Is It Just Me?

by Chrissie Swan

  Great-aunt: “So we’ll see you on Christmas Day then?”

  Salad maker: “Yes! What can I bring?”

  Great-aunt: “Nothing, we have it all sorted.”

  Salad maker: “No, really, I know just the thing! I have a salad that will confuse and amaze everyone and leave everyone talking about it until I am long dead! It’s inedible and spectacular! See you on the day!”

  The setting was a hot Queensland summer and the location was the cleared-out garage under my cousin’s house on stilts in suburban Brisbane. The usual suspects were there – a bit of ham, a few cold chooks, some potato salad with Miracle Whip and spring onion. And boiled egg, if I remember rightly.

  The temperature was approximately 265 degrees. And in the middle of the table, in a cut-glass bowl, was a salad that I’d never seen before and, frankly, have never seen again. Thin slices of orange and matching slices of brown onion were arranged in an alternating pattern. The dressing? Cream.

  Just cream. Orange and onion drenched in cream. This happened twenty-four years ago and I am still confused. I just did a Google search for it and there’s no record of it ever being made by anyone, anywhere, in the history of the universe.

  I would ask my great-aunt’s friend to share the recipe with me, but she’s probably no longer with us. Perhaps it was a concoction of mango, cheese and mayo that did her in. Anyway, the moral here is to never serve an orange, onion and cream salad. Anywhere. Ever.

  My second tip is to buy stupid, outrageous toys for kids and teenagers that they really want. Not underwear. Underwear is a terrible present for kids. I do not remember the year I got three pairs of Bonds cottontails from my gran for Christmas. No wait, strike that – I do remember because it was every year.

  Kids don’t want undies. They want stuff like a Fuzzy Pumper Barber & Beauty Shop. Now, I do remember that year. I wept like a baby. It was 1978. I had just turned five. It was the best Christmas ever and before you pooh-pooh the idea of commercial gifts that break, let me remind you that I still have the Fuzzy Pumper Barber & Beauty Shop. I played with it about two weeks ago, totally absorbed in making hairdos out of Play-Doh in my very own barber chair. I am thirty-nine. So there!

  One year my sister got a Merlin and she cried, too. Remember Merlin? It would beep a tune and you had to replicate the beeps. From memory. Nowadays it’s about as fun as getting a gift-wrapped stick, but in 1981 it was high-tech, let me tell you. We didn’t see my sister for weeks afterwards. And when she did eventually emerge from her bedroom with three new pimples and a new bad mood, she only spoke like Dexter from Perfect Match. Great gift!

  And lastly, make sure you’ve got the right gift for the right person. One year, my ex gave me a bottle of my “favourite” perfume. Which was actually the scent his ex liked.

  I didn’t say anything, but every time I wore it we would fight about how boring it was that I was a vegetarian obsessed with Buffy. Even though I was, at the time, chowing down on a lamb chop. Amazing how evocative a smell can be. I should’ve said something, but by the time I’d worn it on a few occasions we’d broken up and that was that.

  So there it is. My own tips for a top Christmas? Keep the onion away from the fruit salad; a few rubbishy toys never killed anyone; buy gifts for those you like, not those you despise.

  Follow those rules and you can’t go wrong. Happy Yule!

  2nd December 2012

  The best of summer

  Everyone has their own definition of what summer means to them. I mean, everyone knows the weather gets hotter and the shirtsleeves get shorter. Most of us will do an inordinate amount of shopping, most of us will have some time off, and nearly all of us will crack open our first lemonade iceblock of the year. But apart from those sorts of things, it’s strangely personal the ways in which our behaviour changes in the months from December to February.

  Here are the top five things that are synonymous with summer for me:

  1. Chafe

  Pants are a no-go for me in summer. They’re just too hot. But the downside to this is enough friction with each step to light a fire. My thighs seem to resemble sausages the minute I turn that calendar page from November to December. I’ve actually been tempted to stay up late on November 30 with a torch under my doona so I can watch the metamorphosis as it occurs. I’ve mentioned this before on my radio show and was quickly put in touch with an underwear company called, ingeniously enough, Chafe Busters. I’m yet to use anything from their range, instead opting for ninety days of walking around like John Wayne from about 2pm each day. Summer is so sexy at my place. Pass me the talc.

  2. Mangoes

  They start appearing like juicy misshapen eggs a bit before summer and my whole local fruit shop smells of them, so I know they’re in season before I can even see them. By December I can buy them by the box, quite cheaply, and my staple diet shifts. It is possible, however, to eat too many, and I’ve sported mango face-burn and … errrm … downstairs-burn, too … on more than one occasion. I get blasé about them eventually. The first mango of the season is devoured in a kind of ceremony. Slowly and reverently, I slice the cheeks, and score them until I can pop them up from the skin into neat little dewy cubes. The seed gets a good ten minutes of its own. By the end of January, I’m selecting only the ones that are pungent with ripeness and if I get tired of it midway I just cast it off, like Ozzy Osbourne tossing away the body of a bat after he’s torn its head off. Next!

  3. Hobbit feet

  Contrary to popular belief, there are very few freebies in the world of radio and TV any more. However, two years ago I did get a gorgeous pair of very expensive white-and-gold sandals from a photo shoot and I was champing at the bit for the weather to get better so I could give them another run. Last week was the perfect time! So I fossicked into the back of my wardrobe, pushing aside my everyday boots and the pair of wedge heels I wear when I want to emulate a transsexual. I popped the sandals on. Then put them back and toughed it out in my aforementioned boots because … did someone say Bilbo Baggins? Lurking in my winter boots all year were not actual feet, but instead two cracked and dry-skin-covered paddles resembling feet, with a little bit of chipped nail polish clinging to every second toenail. Note to self: book a pedicure in November every year, and call ahead so their orbital sander is fully charged.

  4. Loco children

  Nothing sends kids crazier than sudden hot weather that they’re not used to. Add to that a bit of daylight-saving action and you’ve got a surefire recipe for The Bad Seed. My kids are usually bathed, smelling delicious and tucked in by 6.30pm. But in summer? Forget it. On the first super-hot day this year my one-year-old was still toddling around at 9.30pm. Strange sounds came out of his slack little mouth and there was nothing his father or I could do but marvel at how his hitherto straight hair had curled up, and how he had miraculously mastered the arts of clapping, scooting on his bottom and saying “Na na” all at the same time. In the end, we just waited until his batteries ran out.

  5. Burns

  I am particularly sun-smart. My mother slathered us with sunblock in the ’70s, which I’m sure involved ordering the cream from overseas as other Aussie families happily played on the beach completely unprotected, like ants under a magnifying glass. Not us. We had the works. Hats, zinc and 15+, which was the highest you could get in those days. Sure, Mum was using baby oil, but we kids had creamy armour on. So when I talk about burns I don’t mean sunburn. I mean burns. In the kitchen. Because I am nude and cooking. The latest spots I’m applying pawpaw ointment to are on my tummy, because I cooked salmon three days ago in the nicky noo-na and some water got in with the olive oil and – BOOM! Splatters of lava-hot oil all over me. Friends, that signalled the end of my career as a bikini model. Which is okay, as I generally swim in the nude as well. Like a plus-size mermaid.

  I do love summer. But I reserve the right, after a few hot days in a row, to
start whingeing about how I’d kill for a bowl of soup and an open fireplace. And then I’ll have another mango and I’ll forget I was ever over it in the first place.

  9th December 2012

  Packing essentials

  Here’s a tip, from me to you, for nothing. If you have had a huge year, are pregnant with your third child and are lurching towards your Christmas holidays like a cartoon dog in the desert, then here’s a piece of advice: do not, at this stage, make arrangements to move house.

  I have done this. In fact, I have just done this, last week. And while it’s true that I did survive, it was only barely.

  Things started to go off the rails when I heeded the advice of a friend and booked the use of “packers”. Initially I was in love with the idea. Mainly, because I could say to my colleagues, “Sorry, I just have to take this call from the Packers” and, “The Packers are coming today.” Sadly, I was referring to two spry twenty-somethings in matching embroidered polo shirts arriving at the doorstep of my ’60s brick veneer and not, as it sounded, organising a lunch date involving lobster and Veuve with an ex-model and a billionaire on a yacht in the harbour. Oh well. Pregnant women shouldn’t eat shellfish or drink alcohol anyway, so crisis averted!

  The night before the packers were due, I went around the house placing little red tabs on the cupboards I didn’t want them to touch.

  We still had to live here for six days before The Big Move and I wasn’t going to be squatting in my own home. The pantry got a tag, as did my wardrobe. Initially I thought, “What the hell, take all my clothes – I only wear about four things in there on high rotation, anyway.” But then I remembered I had stashed a freebie in there that had been sent to me at the radio station that very day.

  It was, I blush to reveal, a $220 sex toy. Now, let me get this straight, I wasn’t hiding it for use later … I wanted to show my partner the sheer amazing technology of it and that nowadays these things come with all the bells and whistles. (I stress that’s figuratively speaking … can you imagine?)

  Anyway, after we’d laughed nervously about it, turned on each of its SIX SPEEDS and suggested maybe wrapping it up for one of our mothers (ho, ho, ho) I threw it to the back of my top shelf among my trackie daks and old maternity bras. There, it looked about as comfortable as a supermodel at a Weight Watchers meeting. Just as I was contemplating the packers discovering this dirty little secret, I swiftly placed a red tag on the door, mouthing to myself, “I’ll deal with our battery-charged friend a little later, methinks.” When I arrived home after the packers had gone, I was relieved to find the contents of the wardrobe untouched. The tags worked!

  I then filled a drawer in the kitchen with what I considered to be essentials. I’d made a bolognese sauce, so I felt pretty up myself for remembering that I needed to put aside a huge pot and a sieve. I put in some cutlery, about six plates, some plastic bowls for the kids and some glasses and cups. Not exactly a comprehensive list, but enough to cover us for whatever we needed to eat for brekkie, lunch and dinner. My fella, The Chippie, threw in some tongs and a “Barbie Mate” tool. I have no idea why, but I appreciated his effort. So … I packed that drawer, marked it with a red tag and moved on.

  Sadly, for reasons still unknown to me, when I checked the status of that drawer post-packers, I was aghast to find it totally empty. All our essentials … gone. Somewhere in the towers of boxes stacked high in the living room. It was then I coined the phrase “like trying to find a sieve in a box stack” and you may see fit to use this phrase whenever someone unintentionally, temporarily, ruins your life.

  That night we had a roast chicken hacked apart with a butter knife I found in the dishwasher. I peeled potatoes with a little sharp knife, also in the dishwasher. Ever done without a peeler? The potatoes came out looking completely colonial, like something Ned Kelly’s lady friend might have prepared the night the Jerilderie Letter was penned. The carrots looked like they’d been whittled with a chisel from a chunk of balsa wood.

  My partner and I were on time-share with the solitary fork. I quickly shovelled in my chook, while he paced, checking my plate and asking every few minutes, “How many more mouthfuls are in that for you?” It made me so nervous I got indigestion. Have you ever spied on a cat using the litter tray? Yep. Watch someone do something and they can’t perform. In the end I just handed him the fork and said, “Your turn.”

  Later that night we realised we hadn’t planned ahead nearly enough … my four-year-old’s Pillow Pet was packed. As was his night light. The only book left untouched was the boring one about nursery rhymes. And the pull-ups? Gone. Thank goodness for the car boot and its never-ending stash of crap.

  So then we were looking down the barrel of five days with almost nothing in the kitchen. I have to say, I enjoyed the challenge. It was like camping, without the insects and digging a hole to go to the toilet.

  I’d like to think the moral of this story is that we could all learn to live with less, and that I immediately donated anything I hadn’t used in two years to charity, but my lesson was far more superficial. I learnt that peelers are not essential and not to bring home naughty things if you have no intention of using them …

  16th December 2012

  Living the Christmas dream

  There are only two more sleeps to go! I have to admit that I think I may have failed miserably at achieving my dream Christmas. I had all the good intentions of the season but, as usual, I’m pulling it all together at the last minute.

  I had grand visions of a stylised Christmas. I do this every year. But I think I may lack an innate sense of, I don’t know … style. Why does my Christmas never look like something out of a magazine?

  My Christmas-mad friend has informed me that my first downfall is the lack of a “theme”. Hers is “antique silver” this year. She has wooden vessels heaving with glass ornaments, burnished stars in her hallway and a tasteful sprinkling of bright white lights in her garden – solar powered, if you don’t mind, because, she says, nothing screams “bogan Christmas!” more than metres and metres of electric cabling. Excuse me while I kick all my cords under the couch.

  But, to be honest, I believe I actually do have a theme, although it may not be the focus of a spread in any publication apart from Hoarder’s Weekly. I believe my concept of “anything goes” is timeless and evergreen, much like the real tree I’ve been meaning to organise every year. Instead, I have opted at the last minute to just whack up the free fibre-optic one I got once from a store called Kristmas Kingdom. Best gift with purchase, EVER. The great irony is that I bought some Christmas lights from said shop and my cat went to the toilet in the power pack as soon as I opened it. The free tree, however, lives on!

  This year, I outsourced the wrapping of every one of my gifts and I highly recommend this. It saves you screaming at your loved ones on Christmas Eve, “GO TO BED SO I CAN DO THINGS!” And this time-planning windfall happened entirely by accident. I did all my shopping in one shop and when the shop assistant blithely asked, “Do you want all these gift-wrapped?” I nearly launched myself over the counter and covered her in yuletide kisses, mistletoe or not.

  I went and got a coffee and by the time I had returned everything I had bought was wrapped and trimmed in a way I could never have achieved myself, even with a whole evening in an empty house channelling home-style guru Tonia Todman.

  I have made one Christmas resolution that I’m sticking to, though, and that is I’m only cooking or serving or eating delicious things I really like. For years I have squeezed a turkey into my oven, for what? I don’t even like turkey. It’s dry and weird. And so leggy I feel like I’m dining on Rhonda Burchmore.

  But I do like prawns. And I love Moreton Bay bugs. And for 364 days of the year we never eat either. My family and I intend to eat so many of these crustaceans that we’ll sprout whiskery things from our jawlines and have our customary afternoon siesta huddled together under
a rock, keeping a glossy black eye peeled for predators.

  I’m going to have to throw berley in the pool water just to get the kids in there.

  There’ll be a pumpkin and couscous salad with a yoghurt and mint dressing, something involving potato and bacon and enough pavlova to sink the Titanic. Which is a considerable amount, given a pav weighs nothing at all until you digest it and it magically becomes three or four kilos right there on your bottom.

  I’m guessing the delicate ballerina who lent her name to this antipodean icon did not ever partake of this dessert, especially the variation involving grated Peppermint Crisp.

  I also harbour an unholy penchant for the festive slice called “white Christmas”, but every time I eat more than four squares I am plunged into the existential conundrum of what, exactly, is copha? And why does it make me feel carsick? The lion’s share of any batch of this mysterious concoction usually hits the bin somewhere around December 28.

  I also plan to reprise my annual case of lockjaw from too many Pascall columbines. And have you noticed there are always things that turn up just at Christmas time? I am referring specifically to those Danish biscuits in a blue tin with two tiers of shortbready deliciousness. And panettone. My in-depth research of this phenomenon has revealed that these items are actually “yule-turnal”, meaning they come out only when they hear Boney M singing “Feliz Navidad”. Speaking of which, Bing Crosby is also yule-turnal. And he is the soundtrack of my day. After a full day of Bing, though, I’m ready to pop him back in the CD case for another year. Ding dong merrily on high, indeed.

  I wanted to buy a new frock, but I ran out of time and also, being pregnant, I have no idea what size I am from one minute to the next. What’s the next size up from plus-size? Who knows? All I know is that if I can get through the day without my ankles swelling to the size of a yucca trunk it will be a kind of Christmas miracle.