Accommo Chameleon

Growing up, my family holidayed at caravan parks, the friendly ghettos of the holiday world. Every caravan park has the same characters; the woman in the sarong who's always putting out washing, the shirtless alpha beer belly who knows everyone loudly, the always sunburnt guy with the huge protruding adam’s apple, and the annoying children who take your fishing spot. Instant holiday nemesis.

A hierarchy would establish itself among the caravan kids. My sister and I started a drug ring from up the fig tree, trading sherbet on the black market. How is ‘Wizz Fizz’ not cocaine for children? 

In between business hours we’d swim in the motel pool next door and catch crabs with sticks or twist for pippies. No one ever messed with us.

When you stay at a caravan park you get a special key. With it, you are able to access the bathroom block, a dim dungeon set out like a horse stable. In fact, you can probably converse with with a horse over the partitions in the showers. Her name is Kim Kardashian. 

Our Mum used to make us wear thongs so we wouldn’t get warts on out feet. No matter the size of the shower cubicle or the number of towel racks, somehow all of your belongings would still end up wet. An unpredictable shower nozzle responded as though you were trying to put out a fire on the ceiling. How else does so much water splash entirely outside the shower area? Did Poseidon use the shower before me?

Collective hair strands would swirl around the sinkhole like seaweed in a strong current. It was a new ecosystem. As I left the facilities I was never sure if I was cleaner or just wetter. There’s a difference.

The toilet blocks were usually cleaned between 10 and 11am, because no one ever needs to go to the bathroom then. Basically, an apocalyptic disinfectant storm would sweep through the general area. So fresh and so clean clean. And so very wet, even the toilet paper. You'd have to go through half a soggy roll before reaching remotely dry sheets. You could make a replica paper mache toilet in the mean time. 

So yes, you need a key for all that, a special key. Not just any member of the public can access those fine facilities. 

Hotels and Hostels are different. There’s an ’S’ which separates. The ’S’ stands for Sex, Snoring and Strangers, which means hostels are for people who wish to have sex with a stranger whilst snoring. I’ve never been able to sleep in a hostel, and not because I’ve been having sex with a stranger whilst snoring. I’m a light sleeper, which means I need no light, particularly of the fluorescent variety. And I guess I’ve just never found frat parties in a rabbit warren that relaxing. Are the parents ever coming home?

A hotel room is all about the minibar. I never take anything, just looking thanks. It’s like window grocery shopping. The overpriced minibar items often end up sharing with tallies from the convenience store. You guys get along now. (Slam)

Then there’s the bathroom. What is it we’re looking for, here? It’s not as though the toilet is a ‘jack-in-the-box’ and the shower a fire hydrant. But we do want the toilet roll to be folded into a delicate triangle. It makes us feel special. As do the pretty prepackaged toiletries, but what is in them? Ah well, what does it matter if you wash your hair with possum semen? It’s in a cute canister. 

Then there’s the shower cap you’re more likely to use as a condom, and a hair dryer louder than a dated Boeing, with the effectiveness of an old lady breathing on your scalp. 

My usual dilemma is switching the lever from bath to shower, like I’m steering a heavy steam train. 

Once I stayed in a budget hotel in San Francisco. The water only poured through the bath tap. There was no plug so we used a sock. It turns out that I just couldn’t find the right lever for the shower head. Time for new socks.

Staying in an Air BnB is like visiting your childhood pen pal friend but they’re not there, and I don’t think they ever existed. Who were you writing to all those years ago? Your Air BnB host wants you to feel really comfortable and have everything you need and more, but you’re also being judged and rated so don’t fk it up. Do the dishes, damn it.

Three out of Four Air BnBs we stayed at in USA and Canada required toilet maintenance. Was it something we ate? At home, you just flush and it’s done. In the US, it repeatedly swirls around and swells up like evidence in a murder case. Guilty or innocent? It’s judge, jury and excretioner.

2016 Horror Scopes

With Jupiter in your house of skipping youtube ads for a living, you realise you’ve only used that Nurti-Bullet once but it was a good investment for dust gathering and fruit flies. You may be able to get the juices flowing again by posting a Tinder profile picture of your full moon direct.  

Mercury in retrograde leaves you wondering why the miming boom has ended. No one mentioned it. When it comes to work, your attention to deer tails is staggering. If you decide to take up adult colouring-in it is best to wait until they are asleep. Stay between the wrinkles. 

Busy people still need to nurture themselves. Use your time efficiently by doing yoga in a bubblebath whilst meditating as you receive remedial massage. Or you could just get drunk and play Twister. Single? Knit yourself a body bag whilst watching ‘Gogglebox’ reruns. 

Opportunities are gnocchi but a sauce-pot keeps you living in the pasta. If there is too much on your plate right now, try to avoid restaurants called, ‘Obese Wan Kanobese’. ‘Starve Wars’ may be a lighter sabing option for you right now. Haloumi, is it meat you’re looking for?

With Saturn moving through your house of Donald Trump mirkins, it may be time to open a joint bank account for your elbow. Start a program which involves training guide dogs for people who text whilst walking. Conversely, invest in developing an app with airbags.

Lately your workplace is a rollercoaster, and you feel like vomiting from all the jerks. Great opportunities exist for social not working. If you have a falling out with the girls on a night out, it may be time to purchase a more supportive bra. I’d recommend a firm one with a counselling diploma.

As the sun approaches your ozone of ‘climate change is pretty obvious’, it dawns on you that dog excretion bags cause more litter than plain old regular dog excretion. Focus on the bigger picture, there are plenty more fridges in the sea. But they are not cooling the sea levels. Refund!

If you are seeking renewal, head to IKEA simply to update your apps, refresh your newsfeed and leave immediately! Rather than take up the challenge of assembling flimsy furniture, use your time more wisely by throwing a rubix cube at a brick wall for 2 hours. You’ll have more chance of solving the puzzle without getting screwed.

You can’t please everyone, so why not start up a leaf blower in a study area or a place of worship. Unbeleafable! Saturn is in your house of aggressive text messages ending in smiley face lol. Why not take a selfie of someone else, then reverse the camera as they say ‘Cheese!’ Tourists will love you.

This month love is in the Airbnb until you develop severe allergies to the cat hair covered furniture. Count your blessings as you endure never-ending sneezing. One in the ham is worth two in the butcher, three to get ready, now go cat, go! A mange is as good as a holiday.

The sun shines through Uranus after an ego boosting anal bleaching in your black hole sector. Beauty is in the brown eye of the beer holder. Always consider the prostitutes and the con artists when considering a transaction. They are Paypal too. 

The planets have aligned to start a meth lab in your 10th little house on the prairie. With lusty Venus leading the way there is plenty of chemistry but it turns out that ‘teeth falling out’ dream was real. Excessive Netflix bingeing can lead to severely obese fingernails. Uber yourself from the lounge to your bedroom.

Good Grief

Today I acquired a new angel, Nancy Exton, my Granny. I have other angels, some I know by name, some I don't. Those ones are called Strangels (Stranger Angels of course)
Sitting beside her hospital bed yesterday I noticed that Granny was reading a giant font book entitled 'Entertaining Angels'. Well, here we are now, entertain us, Granny. She was only a quarter of the way through so I'm not sure how entertaining she'll be. I guess she held a decent audience in the material world.

I have farewelled palliative passengers before. But where do they go on these mystery flights? And more importantly do they have a light and a whistle for attracting attention? Let's assume so, just because they're fun and they may encounter a potential Rave or Disco situation on the way.

Grieving doesn't seem to get any easier but I think I am getting better at it. Whilst a part of me feels like an enormously selfish adult baby, I do understand that it is an necessary process I need to let happen. ie The non thyroid related throat lump must be released. And it's ok to be a giant adult baby for awhile. This process is part of my humaness. But I am also more especially aware of nature's glorious impermanence. Granny's passing through this life was indeed glorious, beautiful, graceful, just like a David Attenborough special. And I am super grateful I was around just as the credits rolled. Then I pictured her lovely face instead of the roaring MGM lion.

THE END

Yes, but where did she really go? Well, I think she went everywhere all at once. Which airline does that?

Love to my Granny, (NEVER negative) Nancy Exton xx

Nanna Naps (for real)

Have you ever woken up after a nanna nap as an actual nanna?

I have accepted and embraced bed hair as a part of my daily fashionable life. But recently I seem to be subject to the symptoms of ‘bed skin’.

Each morning I wake up from my bed battle with fresh linen scars. It’s hardly my beauty sleep when I have artificially aged overnight with bed wrinkles galore. I am not an animal!

When I say I have slept like a log it means that I have actually logged my sleep. Yes, my body has documented my slumber with bed sheet imprints and a fossilized face.

Where I used to spring out of bed like a super slinky, now I gradually flop onto the floor like an unused concertina. Every morning stretch produces a honky sounding chord. Enter McDuff from ‘Johnson and Friends’.

Upon closer inspection of my morning reflection I notice that my upper chest is actually a MAD magazine fold out. Woman of many cleavages. Sometimes the bed sheets cut so deep that it looks like my face is folding over and actually engulfing itself.

After an immensely deep sleep (the kind full of astro-travel adventures through every dimension in non human form) I briefly become unrecogniseable. It’s as though I have not fully re-entered my body from my soul vacation. On such occasions I actually change race and wake up Mongolian. As the day progresses my eyes slowly pries themselves open like dead pippy shells on a hot day.

Well, you snooze, you lose.

Till death do us Part Time Casual

One of my favourite things about myself is that I couldn’t get a job at McDonalds. 

Really, where do you go from there? I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that I would rather practice the piano than serve fries.

As a result the manager said I didn’t seem committed enough. I had visions of walking down the aisle toward Ronald McDonald. The groomsmen are out of control, The Hamburglar stealing all of the Holy bread and that Grimace doing those crazy Grimacey things like……. What does he do? What is he meant to be? An overweight personality-absent purple lump doesn’t make me want to order a McFeast. Apparently Grimace lost some weight recently and became Barney the Dinosaur. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet.

I had actually completely forgotten the McDonalds rejection until my sister recounted the event to her English friends.

“Peta couldn’t get a job at McDonalds!” Roars of laughter.

I suppose it is hilarious. I am just not McDonalds material.

Eventually I scored a job at a discount store called Bargain Mania. Yes, anything with ‘mania’ in the title has to be a winner. My boss, Ashok, always manned the till until he needed a toilet break.

“I’m going to convenience”.

It took me a long time to work out that ‘convenience’ was the toilet. For ages I thought he was relieving himself at a 7 Eleven convenience store.

After awhile Ashok started saving me some of his delicious home-made curries to eat out the back. I enjoyed the back of the shop. It was like having a break in the trenches before facing the Bargain Battleground out front. It was probably just as hygienic as a trench, dust puffs, balancing boxes, rejected reject shop items from a bygone era and a suspected mutant insect rodent creation lurking about. Once I was caught in a box avalanche and I was unconscious for an unknown amount of time. Ashok let me go home after I vomited in the sink.

Whenever a customer would ask for a particular crappy product I would say,

“I’ll check out the back”. Then I’d just stand out there for a while until they eventually left. If they remained I would always return with a completely bent candelabra covered in thick dust.

“Nope, can’t see any, but how about this thing?” We never did sell that.

Apart from displaying our quality Elvis themed rugs my favourite section was the ornaments. It was full of dolphin, butterfly, unicorn and wolf figurines, indeed a plethora of inspiration for large unemployed lady tattoos. The wolf figurines had two legs and three heads, and all of the unicorn horns had been snapped off. Ashok would make me superglue the heads back together and return them to the shelves. I decided to glue random bits together for my own amusement. My best creation was a Snow White head on a Bulldog body, a match made in heaven. (Pictured)

Discount stores attract a wonderful array of people. There were some regulars, lady who looked like she lived in a beehive and conversed loudly with no one, the man who looked like a pencil and never bought anything (not even an eraser), and the angry lady with the worst penciled on eyebrows I’ve ever seen. Maybe she wasn’t even angry but her fake eyebrows made it seem that way.

One day an old lady came in with a loose fingernail and wanted me to cut it off for her. I only had giant blunt craft scissors. Anyway, nailed it.

What dreams may come?

The night following Robin Williams’ death, my Dad popped in. He’s dead too, so when I say, ‘popped in’, I mean in the form of a dream. I knew he would. He was my Robin Williams. Whilst his humor touched us more than he knew, reaching across the boundaries of age and the father/daughter dynamic, he had a dark side. Who doesn’t? But sometimes the light doesn’t come back on. It flickers for a while and then it fades, completely. Back to black.

Recently a psychic confirmed that he intentionally caused his own death. We’d always suspected. My sister found him, photos scattered around his room, phone off the hook, furniture knocked over, small change scattered across the kitchen table. We eventually found over 40 empty bottles of whiskey hidden throughout the house, and downstairs a large box of empty Listerine bottles. Correct, he was an alcoholic, but one with fresh breath!

Why can’t we see our own light sometimes? It doesn’t go away, it dims. But it only dims to us, the dimees. Others see it, and they are touched, more than you know. Your aura shines forever. Don’t underestimate your light, please don’t. It’s not just your life. Nanoo Nanoo.

Good Food Hunting

The trouble with grocery shopping is that we are spoilt for choice. Perhaps spoilt isn’t the right word. I don’t feel spoilt, I feel invaded by choice. Invaded because of blaring false fonts and ridiculously tiny fine print on so many variations of what is essentially the same thing.

When the first Homo Sapiens were acquiring food they just needed to kill that one woolly mammoth passing by. There were not several woolly mammoths standing shoulder to shoulder with separate signs labeled, ‘organic’, ‘fat free’, ‘salt reduced’, ‘RSPCA approved’, or ‘Now with viagra’. It was just one unlucky woolly mammoth. Food and clothes in one, may I add. When collecting berries they were not clumped together in packets spelling out, ‘All natural’, less sugar, ‘more antioxidants’. They’re either going to poison you or not, no refunds. That’s it.

When I was little milk magically arrived on the doorstep in glass bottles and it was delicious. It was always milk movember for me. These days I end up in a fluorescent chilled corridor facing a wall of dairy dilemma. How much stuff is in milk? It’s milk! Skim, Goats, Almond, Soy, Rice, Oat, more calcium, easy to digest, omega 3, full cream, reduced fat and smart milk??? What do I do? What would the Neanderthal in me do? Yes, probably poke and prod the products then grunt in frustration until the expiry date. Milk, I just want to trust you like old times.

So I eventually chose the easy to digest because you assume all of the others are difficult to digest and no one wants that. Why isn’t there a litre carton that says, ‘MILK – now with more chemicals and enhanced whiteness!’ Oh wait, that’s toothpaste isn’t it. We all want that whitening toothpaste which doesn’t seem to whiten. Where is the toothpaste for pinker gums to offset the whiter teeth? Then I need the fake tan to make my teeth look even whiter, but before you know it I look like an Oompa Loompa with a laser beam grin. Pow! I’ve never actually used fake tan, I much prefer to just draw extra freckles on myself. “Check it out everybody. Yeah, I get sun. Take that!’

I do, however, moisturize, because you know, who doesn’t want to fight the made up 7 signs of ageing? Quick, take out your moisturizing guns and fire them at your face, lady raptors! But how do you choose a moisturizer? Maybe I should buy the one labeled, ‘Redefining’, since my face looks like a melting Salvador Dali clock lately. If I apply the night moisturizer in the day will I fall asleep? And perhaps if I use the face moisturizer on my legs my knees may become noses. Soothing, hydrating, Vitamin E, Aloe Vera, then on the back of the bottle is an endless list of unfamiliar chemicals contributing to the white ooze. Where’s the immortality disclaimer?

So far I have 3 items in my shopping basket. I chose a basket because I only required a few things. Of course, after an hour I end up lugging around the contents of small shipping container. Damn, should’ve opted for the wheels, but then trolleys have a mind of their own. You know, there’s that one wheel that insists on traveling in the opposite direction, like it’s possessed by some kind of sinister trolley spirit from beyond the car park grave.

It turns out that ‘Self Check-out’ isn’t a large mirror where you can look at yourself. So instead I usually opt for the ‘name tag with hands’ to check-out my groceries. They ask how I am without wanting to know the answer, then enquire if I have Fly Buys, which aren’t feminine hygiene products with wings. So don’t give them that.

The transaction usually requires a short game of poker with my credit cards, then I end up paying with casino chips from the night before. It’s ok, they’re gluten free.