Friday Afternoon

Sometimes I am so freaking dumb it beggars even my own belief. Incomprehensible the things I think, do and say when I'm anxious and under a time constraint. When I get a little calmer - say, AFTER I've sent a last-minute job application on behalf of my partner because he is at work - I realise that I've listed his work position wrongly, plus a bizarre "time in corresponding position" answer based on I know not what, and then neglected to list at all his previous experience that's most applicable in the cover letter.

So I hope he didn't want that job too badly.

I have rolled around all day flapping my hands and feeling like I have turpentine running through my veins and feeling unable to settle on any of the 1317 things and seriously, this must be what it's like to be a demented old woman

I feel dumb as a box of hammers, a few fries short of a happy meal, as thick as two planks. If you're not too attached to your own functionality, though, even being a dill has its pleasures. I still think good thinks. It's just conveying them outward that's a little more difficult for someone whose brain is filled with gurk and splinken dopf, neither of which are meant to be there.

I couldn't get back to sleep after I woke at 4.30 this morning which was why I was texting my local radio station at 5am about the footy. (If you're in Melbourne at the end of September you are accosted on all sides by the football, which must be frustrating in the extreme for those who hate it. If it's any consolation, the AFL is accosting us with Tom Jones as half-time entertainment so perhaps you can feel some appeasement with that). The radio station was playing a fun game of "pretend you are the person who kicks the winning goal in the grand final". I sent my text in which Libby Gore declared beautiful 'cause she knows sensational writing when she sees it. The producers then called me and asked me if I would go on the air and commentate my text and I said I was too tired and I write better than what I speak and no. Because clunk. I am seriously as thick as a brick, as dippy as a roller coaster, as vague as a 170 year old, as deadshit as a not-alive piece of faecal matter when I have to say anything coherent at 5am.

I'm also pretty smart and whippetlike but that only appears between 6 and 7.12pm of an evening, and on Tuesday mornings
I have been writing this entire status update lying in my side in the bathroom with coffee up my arse and you will never, ever be able to get that visual out of your head.

Hawthorn by 16

Congeniality Carriage

Blue Train by Viscious-Speed (cc attribution licence)

They say the journey is more important than the destination.  When the destination happens to be another Geelong v Hawthorn game when you're the Hawthorn supporter, let's just say that Saturday night's train trip to get there was vastly more enjoyable than the game itself where once again, for the eleventy-seventh time in a row (11th actually), Geelong somehow managed to get over the top of a quicksand-engulfed-but-late-surging Hawks to win.  Again, fuck it.  Incomprehensibly.  Not that I'm bitter about it or nothin'.

The trip required to reach aforesaid game takes me the entire length of the Belgrave line sans one, from my home stop of Belgrave to Richmond, one stop shy of Flinders Street.  Seeing I barely travel the trains anymore, it was a pleasure to contemplate a ride with the possibility of people watching and maybe being able contribute another train travel tale to this blog :)

Especially because the trip was ... well, it was all sorta friendly like.  Unlike much public train travel which, Melbourne being a Western city in the death throes of capitalism, generally means that everybody retreats into themselves, surrounded by a veil of almost detectible contempt for everybody else, because strangers in the flesh are ... well, they're too intimate, and politeness is unnecessary in these days where we don't need to talk to strangers anymore.  I wonder if we don't feel that it's invasive and boundary-invading talking to other in the flesh humans that we don't know.  We're not used to the scent.  Don't talk to me when I intend to spend all of my time travelling talking to people who aren't here (many of who I don't know either), on my smart phone device.  Which is what I was doing before I got here, and probably what I'll be doing after I leave.  You, invading me with your body and your energy and your mannerisms and postures, your smell and facial expressions, you are a little too much, and much less manageable unscreened.  I wonder if we are less able to process such things as a conversation with each other when we don't have a box around us.  I imagine many of us would be far more comfortable if, when others desire to chat, they would instead text us their comments.  Strange times.

There's a guy in a black beanie on his phone a couple of seats over when we take off in a reasonably empty carriage.  He looks to be in his late teens or early 20's, pretty nondescript really, just a young bloke.  Almost against my will I form an unflattering opinion of what he therefore must be like, as I am rapidly ageing and sometimes a little scared of stuff, and this is what older people do to younger people.  I am ashamed to admit this.  As we move along several stops, the carriage starts filling.  There's a couple a little up from me decked out in Hawthorn colours.  There's an old couple, the woman with a rather loud voice.  There's two younger women, maybe heading out for the night, one with a fine face, the kind that can carry blood red lipstick, and a decent rack, the other unfortunately plain.  I say unfortunately because women everywhere know that still, though we are all male and female judged according to how we look, women are judged more harshly.  Still.  (And that, to further murk the waters, women also judge each other more harshly than men do each other. But that's another story).  If you don't believe women are judged according to how they look, take a look at these responses to the Wimbledon win by Marion Bartoli, who had the crazy temerity to go out into the world and achieve something whilst not being ridiculously fuckworthy.

But perhaps it's just me still smarting from the comments I got from the football the other night where, sensorily overloaded and exhausted because I'd overextended my body this week and the football is ridiculously overstimulating, frustrated because my team was losing again, and sick of listening to the completely unfunny ongoing remarks behind me from a bunch of 30 year old guys drunk on snucked-in Jack Daniels, I turned in the dying minutes of the last quarter and grumpily requested that the guy behind me stop clapping his hands right behind my head.  Part of the exchange that occurred in response was from one of the other guys, who apparently was a plain-clothes member of the Hair Police and who informed me that for someone as unattractive as myself, my hair was too long .  The hair-as-sexuality maxim.  I've always wondered why so many older women cut their hair short.  Perhaps this sort of thing is why.

"That's the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?" I said in response to him.  He was of average looks, but that's all I could come up with at the time.  His response to my comment was something like, "Huh?" because as we all know, glasses of Jack do not make for high-falutin' intellectual conversation.  And then he said, "What are you lookin' at?" to my boyfriend, who responded, "I'm not sure in laconic fashion," and who I secretly wished, in the Neanderthal part of my limbic system, to punch this guy's head in.  That shut him up, except then he proceeded to make the universal cunnilingus sign to my mother which, while funny in one way (maybe just because it wasn't me) was disgusting in another.  "Have some bloody respect," Mum snapped grandly, though giving in like me to the ridiculous pursuit of arguing with drunken young guys who not only think they know fucking everything, but are hilarious in the process.

But anyway, I have digressed far off the train trip.  And anyway, that's that's what happened at the end of the train line, and the story I'm telling is better backwards, where the more enjoyable elements of human nature were on display from within the train carriage.  And so back onto the train, Momma.

It's impossible not to hear the guy with the black beanie's mobile phone conversation because it's rather loud, as is the general tone of mobile phone conversations.  "I might be on TV soon," he's telling the person on the other end.  I don't know what he is going to be on the telly for as that bit of the conversation's lost somewhere between the rest of the carriage conversations and my ancient eardrums, but my first impressions are that he's probably going to be on The Block or something like it for his requisite shot of fame.  Fame is like nectar to 21st century inhabitants, especially if it's one-step-removed fame, like on the teev or social media, being as we are rather deprived of the nourishment and attention that would come from a society that actually properly functioned with people and sanity and soul at its centre.

"How's the new vacuum cleaner going then, mate?" he asks. This befuddles me.  Is this a guy he's talking to?  Whatever floats your boat, but I haven't heard many young guys have public phone conversations with each other about vacuum cleaners at all, not least asking after the vacuum cleaner's general health.  But then he ends the conversation with, "Okay, mate.  Love you too."

I really don't want to generalise any more than I already automatically have about this guy, but now I presume that the mate on the other end of the phone must be a girl.  Maybe a cousin or a sister or something like that.  Because I just can't envisage two guys having a convo that includes vacuum cleaners and ends with love declarations.  But then, what do I know beyond my assumptions based on nothing about a guy I've never met before?

The older couple ahead of me have begun chatting to the two young chicks heading out.  I cannot hear what they're saying, they're too far away.  But people on the train are smiling at strangers, and it's a bit strange.  Then the older couple get ready to get off.  Or at least the woman does.  "Come on," she says in raucous tones to her husband.  "Leave them girls alone.  You're a married man."  She is saying this as she walks up the carriage aisle to the door where she waits, unaccompanied.  But apparently he's not coming.

"You comin' or you stayin'?" she shouts down to her husband.  Her stop arrives, and she shrugs.  "Fine, suit yerself.  Stay here."  Her husband waits till the train stops completely before he gets up, and walks down past me to the carriage's other door.  With a smirk on his face, just to shit her.  They look like fun.

Many people don't like to draw attention to themselves out in public spaces, maybe because we are unsure about how to behave in them anymore.  And anyway, we're saving up all our attention-seeking for Facebook.  Seeing somebody pay disregard to that, and talk to strangers and be loud and noisy, gives permission for other people to talk to each other too.

The Hawthorn-bedecked couple begin chatting to some other carriage-dwellers about the fight to stop the Tecoma Macca's being built.  Just down the road from me, the actions of the local community against a proposed development that 92% of Tecoma residents oppose, and in which VCAT overturned a "no" decision handed down by the local council, are an ongoing source of pride. Seems the woman is involved somehow, and she talks about the CFMEU, whose actions have buoyed the protesters maintaining vigil at the site, by having temporarily halted site production due to protester safety issues.  Some people, including Janine Watson, have spent time sitting atop of one of the buildings slated for demolishment.  Janine celebrated her 50th birthday up there, before ending up with a broken finger in an incident of which there are several different accounts of what happened.  But it's certainly a case of the people against the system, which has garnered international attention, and whatever cries of "hippy" may come from trolls, and by jaded people who can't see the point in protesting the relentless roll of multinational progress, I am inspired by these everyday people.

The beanie-clad young guy chimes into the conversation.  "I'm a chef," he says, "and I've worked in a few different food places around Belgrave and that.  And we don't need any Macca's in Tecoma,"  We all look at each other and nod.  It feels like such a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but it's these interactions with the wider community that quite simply make my day.  We need each other.  United we change things.  Separate, we underestimate our collective power.

An older man gets on the train and sits down next to me.

"You gonna win?"  he asks.  I nod.  "Like Gough Whitlam's Labor, it's time," I say, confident despite the fact that we've lost the previous 10 times because all bar a couple of those wins have been gettable.  And it feels different this time.  The Hawks have displayed a psychological spinal strength that departed them at times in the year before and incurred disrespect from the football community for being chokers, a problem which it could be argued cost them a grand final.  But this year they have displayed steely tenacity, and it's that which buoys my confidence.  Because at this point the game's end is all future, and I have every reason to believe that our 12-game winning streak will continue with the biggest scalp of all.  Because on this train, we are in the goodest part of the night :)

The man next to me I would guess to be in his late 60's.  He is wearing an Andy Capp cap which sorta looks stylish on him.  By the end of our conversation I will deduce him to be one of those people who carries before them an air of quiet dignity and quiet authority, a masterful combination.  We chat about the nature of the game.  He is a Melbourne supporter, going out in the chill to see a game for the pure enjoyment of it.  No, he wasn't there for their rare win last week; he'd been out with a friend for dinner.  We chat about Melbourne's recent coach sacking and he provides an eloquent response as to why he believes Mark Neeld was not up for the job and why he lost the respect of his young group.

I joke that I enjoy being in a carriage on this particular line with Geelong supporters because we have to go past Glenferrie Station (the original home of the Hawks) and then Hawthorn Station, and I will take whatever psychological advantage I can glean.  We discuss the history of AFL.  "I used to go to Glenferrie back in the days when they played football there," he says.  It was a bit before my time - the last game Hawthorn played there was in 1973, when I was two years old.  "I was there the day Peter Hudson did his knee," he says.

My favourite Peter Hudson story is an off-field one, famous in Hawthorn circles.  A local church, as is their wont, had a sign out the front of its building from whence it would put pithy sayings designed to bring the heathens to God.  On one particular day it read: "What would you do if Jesus came to Hawthorn?"  Someone underneath wrote, "Move Hudson to centre half forward."

Fair call.

We chatted about the modern professional game. "It's a different game to how it was," he said.  "There was a lot more biffo back then, but then ... in other ways too it's different.  It's so much faster now, it's hard to keep track of where the ball is."

"What do you think is the difference between now and then," I ask, "if you had to define it?" 

"I'm not sure what you'd call it," he said.

"I reckon it's lost just a little of its soul." 

"I think you might be right."

"I'll always barrack for the Hawkers whatever the AFL does, and I love the modern game, but professionalism wipes out a little bit of the heart of things," I said, and we both agreed on that one.

The soul and the heart of stuff.  I might be easily pleased but for me, the kindness of strangers chatting and being civilised on a train, though a common thing once, is harder for us to get to these days.  A lot of us are scared, because life is scary and it's not supportive.  This hermit likes and needs her solitude, a great bit chunk of it.  I don't like small talk, and if you find me at a party I'll be in the kitchen, if I'm anywhere, hanging with the Jonah Louies of the world.  But those everyday little interactions of strangers coming together all friendly like, they fuel me for days.  They're important, in some small intangible way.  They're glue for us.  They make us stronger.  Because we don't need to be kinder to strangers, but when we are maybe it means that we are coming to understand how our technology and our economics telling us we are competitors is maybe a false economy.  Seeing strangers as something more than competition makes life safer.  And better.  And from there maybe we see clearer how much change is within our power to effect.  Or at least to try.

To continue trying to oppose a McDonald's outlet that is inappropriate.

And to continue trying to break that bloody Geelong hoodoo.

Maybe next time.

Losers are Grinners

Sometimes you lose but it feels like you've won, you know?

Tonight was a return to the MCG to watch Hawthorn and Geelong begin their 2009 AFL seasons in a Grand Final replay. We lost by 8 points. But life is paradoxically strange. Some losses actually feel like wins, whereas some wins feel somewhat hollow.

Geelong do a bit of psychological poos in their pants when it comes to Hawthorn. Maybe that's why they couldn't kick very straight for goal.

In terms of narrative and poetry, which is the lens I see my football through, a loss tonight has really only set up a nice little spicy bit of season tension, for mine. Tonight, Hawthorn had eight premiership players missing. We debuted three young 'uns, lost one player during the game, did not play our number one ruckman, and had a few seniors a bit niggly round the edges. We did pretty alright considering. Indeed, in the last quarter, after we were starting a reasonable defeat in the eyes, Buddy Franklyn and Jaryd Roughead combined to almost steal the game with beautiful straight poetic goals. In contrast, Geelong were all quivery in front of goal again, like last year. Maybe they'd eaten jellymeat for dinner.

We get under Geelong's skin like splinters. And they know that we know. A win is a win, but this one probably tastes a little too strongly of aspic, I would suspect.

Do I sound cocky? There is a fine line between cockiness and confidence, isn't there :) And I think I crossed it about 10 k's back. Actually, I crossed it in the last quarter. We could have lay down and got thrashed, but we fought it back and nearly ran over the top of them. And we aren't as good as we will be by the time we meet again in 17 weeks' time. So I swagger a bit when I walk. Watcha gonna do about it? :)

Cocky, from Lester's perspective, would be the cat who has been sitting next to me purring while I type this. In Lester's house, while he's not here. What utter betrayal by the woman who he does gaze at with such love and adoration. If he could read, I'm sure he would be heartbroken.

No, it's not one of the kittens - I still have not managed to tame then. And it's not the mother cat either. She is quite a tame sort of a puss really, but I haven't seen much of her either lately. No, this is the black and white puss with one and a half ears who smells a bit and has a cute miaow. I've seen this puss around a bit. Hell, I've probably been feeding this puss unwittingly. I don't know where it lives - I presume it is next-door. But he (she?) has come here visiting this evening, after we had a bit of a chat out the front while I was parking my car. I think all the cats in the neighbourhood are smelling a good wicket. The black and white puss eats hungrily now, outside my door. One step closer to crazy cat ladyness :)

The Cats might have won the game, but not with any sort of authority. And Hawthorn win when it counts. Bring on the season. While you're there, bring on a bout of cat sterility, if possible, or else it's gonna start getting mighty crowded around here :) Maybe I should get the Hawks to come visit my house, scare some cats away.

Miaow :)

First Telstra Dome Rant for the Year

I went to Telstra Dome yesterday to watch my beloved football team record their third win of the season. Those of you who were reading this blog last year in its older MySpace incarnation will probably remember me banging on about how hateful and horrid I find Telstra Dome to be. Well, I'm going to do it again.

I find Telstra Dome to be hateful and horrid. But Telstra Dome is lovely and shiny, too. It's rather like a new housing estate with all the ugly power lines underground and caveats in place to ensure that all the houses are rather the same and no one paints their house bright yellow so as to offend. Everything is so gleaming and chrome and inoffensive at Telstra Dome that the corporates can take their clients to dine finely without nary a problem. Telstra Dome looks after you.

In fact, Telstra Dome mothers you so well that you don't even have to think for yourself if you can't be bothered. Isn't that nice? You get to sit down in your seats (in my case, sitting with the arch-enemy, in the Medallion Club, on the second level, the padded seats in front of the restaurants where suited men dine and drink wine and gaze out at games they're probably not even all that interested in while they schmooze people they dislike. But I'm not one to knock back free tix. Even if I feel uncomfortable sitting there (and anyway, my Mum wanted to sit there. And it's a bit quieter up there, so my snothead didn't pound too much :)

Anyways. Telstra Dome lovingly mothers all the people enfolded in its concrete womb. It very kindly warns the patrons of the dangers that can occur indulging in such utter dangerous behaviour as sitting on your arse for 2 hours watching people kick a dead leather ball to each other . Ye Gads! How do we all survive intact, living in such a horridly dangerous society as this (well into our 80s, many of us - a very high mortality rate in comparison to previous generations.) If catastrophe should strike, Telstra Dome points out in portentous grave voices where the exits are, and to run onto the ground if there is a nuclear meltdown and your face is falling off from the radiation. Because Telstra Dome really cares about you, patron.

Yes. That's why it didn't want you going outside the ground at half-time last year. It didn't want you accidentally getting hit by a flying ball by kids indulging in the age-old past-time of having a kick of their footy at half-time. Telstra Dome cares about your safety. Or, at least, that's the way Telstra spun it until they got called onto the carpet. Turns out it was just to keep the patrons inside its concrete womb because it preferred them paying over-inflated prices for its food inside, rather than going and buying the cheaper stuff outside.

The thing that irritated me the most yesterday was the motherly announcement before the game to behave yourself. The overhead voice suggested that people should be mindful of other patrons and to watch their manners, to be mindful of their swearing. Well *&$# you, Telstra Dome, but I would laugh at the irony of a giant corporation telling me how to behave if my sense of humour hadn't already dripped off the edges of my 17 foot high soapbox :)

The problem with society taking the Old Testament approach and telling us how to behave is it detracts from the reality that I sense, that God has written his law on our hearts, that, on the whole, the good little patrons know what is right and wrong and how to behave. They sense it in their hearts and their guts and their souls. If they will look there.

But the problem is that often we won't look there. That's human nature. We know instinctively, all the way back from childhood, that the right thing doesn't necessarily mean the right thing for us. Humans are selfish and we behave badly. And yes, that's where laws come in, to keep the peace. But there also needs to be a general bit of elastic streteching in social situations for the fact that social situations are made up of stuffed-up human beings like you and me and things are gonna get messy sometimes. But I don't need to be told like a large child to be a good girl at the footy. Because my behaviour is always gonna be on my own head, no matter how much Telstra Dome tries to take it off of me.

We allow a large corporation to dictate morality terms to us because we like it like that. Humans have this insatiable appetite to be told what to do, because then we don't have to hear it whispered on the wind for ourselves, or to look inside and see what our gut feelings are telling us, what are hearts are bleating. Because there's all these dark corners inside, and we don't want dark corners. We want everything a nice shade of Ikea.

But life is not Ikea. It never was. It's mess and pain as well as light and joy and that might not fit a good theory of economic rationalism or corporatism, but neither do human beings. So sod off Telstra Dome, you and your gleaming chrome. I prefer my life a bit more real and a bt more messy, thanks very much. Even if that gets in the way of the digestion of corporate diners. 'Cause life ain't about money, neither. But then, you all know that deep down anyway, don't you?

It's not all about sport either. Still. Go Hawks.

Grand Final Corporate Style

Tomorrow is the big day in the Australian Football League calendar - the Grand Final. The biggie. Unfortunately, a great deal of Geelong and Port Adelaide members haven't been able to secure tickets. Only 22,000 tickets were allocated to them, out of an MCG seating capacity of 100,000. So the ones who are the most passionate don't even get half of the tickets. That is just shameful, AFL. The vast majority of the rest of the tix go to corporates and some to the other 14 clubs. So one-fifth of the ground will be filled with passionate members. The rest will maybe feel vaguely uneasy.

So Telstra boss Sol Trujillo's auntie's dentist's brother's dog has probably got tickets for tomorrow. It can sit next to some guy and his mate who don't even care all that much but his Mum got them from her work so they may as well use them (or scalp them). Meanwhile lifelong members miss out. It's not fair. If the AFL was at all fair dinkum it would grant the vast majority of tickets to team members. Imagine what a fantastic atmosphere that would be! I think that 70% of tickets should be for members. That would leave 30% for corporates. That's more than enough.

The AFL is far too corporately-focussed for its own good and for the good of the game. But hey, why would it be any different than any other large corporation that can't end up seeing past its own nose and ends up stuffing up its own nest by expansionary greed? I vote for an uprising by all 16 clubs to wrestle back control from its evil clutches. Let's rise up, friends! Rise up! Now, that'd be something fun to do over summer until the next season, wouldn't it! I am in the mood for a cause ;)

Or maybe a rally of some description. A march against oppression of some sort. Something to focus my considerable angst and frustration on. Something I can protest against so I can get capsicum sprayed and bashed by policemen totally overreacting to citizens exercising their citizenly rights to protest against stuff big people are doing against little people (like, for example, those protesting Burma in Canberra today). Maybe I'll go to Tassie and chain myself to a tree on the proposed Gunn's site (Gunn's should feature in an episode of The Simpsons. They are so caricatureishly evil).

I must have looked particularly grumpy as I walked to work on Wednesday (I was, rather) because the Australian Childhood Foundation guy backed off really quickly midway through his spiel. Then I felt bad. I felt like I was contributing to the big vast horridness that is called living in a city in the early 21st century when nobody gives a toss about anyone else. This poor guy was probably on some stupid pittance of a salary and will be quitting by next Tuesday because so many people are snarling at him trying to make money for the Australian Childhood Foundation.

But then I pondered as I walked to work how easy it is to throw some money at foundations (not to mention how frustrating to be accosted by them in the street), and then think we've done our job. Oh well, that's my contribution towards Australian childhood taken care of - phew! Now I can go about my business of not giving a shit about anyone else and if I accidentally squash some small children on my way I can do it without too much guilt.

People say that Australians are generally friendly and overseas visitors comment on how warm it is here but I personally don't see it. Perhaps I'm doing that old person's thing of living in the past, but it was so much warmer when I was a child. Daggier, sure. Everyone's hair wasn't as beautiful as it is now. But now, the iciness resembles the air this evening as I walked to the station (brrr, a burst of winter ushering the weekend in). I must be over-sensitive because sometimes the coldness makes me ache (not to mention cough). The gloomy knowingness that of all the thousands of people you have just walked past on your way home, none of them really gives a stuff about you. It's very depressing.

Sigh. I'm being melodramatic again. "Don't curse the darkness - light a candle!" my surely 3 million more-positive-than-I-at-present readers are saying. "Why!" they cry. "Instead of whingeing to the blogoverse about your frustration at living in a dying, cold as stone civilisation, go out and do something proactive! A tiny little flicker of warmth can start a bonfire. A small little gesture in a sea of apathy!"

I glared at a woman on the train earlier, and then out of the blue felt a burst of compassion for her (she seemed weighted down by life). I smiled at the woman in the carpark before. Does that count? I said prayers for a few people who looked strung out on the train. I hugged my dog. I cooked my ex-husband spaghetti bolognaise last night as a welcome-home-from-the-hostible meal. I babysat my cousin's kids the other night for her. I guess these things count.

As a bad global citizen I stopped in at The Warehouse on my way home. The Warehouse is an evil multinational chain that sells incredibly cheap stuff that were probably made by four-year-olds working for a grain of rice a day in a country I shall never have to look at or think about unless I turn my mind to it. I spent $17.75 I don't have on stuff - just stuff. Actually, what I went in there for was a candle. I decided that tonight I would sit down and carve out a haven for myself and do some writing. I was clean out of candles. I also bought 100 sheets of coloured paper to write on (I lurve stationery). And a doodle pad of different coloured butcher's paper which appealed to me because of its roughness and its colourness. Good doodling paper. And a black and white coffee mug. And some soup and a box of teabags.

As penance for shopping in The Warehouse, I have joined the Big Brother Big Sister program. They are looking for people to become buddies for people with intellectual disabilities. It's something I've been wanting to do for years. I joined the Oakleigh Centre several years ago and then promptly didn't ever volunteer there (in hindsight, I was still too ill). But I'm really looking forward to this. It will be a bit scary, I imagine - but hey, ain't all the good stuff?

Unfortunately it's far easier to write that than it is to live it :)