ANOTHER MELLY FELINE CHALLENGE LIST

Five things I plan to do before I die.

1. Have an affair in Paris
2. Retire, gracefully of course, to Thailand
3. read Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”
4. jump out of a plane – parachute attached and working please
5. Finish the renovations on my house

Five things I can do.

1.Shop for hours
2.Be quiet
3.tie a bow-tie
4.cook
5.Fill in lists when Mel challenges me to.

Five things I cannot do.

1. Sing
2. Drink anyone I know under the table
3. Wait patiently.
4. Make meringues.
5. Abide smugness or hypocrisy.

Five things that attract me to the opposite sex.

1. Sense of humour
2. Smile (preferably crooked)
3. eyes
4. Honesty
5. equanimity

Five things I say most often

1. F%#k.
2. Actually . . .
3. Ohhh no!
4. How’s things
5. gesundheit

Five celebrity crushes (another shag list !)

1. Matthew McConoughey
2. Brad Pitt
3. Angelina Jolie
4. Paul Walker
5. Gary Cooper

Five people I want to do this next

1. Lolly
2- 5 Melly already got to them !

Shameful Blogs #2

The previous list was the not-so-obvious ones. I figure I might as well put down the ones from the more obvious list that I’d tried to avoid before. No shame attached to any of these !!

Gael Garcia Bernal
(dot the I ; Motorcycle Diaries ; Bad Education )
He’s my height, which means he’s short. Good start. Has a definite cheeky boyish charm. Sometimes he’s sort of funny looking, there’s something about his snub nose, but then he’ll turn those big baby-browns to the camera and that slightly crooked smile crinkles all the way up around his eyes and its meltdown time. . . . Oh yeah, he’s a good actor too.

Orlando Bloom
Certainly noticed him in LotR. How could you not. I have chosen to ignore that awful boxing thing (Calcium Kid). It’s Pirates of the Caribbean that really won me, despite the very strong competition indeed from Mr Depp. Lean, great bone-structure, that accent, the eyes . . . .So far I haven’t really noticed if he can act

Jake Gyllenhaal
How can anyone turn from dorky, scary weirdo in Donny Darko into being acclaimed as one of the sexiest actors in Hollywood. Helps he is such a good actor – even in that rather crappy but thoroughly enjoyable Day after Tomorrow, and let’s face it that was his ticket to the big-time. His newest Film seems to be generating the sort of good publicity you can’t pay for and it doesn’t even get general release until December. This boy looks like he’s on a roll right to the top. And is he one of the sexiest actors in Hollywood? Oh yeah.

Brad Pitt
What do you say about this man? I would pin-point his prime to “And A River runs Through It” – sort of his James Dean film. Or maybe Fight Club. . . . Why not both, the boy in one, the man in the other? Yeah, I’ll go with that

Chris Evans
Could be on his way to being the new No.1 Hollywood pin-up boy. You might remember him in “Not Another American Teen Movie” – just think whipped cream and weenies – but if you’ve caught up with “Cellular” then you’ll know why he’s on the list. The lad is only something like 22. Haven’t seen Famous (or is it Fabulous) Four yet, and he’s got a few more films waiting for release. Can't wait.

Melly’s challenge

Five Shameful Shags

Try as I may, I have only been able to come up with four, and to be honest, there’s only one I feel even faintly embarrassed about admitting to, the others just need some explanation. So, here goes, in no particular order.

Judi Dench.
Yep, I bet everyone who happens to read this will immediately picture her as Queen Elizabeth. The thing is, that’s not how I see her. I still see the elfin-faced, trim figured, young actress with the distinctive voice and the amazing presence who was the leading lady with the Royal Shakespeare Company way back when I was 17. I instantly found myself with a teenage crush that has not diminished over the years. I met her once – and I use the word met very lightly indeed – a decade or more later, in London. I was walking up Hampstead High Street, and a small, rather stout lady bustled out of a shop and banged straight into me. It was her, and exhibiting every symptom of that teenage crush, I blushed, stammered, muttered something utterly incoherent, and hurried off, totally blowing the opportunity of actually talking to her.

Stephen Fry
He’s very tall, and I don’t go for tall men. He’s also not thin, and I like my men on the lean side. So why? Wit, intelligence and talent.

Jon Bon Jovi
Whoa, hold on, where are we going here? Judy Dench and Stephen Fry to Jon Bon Jovi? OK, this one is purely physical. It takes a bit to get past the hair, a lot to get past the hair, but he’s got a good face, a twinkle in the eyes, nice body (great chest) and the particular combination of light brown to fair hair and hairy chest that gets me every time. But still – Jon Bon Jovi ! My grown-up niece is embarrassed to admit she had his poster on her wall when she was seven !

Ian Wright
You know, the little pommie guy on “Lonely Planet” with the bad teeth and the appalling accent who keeps dropping his dacks and cracking bad jokes and gets plastered in almost every episode he’s on. He tells a good story though, and he knows he’s cracking bad jokes which kinda makes you laugh with him.


My week
More like my fortnight,it’s been a while since I blogged last.
It’s been pretty normal, hating work (except for the two days Mel sits next to me of course) wishing I was rich and dreaming of lazing on a beach in Thailand.
Mel lent me Season One of “The Sopranos” which I hadn’t seen, and that has been my viewing all week. I can’t wait to get hold of the next season, but I think I should take a bit of a break. I am in awe of James Gandolfini’s performance as Tony Soprano.
Have to admit to finding the whole business with his mother in some ways was a bit close to the bone. Not that I am suggesting my mother ever showed signs of trying to have me bumped off, but the whole thing about putting her into the home was just so accurate. I watched the last three episodes in one go today, definitely need a little time to absorb it all properly.

BARNEY














Barney came into my life eight years ago. I had moved from Northcote to Richmond with my two dogs, Blanche and Buddy, who quickly discovered an escape route under the house and out into next-door’s drive-way and were off and away. Blanche came back, but I never found Buddy, and Blanche was missing him, so after a decent interval, off I went in search of a new playmate.
A visit to the dog-home is ultimately distressing, so many pups that need a new home you can never imagine there would be enough people wanting to provide. It is hard to be practical. That gorgeous little puppy that will grow to be the size of a small horse is not going to be suitable for a smallish inner-suburban back yard. Row after row of dogs just wanting to be loved, and in the last cage of the last row, a small, fully grown, tan and white whippet-cross, who stood up, cocked his head to one side, took a long look at me and seemed to decide he was going home with me. He won.
Blanche adored him and promptly elected to take bottom rung on the new pecking order. Barney seemed rather more ambivalent about her, she was fun to play with, but if I was around, well, it was just all about me. Blanche died three years later, at home. Barney was there, and he knew something was going on, he stayed close, and when she’d gone had a long sniff around her, registered in whatever way it is a dog does that she was gone, and that was that.
He never showed any signs of pining for her. It’s like her passing released his independence. Or maybe I just noticed it in him more. It was a relief I must admit, I really wanted to get out of the two-dog thing. We moved again within a year, my own house this time. “His” backyard (but I’m always welcome to join him), “his” two chairs, even “his” bedroom, which he graciously gives over to guests.
He’s getting older now, but still each day I am that little bit more grateful that I have him in my life. He is my sanity, my sounding-board, my chastener, and a constant source of amusement and fun and affection.

Some of the things I love most about him;

· The huge welcome I get every time I come home, be it 5 minutes or 5 weeks, no matter, it always seems like it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened in his life.
· Rough-housing on the floor (me being a kid again)
· How he treats his evening snack of dry food. As if he has to establish for sure it is not alive, one of the larger pieces is carefully pulled out of the bowl, tossed in the air, pounced on, thrown around, pounced on again, then left while the same routine is performed on another piece. Then if the first piece hasn’t moved, it’s safe to be eaten.
· How he has decided that it is his duty as host to sleep in the same bed as our guests.
· The absolute and complete trust he has in me.
· How when things get just too exciting he will chase his tail in precisely three clockwise circles, no more, no less.
· How he listens with total concentration when I am talking to him, never answers back or offers unwanted criticism, and never repeats any of it. God – if he did or could spill the dirt. . . .The things he alone knows!!!
· How when I’m getting ready for work in the morning he takes himself out to his kennel as soon as he hears me cleaning my teeth.
· How he works the room when friends are around, and somehow seems to know just which one will absent-mindedly respond to him leaning gently against their leg and start scratching his ear.
· His marked preference – in total contrast to his dad – for big men – the taller and more solid the better.
· How he knows when I want or need him to sleep on my bed for a change, and when he does, after the few circles to get comfortable, the deep sigh as he seems to settle deep into the bedclothes and then doesn’t budge till morning.

10 Pet Peeves
1 Hypocrisy
2 People that insist on walking three or four abreast on narrow footpaths
3 Boom boxes in cars at full volume at 3.00am . . . . actually at anytime! What ever makes some people think everyone wants to hear their music?
4 Arrogance (invariably unjustified)
5 Too much perfume (or aftershave) – makes me sneeze
6 People who believe the responsibility is always somebody else’s
7 Carrying “Politically Correct” to ridiculous extremes
8 Out-of-control kids in public spaces – especially supermarkets
9 Obnoxious drunks
10 Sleazebags

10 Things That Rock
1 Barney, for his unconditional love and devotion, beautiful brown eyes and the way he wags his tail round in circles every time I come home.
2 Spring
3 Thunderstorms (so tomorrow should be a good day !)
4The first cup of coffee each day
5 Finally being able to come home to my own house every day (So the bank owns more of it than I do? So what!)
6 Music
7 Movies
8 the Theatre – bless it and long may it survive
9 Books
10 Getting off a plane in a new city

This is kind of the Blog I have to do when I really don’t know what I want to blog about. I keep stirring the guys around me at work – here in Blog Central – that they’re getting slack, neglecting their Blog Duties. If I don’t keep my end up they’ll turn on me for sure – and deservedly so.

So . . . . well, the weather’s been really good. Frustratingly good in fact. Combined with unusually late starts (for me) I’ve been walking to work. Takes me an hour which makes it a good worthwhile walk. Nice at this time of year too, can have a good comparatively leisurely sticky-beak at everybody’s gardens as I walk past. Nothing sinister there, just always on the lookout for ideas for my neglected garden. I admit I dream far more about my garden than doing anything about it, but soon !
Yeah, soon.
Right now of course everything is starting to grow. I think perhaps the loveliest thing at the moment is the new leaves on the rose bushes. Just love the way they look so new and clean and green with their reddish-brown edges. That’s going to be about the end of me waxing lyrical.

Just went out for a cigarette. Guy down there I’ve sort of liked the look of for a while.
He has a beard, and I usually don’t much care for that. He’s shaved it off. Pity. He needs the beard. Another little obsession gone.

Forty minutes to go before home time, and things have got so quiet in here it’s going to drag. Got to start writing out a job app when I get home, internal job, still not 100% decided if the time is right for me to leave this company. Apparently a few people going for it. We’ll see. There’s a bit of a flurry of people applying for new positions here – guess its just the first round of new positions after the end of the Financial year.

Getting close to home time. People round me getting silly and its catching. That’s not a complaint, not at this time of day. This is probably my worst blog to-date. Not particularly fussed by that, but going to leave it at that.

I’m just not a winter person. I’ve known that since childhood. I love the sun, and leaves on the trees, and the soft feel of the wind in spring and summer. I love being outside, doesn’t matter if it’s a clear blue sky with a blazing sun or a sky that’s black with a tropical storm, and maybe best of all a night sky with more stars than you thought there could ever be.
Not that I used to mind winter all that much, not as a child. I guess then you figure it’ll pass, that’s if you think about it at all. When you’re a kid you tend to take what’s there and just run with it. Somewhere along the line, when so much of the child has left forever and the responsibility of adulthood has you firmly in its grasp, you find you have to think about things more. And when that started happening to me,, then winter started to get to me, and each one was just a bit harder to get through than the last.
It got to the point my friends would joke about it, well, make it sound like they were joking, around late May “Guess we won’t be seeing or hearing from you for the next few months.” I’d just go into a kind of light hibernation, still functioning, but really at the lowest level necessary, go to work, do the shopping on the way home, then lock myself away from the world and the cold until I had to go to work the next day. They’re good friends, they’ve always been there waiting patiently till spring rolls round. Don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve that.
Well, last Sunday I realised it was the last weekend of winter, and what a weekend it was. I worked the Saturday, but both days were sunny and warm, the nights were almost balmy, the grass is green and the trees are in bud or blossom. The world is coming alive again, and I realised not just that I’d survived another winter, but that I hadn’t spent it all hiding away. I’d actually kept in touch with my friends – more than that, I’d seen them, I’d gone out, got drunk with them, dragged myself through the rain to go to the theatre, or the cold to go to dinner.
Part of it I know is finding out that I was not the only one to get depressed in winter, and there is even a name for it. What’s more, there are simple ways to deal with it, and they work. I was feeling really good about things for a while there on Sunday.
Monday I crashed. Low, real low. A lot of reasons why, I know them all and usually I can manage them. I just haven’t quite figured out what the trigger was that let it all get to me this time. It just wasn’t winter for once.
Work didn’t help. It wouldn’t. It is after all one of the depressing aspects of my life. But usually the people there get me over that – or though it. Problem is that after months at the same desks we’ve all been moved. Of the six seats at my station two are empty, two are part-timers, and the last one usually starts half-way through my shift. I am in other words, pretty much on my own most of the day, and that’s not what you need when you’re down in the dumps and could do with a little cheering up, or at least some distraction to stop the brooding.
And this is where we finally get to the whole point of this. How ridiculously easy it is for something – or someone – to drag you back up when you’re feeling down.

Thank God for M.

Firstly because you were there, and since you went part-time we haven’t really seen that much of each other. We’ve never really socialised, and for a long time now we’ve been seated apart at work. Having you nearby again has meant I’m discovering you all over, and I’m really liking that. Liking little things that have a huge effect, like finding out you like films I do that no-else cares for. Most importantly this week you put me onto reading something, something very personal and very raw, something I got totally hooked on and have spent most of the last two days reading. Something that took me totally away from what was getting me down. It sounds a bit cliched, but something that gave me a new perspective.
Now I don’t know if you knew just what you were doing. I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re pretty perceptive. But if you did know or if you didn’t, thanks anyway. Thanks for the gift, and thanks for being you. Thanks for dragging me by the bootstraps out of the downer I was in. And if you’re feeling embarrassed reading this . . . . Tough. No apologies.
See you next week.