Attack ships off the shoulder and ink on the wrist

I don't expect anyone to remember because I haven't pre-empted it with any posts, but today is the first anniversary of my darling mother's death. The day has been suitably dreary and rain swept here in Adelaide, and I've unfortunately had to work.

More unfortunately, I've had to work with a pounding hangover that was acquired after drinking myself into a happy stupor on mtk's couch last night. Goodness I love that girl. After passing out in her bed, I had what might have been one of the best sleeps of the last few months. It was a little like sleeping on a cloud, especially nice given the stupid decision I made on Wednesday to drop into Hell for an hour or two try out a boot camp session. Seriously, two days later and I still can't walk. I look like I've been riding a horse for a week. Or perhaps like I've been very vigorously rogered by this man's arm:

Anyhoo.

For some time now, my dear sister and I have been planning a commemorative tattoo-getting mission to mark this first anniversary. We met for breakfast at the markets this morning to plot (Adelaide residents or visitors, is Big Table not the most delicious breakfast bar you can imagine?) and partake in some delicious food. Basil pesto mushrooms...I heart thee.

Now, my mother always loved the film Bladerunner, especially this quote:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Before cancer came along and fucked everything up, mutti always joked that when she and my dad eventually kicked the bucket (together on a cliff overlooking the ocean, sleeping pills, hand in hand) they would spend eternity floating up in Orion, playing amongst the belt and watching the starships burn.

When it was apparent she was going to die, she told us all that's exactly where she'd be.

And exactly a year ago today at around 9am my dad called me and told me that a few hours after midnight she had "begun the long journey to Orion, where she'll be watching over us all."

It seemed only fitting that any kind of permanent body marking my sister and I chose would have to be connected to the one place in the universe that fascinated my mother the most. We scribbled down the lines that formed Orion's constellation, wrote ORION beneath it in capital letters and looked happily at what we'd done. That, we thought, would look very good on our wrists.

Here is the hilarious conversation we had with the tattoo artist and his assistant:

-------

Assistant: Right, well I'll just take this design in and see if he thinks it's doable.

Me: No worries.

[We drum our fingers on the counter. Muffled whispering drifts out from behind the curtain. The assistant returns.]

Assistant: Ummm...he wants to know if you really want the writing.. He thinks it's better without it because then people will ask you what it means and you can explain it.

[She looks hopeful.]

Me: Uh...[looking at my sister] Can he do it? We really want the word there.

Assistant: Okay I'll just go ask him.

[She goes back through the curtain. More whispering. Silence. More whispering. Tattoo artist himself steps into the waiting area. He looks vaguely disgusted.]

Artiste: Are you sure you want this? Because I can redraw this and make it so much better.

Me: Well..that kind of has special significance for us soooo...we sort of want that design.

[Artists heaves a big sigh.]

Me: What's wrong with it?

Artiste: Well, it just doesn't look very good!

[Awkward pause.]

Artiste: I mean... It looks like a little kid drew it.

[Uncomfortable silence.]

[My sister and I laugh awkwardly.]

Artiste: Look, can you just let me try and draw another one for you?

Me: Okay... How about you draw another one for us and if we like it we'll use it but if we don't you'll just do this one?

[Artiste heaves another sigh at the indignity of being challenged by peasants and philistines]

Artiste: Al-riiiiiiight.

[Retreats into Where The Magic Happens and proceeds to carefully trace something out a few times with precision. I bet he has his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth.]

[Time passes.]

[Feels like hours.]

[God some of these pre packaged designs on the wall are ugly.]

[Finally, the curtains part.]

Artiste: Here! What do you think of this?

[Passes tracing paper across the counter and rocks back on his heels to accept our praise. The constellation is a little bigger than we'd like and 'orion' is written in some kind of fancy gothic bubble script. My sister and I exchange glances.]

Me: Er....not to be rude or anything. I mean, this design is very nice and all but...I think we prefer the one we drew.

[Artists manages to making looking at the ground seem like he is staring directly into our souls with the kind of derision reserved only for people who beat their children or hang original Picassos right above the grease cooker.]

Artiste: If that's what you want.

[Whips around on heel and stalks into his den in a puff of black heavy metal tribute clothes and faded tattoo ink.]

[Just to punish us, makes us wait five more minutes. He is possibly visiting his spirit animal and asking for strength.]

Assistant: You can come through now. [Embarrassed smile.]

[We enter and sit down.]

Me: ......... You know, thanks for doing this and all. Even though it, you know....offends your sensibility as an artist and stuff.

Artiste: [thinly] That's alright.

-------

Ah, it was refreshing to have a humourous story to recount on a day like today! My sister and I are now the proud owners of a tattoo that according to the professionals looks like it's been scrawled by a special needs child with left brain dominance - but to us? I think it looks exactly as it's supposed to.

Shine bright my dear mother. We miss you xoxo

Peace out (now I'm off to dine festively at the recently reopened Ky Chow. Crispy skin duck? Your ass is grass...)

eat our dust

After rigorously planning a trip to Melbourne with my Swedish Wife's sister, we were aghast to discover yesterday I'd gotten the flight times wrong. Sadly, this is not unlike me. I dream of a day (as do my best friends, family, past and future lovers, workmates, anyone who ever requires anything from me at any point in time, ever) when my brain finally accepts that maintaining a diary will probably lead to more effective life management than simply looking at times, dates and appointments and repeating them once in my head.

Disaster loomed as the cost of the next available flights entered the triple digits. Regardless of how desperate I was to return to my spiritual homeland, I wasn't paying $600 for the privilege (and that would be $300 for J too, as it was my woeful planning that got us in the situation in the first place).

It took approximately 15 seconds between us to decide to hire a car and speed off into the distant horizon. We are young and free and wild and we do what we like.

After a series of adventures involving a girl mourning her father in Kaniva, fashioning ashtrays out of old donated XXXX cans in Tailem Bend (thanks TB pub), getting navigation advice from a hilariously odd yet mutually supportive double act of truck drivers, and choosing the inappropriate time of 10pm while on a lonely stretch of pitch black highway to say, "Hey J, have you seen Wolf Creek?", we finally pulled into Ballarat after an 8 hour drive and turned down the street towards our motel which was located just behind a railway crossing.

A railway crossing that quickly revealed itself to be stuck on the 'train coming' setting.

We could see the hotel right there, not 20 metres away! And there we were, 8 hours into an impromtu drive, stuck behind an impenetrable fortress of heavy bars and flashing lights...

We had to navigate Ballarat for about half an hour before we figured out how to get around it, and when we finally parked in front of the old Eastern Station Hotel, the fracking lights were still set to "Jacqueline du Pres". And wouldn't you know, our hotel room overlooked the whole thing.

Needless to say, we drank ourselves into a stupor and watched while the poor railway worker who'd been called out from his bed in the middle of a freezing night scrabbled around with knobs and switches and finally put the whole thing to bed. I did applaud, but I'm not sure he heard.

So now we're in Melbourne and I'm sitting in an internet cafe on Flinders St. It's good to be back.

Peace out (my apologies to Melbournite pals and chums I've forgotten to notify of my presence. As you can see, I've not even the foresight to notify myself of the ins and outs of my plans. please call.)

Samantha Brett strikes (my brain) again

While you're all busy going about your days, paying your bills and nattering about Handsome Guttermouth Ramsey over the watercooler, a covert resistance organisation taps away with determination and an almost peculiar obsession with all things infuriating.

All day long they sit hunched over their desks, firing back and forth missives and angry tirades with surprising regularity and not just a little stirring passion.

We are the Australian Feminazi League. You'll find us wherever sexism stalks freely through the media. Our recycle bins are where misogynistic articles, captions and newspaper headlines go to die.

Jesting aside, I spend a good deal of every work day writing hundreds of emails back and forth with my fellow man-hating feminasty pasties petstarr, mtk, nai and the book editor. In this way, we've waxed lyrical about panic station articles about celebrity cellulite, alpha male syndrome in Big Brother, Sam Fuckwit Newman and various unintelligible (not to mention illiterate) bigots that visit News Ltd message boards with more frequency than the aforementioned Fuckwit makes a dick out of himself.

All this would explain why I spent approximately three hours today wondering how it is that the quite obviously intellectually challenged Samantha Brett has a regular column for a well respected newspaper. More importantly, is the insane amount of commentors (or 'bloggers' as she refers to them, which is kind of like an author at a writers' festival referring to all those who ask her questions as 'writers') she has an indication that Australians have more or less sold their brains to science for the staggeringly low reimbursement of 'sucked in'?

I despair.

This week, Samantha tackles the highly original topic of how we women are PRACTICALLY the same as Ms Bridget Jones, and in fact her Sex and the City lifestyle has done nothing but damage our own prospects of finding True Love.

Taking her cues from a turgid article written in that bastion of journalistic excellence the UK's Daily Fail, Brett ponders whether or not author Gareth Sibson's theory is correct - that women these days are boring, talk too much about work and are determined to appear sexually dominant just so men will find them attractive.

Sibson's problem seems to be that in the last three years of dating, he's never managed to make it past three dates with any woman because apparently all they want to do is talk about themselves while ascertaining whether or not he's willing to commit to marriage down the track. This is especially vexing for Sibson, as at the same time they've tricked him into thinking they're independent and strong willed.

He illustrates this by making something up and pretending it happened recounting an incident where, waiting for a woman for their third date, he snooped through her notebook and found something shocking:

"What I saw scrawled across the page in a rather childish hand summed up everything about the emotional insecurity of single women today. There, in blue ink, she'd repeatedly written her first name and my surname. This was a woman who had talked nonstop about her career and her independent life from the minute we met."

my emphasis

Never mind the gross invasion of privacy (for which he seems to congratulate rather than admonish himself for - what a catch...) - was I the only one who felt slightly ill when reading the words 'rather childish hand'? So not only is she a potential bunny boiler, she's also been infantilised. Great. In response, Brett comes out with this pearler:

"As could be predicted, instead of Sibson finding her scribblings incredibly flattering, cute and endearing (as most women would do if the situation was reversed, although we all know George Clooney would have kids before that ever happened), he saw it as a sign of desperation."

my emphasis

I don't know about you, but I don't actually get off on the idea that someone might be scrawling my name all over their diary after three dates. I certainly don't find it 'cute' or 'endearing'. But then, if 'most women' are supposed to be like Brett then this is hardly surprising.

Sibson's argument is really too ridiculous to even bother deconstructing. Suffice it to say, he continues to write for a million years far too long about the lack of complexity in modern women and how their real problem is that they've bought the pop culture furphy of the independent lady hook, line and sinker and morphed into...wait for it...Bridget Clones.

Get it? See what he did there? He made a pun! About Bridget Jones! You know, our leader! The woman we all want to grow up to be!

Colour me unsurprised that Brett chose to write about Sibson's quandary and didn't rattle off a treatise on how not only has everything he's written been said before in a million different ways, but it's still bullshit. Instead, she considered the matter carefully before agreeing that yes, he was probably right. How did she know?

"Sadly, while we modern women think of ourselves as sexually liberated femme fatales who shouldn't be afraid to speak our minds, apparently we've gone a little overboard and ventured right into boring-banter territory. (I noticed this on my last date while I was passionately talking about work to which the gent turned around and said; "Okay, I'm not really interested. Can we change the topic?" Ouch.)"

Yes. 'Ouch'.

One swift and frankly rude comment did not lead Brett to think that her date was a dick of the highest degree; it led her to accept Sibson's fantasy that all women are boring and have lost sight on how exactly we go about charming and 'snaring' a man.

"So where did we all go horribly wrong? Is it the fault of Sex and the City? Have we gotten worse with all the encouragement we get from the four independent ladies who don't have qualms about analysing oral sex over egg-white omelettes and fruit salads? Have we made a detour away from true independence and into making desperate attempts to come across as spanking-mad nymphomaniacs in attempt to impress our Mr Bigs?"

And this was where my standard withering disregard for Brett crossed over into the kind of passionate hatred reserved primarily for alpha male fuckwits on Big Brother. The only thing worse than her acceptance that women HAVE gone horribly wrong is her utterly yawnsome use of that old chestnut oft quoted in boring articles about unhappy women unable to find husbands: Sex and the City.

As I furiously typed to the AFL today, will we EVER reach a fucking day when the role models available to women expand beyond Bridget Fucking Jones and the Sex and the City gals? Not only are they all completely different, they're employed as terms of reference to make women feel two things: inadequate and ridiculous. What these articles say to us is that women are trying so desperately to be the chic, well dressed superstars who click clack down the streets of Manhattan sipping cocktails and having wild sex with attractive men - but who they actually are is the sad, socially awkward embarrassment and resident frump that is Bridget Jones.

Papers aren't even trying to make a distinction anymore. Check out this pointer from The Age's website:



If they're going to insist on always conflating Bridget Jones and SITC with the antics of real women, could they at least occasionally make the captions and the pictures line up?

Apparently, there really CAN be more to say on a topic that has been so done to death it's crossed over into farce and is currently being propped up by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathon Silverman at a party somewhere in Miami. You just know that editors are like, " We don't WANT to hear about the wonderful inventions being patented by female scientists in the field of medical research! No one CARES about the lives of women who married Indian men during the Raj and how this was a brave decision given the social mores of the time! Teenage film makers? Female activists? Pah! Write something about how women are still throwing their lives down the toilet in an embarrassing metaphorical morning-after-too-many-cosmos puke because they're trying to live like Carrie but just can't get their shit together enough to not be like Bridget. PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT."


Gareth Sibson's original article contained the level of casual research and made up scenarios masquerading as scientific research that I've come to expect from the Daily Fail (and let's be clear - it's articles like these and NOT comprehensive research that create supposed social trends like 'urbane tomboy' and 'metrosexuals' and as a result subtly urge the world to fit into the labels). Sibson goes on some bad dates and thus decides that not only are all modern women crap, they're deliberately crap and more than a little bit pathetic.

If I were to resort to the same kind of generalised stereotypes and predictable falsities trumpeted by pop culture articles, I might suggest that the reality of his luckless dating record is quite different to what he believes. That it is entirely possible these women have found him so utterly boring, so charmless, so uninspiring that the thought of going on another date with him is nauseating - but not wanting to be rude, they've constructed elaborate personalities designed to freak him out and send him running. A random straw poll amongst carefully chosen people would support the premise that women are kindly creatures and wary of bruising a man's delicate ago, yet understand intimately that all men are terrified of commitment and will run for the hills at the mere mention of marriage. It would be just as accurate and as believable to the undiscerning eye as the balderdash he's regurgitated.

But Samantha Brett, a supposedly savvy woman who should know better? She takes his article and does what is so completely predictable of her.

Namely, writes one that is even worse.

Peace out (written in a childish scrawl.)

Q: What is a noop?

As sometimes happens, I had to summon the fortitude to crawl out of my cosy flannalette sheets (my bed just screams carnality, no?) at the obscenely early hour of 5am this morning so that I might go and sit in a cubicle and listen to endless talkback calls about the river and proposed anti association laws for bikies (plus one particularly stupid news item about a doctor who thinks young healthful types ought to be allowed to sell their kidneys). Don't pull a muscle envying me too much, there.

But despite the brutally early start, I willingly ensconsed myself last night in the most beautiful home or my even beautiful-er friends Maddy and Nathan to indulge in a spirited game of the universe's supremo boardgame.

Absolute Balderdash. Or "Absolute Brilliance" as one might justifiably call it.

With bff mtk snuggled next to me on the couch and all the stoners in the room (them: joints + me = paranoid wreck) heightening their abstract creativity, we were off in a mad race to trick, deceive and gallop towards the board's end.

For those who haven't lived played, Absolute Balderdash is quite simply more fun than a hatful of mischievous monkeys. Basically, there are five categories: word, person, acronym, movie and date. The dasher (board game geek speak for person wot turn it is) selects the category she thinks she can fool the most people with and then reads out the word, title, initials etc. Everyone else then writes the word/s down along with a definition they think THEY can fool all the other players with. Dasher then reads the answers out (about a million times each if the dasher is Nathan) and then everyone guesses. Points are awarded based on how many people you fool, if you guess the correct answer, and if no one guesses the correct answer. Hilarity ensues, and people try desperately not to die from 'ribzuka' (which last night was potentially a disorder whereby people suffer internal bleeding from excessive, impossible-to-stop laughter).

It. Is. Awesome.

Where else could you learn that the word 'extispicey' is not actually a term employed by Hollywood studios in the 1960s to describe the desired performance from actors when playing Asian characters, but rather the practice of fortune telling through examining the organs of animals that have been struck by lightening?

You'd be ignorant of the fact that 'Crazy Fat Ethel II' is not a stirring silent film about two brothers' attempts to build a build a hot air balloon so strong it can take them to the moon, but instead the sequel to Crazy Fat Ethel I about an obese mental woman who is so hungry she goes on a murderous people eating rampage - or that said sequel is so bad, it's actually mostly just flashbacks filmed pirate style from a TV playing the original.

That acrynym 'P.O.C.O' does not stand for Psychic Octogenarian Conspiracy Operatives, but in fact Physiology Of Chimpanzees in Orbit?

And you certainly would never, at the end of the game when everyone is tired and too mellow from wacky cigarettes and wants the game to be over because they've plundered their best material and are working with nothing, have the supreme enjoyment that comes from asking for a brief synopsis of the film Girl In My Pocket and inspires the following:



"Film: Pussy In The Snake-Den.

A scientific experiment goes horribly wrong. A story about searching."

- Nathan"



I practically died from Ribzuka on the spot.

Peace out (for larks and giggles, get thee to a Target and pick up your very own copy. You need never leave the house again!)

Do you have a permit for that jumper?

Not 15 minutes ago, I was strolling through Rundle Mall with bike in tow when I passed one of the requisite gaggles of girls clad in all the tell tale marks of Private School: tartan skirts, rolled sleeves, dishevelled-yet-cute-in-a-pretty-teenage-girl-sort-of-way hair capped with a ribbon, impossibly clear skin...you know the sort. One of them was wearing a jumper, her tie poking out and bobbing up and down with their laughter.

As I pass by, they're approached by a girl who is obviously older, if her general air of unconscious superiority is anything to go by. She looks exactly the same, except she's wearing the after school uniform of skinny jeans and long cardigan. She's got an apologetic smile on her face, as if she's about to do something she really doesn't want to do but it Must Be Done. The girls obviously know her and more to the point, they seem to know what she's about to do...

"Hiiiiiiiiii! Yeah, I'm reaaaaaallllly sorry (smile smile, perfect white teeth) but I'm going to have to ask you to take your jumper off...!! (smile smile, apologetic eyes, revelling in the power)...yeah, I know....I'm sorry!!!!!!!!!"

To which Jumper Girl obliges, looking apologetic back.

Meanwhile, I'm like WTFF? It took me a moment to remember, but then it all came flooding back...

Prefects. They can make you do shit after school. Like pick up rubbish or stay behind to, I don't know, watch the library or something. Or take off your freakin' jumper because wearing it without a blazer is AGAINST SCHOOL RULES!

And I thought to myself, Self - I am so fucking glad high school is over. Because back then, shit like that seemed normal. Especially since my school had this complicated system of Survivor-like leadership tiers which basically saw a third of the year 11s and half of the year 12s given some kind of authority to hand out detentions, lines and make you take your fucking jumper off in public. 

Peace out (sorrrrrrrry!!!!! I know, it sucks, but I have to do it because otherwise the entire world will collllllaaaaaaaaaaapse in on itself like one gigantic ode to irony!!!!!)

Home, home on the Grange

One of the big news items in little old SA today is the release of Penfolds new Grange. Retailing at around $550 a bottle, it's probably not the kind of thing you'd BYO to one of the cheap yet cheerful gut busting Chinese kitchens me and my ilk like to frequent. At that price, I'd probably save it for one of the many ritual male sacrifices held by my Ladies Feminist Foxilliary Club every third full moon (three for each point of the holy vagina). After smearing our menstrual blood all over the defiled carcass of whichever hapless schmuck we'd chosen to hold accountable to all the sins of the patriarchy that particular night, we could pop the cork on a bit of expensive red and congratulate ourselves on being crazy. Which is just like any other Feminasty Friday Full Moon really.

But I digress.

Matthew Abraham and David Bevan invited callers this morning to share their own memories of Grange Hermitage. The following two stories leapt out from the radio waves and pierced me straight through the heart. Truly, there is nothing more depressing than what you are about to read...Consider this your warning.

"Caller Robert shares his Grange story. Way back in 1978 he used to look at various wines a lot. He could not buy much wine then, but he could buy a lot of Grange at about $10 or $12 a bottle. In 1979, the news report came in that the Grange 1971 had won the National Wine Olympiad. He knew where he could get this particular wine cheaply so he picked up ten bottles of the Grange 1971 in Hobart for about $12 each. He also knew that when he returned to Geelong, he could buy them at the supermarket for $8. Robert explains that a bottle of Grange 1971 today would sell for around $1000. After he bought his wine, he drank one bottle and gave a bottle to another friend before storing the rest. But in 1984, tragedy struck when his car broke down and needed a new engine. He sold the Grange bottles to replace his car and was really happy because he got $30 a bottle for them. Alas, Robert says he has never been happy since."

Heartbreaking.

But then there's Min:

"Caller Min owns a holiday house in Victor Harbor where she and her partner keep their wine. Some time ago, they had a phone call from the police saying they had been burgled. When they went down, their wine cellar had been plundered and nearly all the wine was stolen. The policeman who had interviewed them was a red wine drinker and he was beside himself to hear the Grange Hermitage wine was gone. Weeks later, they found out where the burglar lived and discovered him with two half empty bottles of 1991 Grange. The policeman asked him why he hadn't finished them, puzzled. The burglar said he didn't like them and so had been drinking them mixed with Woodcroft's lemonade. "

*cries*

Funnier though was when Abraham and Bevan mused on what exactly Grange mixed with lemonade would taste like. After reflection, they decided on cold duck.

Peace out (while sighing at how I have gotten into the unbreakable pattern of drinking cask wine at the pub)

* Hey, some people have knitting clubs.

That same old chestnut

Oy gevalt, there aren't many things a weekend away in the country won't fix. After trundling up to the Yorke Peninsula with mtk and nai, I feel a little like an Oompa Loompa. This could be because I ate enough to satisfy three pregnant women for the duration of their gestations while working extremely hard to stain my skin from the inside out with copious amounts of merlot.

Saturday was a bit of a fizzer as I made the ladies follow me around while I tried to charm a local into letting me use their internet. I had to post my Sunday Mail blog you see, and it hadn't occurred to me that it might be a wise idea to do this BEFORE I set out on an eating weekend. Memo to self: be better at doing shit on time.

Eventually, the kindly folk at the Warooka pub allowed me access to their very private computer while the chef looked on over my shoulder to check I didn't steal any of the giant wads of cash lying about the place. Meanwhile, my amigos sat out front and indulged in glasses of house wine that were dispensed from upside down bottles the size of scuba diving tanks. For realsies. I know who had the better end of the deal.

I urge you all to check out said blog from yesterday. It's all about why I love being one of them lesbo socialist feminasties. The (endless) comments from some faceless person called 'Gender Irrelevant' (and it really is irrelevant - either way, our faceless friend is a douchebag) are worth the clicking trip alone. It never ceases to amaze me how many people are prepared to write off your opinion as bullshit based purely on the fact you're younger than them. Also, how many will insist that all feminists hate men even though you are a living, breathing one standing right in front of them telling them the complete opposite is true and in fact if you could find a man to love right now (in the biblical sense) you would be very well pleased indeed. SIGH.

In other news, here is my hard copy column from yesterday. I'm interested to hear what you think about the comments. For the record, with the exception of Patricia's, I find them certifiably ridiculous.

---------------

Sunday Mail

27/04/2008

I KNOW what it's like to lose a parent at a young age. I could sit here and wax lyrically for hours about the endless questions, self doubt, frustration, grief and recrimination that are gifted to you through death.

I could paint for you a perfect picture of the static emptiness that comes from knowing you'll never touch your loved one again, or hear their voice, or kiss them on the cheek, or smell that identifiable scent that has been your safekeeping since birth.

But all that can be easily summed up in five words:

It. Feels. Like. Utter. Shit.*

So I find it hard to understand how someone would bring a child into the world knowing death is lurking ever closer.

I had difficulty articulating my feelings last week when I read that celebrated former broadcaster Philip Satchell's wife Cecily had given birth to a child. Jemimah is spectacularly beautiful, and by all accounts Cecily will make a great mother. But at age 70, Satchell's attitude seemed to me dismissive of the trauma Jemimah will face when her father inevitably dies long before any parent should.

I understand the inclination Cecily had to create a child with the man she loves. As we well know, rational considerations often take a backseat when love and babies are involved.

And after all, the age of first-time parents is climbing across the board throughout Australia. They're certainly not bucking any trends. But just as we discourage 12-year-olds from having children, surely there has to be a reasonable cut-off point in the autumnal years where it's really just a bit irresponsible to be donning your parent hat?

It could just be the leftover pangs of anger associated with the death of my mother talking, but I feel an absurd rage that Satchell, by his own admission, was the one who suggested Cecily have a baby even though he knew he wouldn't "have much time with (her)".

There was no understanding in his comment as to how much time his daughter would have with him.

There are issues of ethics that must come into consideration when having a child. Is it fair to knowingly consign your child to eventual life in a one-parent family because your death is imminent?

At an age when the risk of developing degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and senile dementia is elevated, can you really say you are taking the best considerations of your potential child into account?

If Satchell were to suffer a debilitating illness tomorrow, his wife would be left with a newborn baby and a husband who might require round-the-clock care. While you can never predict what bucket of mud life might throw in your face, there are some situations where we might reasonably predict that the odds are not exactly in our favour.

YET I've heard very little criticism of Satchell, and I can't help but think it has to do with our attitudes towards parenting.

When Adriana Iliescu became a mother a few years ago at the age of 67, most people (including myself) expressed abject horror.

I imagine this is because mothers are innately expected to be the "real" parent (i.e. sacrifice their lives for their children).

Dads are allowed to get away with the simpler things, like playing with the kids or pushing the pram occasionally.

But the role of a father is so much more important than people acknowledge. I passionately believe that females need strong, positive male role models in their lives who can act as a blueprint for the kinds of men they might one day have their own children with.

While I've no doubt Satchell and Cecily will shower Jemimah with love and attention, I think there's a tinge of sadness and irresponsibility here that shouldn't be ignored.

Every child has the right to believe their parents will live forever – and telling them otherwise won't lessen the gut-wrenching pain when it becomes all too apparent that's not the case.

-------------

And here's what tracey nelson of adelaide had to say about that:

How dare you confuse your own grief over your father's passing with the joy Phillip Satchell and his wife are currently experiencing with the birth of their daughter. I am 49 and have a three year old, my husband is 59. After many years on IVF we gave up hope and discovered ten days after my own father's death that I was pregnant. Do the math and you will see that I conceived at the very time of my dad's death. We will forever cherish our darling Esther but are very much aware that my husband's time with her is limited. She is a gift, just as this other baby is. You have no right to tinge their joy with your clouded judgement over the sudden and sad loss of your own father. As you see from my experience my father's sudden loss brought great joy to others. Some opinions can be expressed and should be expressed as that is our right, but I think the way you have personalised this to one couple is unfortunate. At 26 you really do need more life experience to make those sorts of enormous judgement calls. You are too young to appreciate that you grab joy when it presents, no matter what form it takes and no matter what possible pain it might cause. My father lives on because of the gift I believe he gave me (in my daughter). You should not make judgements based on your own grief (as sad as this is). Age makes people better arbiters of their own fate than 26 year old columnists.

Posted by: tracey nelson of adelaide 10:25pm April 27, 2008

a) Father?

b) How would tracey feel if Philip was actually 'Phillipa'? My guess is she wouldn't be quite as supportive.

c) The old life experience chestnut again! I cannot possibly know anything because I was only hatched yesterday and still have a bug for a brain. I think I love that almost as much as the endless comments about how I love having abortions.

Thoughts?

Peace out (and do head to my news ltd blog and leave a comment. it's so nice to read reason amongst blatant examples of how people don't read the text properly...)

* This appeared in print as "Misery". But "Shit" is more apt.

PS: How good does Big Brother look this year? I'm not even joking.