Everyone always says, ‘you should look after yourself’. I have always wondered what they mean. Do I have food in my teeth? Am I looking a bit rough? Is my tag sticking out? Does my breath smell? Did I even ask you?
Shoplifting shouldn’t kill you. In 2024 Coles supermarkets recorded an annual profit of $1.1billion. This was during our cost-of-living crisis. Coles and Woolworths chains control about two-thirds of the market. It’s why they have been accused of price gouging and colluding to drive up profits. Corporate theft. But hey, it’s okay. They’re corporations.
Ok, I did it. I played pickleball. Originally I’d thought it just a game for seniors. And because of its low impact nature, originally it was. It was clearly invented by them.
What does starvation feel like? What does it feel like to bury a baby your body couldn’t feed? What does it feel like to hear your children cry because their bellies are swollen with hunger?
Capitalism is watching. The system that many believe is the pathway to freedom is quickly becoming the fast-track to servitude. Choice isn’t a choice if it’s been chosen for you. Based on your previous choices. It’s the choice illusio
I have been trying to keep this column non-political. But today I can only write one thing. I can only write about how I woke up today. Because in over 22 years of writing the Soapbox I have a contract with my readers. I always write from my authenticity. I tell you the truth. I write what is front of mind. And today when I sit at the desk, I’m in tears. Tears of gratitude for the beautiful people who have turned up, who have carried me through, and tears of sorrow for this terrible feeling that I have let my community down. That I gave people hope for something I now couldn’t deliver.
Why do some people struggle with Welcome to Country?
It’s a cultural ritual performed to honour the land where an event or gathering is being held. It recognises that you are meeting on the land of First Nations peoples. Last I checked, even if you are born here. Or your dad was born here, and his dad. And his dad’s dad. Well, at some point if you are not Indigenous then your family arrived, and while you’re a few generations here, you’re not a first people. But that’s okay because you are welcomed.
I never meant to become a comedian. It was an accident. Just something I could do. To be honest I never meant to become a mother either and I had five kids. It seems my destiny in life is to take the unintended path.
For years I have done a joke about my husband snoring. The truth is – my husband doesn’t really snore. He makes that weird breathing sound that’s a bit like a tiny leak in an air mattress. It’s annoying, but still kind of cute. The snorer was an ex. He snored like a chainsaw. I didn’t sleep but I got a joke that I have used for over 20 years. I told all the partners who came after that, if they loved me they had to accept that everyone would come to believe they had sleep apnoea.
Why do we sing ‘Happy Birthday’? It’s an awful little song. It’s weird and depressing. It’s age inappropriate for anyone over ten years old. It feels daggy and inauthentic. Sad. Lost. It makes me feel funny inside. But if it’s someone’s birthday it’s my go to, because it’s all we have.
There is one super easy way to be happier, more fulfilled, connect with community, and to get off socials – volunteer. Volunteering is this incredible two-way street. You give back to your community, and in return you feel good about yourself. It’s better than 100 likes on a Facebook post! Actual real likes from people with actual faces!
When you’re the PM, or you’re at the very least polishing your bald nog, wearing a suit and lining up for the top job, here’s a tip gleaned from recent history. Don’t go to Hawaii in a bushfire. And definitely don’t go to a party in a cyclone. Especially a swanky Vaucluse fundraising party for the Liberal Party when your electorate (the people WHO ELECTED YOU, i.e. technically your employers) are facing the prospect of losing everything.
We need to value and learn from the stories of older women. This week sees International Women’s Day and Seniors’ Week intersect. I reflected on the themes for both, with Seniors’ being ‘Time to Shine’ and IWD being ‘Accelerate Action – to collectively forge a more inclusive world for women’.
I sometimes wonder how to make life simpler. I look at the devices, meant to make our lives more convenient, but realise what a slave I’ve become to them. They’re great for efficiency but they are also time wasters. I spend a lot of time looking for my phone.
Your brain is a miracle. Put a helmet on. Lately I’ve been noticing a marked increase in the number of people not wearing helmets. Especially on e-bikes. If you’ve spent that much on your bike, couldn’t you fork out a few bucks for your head? Let’s face it. Your head is the most precious technology you own.
Last Saturday I almost missed my flight. I had booked an early Gold Coast to Melbourne to see my kids for the weekend, for my daughter’s birthday. I had booked a 6am from GC. So we know here in NSW that it’s 7am our time. So I had to leave at 5am NSW to be there at 5am Qld. Approximately. It gives me about 15 minutes to find a park and get a coffee.
The other day my friend said, ‘I don’t think I am going surfing today, the beach is a bit sharkey’. It’s something only people who live here, who know the water, say. I don’t think ‘sharkey’ is an official adjective that one can use to describe a body of water which contains said sharks. I don’t even know if it’s spelt with an ‘e’. But when someone who surfs everyday says the water is a bit sharkey – I don’t go in.
I am driving on the highway and there’s a giant ute up my butt. It’s making me nervous. I can feel the ‘get out of my way’ energy. I’m a menopausal woman. I don’t respond to coercion.
Smoking is gross. It stinks. It’s full of poison. It’s anti-social. It gives you cancer. It’s stupid expensive. It makes you look ten years older. But I loved it.
This will be my third sober new year. People ask: is this forever? Will you ever drink again? No, I won’t. I actually like not drinking. It’s cheaper. I can’t believe I paid so much to feel so shit. I feel completely fine. I enjoy social occasions. I can relax after work. I can talk to people I don’t know.
Holy shit, just when you thought things were bad, they just got worse. We have a climate crisis. A cost-of-living crisis. And now we are in the worst crisis of all – they’ve run out of HRT patches. There’s a worldwide shortage. Hot, angry, sad, anxious women are not happy. They’re hanging out. There’s no oestrogen this holiday season. Be afraid. Be very very afraid.
It’s nine days to Xmas. I don’t know why, but that makes me feel immediately anxious. It’s exactly the same feeling as having an assignment due but you haven’t even started yet. I only put the Xmas tree up yesterday. I think you’re supposed to get that sorted by the first of December. You don’t have to have a tree, but I’m so conditioned I can’t not erect some sort of tacky tinsel and flashing lights installation.
What’s the obsession with ‘reviews’? It used to be something that you got after a performance in a stage show, now the guy at Optus wants one. And Sportsgirl. Even the place where I bought socks the other day. I was barely out of the store and it said, ‘thanks for shopping with us, can you rate your experience?’
Clutter makes me angry. When I open a cupboard and things fall out I feel emotionally precarious. I am in a constant battle with stuff. In fact, I feel like the older I get, the more stuff I have. The more stuff I have, the more time I have to spend cleaning, arranging and sorting stuff. Most of the stuff I don’t use, but it’s nice stuff. Or it’s stuff I’m emotionally attached to. Or it’s stuff my kids have left at my house because they don’t feel like sorting through it. I work so hard that by the end of the week I’m literally stuffed. Which is ironic because tidying my stuff when I’m stuffed is crucial to maintaining my mental health.
Global efforts to tackle climate change are wildly off track. The UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) finds that the current pledges under the Paris Agreement put the world on track for a 2.2 to 2.9 degree Celsius temperature rise above preindustrial levels this century. That’s way above the 1.5 degrees we need to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. And right now, warming gases are accumulating faster than at any previous time in human existence.
We need to talk about child sexual abuse. And most importantly we need to listen. And then we need to act. There’s a kind of social paralysis that exists around this subject. It’s uncomfortable. It’s upsetting. It’s triggering. But the silence – from the system through to the family, continues to hurt people long after the assault has finished.
I’ve never liked walls. The idea of creating a structure that keeps people separate. A divide that includes some by excluding others. Walls have been a primitive and historic way humans mark their territory. Everything inside the wall is mine. And outside the wall is all that will be mine once I put a wall around it.
It’s dark, you’re on a country road. A fragment of what was once, dense bushland. Suddenly you notice something in front of your car. It comes out of nowhere. Maybe you were going faster than you should have. Maybe you weren’t. You swerve and brake.
Why are conservative men so obsessed with women’s choices? Why do men like Trump in the US, and Robbie Katter here in Oz want to rule our wombs? Abortion is a health issue. It is not a soft place for the patriarchy’s hard hand. My uterus is not an electorate.
Apparently menopause lasts one day. You could have fooled me. I thought it was the chapter title for this weird bloaty, flushy, foggy, angry, teary decade of my life. But apparently menopause only describes the day, 12 months after your last period when you are no longer peri-menopausal. Which by the way, no doctor I saw ever mentioned was a thing. And perimenopause can go for a decade. And postmenopausal goes for the rest of your life.
Yesterday I watched my daughter and her friend play the Byron/Ballina version of Monopoly. It was mildly ironic and a little sad. A game of property where kids like these, without intergenerational wealth, won’t own property. Monopoly is a horrible game. Mainly because it never feels like a game. It feels like a reenactment of everything that’s wrong with our relationship with property. According to a google, Monopoly started with the name, The Landlord’s Game and was invented by a woman who only got $500 for the patent. Classic patriarchal capitalism in action! And nice work grooming kids into sociopaths so they can be ruthless property developers of the future. Yuck.
People matter. In a world where we become more and more disconnected from each other, where we shout hatred at strangers from the safety of our cars, where we congregate on Facebook groups to farm outrage, where we can refuse to see our own responsibility in alleviating the pain, hardships, and suffering of others, we become deeply disconnected.
Have you ever been told something about yourself that is absolutely breathtakingly true but something you had NEVER realised? At 56, I just discovered I suck at exits. A very perceptive young friend told me as I left a small gathering. They said, ‘You don’t do goodbyes do you?’ I was confused but then I reflected on how I’d just got up from the table and bolted.
What happens when you take hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue out of our local economy? We’re about to find out. The Falls Festival is no more. Splendour has finished. And this year Festival Director Peter Noble told us this would be the last Bluesfest. It seems unfathomable that our iconic signature event will be no more.
Right now Australian households are in a cost-of-living crisis. Basically it means that the cost of everyday essentials is rising much faster than the average household income. According to Expatisan, a collaborative cost-of-living database, Australia is the ninth most expensive country to live in out of 66.
I was sitting having breakfast in a quiet Bellingen cafe when a woman comes towards me with a newspaper she’s selling for $5. She tells me it’s about all the things that are happening that the government keeps from us. I know what it will say, but I pay $5 and have a look anyway. And a chat.
Not counting trans and intersex people, as they specifically identify, in the Census is a form of bureaucratic erasure. For an exercise that is chiefly about creating a data-driven snapshot of who we are and how we are changing, not including the full spectrum of the LBGTQI+ community is both insulting AND unscientific. So that makes the decision to knowingly not include specific groups of people as political – quite frankly it feels like an act of erasure.
Congratulations to John Nardi, who will be receiving the Australian Fire Service Medal (AFSM), in recognition of his decades of dedicated service to the Rural Fire Service.
The landmark event showcasing the best of female rugby league – from grassroots juniors to elite players – will take place on 21 June at the Piggabeen Sports Complex in Tweed Heads.
If you didn’t get your flood pantry ready in time or you are just struggling to put food on the table (if you happen to have one) knowing how to make a simple nutritious meal out of basic ingredients – possibly without a heat source – is essential.
