Did I mention that I'm terrified of flying? That I've been terrified of flying my entire life? That I'm the sort of person who clutches the arms of total strangers sitting next to me and won't let go?

One man I grabbed once was a former engineer with British Airways and he spent the flight telling me about all the safety checks they do on planes (none of which I can remember). His wife glared at me the entire time. On another occasion I clutched at a strapping young fellow who, it turned out, was even more frightened than I. When he saw the extent of my own terror, he put on his headphones and refused to talk to me. I think he must have asked for a 'stable neighbour' when he checked in and felt really ripped off that he'd been seated next to Gibbering Wreck, Yours Truly.

So in nine hours I get to board one of the damn things and grab, clutch, poke, hug and generally molest my mother and the Dreamboat. Can't wait.

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This time tomorrow I'll be in NZ, sleeping the sleep of the innocent and dreaming about what an idiot I'm going to make of myself on the ski slopes of Mt Hutt.

Today ended on a slightly better note than it started. I woke up annoyed with the Dreamboat, who last night seemed to take exception to my perfectly reasonable wish to quaff vast quantities of the wine stash secreted at the back of the wardrobe. In his words, these bottles are 'expensive' and 'irreplaceable' - to which the only thought I could come up with in response was 'Perhaps you should stick them up your ass, then - where they'll be safe".

Some words were exchanged, a couple of attitudes were brought to light, he came home from work today and cuddled me as his way of apologising and I made him one of his favourite meals by way of compensation. And what of the Dowager Empress in all this? She carried on watching Aussie soaps on TV, blissfully unaware. As she should be. Even I wouldn't drag someone to another country and then force them to witness silly spats for the hell of it.

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I missed my writing group yesterday, which is probably just as well because I haven't written anything except a couple of emails and this blog for a week. The group has been invited to contribute some work for a festival being held in October - celebrating 25 years of the local community centre, or something. According to Joe (Leader of the Group But Not in an Oppressive or Overbearing Way) the literary gems selected for display at this momentous event will be seen by 'thousands of people'. I didn't realise large percentages of Melbourne's population took that much of an interest in its wee community centres and how long they've been cluttering up the pavement, but there you go.

The theme (oh yeah, there's a theme. You didn't think they'd let us write what we want, do you?) is 'Belonging'. I ask you. 'Be-fucking-longing'. Why couldn't the theme be 'Housewives Who Iron Obsessively In An Attempt to Cope With the Realisation That Their Husbands Are Screwing Their Best Friends'?? Or how about 'Men Half Insane With Sexual Jealousy Who Beat Up Their Girlfriends When They Discover Them Rubbing Themselves With Wet Vegetation Outside a Party'?? I can trot out that sort of thing, no problem. But 'Belonging'?! Ugh...that's team player stuff.

In an attempt to impress the Muse, I thought I'd make a list of all the things I belong to - setting aside the semi-obvious ones like The Human Race, The Female Gender, People Who Lived For 13 Months In Whyalla, South Australia, and Survived, and Not a Member of a Fundamentalist Religion and Therefore Damned. This is what I came up with:

1. Slightly overweight people with freckles who obsess over their hair
2. People who have been divorced more than once
3. People who didn't go to their first rave until they were over 35
4. People who are nearly 40 and still get zits
5. People who wrote a letter to Prince Charles and never got back a reply

Heart-warming stuff, ain't it?

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A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
- Phyllis McGinley

Way to go, Phyl. Someone get this woman a drink. Actually, she's been dead for 24 years, so make it a toast in her memory.

I always loved this poem, particularly the last line. I don't know about you, but there have been times in my life where I've been desperate for someone to understand me 'relentlessly'. Maybe because it implies that you can't hide or get away with anything. There's nothing more conducive to honesty than someone waving a finger at you and saying, "Don't bother trying that one on. I know what you're like." Then you can have hours of fun arguing with them, even though you know they're right.

So what do you do? It's a gorgeous day, you're hanging out your washing and this person who brought you into the world is talking to you about their death. They're saying, "I'm not afraid to die, like some people are. My greatest fear is having to go and leave you kids behind. I don't want to leave you."

If you're me, what you do is nod in acknowledgment and continue pegging those fucking clothes because it's suddenly the most absorbing task in the world. Otherwise, you'd burst into tears and ruin the moment.

You see, she's perfectly entitled to talk about it. I don't have a problem with that. I don't think people talk or think about it enough, actually. So when someone close to them dies they fall apart. (I'm not talking about being maudlin, either. I just don't think there's anything wrong with being a bit mentally prepared for the inevitable.)

So there she is, in her so-called 'golden years' (which basically means 'way too much time on her hands to think about things') and she's talking about everything in her life that made her sad or angry or regretful and I'm the only person she feels she can talk to, because I'm the only person she feels actually listens to her.

I don't know at what point it switches around - the point when they stop looking after you and you start looking after them. I guess with my mother and me, the switch-over happened when my father died. I'm not saying she became utterly helpless from then on. Actually, she became far stronger, more tolerant, wiser and much more her own person. Maybe it happened then because that was the point I decided I'd look after her - not as a helpless, needy person, but as someone who deserved some support. I was five weeks off my 21st birthday.

I grew up a bit around that time. I didn't necessarily act 'wiser' in the way the world views 'wise' - less than a year later, my marriage was over - but around that time I came to conclusions that have stood me in good stead. Life's too short to be doing anything that makes you unhappy, whether it be trying to stick out a job or relationship or any sort of so-called commitment that does a person damage. But lest I start to rant or lecture, I'll leave it there and you can draw your own conclusions. All I'll say is that experiencing the death of someone you love is the best thing I know of for putting things into perspective.

So I find myself opening the door to her room and checking up on her... making sure she's breathing... stuff like that. The sort of stuff that parents do with their babies. Somehow it's been turned around. Now it's, "Are you hungry? Do you want to go to the loo? Are you tired?" I don't mind. There's a strange kind of symmetry in it.

This has been a bit of a serious one, but you can't be funny about things all of the time. Sometimes it just doesn't fit. So 'til next...

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The Blair Witch Project is on TV. I didn't see it at the movies and I'm very glad because the girl is annoying enough on the small screen as it is.

The first official Culinary Disaster of the Dowager Empress' visit occurred tonight. After fighting our way through the crowds at the Queen Victoria Market just long enough for me to feel the first stirrings of homicidal frustration, we staggered home laden with healthy, low-cholesterol victuals. You'd think nothing much could go wrong with roasting a chicken and some potatoes and blanching a few green veges, huh? Wrong! The chicken came out looking like a work of art - golden, succulent, perfect - but when the Dreamboat began carving it up, he noticed it was ever so slightly bright pink inside. After another half hour in the oven the bird was well and truly done but everything else was well and truly over-done. The others ate it and were complimentary in a hearts-overflowing-with-sympathy kind of way, but there was no hiding the fact that they choked it down mainly out of pity.

This is why I desperately need to be rich and famous - so I can buy a chef.

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Actually, the hangover wasn't too bad, but I can't in all honesty say that the day got off to a lively start.

We took the Dowager Empress to the William Ricketts Sanctuary. (This link has the best pics, but the information isn't entirely accurate. The sculptures are made from kiln-fired clay, not wood.) If you're ever in Melbourne, check it out. It's extraordinary.

William Ricketts was a genius, a visionary and a passionate mystic. In my opinion he was also just a wee bit mad, but there's no denying that elements of his philosophy, particularly his views on conservation and our responsibility for the land and all its life, have a ring of truth about them.

Whether or not you share his beliefs, it's worth going to the Sanctuary for the sculptures alone. They're superb. The whole place has an other-worldly sense to it that's quite state-producing. It's like an Australian mini Narnia for grown-ups.

We stopped for afternoon tea at a little restaurant next to the car-park. The Dowager Empress was wilting a little and it occurred to me she hadn't eaten since breakfast. The thing about my mother, though, is she'd never say anything for fear of being 'a nuisance'. She'd just keep going until someone realised or she passed out. (I don't think I inherited that particular gene.)

The restaurant turned out to be a good choice. Like the Sanctuary, it's set in eucalypt rainforest and the area is teeming with bird-life. The restaurant owners have placed feeder trays in front of the windows, so we got to pile mountainous, indecent quantities of cream and strawberry jam on our scones and blame it all on the damn birds for distracting us. There were a couple of dozen crimson rosellas - gorgeous creatures - but they kept getting the guano kicked out of them by a crow and a couple of bully-boy magpies. Then five or six kookaburras showed up, booted bully-bird ass and were everyone's heroes. The effect was spoilt shortly thereafter when a couple of them persisted in trying to fly through the closed windows. Final assessment: Menacing But Dumb In An Endearing Kind of Way. Just think of Andre the Giant's role as Fezzik in The Princess Bride, then shrink him down into a bird and - voila! - you've got it.

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To sterilise this apartment to any level greater than the one it currently demonstrates, you'd need gallons of hydrochloric acid and a small but effective nuclear bomb.

The Dreamboat arrived home at the appointed hour and we drove with all due haste to the airport to greet the Dowager Empress (my Mum) on her arrival to Melbourne.

Let it be said that she's here, she looks great and I love her to bits. My mission over the next seven days is to somehow get her to gain 2 kilos without raising her cholesterol level or in any way endangering her health. I plan to do this through alcohol. It's always worked for me.

Memorable quotes:

Mother: (after mandatory greetings, hugs, dissection of service on flight) Yes, I can see you've put on a little bit of weight. But it looks good on you.

Dreamboat: (following mandatory bottle of bubbly with bottle of chardonnay as chaser after Dowager Empress has retired for the night) OK, we'll drink the bottle of Pinot Noir, but only because I know you'll drink it on your own and be wrecked for all of tomorrow if I don't join in.

I feel so loved!

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My mother arrives in 18 hours. The house looks like the kind of wasteland that would follow an invasion by hordes of rampaging toddlers. (Not that I've ever seen a toddler in inner-city Melbourne. Maybe there's a by-law that restricts them to the 'burbs or something.) There isn't one scrap of food in the place, but I do have two shelves in the pantry dedicated entirely to condiments. Judging from the noise emanating from our neighbours on one side, there's a festive gang-bang taking place. On the other side, our neighbour is treating us to the latest hits from the Asian equivalent of Britney Spears. The Dreamboat is snoring away peacefully, no doubt dreaming of long-legged blondes with prodigious mammaries who actually work for a living. And what have I achieved today? Well, I cleaned out the 'guest' bathroom. It took me nearly two hours.

Despite a couple of drunken conversations with the Dreamboat about one day owning some sort of exclusive B&B cottage, I know for a fact that I'd never be successful in the Hospitality industry. You see, I have a deep-seated aversion to other people's pubes. (The Dreamboat is an exception in this regard. When you LOVE someone, pubes are part of the package deal.) I'm not even too enamoured of my own. And pouring buckets of water over someone else's discarded little hairs on the shower floor in a vain attempt to coax them down the drain is not my idea of Time Well Spent.

That's the underlying deception inherent in the Hospitality industry, by the way. You'll see some swanky B&B cottage advertising itself as a 'secluded, romantic retreat for discerning couples'. What that actually means is they're happy to pretend that their guests spend their time:
1. Wandering through the garden reciting passages from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Sonnets From the Portuguese' to each other
2. Making excellent use of the 'gourmet' kitchen facilities
3. Cuddling in front of the fire and staring into each other's eyes while the soft strains of Andreas Bocelli singing that thing he's famous for play in the background
4. Admiring the moonlight as it glitters on the tranquil waters of the nearby bay
5. Murmuring, 'Darling, you are my life, my love, my soul' before falling asleep in each other's arms

...when they know damn well that people only bother paying money to stay in their establishment so they can:
1. Get drunk
2. Eat out
3. Crank up the spa bath
4. Pop the champagne cork
5. Fuck like bunnies

And the upshot of all this is that some poor sod has to come in the next day with a step-ladder and turbo-charged vacuum cleaner in an attempt to dislodge dozens of 'discerning' pubes from every visible surface.

At least I don't have to worry about any of that where my mother is concerned. Everyone knows that mothers are pure and sexless creatures who valiantly subjected themselves to the whole disgusting process in order to bring wondrous beings like us into the world. It's not like they enjoyed it or anything.

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OK, so it wouldn't work in tandem. They'd need to be flying side by side. I was tired, you know?!

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Totally unrealistic intention #412: I will go to bed before 2 am. Yeah, right.

I've been writing emails for nearly 5 hours solid. Well, two emails. Two very long emails. I blame technology. Things were much simpler in the days of quills and parchments. You were forced to condense it all into something that would fit comfortably around the leg of your average carrier pigeon. Not much room for waffle there. So on that principle, you'd need two albatrosses flying in tandem with a little hammock thing suspended from their beaks to hold my weighty tomes aloft.

I received an email from Andrew in Sydney tonight. At the end, he asked how the gods of red wine were treating me. I read it out to the Dreamboat, who said, "Everyone in the entire world knows you're a pisshead". Wow. Fame at last. But rest assured, I won't let it change me one bit.

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Totally unrealistic declarations in honour of Blog Attempt No. 3:

1. I will try not to swear too much
2. Since this is my blog, I'll do what I fucking well please

It's off to a good start already. I can tell.

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