More About School

I have mentioned a bit about my time at school. I was always kind of a geek but had the good fortune of being considered funny so most people put up with me. I was happy with this arrangement because it was so easy to be funny at my school. There was just so much comedy gold everywhere to be seen.

Probably the best source for cheap entertainment in the entire school was the librarian we had for the first few years of my time there. His name was Mr Cox, which led to a lot of very obvious jokes from the student population. But in my humble opinion, his name was the least funny thing about him.

We referred to him as the Book Nazi. His demeanor was very similar to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld except instead of soup, it was books. There had to be total silence in his library at all times. God help you if you were chewing gum. I remember a friend of mine once accidentally dropped a book from the library's upper level and I will never forget how terrified I was for her safety.

But it gets better. Cox the Book Nazi was, in his spare time, a reasonably successful square dance caller. Seriously. A few friends of mine looked him up on the internet and found that he released his own recordings of him calling square dances, giving it a bit of the old 'Dosey Doe and around you go!'. And people actually bought them. When we discovered this, it was an incredible revelation. Word spread around the schoolyard pretty quickly.

At some stage the school found out about this hidden hobby and dealt with it the way that high schools are legally required to deal with this things. That is, the way they are required to deal with these things if you live in a Saved By The Bell-esque sitcom. They put him in charge of our PE class for a week. I don't know if you've ever been given square dance lessons by a psychotic librarian with anger management issues, but it's a strange experience. He would be up on stage in a cowboy hat, dropping phrases like 'square your sets!' and throwing in a few rhymes while intermittently screaming at any student who dared displease him. There were a lot of detentions given that week.

Another of my favourite staff members was a history teacher whose name I won't mention, because it was a bit less common. Like many of the teachers at my school she was widely regarded as being totally and completely insane. Personally, I quite liked her. I remember our first history class in year 7, she asked everyone in the room to tell the class two things about themselves. A simple 'getting to know you' exercise. The girl sitting next to me (the same girl who had the misfortune of dropping that book, now that I think about it) mentioned that her favourite food was tiny teddies. We moved on. But our teacher, not so much. The next class she came in with a huge box of tiny teddies and gave them out to everyone in the class. Except for the girl sitting next to me. I should point out that there was literally no reason for doing this that isn't simply messing with a new generation of awkward teenagers.

She also sent me on the single greatest errand I ever carried out when I was at school. I loved running errands for teachers and it wasn't a brown-nosing thing - it was more to do with the fact that it got me a free ticket out of class for as long as I could stretch the errand out.

"Sarah, can you take this note to the front office?" she asked me in class one day, "Tell them it's from me, they should give you something to bring back."

I nodded and wandered out into the corridor. Obviously, I read the note. I was a bit confused when it only had three words on it: 'Bag Of Money'. I wasn't sure what this meant. Had my history teacher finally snapped and was sending the school office a poorly worded ransom note, using me as a messenger? Or did she just fancy her chances of them assuming someone else had ok-ed giving her a free bag of money?

Either way, I handed the note in to the front desk, telling them who it was from. To my surprise the office woman simply nodded and handed me an actual bag full of cash. I considered trying this for myself many times, just going up to the office with a note that said 'Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD' or 'Free Maxibons for life' and seeing whether they reached into that cupboard and pulled out what I wanted. I was never game.

I got along well with that teacher, probably because history was one of my favourite subjects. I was always extremely interested in the way that ancient people lived. As I have mentioned, my aunt in England dabbled in archaeology (or, as I like to describe it 'Jetting around Europe digging up ancient remains with Baldrick from Blackadder'. In other words, my dream life) so I had a bit of an inside scoop on this whole ancient history business. It seems impressive in Australia to find something that's more than 50 years old, but over in Europe they're falling over historical artifacts. They can't build a carpark without having to do a full excavation. I remember hearing the story from my mother about how one of my aunt's neighbours had been digging up his backyard and had discovered a human skeleton. It was quickly cleared as not murder due to it being thousands of years old, probably Roman. It was a small country town and the neighbour wasn't quite sure what to do with the discovery, but knew that my aunt was involved in archaeology. He just gave the skeleton to her to deal with. My aunt, being a very busy person, put the ancient human remains in a box under her bed until she could find a spare moment to deal with them. She was that chill, she didn't mind sleeping with literal skeletons in her closet. Although it was even worse because they weren't in the closet, they were under the friggin bed.

Because she lived on the other side of the world, I didn't get to see her that often but I did speak to her on the phone sometimes. I recall a few months later remembering the skeleton incident and asking her how she had ever resolved it. I will never forget her reaction.

"Oh yeah," she muttered, "I should probably get around to doing something about that."

Best relative ever, seriously. Hopefully she did end up remembering to deal with it, because I never did hear what happened with that.

But back to school. As I say, I was very interested in history, but was also a slightly sarcastic teen who didn't quite understand the best applications for her sarcasm. I was in class one day, passing some judgement on an ancient civilisation. My teacher decided to stop me to teach me a lesson, as they tend to do.

"You know, we live in a very different society today. You can't judge those people by today's standards," she mused.

It was a very good point, but I would put what I said next as the single greatest academic comeback I have ever used.

"Yeah? Well, watch me because I think I just did!"


At least that girl who sat next to me got a laugh out of it.

-Smackie Onassis

Facebook's predecessor was called Facemash and I totally would have preferred that

I have mixed feelings about Facebook and its social networking companions. On the one hand, it's free entertainment. I get to be an idiot with my friends even when they are not at my house. On the other hand, I have ended up totally losing respect for people I once liked because of their online behaviour. There was one girl in particular who had been a good friend of mine for years in the past. When I moved to the other side of the country, I tried to contact her in at least five different ways. I tried calling her, emailing her, writing her a real physical letter, texting her and sending her messages on Facebook, all of this spread over a period of about 12 months. She didn't actually take the time to reply to any of them. She did, however, take the time to spam my Facebook feed with endless photos she'd taken of herself in the mirror and constant reminders to see some local amateur play she was in. Now, I don't mind people using Facebook for promoting things they are doing. It's the perfect medium for that. But if you are writing multiple updates a day telling people to come see your show for several weeks before and during the production, I think you should probably seek help. It can't be healthy to need that much constant validation.

When 2009 rolled over into 2010, I culled my friends list to delete all the people who hadn't made any effort to contact me in the last year. As a result, I got 99 friends but a bitch ain't one.

To be fair, that wasn't the only reason I deleted more than two thirds of my friends list in one hit. See, when people talk to me in person regularly they can kind of understand where I'm coming from. They know that most of what I say is a joke and that I find being inappropriate amusing. The problem is that my sense of humour doesn't always translate that well to brief conversations on the internet.

I have a file on my laptop where I write down things I want to say if they seem a bit suss, then think them over objectively and decide whether I can get away with them. I have mentioned it before. It seems like overkill, but it has saved my arse a few times now. My favourite example was when a girl I hadn't seen in awhile asked her friends list about skiing in Japan. Without thinking, I typed out the phrase 'I hear they've got some wicked slopes in Japan!' before realising what I'd said and hurriedly deleting it.

A second incident occurred when Buglustre's brother was being pressured into watching a movie or some such. I hadn't heard of whatever it was they wanted him to watch but I was kinda tempted to add to the conversation, for no reason other than to be creepy in the name of personal amusement. I wanted to chime in out of the blue with: "Yeah, do it or we will all gang rape you". In a lot of situations, I would have been fine with saying such a thing. But considering that I was on a mission to be the first friend of his sister's that this guy was not afraid of, I eventually decided against it.*

I have a few theories about Facebook. Not the people who use it, but Facebook itself. I have a sneaking suspicion that there's more to this beast than meets the eye. I have thought for awhile that Facebook has become a sentient being but I wasn't sure what it was that made me suspect such a thing. Not only am I now quite sure that Facebook has its own personality but, you guys, it's kind of a jerk.

My first clue came when they added those little word things that you have to retype to prove your humanity. There are a heap of websites dedicated to people who have read those two 'random' words and gone 'HEY! Hey, that's mean!'. There are the apparent insults, things like 'Smells Bad' and 'Fart Brains', or the strange and disturbing instructions such as 'Beat Wife' or 'Kill Everyone'. Admittedly I made all of those up, but I've seen the type of phrases that have appeared and none of these would surprise me in the slightest.

Another piece of evidence for my 'Facebook is a Jerk' file came when they introduced Friend Suggestions. It seemed like a good idea, finding people you might be interested in knowing based on your mutual friends. I have since suggested that the slogan for this feature should be 'Friend Suggestions: Reminding You Of Every Awful Thing You've Ever Done'. Facebook keeps suggesting that I contact old flames who I hurt kinda badly, family members I really should have contacted sooner, friends I lost because of some stupid reason and so on. Friend Suggestions is that guy at a party who brings everyone down by reminding them of all the things they'd rather forget about, then proceeds to get mind-bendingly drunk and mistake your TV for a urinal. Nobody wants to talk to that guy, but there is apparently no way to get rid of him.

But the real evidence that Facebook is alive and jerking comes when it glitches. Things get a bit mixed up in unpredictable ways. The biggest example of this that I can think of came when I was discussing something on someone else's photo. I was informed by the person I was talking to that they couldn't read my comments and all they could see was that Facebook was saying I'd posted them on January 1st, 1970. I thought this was a bit strange and inconvenient but didn't think any more of it. Until I had a quick look around me. I saw the lava lamp in the bathroom, the big reflective sunglasses on my desk, the flat shoes I was wearing that say 'Love' on one toe and 'Hate' on the other and heard the sounds of Hall & Oates drifting out of my headphones. I remembered that I write under the name Smackie Onassis, for crying out loud.

"Fuck me," I thought, "Facebook's having a go!"


I'm sure there are a thousand more examples out there of Facebook being a prick but if I had any doubt, that alone would be enough to convince me.



-Smackie Onassis





*I have now been informed that I have succeeded in my mission and it is mostly because of this blog. WHAT IS UP "MARY-ANNE"? :D

Things You Can't Get Away With In A Small Town

Anything.

It's hard to pull any kind of antic in a small town if you don't want everyone knowing about it by the morning. Believe me. Even the people you don't know are probably good friends with everyone you have ever met. It soemtimes makes it kind of hard to get away with... well, yeah, anything.

Here are a few things you should especially try to be careful with:

1) Online Dating
Some people still try to use websites like RSVP when they live in places where everybody already knows everybody else. Places like Newcastle. I know, because I tried it once. To be honest, I wasn't really looking for a relationship at the time, I was just kinda curious about the whole thing. As it turned out there were actually quite a few local profiles on there and I even started chatting to one guy. I thought he seemed nice, but then I asked him what he did for a living. It turned out we worked for the same people. In the same location. It could happen to you.

2) Repeating Gossip
Yes, people do this even more than usual in smaller towns. It's unavoidable. The problem is that they really shouldn't, because you never know who can hear you. I remember once I was waiting for a friend of mine at a cafe. There were two girls chatting nearby and even though I wasn't intentionally eavesdropping, I couldn't help but hear what they were saying. Because they were talking about me. They could see me perfectly well - the problem was that they didn't realise it was me they were talking about. They were telling a story about something I had done, not knowing that I was sitting a mere couple of metres away from them. I responded by feeling incredibly awkward and deciding to wait for my friend outside.

3) Cheating
Cheating is a strangely powerful thing in relationships. Some people don't see it as a big deal, but others view it as some kind of dating apocalypse. It is strange to then see the things some people think they can get away with.

The bass player of the band I was in was just One Of Those Guys. When we would go touring he had this thing of saying "Not my state!", "Not my country!" or "Not my postcode!" depending on our current location. The implication was that he thought being in a different postcode meant he could cheat on his girlfriend and not feel bad about it. Someone really should have told him that this doesn't work quite so well if your girlfriend is in your band, something I found out about the most awkward way possible. I had joined only recently and we were on tour. He had drunkenly come on to me before we'd left and I'd told him I thought it was a bad idea. In an attempt to bond with the only other girl in the band, I mentioned this to her over a drink.

"Has he ever hit on you?" I asked.

"Actually, we've been going out for two years," was the reply I received.

Kind of awkward, yeah. Although, admittedly that is not so much a small town thing as a 'Don't cheat on your girlfriend who is in your band with the new girl you have hired to be in your band' thing. I think that's good advice regardless of where you live.

-Smackie Onassis

Street Folk

Every town has its fair share of street crazies. Adelaide has that guy sitting out the front of Hungry Jack's playing a glockenspiel. Sydney has... well, the entire population of Sydney. Newcastle had quite a few of its own special breed of loonies.

The most prominent was probably a man the media dubbed the Serial Pest. In his personal life, he went by the name Shock. He was a skinny man that I would always see darting around the streets with his long, frenzied black hair whipping around his head. He reminded me of Sirius Black straight outta Azkaban. He was always seen with a cat that just hung around on his shoulders. The cat never seemed to mind. It probably liked the attention and the fact that it didn't have to get up. Cats are like that. I did also once see a man walking down the street where I worked with an honest to god parrot on his shoulder, although sadly I never saw him again. I guess he had some swashbuckling to do in another port.

But Shock stuck around in Newcastle for a long time, making headlines where he could. He liked to crash any event that happened there and he wasn't selective about it. Sport, politics, arts, he would be there, making a scene. I don't know what he would actually do, just that the media would always be complaining about him the next day. I remember hearing from an arty-type friend of mine that when he wasn't occupied with being mental, he actually did performance poetry or some such. She said that yes, he was off his balls insane, but it somehow translated reasonably well into the poetic medium. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.

They were often artists, the Newcastle crazies. I guess we had the This Is Not Art festival, which kind of encouraged that sort of thing. I remember when it was just becoming a big deal. I was in high school and home economics required me to make an apron. There were marks for decorating it, but I couldn't really be bothered so I just wrote 'This is not an apron" on it and handed it in. No-one in my class got it, but my teacher thought it was great.

There was one guy that I never quite knew whether to feel sorry for or not. He was a middle-aged asian man who busked in the mall. And when I say he busked, he stood outside the 711 every day shouting the words to popular songs at the top of his lungs. A capella, if you could call it that. He had a hat set up in front of him for people to give him money but I will never know if anyone actually gave him anything. Don't get me wrong, I would have given him a few bucks. I was just a little afraid of going too near him.

My favourite street crazy in Newcastle was a "musician". I say "musician" because he was most well known for playing music, but I'm not sure he actually knew how to play any of his instruments. He sat on the same street every day playing the bongos and occasionally the ukulele. He surrounded himself with his own crayon drawings that he offered for sale. His beard was always dyed two or three different colours, purple usually being one of them. I called him Bongo Man until he introduced himself to me with his real name and I adapted it to Bongo John. Occasionally Johnny Bongos.

He introduced himself to me because I lived near the street where he played and spent most of my time wandering around wearing outlandish outfits.

"You're a bit of a gypsy, aren't you?" he grinned toothlessly at me one day, "I see you walking around here all the time."

He told me his name in between incoherant ramblings and I told him mine.

"I hear you do a mean version of I Shot the Sheriff," I said to him and he broke into it without needing any more encouragement, accompanying himself on the ukulele. He didn't seem to know the chords, or the words for that matter, but it was high quality entertainment. I gave him my change every time I saw him and chatted to him about music. I seem to remember him playing a song with my name in it, but every artist has a song with my name in it and I can't be sure which one he was trying to play. I suspect Hall & Oates or Bob Dylan. He was always asking me to come back to his "art studio", but judging by the fact that he was an old man with a multi-coloured beard singing incoherantly on a street corner, I always passed up the opportunity.

-Smackie Onassis

Feelings are boring, Kissing is awesome

Over the years I've had a fair few "romantic entanglements". When I was at school I always developed crushes very easily, usually on my friends. Unfortunately for me, they usually looked at me as one of the boys rather than as a potential ladyfriend. The people who were interested in me were people like the kid who was mad for buses. Don't get me wrong, he was a good guy, I just wasn't interested. However, that's not to say I didn't date at all.

One of the first guys I went out with was a guy I did theatre with after school. I really liked him, he was a sweetheart. Unfortunately my friends did not. He was a bit of a geek and so they ripped on him mercilessly, constantly pressuring me to break up with him. Eventually they made up this whole big thing about something he had apparently said about me. I knew it wasn't true, but I broke up with him anyway because I was sick of my friends being jerks. "Peer Pressure". The guy actually wrote me a really sweet letter explaining that there'd been a misunderstanding, and that he was sorry for anything he might have done. It really touched me, but I didn't reply and I felt guilty about it for the rest of high school. At that stage I wasn't expecting to see him ever again.

When my friends and I went to schoolies, we didn't do the whole Gold Coast thing. Instead, we went to Byron Bay after the official schoolies time had ended. It was cheaper, and there would be a significantly lower douchebag quotient. We were out dancing when I saw a friend of mine being chatted up by a guy. A guy who looked very familiar.

"Hey," I sidled up to my friend when the guy had gone to buy a drink, "What's the name of that guy you're getting all friendly with?"

She told me and sure enough, it was the guy I'd dated when I was fourteen. I'm not sure how that even happens, considering how far away from home we were, but it was him. It could have been very awkward. Luckily I'm not the type of person who cares about these things and I thought it was hysterically funny. I even got to make my peace with the whole situation, telling him how bad I always felt about breaking up with him. He told me that he'd always felt bad about some of the things he did to me too, things I didn't even think were a big deal. We laughed, forgave each other and I told my friend that he was a good guy and that she could go out with him if she wanted. They ended up dating for about two years, I think.

The guy I had the biggest crush on in school was a guy who basically disappeared after we graduated. People saw him around occasionally, but no-one really knew what he was doing. What I remember about him was that he lived on a working cattle farm and was a die-hard supporter of communism. He was a down-to-earth country boy, but he was also a total weirdo. One of the conversations with him I remember most vividly was about garlic, of all things. I was talking about how I needed a mint because I had eaten something garlicky. He questioned why I would want to get rid of a delicious garlic taste. I told him that while it was delicious, other people might not be so fond of it. Other people would especially not want to kiss me. He informed me that he liked garlic so much that he sometimes picked up whole cloves of garlic while he was walking through the kitchen and ate them raw. I nodded, trying to figure out if he was insinuating that he wouldn't mind kissing me. Whether he was considering it or not, he didn't kiss me.

The problem was that he was so strange I could never tell if he was flirting with me or messing with my head. I remember once hearing him say 'Hey Sarah, want a date?' only to turn around and see he was offering me part of his lunch. To be honest, I love dates so this was just as good, but it was still confusing.

I didn't hook up with my friends a lot in high school, unlike a lot of people. That is, until we all turned 18 and started drinking legally. I thought kissing was the bees knees and so did it most times I was drunk. I rarely went any further with the guys and now realise that I probably must have looked like something of a tease. But guys, I just really like kissing.  

There was one particular kissing story from when I was in year 12 that was repeated back to me by almost everyone I knew the next day. We had all gone out to celebrate our upcoming graduation and gotten quite drunk. Yes, in Newcastle we started celebrating our graduation before we even graduated. It was on a weeknight too and we all still had to go to school the next day. It does kind of seem to defeat the purpose.

I ended up spending most of the night macking on a friend of mine. The problem was, I'm quite short and he was one of the tallest people I've ever met. He was at least a foot taller than me. Probably more. Our friends were pissing themselves. They came up to me afterwards and told me that it was like watching an honestly funny comedy sketch. I haven't seen that guy for years, but I have actually heard that he is now doing stand-up somewhere on the other side of the country. I can't help but wonder if he has ever told that story.

-Smackie Onassis

Canada/More Fun With Namesakes

I love Canada. I seriously do. I have never been there but it is basically my holy land. I would love to go there, traveling around, skiing and seeing all my favourite bands. I have a bunch of family there too, so I could probably get accommodation pretty easily.

I've always felt like I can relate to Canada. As some of you may know I spent a bit of time in my youth kicking back in Toronto, NSW. If you listen to Darren Hanlon as obsessively as I do, you know that NSW has a tendency to steal the names of other, more famous places. I guess it might be to make believe that the location is more exotic than it is. I remember being on the phone to someone in another state and mentioning that I was in Cardiff for the day. This was the Cardiff that was only about twenty minutes drive from my house, but I think it says something about what I'm like that the person I was talking to not only assumed I had spontaneously left the country, but wasn't even that surprised by the idea.

I spent time in Toronto mainly because I went out with a guy who lived there. Oddly enough, when he was a kid he had actually lived in Canada, gone to high school in Sydney and then found himself living in Toronto, NSW. I guess there's something to be said for familiarity. Possibly the most Canadian sounding thing I did there was when was when I found myself drinking with a brass band at ten in the morning at the Toronto RSL, although I was sadly the designated driver. You have no idea of the looks I received when I turned down the free beer, even though it was ten in the morning. 

I remembered another thing that makes me feel like I have ties to Canada after receiving a letter from the optometrist who prescribed me my first pair of glasses. His name was Brian Adams and I always thought that was the funniest thing in the world. I love namesakes. More specifically, I love comparing people to their famous namesakes. Dr Brian Adams may have been my favourite, but there have been others that I've known. 

My best friend in high school was a particularly good example. He was one of the best people I've ever been friends with, just because of the sheer level of absurdity I could get away with in conversation with him. Every single person we knew was convinced we were doing it, but we were honestly just really good friends. One of the most wonderfully random phone calls I have ever received was when he called me out of the blue after we hadn't seen each other in a while, and duly informed me that he was in an airport in Sri Lanka. The thing is, his name was George Martin. I hesitated before including his full name out of fear he might find this by googling himself, but then I remembered that this entry would be nowhere near the top of the google results for that particular search term.

I've often wondered if having the same name as someone so closely connected to the Beatles affected the way he listened to music, because he was very retro. He listened to a lot of vinyl, but it wasn't a hipster thing. It was more to do with the fact that almost all the music he listened to had been released before the invention of the CD. 

There was one particular day when we were out together - we had arranged to meet at a butcher. Solely for the pun value. Which we didn't shut up about for a long time, even though it doesn't work that well in past tense. From the butcher we wandered down to the Beaumont St Beat, a shop that advertised itself as the only independent music retailer in Newcastle. I was always insanely jealous of the people who worked there, who got paid to know more about obscure music than anyone else. It was kinda my dream job.

There was an album that George wanted that wasn't currently in stock. He put in an order form, but gave them my number. I think it was because he was going on holidays and didn't want to miss the call. The thing is, it was a Beatles album. I am so glad that I was the one who answered the call when the CD arrived. I'm fairly sure that if either of my parents had answered a call from a music store saying they had a Beatles album reserved for George Martin, they would have hung up straight away.

-Smackie Onassis

Obscure Relatives Hour

I don't have a lot of contact with my family these days, what with the living multiple plane trips away and all. Newcastle airport is not so much a proper commercial airport as a tin shed where planes go sometimes. Maybe. If they feel like it. There's only one or two gates, plus a Hungry Jack's and a gift shop. There's none of the hassle of getting lost because it's all one big room, really. And yet, there's still more than one bar.

I was thinking about my family the other day. I have an assortment of relatives all over the globe, which is nice for if I'm ever overseas and in a bind for a place to stay. I remember when I was a kid and my dad's cousin was marrying someone from Uruguay, my parents got to go to a traditional South American wedding where everyone got given maraccas. Needless to say, I was extremely jealous.

Often when I was growing up, visiting relatives would stay in my grandparents' house, which was walking distance from the house I grew up in. As a result, some of my most fondly remembered relatives were people I only met once.

The first favourite I can remember picking was a woman who came to stay for a week or so when I was quite young, maybe ten or eleven. Technically speaking she was my great aunt by marriage so although not related to me by blood, she was still family. She was from Switzerland and was the biggest stereotype I have ever met in my life. Her name was either Helga or Hilda and she was large and jolly with a laugh that sounded like yodeling. In fact, her accent made it sound like pretty much everything she said was yodeling. I thought she was the greatest. The beach was about 100 metres from my grandparents' back fence, with a little path that wound it's way down to the sand. You can imagine how exciting this was for a Swiss caricature who wasn't used to being able to step outside with less than three layers on. This was a long time ago and I don't remember many of the details, but I can remember her splashing around in the water in an old-fashioned swimsuit, laughing like it was the craziest thing. I decided then and there that I was going to ditch Australia for a while and go hang out in the alps with Helga. Or Hilda. Obviously I never did or I might be able to remember her name.

The next favourite relative I had is one I do plan on spending some time with as soon as I have the money. Aunty Susie was a woman who was hyped up through my entire childhood. I didn't meet her until I was fourteen because she lived in England, but everyone told me that she and I were peas in a pod. This is the aunt I mentioned that knows Baldrick from Blackadder and spends her spare time digging up ancient Roman skeletons. She also lives in a village called Cheddar. At first I assumed that surely the cheese had come before the town, but then I remembered that it was England. Sure enough, that's where they started making it. I actually witnessed a live, unintentional re-enaction of the Monty Python cheese shop sketch there. It was only a small village, but there was a cheese shop. My dad went in and asked for every kind of cheese he felt like, not realising that a cheese shop in Cheddar only really sells Cheddar. Maybe some runny camembert, if you're lucky.

My aunt took us roaming across the countryside, seeing as many sites as we could fit into our trip. We even spent some time floating around on a houseboat in Norfolk, which I would gladly do for the rest of my life. She was great, and I am overdue for racing around the country with her again.

There were a few other characters I can remember meeting at family reunions, birthdays or funerals. I particular enjoyed my Canadian cousin Gwen, who I bet will give me accommodation when I eventually manage to get my arse to Canada. She made me laugh at my grandfather's funeral and I remember appreciating it a lot. But there was one who was actually Australian that I remember meeting only once. He was my Uncle Mick and I think he lived in Queensland or something. He must have been crazy rich because he collected classic cars. I met him at a big extended family picnic, where he arrived in a red MG convertible. When he asked me if I wanted to come for a ride, I nearly had a spasm. I was even wearing a scarf in my hair. 

He sped me around the streets, telling me I was his lookout for police cars. We passed another MG whose driver waved at us.

"It's like being in a club," he explained with a sly smile, waving back.

I have never felt so 1950s style cool in my life.

-Smackie Onassis

Let's Cyst Again

I have detailed a few of my more interesting ailments here. In some ways I feel like this blog is starting to read like a medical history. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. This is true. But I have had quite a lot of medical dealies that weren't the result of my own paranoia. When I broke my hand, I remember denying for hours that it was broken on the basis that I didn't want to have broken a bone in such a phenomenally stupid manner. As you probably know, I would go on to much bigger and stupider injuries. My medical woes aren't always the result of me being an idiot though. I was thinking about this the other day, and it reminded me that I haven't yet mentioned that time I had a bit of the old plastic surgeries.

Yes, you heard it hear first folks: Smackie Onassis had plastic surgery. When I start off telling this story, even when I preface it by explaining that plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery are not the same thing, everyone has the same reaction:

"Boobs, right? I knew it."

No, I did not have breast augmentation. Look through my school photos if you don't believe me. I was already being catcalled by boys in my class when I was 12 years old, something I found more than a little strange and frightening. I have back problems as it is, I can't imagine anything I would want less than big old fake breasts.

The surgery I had was not cosmetic. There was a cyst growing in an unfortunate spot on my forehead and even though it posed no real threats to my health, it was getting bigger and it was a pain in the arse. Also it was in the middle of my damn forehead and all my friends kept trying to squeeze it. So, I was booked in for minor surgery.

It was just a local anaesthetic. I could understand that - general anaesthetics are much riskier. Unfortunately it meant I was wide awake while a surgeon cut open my head. I'm not going to lie to you, it was pretty awful. The worst thing is, it grew back. I was booked in for a second operation.

About halfway through the second procedure, I felt the surgeon stop what he was doing. It was then that I heard the single last thing you ever want to hear when a medical professional has a scalpel sticking into your head.

"Huh."

Something had surprised him.

"So that's why it grew back," he continued, muttering to himself. And yes, even though this was many years ago I can remember exactly what he said. It's not the kind of thing you forget.

"Hey! Awake down here! What's going on?" I would have spoken up if I could manage to get my vocal chords working. I didn't actually say anything, but I guess the doctor remembered where he was and decided that I would probably want to know what had happened.

"Don't worry," he said, "There was a little nest of them in there. I'll be able to get them all out."

Admittedly he was talking about sebaceous cysts and not horrifying spiders, but that's kinda the image that is conjured up by that particular turn of phrase.

The rest of the surgery went off without a hitch and I got to walk around for a bit with my head bandaged up like an old-school slapstick actor. My only disappointment was that he had been such a good surgeon that my scar was barely visible. You may think that's a good thing, but keep in mind that the tiny excuse for a scar that I do have is at the top right of my forehead, just below my hairline. If he hadn't done such a neat job, I would have the exact same scar as Harry friggin Potter. I can even remember my little sister telling me I should ask him to cut it in the shape of a lightening bolt, but I wasn't game to make jokes during a surgical procedure. 

There is still a scar there, it's just not one you'd see unless it was pointed out. I guess that's kind of ideal, really. Facial scars aren't really viewed as the pillar of feminine attractiveness. Still. Harry Potter.

-Smackie Onassis

The Sporting Life

Most people who know me probably wouldn't expect me to have played a sport regularly at any point in my life. This is partly because I show very little interest in watching any kind of sport and partly because I am the clumsiest person in the known world. I do actually enjoy exercise but have no real interest in any kind of organised team business. I never want any company, preferring to walk or jog or lift weights by myself. I guess you could say I'm not a team player. This wasn't always the case. I actually played a fair amount of sport when I was in high school. For those keeping track, this was when I was working on cementing my position as 'Most Overcommited Teen Ever'*. 

The main sport I played was water polo. I had done a lot of swim training before (we lived down the road from the beach and my parents wisely decided I should be good at swimming) and it made sense for me to play a water sport. I had all the grace and co-ordination of a newborn fawn who is also drunk somehow, but I put up a mean egg-beater kick. 

I was never that good at the game. I played in a mixed gender league and while I discovered certain advantages in the double standard that none of the boys could hurt me when I hurt them (official water polo motto: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how badly you injure the opposition), they were still much bigger and faster than me. And could catch a ball. That probably helped.

On land, my main thing was running. I have always loved running, although I have had a lot of knee trouble from doing too much of it while my bones were still growing. I can remember how surprised everyone was at school when they first saw me sprint. I only had tiny legs, so no-one was expecting me to actually be fast. From the way they described it to me afterwards, I'm assuming it looked like something out of a Warner Bros cartoon.

The problem was that I didn't care much about competitive running, but my teachers did. It was an academic school and the entire PE department had a huge complex about it. They would pump their fists and insist that they didn't teach at a nerd school, that there were heaps of jocks who were all just wagging class that day. I remember one year I hadn't bothered showing up to the school cross-country. I don't remember what excuse I gave, just that I wasn't there. I'm not sure what the system is elsewhere, but at my school the criteria for going to the regional cross-country was that you'd achieved one of the fastest times at the school event. Imagine my surprise when my teacher handed me a permission slip.

"I... you realise I didn't actually compete? I can't have qualified. On the basis that I wasn't present," I stuttered, legitimately confused.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, "We know you can run so we'd like you to go anyway."

I was flattered, but as it turned out I couldn't go anyway due to a music thing that was on the same day. "Priorities". But I was lured back into the world of school sport when the girls' rugby team started recruiting. They desperately needed new members and I guess they figured I was better than nothing. I had one training session before the first (and last) game of my rugby career.

As always, I wasn't taking it seriously at all. I thought it was all a big laugh until I saw the girls I would be playing against. All of them were twice the size of the biggest girl on our team. Then, the game began. I had never before seen a school sports event that turned into that big of a bloodbath. And I know I'm not exaggerating because the boys' team were on the sidelines, gasping in horror.

"Geez, girls play dirty!" I heard them shout as yet another player left the field, too badly injured to continue. I gulped and took my position again. Keep in mind that I was one of the smallest people on either team, so I knew I could be in trouble. Usually the aim of sport is to get the most points, but after the first half of the game or so, my aim was to get out of it without sustaining any permanent damage.

By the end of it, there were more players off with injuries than there were players left on the field. I'm not even kidding. It was like Roman gladiators. The only thing I remember about the last portion of the game is seeing the fear in the other girls' eyes during the scrum. Everyone was terrified.

I made it out alive that time, but I never played for the girls' rugby team again. I still watched their games though. Sensational entertainment.

-Smackie Onassis

*If you don't believe that I deserve this title, this is what I was doing when I was around sixteen: studying for my school certificate, going to weekly after school lessons for singing, piano, saxophone and drama, rehearsing for a local amateur musical, swim training once a week, water polo training twice a week, water polo game once a week and also I was working part time at Video Ezy. I also somehow managed to write a novel that year, although I never had the confidence to show it to anyone.

Catch My Phenomenon

You may have noticed that reading about obscure diseases is a hobby of mine. Maybe it's because I was raised in a medical household, but I find them fascinating.

You remember that kid I knew that was allergic to sunlight? How it had to be explained to the school that he was special because he couldn't go out in the sun without his skin reacting? I always felt sorry for that kid, he was a sweetie and would probably suffer a lot because of his condition. But then I remembered Twilight. With a bit of quick mental arithmetic I worked out that this year that little boy would be around 18 years old. I cannot fathom just how much sex he would be having. 

I did remember recently that I actually have a reasonably obscure medical condition myself. I never thought much of it because I was diagnosed with it so long ago and it wasn't until I saw it mentioned in a Cracked article that I realised it wasn't that common. 

I have a condition called Raynaud's Phenomenon. To be diagnosed with a 'phenomenon' is pretty cool to begin with. What happens is that as a response to extreme temperature changes (especially cold weather for me), my fingers go completely numb and start changing colour. For real. It's a circulation thing, apparently both my mother and grandmother have it as well. I discovered it when I went skiing with my family and found that if I didn't wear two pairs of gloves I sometimes couldn't hold my stocks properly. As you will read on that wikipedia page, the fingers first go white, then blue, then red when you warm them up. If I were American it would be the most patriotic medical condition ever. I would almost definitely be elected president, even without ever mentioning a single policy. They would ask me my stance on universal health care and I would be like 'Well, I could talk about that. Or I could show you my AMERICAN FLAG HANDS AGAIN!' 

But I was glancing over the wikipedia entry when I came across a phrase that I would assume were a hack if I didn't know it was true. Under the 'treatment' section:

"If triggered by exposure in a cold environment, and no warm water is available, place the affected digits in a warm body cavity - armpit, crotch or even in the mouth"

You can see how that would appear to be a crank, but that is actually the best way to fix it when you're out in the snow. Although the crotch is not usually the area I go for. But this didn't stop me from realising that hypothetically, if I presented to a reasonably cool doctor with this condition, I could get a prescription for fisting. I would frame that.

And I'm not a lesbian. But this knowledge has made me wish just ever so slightly that I was, on the basis that I would have the best pick-up line ever.

"Hey cutie, I don't know if you can help me out, but I have a legitimate medical need to place my fingers in a warm body cavity. I even have a prescription. Care to help me... fill it?"

Realistically, I would never have the guts to say that to anybody I hadn't known for a long time. But it's nice to have it in the arsenal*.

-Smackie Onassis

*No pun intended, you filth merchants.