Tales from the tub - Tifanee

TIFANEE

Tifanee was the antithesis of her birth name. Intended to be 'Tiffany' one of the more popular names in the early 90's, a signifier of upper class luxury, her parents were phonetic retards. To be fair they were literal retards.

Tifanee was born in 1991, daughter to Mark and Angela Redden, both of whom suffered from relative degrees of mental retardation. Mark and Angela were loving parents and loving people. That was one thing Tifanee could say for her folks, retards are nice.

Tifanee often wondered how her life would have been different if she was born like them. She wasn't. She was bright. From the age of 5, she had been her parents, parent. She prepared breakfast, let the visiting day nurse in and got herself ready for school.

"My daddy is a lawyer," she would rehearse on the bus on the way to school, "My mummy is a housewife." She had to learn that lesson the hard way first day of kindergarten when she was the only one without a professional explanation for her parents existence.

As she got older, her lies became more elaborate.

"How is your dad, Tif?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know he is still in Paris, after winning the Law institue of Victoria award he decided to take a brief sojourn. My mother is thrilled, she has had her eye on this Parisian tailor and is going to get something made, don't know what, just something, you know, a little something, something."

The lies felt so natural. But, each evening she went home, had a cup of tea with the house nurse and discussed her parents progress that day.

"Your Dad did really well today Tif, he is reading at an 8th grade level, you shoud be really proud, make him a nice dinner, yeah, he has been asking for fish fingers all afternoon."

"Fish soldiers with tomato sauce!" came a cry of agreement, glee and self-pride from her father in the living room.

Tifanee burst into tears, she couldn't stop. Somewhere between her reality, the false reality she had created and the intensity of pubescent hormones she lost it.

A warm hand on her shoulder, it was her mother. "Hush baby, your our magic Tifanee, you don't cry, even when you were a baby you didn't cry, you can do anything, you are magic, they said we would never have any babies but we had a magic one, you, can we have fish soldiers now?"

A choked smile, a kind face from the day nurse, "Yes mum, go watch TV with dad and I'll call you when its ready, ok?"

"ok, happy magic baby?" said her mother with the most angelic innocence.

"Happy magic baby, thanks mum."

Tales from the tub - Walter

Right you bastards. Boring, apparently my happiness bores you. I have been informed. Things are clearly more interesting when my life is in the toilet. Now, while I certainly can't promise to be happy indefinitely, I have a gift for fucking things up in spectacular and unique ways. I have only been happy for a little while, give a girl some time.

So, in response to the constructive criticism I received today. You asked for it. My back catalog of fictional short stories, penned in the bath. To regale you with, while I think of a way to screw my life up again : )

WALTER

"But, is it meant to be yellow, I swear they never used to be yellow," Walter surveyed his fingernails, picking dirt and shit out from under them and massaging it into his trousers, "no, I don't think it's meant to be yellow, they look flaky too, I don't think they are meant to be flaky, no."

Walter was displeased. Things weren't quite going the way he had planned. As one part of his body failed him it took all his attention, to the detriment of another, in this case his fingernails. He hadn't really even considered his previous ailment an affliction, if his penis didn't work then he no longer had to service that monstrosity of a woman he married some years earlier.

It wasn't that he was no longer interested in sex, far from it, a 25 year old posterior was always able to make his member tweak, even at it's most advanced state of circulatory deprivation. But the truth was, he didn't stand a chance. He got head spins when he took a crap.

Driving a bus for a living wasn't thrilling him either. While he enjoyed feeling big on the road , his bus was Napoleons hat. When he took it off, he wasn't so big. He had also run out of excuses. Driving a bus initially put him through school, then got his kids through school and now, well now, it was just something he did. It was never intended to be what he did.

2am and he woke in a panic. He had a bad dream. Perhaps the dream woke him, perhaps it was the guttural snoring and post orgasmic flatulence of the devil woman next to him, perhaps it was the increasing pressure of his regurgitating urinary overflow. Whatever it was. Things had to change. He wasn't going to stay here waiting for death, he was already dead.

Walter was not a man of action, he was a man of procrastination and eventual defeat. But not this time. Between 3am and 5am he planned his escape. He was going to be the man he wanted to be.

He ate breakfast at 5:30am and went for a run. His limbs burned. Coming home he showered casting a disdainful scowl at the lump of womanhood that moved only to relieve herself. He dusted off his finest suit. He got dressed and he went to work. But not his work. The work he would have had if he had stopped driving a bus 20 years before.

"I'm Walter Clarendon, Mr Whitman is expecting me," he said officiously.

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, I don't have you in his diary, did you have an appointment."

"Did I have an appointment?," raising his voice slightly, "get me in that office before I share with Mr Whitman how incompetent his PA is, I have had this appointment for 2 months, he requested that I fly in from Geneva and you have the hide to ask me..."

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, of course, take a seat, I'll free up some time, my mistake." She looked at him. This young thing looked at him, not through him, at him. He was commanding respect, his member tweaked. Brief discussion on the telephone and he was ushered in.

"Walter what are you doing here?"

"Barry, I need a fucking job."

"Walter..."

"Barry, I got you laid remember, I saved your life, save mine."

"Walter, you never finished you professional placement, I can't take you on, your too old, I have kids working for me with more qualifications and willing to work for less money, help me here buddy."

From his brief case Walter produced an antique tin, opening the lid to reveal a stack of Polaroid photographs.

"Sure Barry, I understand mate, but help me here buddy, these photos of you with an indigenous male minor, where do I leave them on my way out, how's the wife?"

Desperate Damsel v's Femme fetale

Saturday and the melancholy of last nights frivolity has worn off, I have showered, I am clean and good to go. So I made made my way to Glebe markets with $100 and hoped for something divine!

There she was, fat, aboriginal in origin, rude, mid-50's maybe and pumping out works dedicated to Robert A. Maguire classic crime noir illustrator. Where have you been all my life fat, rude, talented lady?

The interesting thing is that she only illustrates, desperate damsels. There are classically two types of crime noir heroine. The desperate damsel and the femme fetale.

My whole blog is femme fetale inspired. I just don't identify with the other. Crying bitches... please, just shoot the daddy in the back of the head and be done with it, right? Plenty more where they came from.

So, I bought one.

This one.

I thanked her profusily, tried to wax lyrical about the genre, told her to send me a catalogue of her other work.

She didn't even look up, I was not even on this angsty middle aged womans radar. She was to0 involved getting her creative sad on. I love her! I wonder, if I had been the man that broke her heart would she have put her ink down, who knows?

Love it. So the teary love smacked damsel will sit pride of place above my couch and there she will stay. A constant reminder of why I will never be the desperate damsel!

This is one of mine... spot the difference.

Cya Daddy...

Uniting the twin disciplines of red shoes and mens hands...

"In Hand" water color and ink on paper. Mark Schwartz.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a weakness for two things, red shoes and men with nice hands.

Oh hello....
GOD CREATES MAN... MAN CREATES SHOES. S is having both, thanks.

Was what I thought when I made an impassioned decision to buy one of Mark's works this week. It's so powerful, raw and I just love it!

I've been checking out his work, prolific work actually, Mark can you sell me your work ethic too? Very few of them seem to have a human element, so this one had a particularly visceral appeal complemented by the bleed of the water colors.

The title has a resonance with me as well. There is nothing about my life presently that I feel like I have in hand. So it makes me feel kind of steady and reassured.

It's also just a little bit sexy.

It just fills me with such immense joy! It's marvelous!

Thanks Mark.

The girl who's house threw up Mexico!

I adore understated genius.

I had lunch on Sunday with a girlfriend I have known since primary school who smiled and allowed me to rant incoherently about my new years resolution to return to dress making. The vintage patterns I found online, the fabric I had bought and the mission it was to get my sewing machine home from the coast to Sydney on the train when I have the upper body strength of a tadpole.

"yeah, I do furniture," she said.

She pulled an elegant antique tin from her bag and pushed it across the table. It was her portfolio.

Oh holy Jesus! Maaike, you are a clever bitch! Her extensive travel through Mexico combined with her eclectic and tangential thought processes have influenced some of the coolest and most unique furniture projects I have ever seen.

Maaike, I hope you don't mind that I put your image here ; ) Of course you don't , your marvelous!

The Beppe (Frisian for Grandmother) Chair is covered in green velvet stripes previously destined for the dump, and labelled as "too ugly" by anyone who saw it on the bolt. Combined with Mexican roses and princess-and-the-pea cushions, the chair resembles my Beppe's adhoc sewing basket. http://www.maaidesign.blogspot.com/

I think you either love it or you hate it. Her house is full of these pieces, someone, who didn't love it once described her home as the house that threw up Mexico! I love it, played hard man, nice work!

In the words of Maaike, my new favorite creative she-hero.

If anyone, man or woman, tries to get between you and your creativity tell them:

"Stop making me a lesser person." : )

The Deadly Nightshade 2

The windows of the Brown estate were boarded up. The contents of the house disappeared as Byron Browns creditors clawed at everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Like a complete jigsaw puzzle being dismantled one piece at a time, Belladonna watched the life she knew disappear and the skeleton of a new one form.

The feeling of cold invisibility, she felt like a wallflower, a spectator as strangers in single file raped the contents of her home.

“No,” she screeched at one of the removalists, clutching her wooden spinning top until the carved symbols on its surface pressed red indentations into her palm. Set about his task he ignored the little girl’s protestations and her pain.

She was the last thing to be liquidated. Lilydale’s Finishing School sent a car for her one overcast Sunday. A heavyset Turkish schoolmistress, Ma’am, as she insisted on being called, had been sent to escort Belladonna to her new home.

“You will collect your things and come with me, your Grandfather has enrolled you and you will receive an education commensurate with your breeding. The death of your irresponsible parents was the best thing that could have happened to you, imagine, home schooling a child,” without making eye contact Ma’am judgmentally surveyed the wreckage of the once proud Brown estate, “Don’t dally child we have a long journey, go!”

Tears stung her eyes, “No!”

Throwing her toy on the ground she ran for the door. With her eyes closed she kept running but she could no longer feel the ground under her feet. Ma’am had her suspended by her shirt colour as she struggled desperately to free herself of this circumstance.

“You’d do well not to make an enemy of me young lady and I’ll only say this once more, GO!”

What do you pack? How do you pack a childhood into a single trunk? You can’t.

So she packed nothing.

“I’m ready, Ma’am”

“That’s a good girl.”

People to eat, things to see...

Not all cities can do food. Of course, all cities have food but Amsterdam is a city that does food, it enjoys it's food. It was an interesting dichotomy from New York where food is plentiful and quantity and economy are king to Amsterdam where quality reigns supreme.

No where is this dichotomy more evident than in chocolate. At the Hershey's store on 5th Avenue in New York I saw plump tourists smack their lips at the prospect of a bargain 3kg block of chocolate while in Amsterdam there are small, independently owned chocolate shops where you pay about the same but come away with half a dozen petite and artful morsels.



Puccini was a on the corner of our block and had everything from white chocolate with vanilla, dark chocolate with chili, gin with lime rind and walnut truffles with cinnamon.

When in Rome? When in Amsterdam, Pancake.

Pancakes at Barney's with strawberries and from Sara's pancake house with Bananas. Also my own attempt at French toast with the Maple syrup or Ahornstroop that I bought from the near by organic farmers market.





Cheese, Cheese and more Cheese. My favorite is the white fleshed semi-hard goats cheese which is made by hand in Holland. Above was my breakfast, Goats Cheese, Triple Bree with truffles, Saint Agur blue, tomato relish, Grapes and Sourdough (the coffee and the joint are out of frame ; ).It's worth a trip for the food alone but the best thing was the sense of community that all these small independent shops engender. I loved it! Although I think I'll go easy on the maple syrup next time ; ).