weekend to binge your favourite Netflix show? Why not.

Because seriously I DON’T CARE ABOUT JESUS’ BIRTHDAY or JESUS’ ON THE CROSS/OFF THE CROSS/ZOMBIE DAY. I DON’T CARE ABOUT LIZZIES’ BIRTHDAY (which isn’t even her birthday FFS, what is that even about??!!).

Have I got off topic? Possibly. Anyhoo… let’s scrap 26 January, pick another day, move on. Better still scrap all the dates, chuck everyone some extra annual leave and move on.

Problem solved. You’re welcome.

We’ve just finished watching that brilliant documentary Years and Years. As good as that other documentary The Handmaid’s Tale. You can’t make that shit up anymore… because it’s all real. The dystopian future we feared/laughed at IS HERE… and if it’s not here in front of your eyes right now it’s just around the corner because some corporate is busily engineering it as we speak.

It’s the end of another spin around the sun and as the world’s most slack arse blogger I thought I’d cobble together a few words to sum things up as we careen into the last week of 2019. I was inspired by all the “it’s been a shit 2019 but 2020 will be THE BEST YEAR EVER” type Faceplant posts. Undoubtedly I’ve posted some such shite in previous incarnations. They make me laugh because what the fuck is “the best year ever”?

I can’t say I’ve learnt anything this year as opposed to other years. I feel like the penny has dropped to some degree in my understanding of myself. I’ve had some adventures this year that I certainly did not in any way foresee this time last year.

So here’s a list of statements to sum up where I am right now (with the express understanding that this may not be where I am in five minutes time or next week and definitely not at the end of 2020).

I believe resilience is EVERYTHING.

I believe in saying yes and scaring yourself a bit (because that’s how you learn about yourself) but also saying no if that’s what feels right then and there.

I believe noone is going to save you or make you happy or fix you.

I believe it’s really nice to have a special someone but their job is not to do any of the above.

I believe life isn’t black and white and it’s the shades of grey that make things interesting.

I believe that children are our future. (Just checking if you’re still paying attention)

I believe in music and singing along when you’re driving and hot, sweaty gigs where you know the words to the songs and that moment is everything.

I believe in words and books and plays and movies and art and us humans trying and failing and trying again to wrestle with whatever this motherfucking “human condition” is.

I believe in humanity but not in corporate greed and that humanity can and will push back but maybe it’s too late and we’re fucked which is ok.

I believe you live until you die and we should live until we die but not be afraid of death because we all know it’s the one certainty and that’s as it should be.

I believe I’m an entitled white middle class wanker with a truck load of luck and I don’t have one seriously valid thing to complain about.

I believe I better stop before this gets any sillier and even more self indulgent.

Good bye 2019, you were bloody awesome. Let’s see what you’ve got 2020.

I’ve been going to some protests in recent years. I guess since the big Women’s March at the start of 2017… a march to protest the abomination which is the presidency of the Trumpster monster. The feeling at that march was solidarity, hope, anger… a coming together to say WTF is happening to our world.

Since then I’ve been to marches for women’s rights, refugee rights, pro choice, keep Sydney open and the beautiful marriage equality rally in 2017. I haven’t marched this much since the anti nuclear marches back in the early 1980s.

I don’t know if marching, protesting achieves anything but I am so angered and saddened by what is happening in our world that I need to express it. The reality for me is I’m a privileged, white, middle class woman. I’m educated, I own property, I have a pretty bloody good life. But I’m watching governments in this country and overseas doing shit things to people who have already had a shit tonne of shit things done to them (the gay community, refugees, racial minorities, women needing abortions… to name a few) and I’m fucking pissed off. (I may have just exceeded the legal limit of the word “shit” in a sentence.)

For one thing my privilege is a combination of luck (mine) and hard work (my parents’). They got me out of the wreck known as the Ukraine and via a series of twists and turns we ended up in Oz and our lives have been pretty damn good since 1976 when we arrived. Every day I think about how lucky I am to have the life I have and how that luck has nothing whatsoever to do with my own intelligence, abilities, work ethic or any other personal attribute. Just dumb luck. Which means that I could just as easily not have that luck and be one of the people so demonised by politicians and society.

We are currently living through an upswing in conservative, right wing ideology. The Trumps and the ScoMos didn’t pop up out of a vacuum… they crawled out of the murky swamps created by fear and uncertainty. I could write thousands of words on that topic. Let me just say I despise politicians who feed that fear and uncertainty in the community and present themselves as having easy solutions; more so I hate them for creating scapegoats and for pointing fingers. The scapegoats are usually the people most in need of societal care and protection, the vulnerable and disadvantaged. But it’s much easier to say that the refugee is coming for your job or is a secret terrorist than to say you can’t fix the economy because we’ve all sold out to corporate greed and the myth of trickle down economics; it’s easier to hark back to an imaginary golden age of family bliss and harmony and blame the LGBTQ community for destroying “family values” than to deal with the reality of complex human and family needs.

What I’m really afraid of, in a nutshell, right now is that we are being puppet-mastered and “governed” by people like ScoMo who believe that they represent their imaginary friend in the sky above and beyond the fact that they represent living, breathing human beings who actually fucking voted for him. That is the crux of the problem with god botherers – they are more interested in the afterlife than in the real life; more interested in their imaginary friend than in the needs of the actual people around them. The fact that people who call themselves Christians (and therefore are supposedly walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ… I’m no biblical scholar, correct me if I’m wrong) can vote for human garbage like Donald Trump, can demonise the most needy, can protest against abortion while unapologetically doing nothing for actual children when they are no longer sacred fetuses…. well, the hypocrisy of these people is astounding, diabolical even. They are the polar opposite of what they represent themselves to be.

I’ve really wondered off track here. I guess I’m trying to explain why I’m pissed off and why I’ve been going to quite a few marches lately. I guess I need to stand with like minded people and say “I’m mad as hell and I fucking don’t want to take this shit anymore”. I’m using my privilege to march for those who can’t; I guess that’s the bottom line.

On Saturday I’m taking Miss M to the pro choice rally in Sydney, a rally in support of the legislation currently before the state parliament to decriminalise abortion in NSW. We are the last state in this country to still criminalise abortion. Can you believe that shit? It’s been horrifying to watch the god bothering nutters writhe and scream and lie about what it will mean when abortion is decriminalised. You know what it’ll mean? NOTHING. Abortions will continue like they have since women first figured out how to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, through poison, or coat hangers, or back yard abortionists… but they will continue safely and without the bullshit and the morality and the slut shaming and the women shaming and the god invoking nonsense. Women will be able to have abortions without the fear of a criminal prosecution and doctors will be able to perform abortions without fear of same. A no brainer for a civilized, just, compassionate society.

N and I saw Hail Satan! on Friday night, a documentary about the Satanic Temple. Without knowing much about it I’ve been looking forward to seeing it for some time.

While it covered the brief history of this organization and its founders it was, for the most part, focused on the ST’s fight against the imposition of Christianity in public spaces in the US and the meaning of that imposition.

It is the creeping notion of Merica as a Christian nation that they are standing up against. The symbols of a certain type of fundamentalist Christianity which are seeping (and have been for some time) into every form of public life. Prayers in politics and schools, crosses and other symbols in public spaces.

You see Christian theocracy just creeping into our government, and it is our duty to stand up to this.

This film particularly focuses on the Satanic Temple’s stance against the large monument installed in the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol.  In protest the ST proposed to erect a statue of Bephomet. Their smart, tenacious fight filled me with hope and love.

There are so many scenes in this doco which highlight the differences between the “good” and “godly” Christians and these “evil” Satan worshipers (they’re not). The Satanic Temple people are intelligently and compassionately standing up to idea that America is a Christian nation and fighting for rights of all; for equality and a voice for all people. They are doing so by taking the piss out of the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of the conservatives. It’s shooting fish in a barrel really.

But they are not just taking the piss; they are doing good work. Each chapter, apart from fighting against religious intolerance and control, are doing acts of civil charity.

As an atheist I found this quote from director Penny Lane sums up really well why these people, all of whom are atheists and not devil worshipers, align themselves with this group:

LANE: It’s not just that atheism is boring. It’s that atheism in and of itself is not a kind of affirmative set of organized values. It’s more saying what you’re not than what you are. And as a lifelong atheist myself, I can attest to the fact that atheism doesn’t give you a community. It doesn’t give you a mythology, a sort of organizing set of principles or ethics. And it doesn’t give you a kind of way to organize yourself in relationship to others and make change in the world.

In summary it seems they are fighting fear, prejudice, restriction, superstition and nonsense with their 7 fundamental tenants (see above): compassion, reason, freedom, justice, the right to control one’s own body.

I came out of Hail Satan! filled with joy and optimism. These are my people. The misfits, the oddbods, the brave ones. The ones who want to fight back and will do so intelligently, with humour and heart. If Hail Satan is the opposite of Amen, then Hail Fucking Satan!

On Friday I took the day off work to attend a school dance performance Miss M was in because I was too vague/stupid to remember to book tickets in time to go to one of the two evening shows. Sigh. Bang head on wall.

I’ve attended approximately 3,427,189 dance performances since Miss M started dancing when she was three. I have included the handful of singing eisteddfods she has also performed at in that modest number.

It’s fair to say I have a love/hate relationship with these forms of *cough* entertainment. I’m still mentally scarred from the first eisteddfod where one of the other participants brought a full single canopy bed with associated accoutrement onto the stage for the child’s prop. I love the kids, I hate the competitive parents and the storm of bullshit they create.

Anyhoo… Friday morning I found myself back in beautiful downtown Frenchs Forest for the third time in a week. It’s not my part of the world but I did manage to wrangle two catch ups with friends who live roughly in that geographic area so it wasn’t totally wasted time.

This particular dance extravaganza is the Sydney North Dance Festival, an event designed to showcase the dance abilities of school aged children from the Northern Sydney area (I believe the clue is in the title). Maybe because I’m on the tail end of this parenting malarkey or maybe because I’m a crabby old cow but to me it just seems a good way to fleece a lot of parents and grandparents of $30. Because frankly you sit through an hour and a half of the little darlings dancing to watch your own little darling dance for no longer than three minutes. Oi vey.

Despite the previous five paragraphs this blog does not exist to purely complain about this entertainment spectacular but to allow me a little rant about one of the numbers. My alternative titles for this post were: “Are you forking kidding me: Is it 1972?” or perhaps “Andrea Dworkin is rolling over in her grave”.

Let me draw you a picture: The dance routine starts of promisingly enough. The song is Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Going To Take It. Not in my top one million songs but compared to the rest of the drivel it gets a thumbs up from me. The group is little kids, I’d say years 1 or 2 at primary, lots of girls and five boys. I notice two kiddie electric guitars placed strategically at the front of the stage. Using my Sherlock Holmes level deduction skills I assume they’ll be part of the dazzling finale for this rocking little piece.

Then it hits me and I KNOW exactly how this will end and I want to scream NOOOOO. Somebody, not me because that would be a public hazard, burnt their bras for this. Don’t do it…. please… think of Germaine Greer. But they did it anyway. Yes two of the boys picked up the guitars and did their little rock moves at the sides of the stage. But that wasn’t enough to end the routine; the five boys lined up, in a boy band fashion, and did a little pantomime of a boy band performance… while the girls simply did a pantomime of being cheering fans.

What’s wrong with this picture? Jezuuus forking Christ it’s 2019. Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Gwen Stefani, insert another five bazillion kick ass female rock stars here… Why are we still representing rock/music as a male thing and females as the passive consumers/fans/groupies? I wanted to weep but I also wanted to smash things. This dance was choreographed by a (I’m guessing, young) female primary school teacher who obviously seems to have slept through the entire little blip in history I like to call feminism. WTAF??!!

I was seething. To cheer myself up I left the theatre wondering who came up with the Lyrical style of dance which seems to be the dance choice du jour. If you don’t know it just imagine girls (with the occasional boy) twirling in a meaningful manner to songs by Adele. I tend to think of it as depression in dance form.

There really should be a bar, a free open bar, at these events.