As the weather warms this wide brown land, the burgeoning bloom of Spring bringing with it longer days delicious and dry, it is with trepidation that I sniff the air.
Yes, for something wicked this way comes; a cloud looms portentiously, a shadow expectant and hovering over this very house.
Well, across from this house. Over the road actually.

It comes in the shape of my neighbour, a good neighbour really.
A friendly one.
Rather too friendly.
Unless you have been introduced on a previous occasion, dear reader, I will acquaint you now with Underpants.
That is how he is known round here.
For that is pretty much all he wears.
Everywhere.
Oh, not the tighty whitey kind, no.
Not, and I thank God for this, the Speedo, the Budgie Smuggler, Dick-Sticker variety.
Our Underpants favours instead the Scoop, the short, short scooped boxer-short style.
Offering maximum sun exposure, while gently disguising any sneaky running tackle displays, they ride high and loose on the thigh, nestled snugly under the deeply tanned, presumably leather-like belly folding rather sadly over the waistband. Above it all loom the greying chest hairs and saggy man breasts fighting stoicly against an inevitable journey south.
Indeed, it is brazen. It is a middle finger against our gentle sensibilities, a brown eye at the establishment and, while I want to applaud his brave stand against the hourglass, while I battle to embrace his bold bohemian bravado, his cavalier charge against the march of time, I must admit it is the damned awkwardness that is the problem.
Not only does he flaunt his flesh, he flashes it incessantly.
Indeed, it is always there.
Underpants is always there.

As I manoevre my way to the car he is mowing the lawn. He is mowing the lawn again. He is pulling at some weeds. He is tweaking the flowers. He is cleaning his car. He is sweeping his driveway. He is collecting the mail. He is just standing there. He is cleaning his wife's car. He is wandering into someones garden. He is mowing the lawn. Again. He is calling out to his children up the street. Loudly.
He is pulling something off our grass. He is talking to someone in their driveway, from ours. Loudly.
God. Is he mowing the lawn, again?
Yes.
Indeed yes. He is there.
He is always there.
And always in the underpants.

Warm weather is an open invitation to near nakedness. Underpants rolls in his own grass clippings with unabashed glee as the tshirts and singlets of colder seasons lay abandoned in a joyous embrace of the sun's rays.
I suspect that, even as I write, our neighbours are preparing, both mentally and physically, for the prospect of such prolonged, semi-naked cavorting over the next six months.

I too am prepared, dear reader.
For I am Agent Minx, slippery and sly, subversive and oh so deliciously secret.
Behind the limestone walls of my courtyard, I skulk and lurk in a fashion enigmatic, my travels to the mailbox conducted in the manner of a reconnaissance mission, ducking and weaving similar forays from the other side of the road.
Indeed, weeds are pulled in the shadows, gardening done by gaslight, cars cleaned and appointments kept under the cover of darkness. And the curtains are closed.
Ha ha! How I love to make a mockery of this full frontal assault.

But alas, as the sun sets at the end of our street, lo, I glimpse, from my vantage point behind the courtyard walls, a flash of silver hair glistening in the fading light.
There is no sunshine, yet there he remains, Scoops flaring and grey chest hairs rippling in the evening breeze, standing sentinel at the end of his driveway, meerkat like, poised and ready.

Ah, something wicked this way comes.
Indeed, and Underpants is ready.
Perhaps he'll hear his name upon the breeze now and take himself inside.

For someone who predictably delights in unabashed busyness and dashing about pell-mell, I admit to feeling increasingly endeared by the concept of reclining upon my arse and doing nothing.
Well, very little that is, except for The Absolutely Necessary.

After having been consumed almost every night and day for the past week with one social engagement or another, I am feeling a little frayed.
My colours are beginning to run. And I have become testy.
Not only have I found myself without the time to devote to my cruel mistress, "The Book"(She Who Demands to be Written) and indeed My Blog and all her friends, it appears there are areas of my home that have risen up in revolt against the lack of attention.

It was obvious this morning as I entered the kitchen that there was conspiracy afoot, my dishwasher, pantry and bench top all wearing that uncomfortable expression of contrived disregard. There was a harrumpff from the dishwasher as I stooped to empty her of residual detritus, a sniff and averted eyes from the bench top as I sprayed and wiped her clean of spillage. There was downright resistance from the pull-out pantry as my fingers fumbled to correct the disarray of her jumbled contents, but not until there was a frustrated whimper from my own direction did the situation become clear.

"I'd like to speak on behalf of all of us." ventured the dishwasher.

"Go ahead." I spoke.

"We are unhappy. They don't treat us like you do." she sniffed, a little trickle of water escaping her hinges. "When you're not here they slam us closed, they slop things on us and just leave them, and they're, they're - "

"Disrespectful." growled the stove. "I still bear their noodle sauce spillage of two nights ago."

"Hmmm," I agreed. "The boys."

There was a swell of disgruntled mumbling as their names were whispered around the kitchen, stories of injustice spat hastily, repeated with increasing fervour as evidence of the boys' monstrous crimes unfolded.
I surveyed the scene. Despite a couple of small unwiped spills, some crumbs in the corner and a discombobulation behind closed doors, it didn't look so offensive, really...
The twin smells of jealousy and abandonment hung in the air like sour fridge odour.

"You know" I offered, "It's not that bad."

Oh. Silence. A sniff. Sobbing from somewhere in the pantry. Narrowed, resentful eyes from the stove.

"But I'm home all day today so I'll give you all a thorough clean. Hmmm? How's that?"

A giggle. Gleeful tittering from the spice drawer. Spontaneous leakage from the tap.
A visible swelling of the appliances.

"Ooh, it's so much better when you're around." trilled the dishwasher.

"We've missed you!" sang the bench top.

"I'm back." I said. "Now who's first?"

"Just hold on a minute there!" came a cry from the laundry.

"I can't tidy myself!!" bleated my dressing table.

"And I Demand To Be Written!" growled The Book.

Oh dear...

It appears my arse reclining will have to wait...
for The Absolutely Necessary demands my attention. Now.
And all too often lately; for the concept of "Necessary" is one riddled with ambiguity, swollen with guilt and so dangerously ill-defined.
So necessarily unavoidable.

Til then I will dream..
of that one quiet, guiltless day..
and ah, how beautiful it will be to do Absolutely Nothing, Nil, Nada,
Sweet Fanny Adams,
and then rest afterwards...

Having sex where I might get caught used to be one of my thrills.

Going to an all-girls Catholic school for eleven years had messed with my mind.
By the time I was having sex I couldn't get enough of it.
It was decadent and naughty and all the delicious things that were guaranteed to send me straight to Hell.
Like icecream I had my favourite flavours, but guilty, bad-girl, naughty sex was the tastiest. The naughtier the better.
Indeed, it was the very badness of sex that made it so addictive.
Oh and I was greedy. Where and when didn't matter as long as I got it when I wanted it.
No one wants a tantrum now, do they?
So I always got my treat.
I got it in the car, I got it on the beach, I got it in the University typing room, I got it in the library, I got it in a hollowed out log in the bush, I got it in my wardrobe, I even got it behind my friend's sofa when she left the room to make a cup of coffee.

Intoxicating and exhilarating, the thrill of inappropriate pleasuring became an insidious thing, and pervasive. The thrill of the guilty pleasure made the mischief so deliciously desirable that it became my drug.
Furtive, fevered, lust-filled forays in the backseat of the car were an orgasmic banquet upon which I feasted, revelling in the wrong, my appetite wild and whet by it's wickedness. Those tedious lectures on the evils of sex before marriage, by nuns that had presumably never had it, ensured it became the best aphrodisiac for feverish frenzied fucking.

So last night, as my husband struggled to close the bedroom drapes that are a little too flimsy and don't quite meet, I had to laugh.
You see, a few months ago, after a history of sex in appropriate places, we were finally caught in the act, in flagrante delicto, in our bedroom. Our own bedroom.
In the marital bed. Of all places!!

It was a moment, as it happened, when both of us were simultaneously facing the gaping division between the drapes. Without my contact lenses I am technically blind, but when my husband, lurching, spluttering and shrinking, grabbed the covers and threw them over us both I could see there was a problem.

"What the hell!" he gasped. "There's someone at the gate! They were just looking through our window!"

"What? Who?" I giggled.

We stole furtive looks through the gap in the curtain like naughty children.

"I don't know. They're moving hard. They look like Jehovah's Witnesses."

Sure enough, two plainly clothed figures were scurrying out of our courtyard, heads down, books clutched fervently to their chests, their morning evangelism soiled by what had been witnessed, a witness glaringly incongruous with their vision.
Visions incongruous! Indeed!
Funnily enough, after all those years of flagrantly inappropriate sex, this interlude was likely to be remembered as the most intrusive and exposed.
Here, in the marital bed! A million years later...

We laughed. Because it was perfect.
All alone, in the privacy of our own home, in our very own bedroom, we had been made to feel the naughtiest.
We'd even had the curtains closed!

Well, sort of...

I must confess, dear reader, there are times when only a meme will do.

• When one has been inordinately consumed with writing one's novel, wrenching spirit from the very heart of one's innards, ignoring such trivialities as meal preparation, general housekeeping, the call of the wild;

• When one's free time has been spent further avoiding such business by shopping, answering emergencies with wine and cigarettes, doing lunch, entertaining girlfriends;

• When the time that one should be spent sleeping off such over-indulgence is assigned to such previously avoided tasks as sweeping, mopping, dusting and all other wretched and tedious fundamentals of basic housekeeping;

• And when one inevitably becomes poorly...

Today (whimper), grieved by a sore and scratchy throat, a head awash with mucus, and with limbs flaccid and feeble, I discovered to my curious delight that a meme was anxiously awaiting my input. Courtesy of the very darling and deliciously talented Christina of Paris Romance, I was intrigued to find it required a revelation of Five Things.
Finding myself fundamentally incapable of preparing anything other than a slap-up meal, a quick fry up of my own eviscerated entrails this weekend, dear readers, it was perfect.
Indeed. It is fast food.

Please enjoy.
I do hope it won't give you indigestion.

Five Things

1) Living in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia.
2) Wearing rampantly inappropriate camo mini skirts in a Muslim country.
3) Not housework. Oh no! I had a maid.
4) Doing lunch.
5) Preparing for a snowboarding holiday in France.

What are five things you were doing this time last year?

1) I was in England organizing my Nan's funeral.
2) Comforting my Mum a lot.
3) Missing my entourage at home.
4) Thinking of all the loose ends I hadn't tied.
5) Preparing to take Mum on a holiday through Andalucia, Spain.

What are five snacks that you enjoy?

1) Gorgonzola on wafer crackers, with shiraz of course darling.
2) Handfuls of pepitas
3) Butter and vegemite on Salada crackers
4) Twisties.
5) Strawberries.

What are five songs you know the lyrics to?

1) Luck Be a Lady - Frank Sinatra.
2) Killer Queen - Queen.
3) Sour Girl - Stone Temple Pilots
4) Spoonman - Soundgarden.
5) Hanky Panky - Madonna. (indeed...)

What five things would you do if you were a millionaire?

1) Buy a beachside home in Cottesloe.
2) Enjoy overseas holidays at least four times a year.
3) Donate more money to WSPA.
4) Build a holiday home in Eagle Bay.
5) Offer the luxury goods market my full support.

What are your five bad habits?

1) Chewing the skin next to my nails when I'm nervous.
2) Drowning in the details/Being utterly irresponsible.
3) Jumping to conclusions.Speaking out of turn.Upsetting the apple-cart
4) Pushing the limits, particularly when over the limit...
5) Not paying bills.

What five things do you like to do?

1) Write: my book, my blog.
2) Explore the world, traveling and adventuring .
3) Immerse myself in nature on mammoth treks - I love the communion of body and spirit with the elements.
4) Indulge my rampant sensuality in my most decadent and delicious theatre of hedonism.
5) Ignore the rest of the world and read.

What are five things you will never wear again?

1) My hair in the frizzy horror of Perm, circa 1989.
2) The monstrous reading glasses of, again, 1989. What the hell was I thinking!
3) Bright orange stockings under rolled up fluoro pink socks under purple plastic shoes. 1984. Good God.
4) Cheap underwear.
5) A wedding dress.

What are your five favorite toys?

1) My camera.
2) My laptop.
3) My iPod.
4) My Mac.
5) My little Italian Greyhound, Chi Chi..

What are five things you hate to do?

1) Housework. All of it, especially ironing.
2) Endure the company of ill mannered people.
3) Visit the doctor or the dentist.
4) Kowtow.
5) To do as I'm told, of course...

Perhaps you would like to whip up your own little fast food fry up, readers!!
It's easy really...you only need five things!
And a good excuse!

Now, dear readers, you must excuse me (sniff) while I take myself to bed.
It is chicken soup on the menu for me, of course...

PS: I know how most of you feel about memes...
So I have not tagged or bagged, or indeed shagged any of you,
for fear of incurring name calling, sneering or other scornful behaviour...
But please, by all means, feel free to slap away at the five, if you dare...
Mmm, challenging arent I?
No? Okay...I'm delirious now and I'm off to bed.

xox

As you know, I have a very cavalier, renegade, if not thoroughly irresponsible attitude toward bill payment.
Even as we speak I have one disconnection notice, one threat of license suspension for unpaid parking fines, one Pay Immediately and another so cheeky that I have been compelled (again) to write Fcuk Off on it.
Yes, we have discussed this before. I know the deal.
I believe I can't be arsed dealing with it.
I know I've got it coming and, sadly, I don't give a shit.
It's a shame really. It's a major thorn in my husband's side.

"Just pay the bills when they come in." he says.

"Okay." I promise and promptly don't.

And this is precisely the chain of events when, in that most frenzied of summers, I was the proud owner of Baby Bear's Cottage, a luxe and delicious children's boutique of my own creation. Preoccupied with running shop, rearing my own two tiny children, buying, selling and sewing entire nurseries of the requisite manchester, I simply forgot to pay the registration on my wholly inappropriate and utterly wretched beige and caramel Datsun 200B.
And I forgot for the longest time until, inevitably, I was called to order.
An order I promptly ignored.
It was a callous disregard. I even remember laughing as I saw a police car crawling up our quiet cul de sac, as I turned the corner for the coast.
Laughs were scarce, however, as the same car eased to a stop outside my business premises a week later. A pair of burly policemen with papers in their hands emerged, explaining that my reluctance to Deal With Issues had resulted in not one, but two warrants for my immediate arrest.
If I could just empty the shop of paying customers, they were ready to escort me to the courthouse.
Sadly, no amount of eyelid batting would prove successful in avoiding this issue and reducing the assortment of fees and charges I was required to pay so publicly; but my big eyes and innocent visage did manage to endear me to the two burly policemen who were subsequently treated to a cup of coffee back at the shop.

Their new friendship came in very handy with two speeding fines I incurred a mere four months later. One fellow was so enamoured of our new friendship that he visited my home after such an infringement to theatrically tear the speeding ticket up before my very eyes, claiming that he had made an error and, as such, the slate must be wiped clean! I'm sure he was angling for another cup of coffee - until he noticed my husband, lurking with narrowed eyes and tightened jaw, in the hallway.

It's a shame the same friendly policeman wasn't in the security section of the Perth Airport eleven years later as I struggled to make my case against a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs in my on board luggage.

"And what are these, Mrs Carroll?" asked the large and sweaty itinerant fruitpicker masquerading as security guard, holding aloft, and with much aplomb, my pretty implements.

"Oh" I gulped, disappointed that I had neglected to pack the fluffy interlopers in my suitcase. "They're part of a costume. I'm going as a Fembot to an Austin Powers Party. In the middle of West Papua."

He smirked. He nodded. Knowingly.
He held them a little higher and smirked and nodded again for the benefit of the passengers bottlenecked behind me. He smirked and nodded meaningfully once more, this time at my poor son who had now turned a curious shade of scarlet and had begun to shrink into his adolescent shoes.

"Well, Mrs Carroll, I'm afraid I can't let you travel any further with these restraints on your person." he announced, holding the pink fluffy LoveCuffs aloft so that all could properly see them. "They are contraband. They are prohibited and they are considered a dangerous item to allow on board an aircraft."

"You're joking, surely!" I scoffed. "What do you expect me to do with them on the plane! Do you imagine I might attempt to restrain the Captain?"

"Well now!" he laughed, for the benefit of the audience that had gathered now about the sordid scene, "We can't be too sure of that, can we? (wink)"

"But-"

"I'm going to have to ask you to hand over the cuffs. To me. Now."

"But-"

"Now."

I took note of the muscled security personnel, twitchy and itching for a cavity search, I stared at the giggling, gathering audience. "Sorry" I whispered to my florid and uncomfortable son.
I glared finally at the smarmy smuggler of my pink fluffies, and I bid my farewell.

I wasn't happy. I loved those babies.
But in hindsight I like to think it was a symbolic gesture, saying goodbye to the handcuffs.
I've come very close to serious trouble since; an armed police contingent outside one of my parties, almost being kicked off The Island, a very scary visa face-off in The Little Room at Denpasar Airport and a swathe of misdemeanours to fill in the gaps, but nothing so diabolical I might end up wearing a cold hard pair of the cuffs myself...

That is unless I forget to deal with those bills I mentioned earlier...

Alas Chi Chi, we're not in Mandurah anymore!

Growing up in the seventies, it was inevitable that my memories would be punctuated by the pertinence of popular culture. It was inescapable that the cross pollination of those deliciously kitsch influences on my developing psyche would help create what I am today.
Episodes of Mission Impossible, The Mod Squad and The Persuaders encouraged my Spy Girl instincts.
The Night Stalker and Invaders instigated sleuth of the supernatural kind; but in my twelfth year, as I watched an old video of The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford it was like watching history unfold. It was an epiphany.
I wanted to be a stripper.

I remember watching open mouthed, stupefied by their infamous sting, manipulated by the masterful monkeying, but mesmerized mostly by the fabulous bump and grinder in the first act. I was twelve and the sleazy strip joints of The Great Depression's Downtown Chicago held an action I was unfamiliar with. It was positively delicious. There were fans, there were feathers, there were pasties and nipple tassels. There was a quiver and a shimmy irresistibly shimmering.
To my virgin ears, the rag time trumpet, the sleazy brass, the triumphant baboom of Marvin Hamlisch's Hooker's Hooker conjured a 30's strip joint vibe so tantalizing I could taste it. The wiggling arse, the jiggling tits, I wanted it all. Encrusted with rhinestones. Oh and I wanted that applause, baby, that unrestrained appreciation from the audience.

So I planned my execution. I practiced my art. I watched the video repeatedly, played my Mum's vinyl soundtrack, wiggling and jiggling what little flesh there was on my scrawny pubescent body to the brassy bump and grind.
After a week of preparation I decided to unleash my talent upon the world.
My Nan would be first. It would be a soft opening, of course, given that she was often blinded by the sunshine streaming from my bottom.

"Oh Nannan, you must come and watch me," I pleaded, "I have been learning a new dance and I'm very, very good at it now."

"Ooh, I'm looking forward to it, luv," she beamed, settling into her armchair, "I love to watch you perform. Why are you wearing all those clothes?"

"Because I have to take them all off" I smiled through inches of my mother's makeup, carefully placing the needle on Track 4.

The raunchy jazz trumpet lurched out of the speakers as I began a similar escape from my clothes. I swirled and twirled, bumped and jumped as cardigans, scarves, t shirts and skirts flew around me in a frenzied whirlwind of fabric, effort given to working my missiles in with the music which squealed like a firecracker at particular moments of disrobing. Some of them landed on the carpet, some on the furniture and some in my Nan's lap and as I followed their shameless trajectory I saw the steely eyes, the furrowed brow, the tightening set of the lips. It was a bump and grind down to my camisole when I heard the

"blinkin' 'eck!"

"Wheee" I trilled as my skirt twirled about me before inching down my thighs.

"Now that's enough!" cried Nan, "That's quite enough! Now just stop it!"

"But Nan" I squealed, half mast in my skirt, my little bottom preparing for its final wiggle. "I'm not finished yet! I'm not -"

"Get thee skirt on now before I get wooden spoon round it!" she spat, rising from her chair, her lovely face contorted with anger. "Just a blinkin' tart in this get up. Absolute nonsense."

I stood and stared up at her, my red lips quivering, tears hot and stinging, welling in my mascared eyes before rolling down my rouged cheeks.
The music flounced and giggled around us in a shameless and saucy mockery as my Nan looked down at me in what appeared to be unspeakable horror.

"But I just have one m-"

"Upstairs now!!" she bellowed "And put ye blinkin' clothes on!"

It was a dirge, a funeral march up the stairs as I slunk to my room, clutching my skirt and what was left of my 12 year old dignity. I closed the door, sniffed and looked at my bare legs tottering in Mum's heels. I looked at myself in the mirror, a mess of running makeup, teased hair and weediness. I stuck out my bottom and wiggled it. And giggled. Indeed, the jubilant frippery of my flirtation with stripping was alive and kicking despite the scolding. I peeled the camisole away and looked at my tiny breasts, bedazzling in their tinselled pasties, held down crudely with sticky tape.
Silly Nan. I could still hear her tut-tutting downstairs and scratching the record in her haste to remove it. She didn't know what she was missing.

Years later, I miss my Nan and the laughs we often had about this and my curious penchant for removing my clothes after a few drinks.

"Perhaps I was stifled," I'd wink at her.

"Not blinkin' stifled enough," she'd return, with a tut, and a wink of her own.

Obviously not, as my record of unholy behaviour will verify.
While my aspirations never drove me to strip on stage it is disturbing to note how many times they have driven me to disrobe while under the influence of other intoxications. And in the privacy of my own home I am never far away from the sleazy spy jazz of John Cacavas or the brassy burlesque of The Stripper.
For it seems I am an ecdysiast after all; my wardrobe is fabulous, my routines are polished to perfection, I can bump and grind with the best of them and, what's more, what's best, I have a most appreciative audience.

I am rather fond of a little tale where an elderly lady, pensive in her last moments, recounts all the things in her life she wishes she could change, redo, try again,
if she had the chance.
Yes, she would sit in the sun a little longer this time around, eat another icecream perhaps, allow it to melt deliriously down her hand, take her time over a cup of tea, smell the roses and live a little.
Oh, if only she could, for just a little longer..

I am fond of that story for many reasons.
It's lessons are many, not least the one that reminds us that, at the end of the day, most literally, there is less time spent regretting the things one has done than the things one didn't do..
And it gives me hope.

In the past I have often taken extra time to beat myself up for the vast number of thoughtless, foolish, selfish things I've done in my life.
We've all done them. Some of them I've done twice.
On more than one occasion I've gone back and done them a third time too..
Ah yes, there have been some thoroughly inglorious moments of unabashed stupidity and error.
Yet, as each year finds me inescapably older, I have found the hair coat less than helpful.
All the remorse in the world can't change the things I have done, but I can change the things I haven't done yet. Indeed, there is still an opportunity to get to my deathbed with a much shorter list of Things I Wish I'd Done, But Didn't...

Like surfing.
I can't believe I'm not surfing.
I come from a family of surfers.
Not my original family of course. We are from England. We are Hiltons.
We can barely swim.
Which is part of the problem.
Even migration to this wide brown land did little to change my non-swimming status.
I blame my mother who, darling and incalculably chic in flower covered bathing cap, instilled in me a fear of water so dark that I still suffer palpitations when the waves hit my chest.
It has been a crippling handicap, so much so that when my children were infants I made a decision they not suffer a similar fate, thus endeavouring to create them in their fathers image; surfer, swimmer and epitome of Mr Chesty Bond.
I have thrown them in the deep end, I have tossed them in dark water, I have watched them paddle out in a ten foot swell when they were 9 years old.
With no regrets.
Bold and brilliant in the surf, they have thanked me for it, as I perch, high and dry,
in my itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, holding their towels.

And it is here, dear reader, that my regret lies...
Huddled in the shallow end, hiding in my fear, I have spent at least three decades of my life desperately, heart-stoppingly, pathetically frightened of the water.
For someone so bohemian, so prone to adventuring, so thrilled by experience, it has been a gross impediment.
Living so close to the ocean, with a family of surfers, it is almost ridiculous.
And it is beginning to make me sick.

Last night, we watched a surf movie as we often do, but this one really captured my attention.
It centred on a yacht full of young women, cool, fit, ballsy chicks surfing one beautiful set after another off the coast of Sumatra. In effortless style they twisted and turned their bodies on smooth boards, carving through the face of the wave in serpentine fluidity, their exhilaration a rush of pure joy as they slipped through the green room, a backdrop of Indonesian palm fronds completing the picture perfect surfing postcard.

"You'd make a great surfer," said my husband, "You're built for it, low centre of gravity, good balance, great bod. Shame you're so frightened of the water."

I looked at him, I looked through him and back at myself.
I saw the skinny little girl with the big eyes, cowering by the water's edge.

"I don't want to regret this any more," I said, "I'm sick of being scared."

He reached out and took my hand.

"Then I'm going to teach you how to surf, Gidget." he said. "This weekend. You won't regret it."

Indeed, it might well be my greatest achievement.
Minx. Wahine.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

It is Springtime here in this wide brown land, dear reader, and with it has come the proverbial Spring Clean; a cleansing, purging and general re-evaluation of one's shit.
It began for me in earnest last week with the cleaning of the closet .
It continued this weekend with a full blown assault on the shed at the back of the garden.
It was thorough, it was conclusive and it was infinitely, embarrassingly and disturbingly revealing.
Indeed it was Apocalyptic, for I discovered three more pairs of boots that I had neglected to factor into my collection equation.
It appears, dear reader, that I do in fact, have 39 pairs of boots.
Yes. 39.
39 pairs of fricken boots.
Good God. Somebody help me, for I am in Trouble.
There is no denying it. I am The End of Days and I need therapy.
I am the owner of a full blown, growling, snarling boot obsession.
Call me the Imelda Marcos of boots, a fanatically flagrant female fiasco of the foot fetish for I cannot help myself.
I thought 36 pairs of boots was hardcore.
Indeed it is 39 - and counting.

I have always been a sucker for the boot.
I cannot pass a shoe store with a pair in the window without stopping for a look.
It is an exercise fraught with danger for they call, they beckon, they lure me with their siren song, their intoxicating leather smells reaching out in tendrilly fingers of decadence to entice me.
It begins with a touch, laden with sexual promise, a stroke down each pair, my palm running their length, my fingers fondling their zips, my hand encircling their toes as I bring them closer, smelling them deeply, the richness of their aroma filling my nostrils and toying with my thoughts as I entertain the idea of entering them.
Ahhh...
Oh, it is no good now.
They know they have me as I plunge my foot into their depths, toes searching the smooth spot at the end of the tunnel as my heel sinks deeply into their base.
The leather encases my leg as I pull at the zip, upwards, upwards, ahhh... Captured...
Oh I love the smell of leather in the morning.
The sweet smell of leather and defeat.
For yes, I own the boots!

Or, perhaps, dear reader, is it that the boots own me?
Indeed, it is a curious concept to find oneself strapped and held in bondage by one's very own boot fetish, captive and tied at the ankles by one's own obsession.

Yet alas, I have no desire to be free.
The boots call and I will answer.

Indeed, my boot fetish finds me doomed.
It may be Spring but something wicked this way comes.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride towards me on the storm.

And ooh yes - are they wearing boots?
Oh, how I want them!

Indeed, seal my fate and bring on The End of Days for I am well prepared.
I have my Tools of Armageddon.

And I'll be looking damned fine as I meet my maker, glorious in one of my 39 pairs of diabolical devilry!!

Lock 'n Load 'n Lick my boots baby!

The French are glad to die for love.
They delight in fighting duels.
But I prefer a man who lives
And gives expensive jewels.
A kiss on the hand
May be quite continental,
But diamonds are a girl's best friend.

Indeed, you may think these to be my own words, dear reader.
You may imagine me a creature of greedy hands extended,
grasping fingers grabbing with avarice anything that sparkles with the illustrious and luminous energy of that most fabulous of God's creations,
The Diamond.

But alas, you would be incorrect..
For indeed, while I do faun at the feet of the magnificent stone,
mesmerized by it's fiery brilliance,
I have come to see it as a warning,
a betrayal.
Indeed, for me, it is The Judas kiss.

My epiphany came when I was living in Balikpapan, sprawling seaport city on the eastern coast of Borneo in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia.
The land was ripe with resources and the city of Balikpapan did a rich trade in gold, one of the many assets in abundance there, and one which my husband, and indeed many other sturdy men, were employed to extract, treat and process into gold bars, deep in the steamy heart of the Bornean jungle.

For many of these men it was an adventure to another world.
Indeed, in all respects, these men were strangers in a strange land, a land still languishing in a time forgotten by the rest of the world.
Prior to 1991 and the intervention of Rio Tinto, the indiginous jungle folk had been living an existence tribal and primitive, nestled comfortably in their traditional activities; hunting wild bears and pig, smearing the fat of these cooked animals on themselves of an evening and spearing the heads of errant Javanese on the borders of their territory.
I kid you not, dear reader; these were the original Dyak headhunters, the proverbial Wild Men of Borneo.

When my husband arrived there in 1991 at the very commissioning of the mine, speaking not a word of Indonesian, his workers speaking no English, it was a glorious pantomime.
Yet, gold was mined, bars were poured and slowly but surely the language barrier was broken. In all that time, however, the orang puti retained the incredible enigma of wonderful strangers, perhaps even demi gods.
At least, that's what some of them thought..
And, away from their wives, most only a helicopter journey away, they began to believe in their own magic.

It was a curious phenomenon.
Separated from their families, these men began to wear new hats; holding hands with local girls in the jungle bar, falling in love, some even enjoying elaborate matrimonial ceremonies with their jungle love, starting families with them, all the while maintaining the visage of intrepid husband and father to the people at home.
Other men spread their favours, lavishing their love on a multitude of local women, sharing their seed with those that considered them divine while providing the community, inevitably, with a whole arrangement of ill-conceived offspring.

And, simultaneously, there began a new trade in Balikpapan.
While the soft yellow metal never lost it's popularity, it was evident that all that glittered was not gold and there soon began a trade in something more sparkling, more substantial.
Diamonds.
More specifically, Diamond Rings.
Big ones.
And it seemed there was a pre-requisite to receiving one as a gift.

Over a bottle of wine, a few of us came to a sad conclusion.
There was a glittering prize for being the wife of a cheater.
It was big and sparkling and glimmered on the hand like a fire divine.
It emerged as enigmatically on the fingers as the gossip did on the lips.

Oh and what a sad indictment it was.
Yet, even more pitiful, it appeared the recipients were oblivious to the deception; flaunting their prize at morning tea, flashing their sparkler at lunch, their booty a blatant and wretched advertisement of a wrongful exchange, the juice all over town by dinner time.
It was a Judas Kiss, to be sure.
Yet, if I knew, why didn't they?
How could they not know, given the well oiled machinery of bitchy expat gossip?

I think perhaps they did.
I suspect they had resigned themselves to a fate made marginally better by the lubrication of trinkets and payoffs.

And good luck to them.
I, for one, was happy never to have been given the diamond ring while I was there.
Which is a good thing.
For I can't be bought.
Then again, I can afford to be smug.
I'm lucky enough to be married to one of the good guys. They're few and far between I hear; they don't mess around, they don't imagine themselves divine and they don't hold hands in jungle bars.
More importantly, they don't come bearing gifts of the glittering kind.
And they had better not.
For that, to me, would be The Judas Kiss.
And that kiss on the cheek
would be quite detrimental,

for all that glitters is not gold,
nor diamonds for that matter...

bada bling?
bada BOOM!

Last night, as a tantalizing glimpse and subsequent tug of something silver resulted in a bombardment of handbags upon my bewildered head, I knew something had to be done.
Justice was swift.
Restitution was ruthless and with a disgorgement worthy of Madame Ipecac herself, the detritus that befouled my bedspread this morning was dealt with.
It wasn't pretty.
Well, some of it was.
It's just that there was so much of it.

Boxes of beguiling Christmas decorations twinkled next to swaying piles of sarongs which reclined seductively against heaving mounds of folded sheets. Upon layers of make-up containers balanced beams of wrapping paper, unravelling and extending their inner coils like light sabres at the merest touch. Shoe boxes filled with Europe 2002, Turkey 2005 and Greece 2003 sat quietly next to paper bags of Paris 04 and envelopes of Santorini. Bali was all over the place, smiling smugly at her dominance over the other ephemera gleaned from corners of the world less traveled.

In a manner not unlike Charlemagne, I led my first charge at the less frequented portions of the wardrobe. It was a surprise attack, sidetracked almost immediately by whimsy as I retrieved a few forgotten treasures poked desperately between gaps in the bulging suitcases on the upper shelf; a white beaded Balinese sarong, a stripy citrus one and a pretty pink embroidered number that I swear still smelt of the Cyclades as I pulled it close.
Memories tempted as bags of birthday cards, saved slavishly, spewed from their sentimental hidey holes to tease me with times past enjoyed and the ceaseless perpetuity of the passing years. Dangerously close to the ephemeral wobbled lethal litre bottles of essential oil, sandlewood and ylang ylang threatening in their teeter to spill over the spoils of the years, their threat dammed a little by thin walls of scarves rolled into balls and stuffed like cotton wool between the gaps.
A swathe of glossy bags from Alannah Hill, Kookai and their ilk spread like a layer of cream over the scene, their contents long eBayed, their dockets still a shocking evidence of glorious moments in shopping history.
Down they came to the battlefield on the bed, to be picked over and reconstituted before a systematic replacement in the closet.
While I am a sentimental minx, it is at times like this that a flagrant disregard for such domestic debilitation can overtake me, surprising me with it's ruthless abandon of all that ties me up, quite literally, with my shit.
After a thorough pillaging of the top, and least detrimental layer of my cupboard, dear reader, I will concede that my bin bag was full.
Buoyed by my savagery, the ministrations continued throughout the day, all senses affronted by the sheer magnitude of my hoarding, one shelf filled with no less than fifty various yet surprisingly similar hair products, another sheltering the detritus of a serious makeup addiction, along with several other obsessions as I made my way through the clothes section, both hanging and folded, and the shoes and boots clearly kicking each other to death at floor level.

It has been a battle fought and won, dear reader, my closet standing skeleton-free,
a gleaming symbol of my daring and dramatic domestic dominion, an edifice almost luminous in it's monument to order and organization.
Yet, as I clutch my glass of shiraz, my sparkling case of writer's block and the same half written chapter of this elusive book of mine, I know I have mastered The Art of Distraction as well.
Rather too well.