Harry's got a new girlfriend already, her name is Monty. We spent last Sunday constructing this wacky little fence so Harry couldn't escape, then came home Monday afternoon to find it completely destroyed. Monty had caught the good word that there was a new hot hound in the hood, and she'd been jumping over the fence all day to visit. Harry was all puffed and starry-eyed. I'm glad we got him desexed.

Friday afternoon I took Harry for a walk. We were just setting off when Mr and Mrs Smug Bastard emerged from their house with their perfect jogging outfits and their perfect dogs. They strolled with style up their perfect cobbled driveway, past the perfectly manicured garden with the perfect flowers sitting up straight and polite like kindergarten kids. I started to walk the other way when Mr Smug called out to me in the smuggest of tones.

"Hello, do you live in that house?"

Of course I bloody live in that house. How could they forget me smashing my car into their friend's car? It was less than a week before. "Yes I do live in that house."

He fixed his smug, patronising stare on me. "Did you know that black dog over there keeps coming over to see your dog?"

"Yes I know about that." Not only had Monty called in, the Smug Bastards dogs had been over too. Harry is a charismatic canine and very hard to resist.

"But do you realise she's been jumping over the fence? Running around in your yard?"

It didn't even occur to ask him how he knew about that, as he couldn't possibly see unless he'd right walked over to investigate. Or maybe he just sat around with a gigantic zoom lens, observing us a la Rear Window. Instead I just said, "Yes I know about that, and it's fine."

"But do you realise..." he asked with a dramatic pause, his lips curled with distaste, "Do you understand... that they have been getting... rather animated? If you know what I mean?"

There was many things I could have said to that nosy, smug, arrogant twat of a man:

"Animated, eh? I'm afraid I don't know what you mean?"

"Animated, eh? Well YOUR skanky hounds were over here last night and they seemed just as keen on Harry's hot ass."

"Animated, eh? Looks like he takes after his owner. Wink wink!"

"Animated, eh? You mean they were SHAGGING? You mean they were GETTIN' IT ONNNNN? You mean he was SINKING THE SAUSAGE LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW? Am I offending your religious sensibilities?"

"Animated, eh? Did they do it doggy style so they could both watch X-Files?"

But instead I could only mumble feebly, "Oh really? Cool!" before fleeing round the corner with my little tart of a dog.

Back when I was moonlighting as a public servant last year, Miss E and I both worked with Sargeant Sue, the one who's lunch I chucked out and accused me of being a lesbian. The topic du jour was Childbirth, not a subject Miss E or I introduced, but once Sue got rambling there was no stopping her.

"It's all downhill after the first one," she told us sagely. "Your arse doubles in size, your skin goes to pot and the boobs start moving south!"

Miss E and I shared pained glances.

"BREASTFEEDING!" she crowed, "Now that's nasty business. Babies may look sweet and innocent, but once they latch onto your nipple, they cling on for dear life! Sucking away like a leech! The little buggers!"

We pleaded with her that we had heard enough, Miss E slid under her desk, I shoved my earphones further into my ears, but Sue would not be silenced.

"But I wisened up in time for the second baby. I was prepared. I TOUGHENED UP MY TITS!". Her voice pinged off the cubicle walls so the whole floor could hear.

"It's very simple," she explained. "Every night before bed, I'd get in front of the bathroom mirror, get out the toothbrush, and give me nipples a good scrub!"

She got out of her chair to demonstrate, pen in hand. Clothing on, thank lord. "Scrub the left! Scrub the right!" she cackled, her hands moving in circular motions like Mr Miyagi in the Karate Kid "Right circle! Left circle! Wax on! Wax off!"

"Worked like a charm," she concluded. "So with the second kid, I didn't feel a thing!"

Brushing my teeth was very traumatic for weeks after that one.

Trivia gets me hot and bothered. I love Sale of the Century and Jeopardy! I have a nice collection of beer glasses won at Pub Trivia at the Oxford Tavern from the uni days. And nothing drives me wilder than a guy whispering in my ear, "Let's go back to my place for some Trivial Pursuit". I'm no intellectual heavyweight, I can't discuss politics and I haven't read Important Books, but I do know a shitload of Useless Information. When my new boss asked if I wanted to go to a Trivia Night for her child's pre-school on Saturday, I jumped at the chance.

The venue was suitably dodgy, the Belconnen Soccer Club dazzled us with brown decor and mirrors and violently-patterned carpet. There were chicken wings and mini-spring rolls and ham/cheese/tomato sandwiches and a bar. It was going to be a fun night.

Our team consisted of my boss, my sister and I, a South African couple and mid-30s geeky type. The boss abandoned us after Round One, apparently her project management skills were required at the Scoreboard. There's little difference between managing a whiteboard of quiz scores and running the Virtual Tallyroom for the upcoming Federal Election, I tells ya.

We were performing pretty dismally in the early rounds. But there was alcohol so who cared? It was an interesting format, you could actually buy answers. $2 for 5 random answers plucked from a box. Inevitably you'd get 4 of the same answers or a really obvious one, but we noticed people around us starting to take the whole event very seriously, and they were buying up a storm. The team in front of us were winning, so they were particularly serious. They all sported the same Matter of Life and Death killer frowns, the kiddies, the mum and dad, the pregant teen, the uncle and aunt, and then the grandmother, Lord of the Team, resplendent in purple polyester and fake pearls. She perched on her chair, head darting back and forth like a magpie, double dipping into the Answer Box. She obviously was Up There with the pre-school staff, if she drew out an answer she already knew, she's put it back in and draw out another.

My sister and I were mortified. We launched into a bitchy routine of stage whispers:

"HEY! Why don't we put them back in the box and draw NEW ANSWERS until we get ALL OF THEM!"

"YES! Just like those CHEATING BASTARDS in front of us!"

"HOW DO THEY SLEEP AT NIGHT?"

When the quizmaster read out the answers, the old duck would twirl her pearls, nod smugly and wink at her teammates. "Yep, yep, that's right, I knew the answer was Rage Against The Machine. I am not a filthy cheat, I am just a particularly knowlegable old fart."

We started making a comeback around Round Six. If you scratch away at the brain long enough, the trivial crap spews forth. Caspian Sea largest inland body of water in the world. Patrick White won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. And a four-point question, name all the members of The Corrs (Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and Jim. I wish I didn't know that).

Everyone knows there's proper procedure for answering questions at a Quiz Night. If you know who the won the Best Country Artist ARIA in 1998 or what the currency of Bolivia is called, you have to wriggle discreetly in your chair, or make fervent "Mmm mmm mmm!" noises, while waving your hands around. Then you silently write down the answer and shove it to the middle of the table, and raise an eyebrow for approval. If you're right, the rest of the table nods knowingly, gives the thumbs up, or goes, "Ahhhh!" or "Oh, I knew that, but you just said it first".

Then you sit around looking smug until the next question is asked. So you do NOT bellow at the top of your lungs in your thick South African accent, "OH I KNOW THE INSA NOW! ET'S THET CRICKET FELLOW! ET'S DON BREDMAN!". Rhiannon spent half the night hissing "Shut up! Shut up!" and pelting chicken bones at them.

By the last couple of rounds we were in with a chance. I was hot for the $60 Avon Basket and the Microsoft Encarta prize pack. It was time to get serious.

The question was, "Who was the Governor of New South Wales arrested in the Rum Rebellion". I was Pencil Nazi by then, and I scrawled down "William Bligh" without even consulting my teammates, most of whom were smashed by that time.

Geek Man seized the answer sheet from me. "Bligh? Bligh? Oh come on! It's not Bligh!"

"It's Bligh! Keep your voice down!"

"Bligh was the Mutiny on the Bounty guy!"

"Yeah but he was the Rum Rebellion guy too, I tell you!"

"Oh, so he was in two places at once?"

"One happened before the other, you fuckwit!"

"You're wrong!"

This is when I leapt from my chair and tackled Geek Man to the table. I pinned him down and repeatedly slapped him across the face. "Listen to me buddy, get a hold of yourself! I wasn't in the champion Western Region History Quiz Team for nothing. I know my crappy colonial history, and I am telling you it's BLIGH. Got it?".

Then I wedged a spring roll up his nose, sat down and wrote BLIGH in big bossy letters on the answer sheet.

Or

I meekly surrendered the sheet, muttering "Fine! Fine! You're the boss!" while he wrote down 'Macquarie'. Then lorded it over him for the remaining rounds when it turned out I was right.

Depsite our Bligh blunder, we romped home in 3rd place, tied with none other than the Cheating Bastards. Our booty included a dodgy bottle of white, a French cookbook, and a voucher for a men's haircut. My sister got a voucher for a massage (the sporting kind, not the Dodgy Adult Shop In Fyshwick kind of massage) and I got a $20 petrol voucher from Lyneham Mobil. Woohoo!

Back in the day, when we had a hankerin' for a Red Rooster dinner, we would say, "Let's go root the Red fella".

"I have to tell you something very important," the mother began. "I just finished this book that Oprah recommended!"

"Pfft."

"Shut up! And it was all about controlling parents and how they have such high expectations of their children! How this is so very traumatic for the child! So I had to call you and say I am very sorry for any pressure I put on you over the years!"

"Pressure? You? Never!"

"I just want you to know I don't have those harmful expectations of you anymore, all I want is for you to be happy and for you to be doing what you want to do, whatever you're passionate about. So I don't mind about the failed journalist thing, and if you don't do the computers for the rest of your life I don't mind about that either! So there's no expectations from me anymore!"

"Cool. I don't have any expectations of me either."

"But you can always talk to me about anything, you know? No pressure! No expectations! I am serious! Can you hold on a minute?"

The phone is dropped and I hear her toddling out of the room. There's a loud noise and giggle before she returns.

"What was that?"

"I had to fart."

After 37 minutes of muzak...

"Welcome to to Telstra's Customer Service Line!"

"Hooray!"

"We are now trialling our new service where you can make your choices simply by saying the keywords! There's no need to press buttons on your keypad! Thanks to our new voice technology, you can now simply SAY what you want to do!"

"Wot?"

"Now! Please tell me what you'd like! Accounts and Payments! Connections and Disconnections! Special Offers! Faults!"

"Oh man. What is this shit?"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"I've already heard the bloody menu!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"Arrrgh!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! Please select again from the following menu!"

"CONNECTIONS!"

"You have selected Connections and Disconnections!"

"HURRAH!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! If you need help please say HELP!"

"I don't need help! I just want to disconnect my phone!"

"Would you like me to repeat the menu!"

"Your voice is far too perky for my liking!"

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you! If you need help please say HELP!"

"Kill me!"

We're moving. Just took Harry for a walk to see his new digs. He was running around peeing all over everything when I noticed the neighbours in the very posh house across the street watching us from the window. I could have smiled and waved and established a nice friendship, but instead I pretended not to see them and peered into windows and looked over my shoulder nervously as if I was casing the joint. Then I walked away very quickly. Maybe they've phoned the cops by now. I really need to find some proper hobbies.

Many happy returns and birthday huggles to the one and only Miss Fran for Friday. And also turning 29 today and not all worried about heading for thirty, is Tony!

So we're up the back of the high school on the school farm, on our knees with assorted chickens and a black sheep giving us withering looks from across the fence. It was Year 9 history class and the topic was World War One. Our assignment was to recreate a trench in a patch of dirt. We had big sticks for diggin', a bucket of water, a Bic lighter, silver tinsel, a box of Kellogg's Mini-Wheats, and an army of Lego men.

We were in groups of four, and each group huddled round tight, whispering and digging furtively. Shooting dirty looks at the other groups, hissing things like, "They've got tomato sauce for blood! Why didn't we think of that?"

Soon two nice deep trenches formed with a nice empty stretch of No Man's Land between them. We rolled some tinsel in the dirt and plonked it down. That was our barbed wire. We threw a few Lego men on top, the poor buggers got caught in the crossfire.

On to the trenches. Paddlepop stick parapet. Mini-Wheat sandbags along the top. More Lego men. Then the finishing touch: dumping the bucket of water over the whole thing.

Our teacher swooped over and huffed and puffed disapprovingly."Why did you just flood your trench?"

"It's the Somme. It rained a lot."

"And why are there crushed up Mini-Wheats floating in it?"

"That's the lice."

"And why is that Lego man on fire?"

"That's our interpretation of mustard gas."

We had little regard for historical accuracy, rather crowed a lot about our ingenuity and cleverness. But every now and then we'd grow serious and remember that there really was this huge, horrible war that changed the world so greatly.

Now I can't help thinking about this war now, I keep thinking and worrying. And I wonder if there'll ever be a time some day it will be over, when my great-grand-kids will be studying it at school. Reduced over the years to a neat little chapter in a textbook that said it started in 2001 and ended in blah blah blah and this many people died and there'll be maps and diagrams and it will all look so simple and resolved. So long ago and foreign to them. Maybe they'll be doing recreations in the dirt.

"So what's all this sand?"

"That's Afghanistan."

"And who's that Lego man under the rock with the steel wool round his face?"

"That's Osama Bin Laden."

"Why's there Mini-Wheats tied up in string all over the place?"

"They just dropped some food parcels."

The Phoney Spring continues here in Canberra. Mid-September you get this brief tease of sunshine, some blossoms, a bit of pollen up your nose, just enough to tantalise and make you rip off flanny sheets and put away winter woolies and realise how horribly pale you are. Then it all disappears in a burst of storm and chilly days. Mother Nature is such a nasty bitch, she waits and watches then makes it go cold precisely on the day you' decided to wear summery shoes and short sleeves for the first time, everyone else at work is all rugged up and random strangers announce that they can see your nipples.

And it rains a lot in the Phoney Spring. Not nice warm spring rain but mean, icy rain that turns our yard into a mud bath. I take Harry out for a walk and his fur is filthy and clumped together like an old fluffy dressing gown. It sounds like rain outside but it's hard to tell if it's an actual shower or if it's stopped and the trees are wringing themselves dry. They always seem to wait until you're right under them to squeeze out a big, messy glob on top of your head. It's that Mother Nature again, you see, she really has it in for me.

I'm very messy. It was such a short journey, from the takeaway container to my plate, some leftover fried rice and honey beef. But I lost control of the spoon and half a dozen glossy chunks of meat went flying through the air and despite diving to catch them, they landed into a laundry basket full of my sisters clothes, still warm from the dryer. Sauce flecked over her socks and bits of beef rolled into undies. MSG is a real bitch to get out.

America Strikes Back! With taglines like these, it's no wonder some people still think this is all just some bad movie.

We were so close to the bit where Mr D jumps into the lake when the VCR decided to eat the tape. There was something seriously scary going on inside that machine, the tape had actually melted and warped. We had to resort to talking instead! I felt so empty and unfulfilled.

...Mr Darcy rose from the lake dripping wet and said unto me, "Shauny baby, let's shaaaaaag."

Our soon-to-be-roomie Miss Emily said we "look like shite", thus were in need of "a little Darcy". So I'm going out for 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice tonight. Don't wait up. Mrowr.

One day long long ago, in the mid-80s, someone caught on to the brilliant idea of putting jelly and fruit into a can together and calling the resulting taste sensation Jelly Fruit. There was Peaches in Orange Jelly and Pears in Passionfruit Jelly. There was lurid packaging with hot pink graphics that wouldn't be out of place on a Culture Club or Duran Duran album. And there were about 37 cans of it in our pantry.

After a delightful meal of Eternal Chops, we'd ask hopefully, "What's for dessert, Mum?" and for a long time the answer would always be Jelly Fruit. When you opened up the can it would come slithering out with a revolting schloooooooooop. It didn't even wobble like normal jelly, just stood there unblinking with the peaches smooshed up against the sides, pleading to be set free. You had to cut it with a knife, it was thick and uncompromising like a can of dog food. I'd whisper to my sister in a poor scottish accent, "Sooooo chumpy you can carrrrve it" and Mum would wave the knife at me and glare.

My mother and grandmother shopped like the world was about to end. We were apparently about to be living in some post-apocalyptic hell and have no food, no clothing, nothing at all, so we had to hurry and stock up. They also loved a good bargain. At 59 cents a can they couldn't resist buying the Jelly Fruit in bulk. Even though it was only available in a supermarket about an hour and a half away.

It wasn't that unusual to go long distance shopping. My home town was small and publically everyone subscribed to the "shop locally and help our town's dismal economy" way of thinking, but made secret expeditions to Bathurst or Orange to take advantage of the Big Town Bargains. I particularly remember the January post-Christmas trips to Orange. We'd stop by and pick up our grandmother in our ancient yellow Mitsubishi Lancer. It had no air conditioning and black vinyl seats that fired up something fierce in the summer. My sister and I would be moaning and complaining in the back seat for the entire journey as the upholstery barbequed our thighs.

The day was planned with great precision. It began at Big W where they'd pick up a dozen boxes of Christmas cookies and bags of tinsel and plastic reindeer and angels.

"Why do we need another star for on top of the christmas tree? We only have one tree", whined my sister and I.

"Shut up! It's On Special!"

It didn't matter if we already had it at home or simply didn't need it, if it was On Special we got it regardless.

"Muuuum. He already has a pair of tennis shoes. He only has two feet. Why does he need anotherrrrrrrrrr pair?"

"Shut up! On Special!"

"Muuuum. I don't like pink. I don't want pink swimmers. You said before redheads shouldn't wear pink!"

"I did not! On Special!"

My grandmother was just as bad:

"Oooh purple mohair wool only 39 cents a ball!"

"But Nanny, you said you can't knit anymore because of your arthritis!"

"On Special!"

And on and on it went. Again at K-Mart. Again at Lincraft. Again at the second hand bookshop that smelled like death and tobacco. By this time my sister and I had managed to stretch about 47 syllables into the word "Mum" and were begging for lunch, for a drink, for a bullet.

"Muuuuuuuum. Are we going home now?"

"No we are not going home now!"

"Why not?"

"Because we're going to Franklins! Your grandmother wants to get some more Jelly Fruit"

"But I HATE Franklins!"

"How can you hate a supermarket?"

"Because it's stinky and cheap and the aisles are too cramped and it doesn't look pretty like Woolies."

"But it's cheaper!"

"How is it cheaper if we have to drive an hour to Orange to get it?"

"You shut up back there! I don't want to hear any more of your logic!"

"Can we wait in the car?"

That is when she yanked the rear-view mirror around to maximise the impact of her frosty glare. She lowered her huge, horrible plasticky sunglasses that looked like fly eyes (bought on special at K-Mart in about 1982) and fixed her black, black eyes on me. "You're coming in with me and that's all there is to it!"

The grocery shopping was the most humiliating part of the trip. My sister and I stomping behind Mum, scuffing our shoes and muttering as she crowed, "Oooh 2 litre Dynamo is only $3 here! Can you believe that? It was $4.50 back home. Shauna, put three bottles in the trolley!"

Franklins tried to spoil their fun by putting a limit on how many items you could buy per sale item.

"Ooooh Cream Wafer Biscuits on special! Only 89 cents a pack!"

"But Muuum, it says Limit 6! Limit 6! That means you are limited to six!"

"Limits! I'll get around those limits!"

Getting around those limits meant giving us kids some cash and an armload of biscuits and send us through seperate checkouts. Then we'd all meet outside with our collective purchases, Rhiannon and I glowering as my mother and grandmother did some sort of triumphant victory dance around the trolley.

All these years later and Mum claims to have reformed, but last trip home I shared my bed with six boxes of cornflakes and a 3-foot Santa statue. And at last count my grandmother has about 12 packets of chocolate biscuits and 20 gallons of softdrink in her pantry. She's diabetic, and I'm sad to say my dear grandfather can pretty much only eat mush these days, so I don't know who she's buying it for. Some days I wonder what deep psychological issues they both must have with their compulsive need to surround themselves with so much junk. What pain are they trying to mask by shacking up in a fortress of Earl Grey Tea ($1.99 for 200 bags, on special), ceramic chickens, and Tim Tams? Or maybe they just really do love a bargain.

I first became acquainted with death around the age of six during the big nasty mouse plague of 1984. My little school was sandwiched between a wheat crop and a pig farm, so the playground was inevitably shared by a few furry friends. My mum worked in town at the time so had to drop us off pretty early. If we didn't hide in the trees or atop the monkeybars, the teacher would hunt us out and make us do jobs. Like weeding gardens, sweeping footpaths, or emptying the mouse traps.

I wasn't scared of a dead mouse, in fact I felt a little sorry for them. Instead I was terrified of getting my fingers snapped in the trap when I released the deceased. I'd run over to the edge of the playground, stand on tip-toe to avoid the barbed wire on top of the fence, gingerly holding the trap out into the wheat paddock.

"I'm sorry mousie, but this is where I have to leave you!"

"Ah, don't worry about it," the dead mouse would look back at me, its stiff little claws lifted into a shrug. "C'est la vie."

Then I'd shake him free and run squealing back to the classroom, "Urrrrrrghhhhhhh!"

My stellar experience with the mice led to me being put in charge of disposing of the school goldfish when it died. We staked out a nice spot in the playground and spent a few lunchtimes designing his resting place, digging the grave with a teaspoon, finding pebbles for a pretty border around it, constructing a cross out of two twigs and string. By the time we finally mummified him in toilet paper and laid him to rest, he was looking a little crusty. But we wrote him a nice poem and I'm sure he appreciated the trouble we went to.

I learned that death could be brutal, but fascinating in its brutality. It was a brown snake, four or five feet long, probably smaller than it seemed to my little eyes at the time, and it was swishing its way along the hopscotch lines on the playground.

"Snaaaaaaaaaake!" somebody screamed, "Snaaaaaaaaake!"

Big whoop, I thought, but dutifully trotted into the classroom where we were told to wait while the teacher Dealt With It. Noone cared about conservation then, and the Crocodile Hunter hadn't been invented yet, so all snakes were disposed of with a swift chop of the shovel.

All 27 of us students in the school were plastered to the windows, oohing and ahhing as the snaked swerved wildly. The teacher brought the shovel down. WHOOSH! Chopped in half. CHOP CHOP! And in half again! Soon there were half a dozen browny bits twitching along the concrete. From the head with the tongue still out right down to the tip of the tail, the diced snake jerked and shimmied like an over-zealous cheerleader. It seemed a full five minutes before the nerves were reduced to a slow shuffle. It was truly enthralling. The teacher scraped up the bits into a dust pan and dumped it over the fence into the wheat paddock to be with the mice.

Later on, I learned that sometimes people wish death onto other people. I witnessed pure evil in action. We had been left unsupervised watching Behind The News, a current affairs show made specifically for school kids. Every child in Australia knows about BTN and the horrid worksheets that followed. Nobody liked BTN. Or if you secretly looked forward to it in a nerdy little way you kept quiet about it, or else get clobbered at recess. It was impossible to concentrate on the stories, but you knew you had to because there'd be questions after it.

The host of the show at the time, Richard Morecroft, looked so smug and sadistic that I wanted to cry. But Melissa truly HATED Richard Morecroft. She took the opportunity of a teacherless room to let him have it. She stood on top of her orange plastic chair and hurled her pens and pencils at the screen. "I hate BTN!" she screamed, pegging a big yellow marker his nose. "And I hate you Richard Morecroft! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU AND I WANT YOU TO DIE!"

Gasp!

The next Tuesday when the dinky BTN theme started and the credits rolled and there was no Richard Morecroft. He was GONE! Just like that! I was briefly horrified, thinking that she had really somehow killed the man. But we all cheered and crowded, no more BTN, hurrah!

Unfortunately he was replaced, by some guy with a moustache who's name escapes me and who was a hundred more times annoying. And awhile later Richard Morecroft appeared as the new anchor on ABC News.

I guess that's when I learned about reincarnation.