AN UNEDUCATED VIEW OF SEX, FOOD AND POLITICS.

As seen from the vantage point of misunderstanding, self-indulgence and simple blind reasoning.


By Derek Haines


PUBLISHED BY:
Derek Haines on Createspace


An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics
Copyright © 2010 by Derek Haines


Cover photograph:
Courtesy of www.morguefile.com
Photo taken by Kabir at the Cincinnati Zoo September 2005
http://www.cincyzoo.org/Exhibits/AnimalExhibits/GorillaWorld/gorillaworld.html


Table of Contents.

Foreword
Chapter 1. Why Am I Here?
Chapter 2. What is Food?
Chapter 3. Sex? I’m Confused.
Chapter 0. Not A Chapter. Just Autobiographical Egotism
Chapter 4. A Want To Be Cosmopolitan.
Chapter 5. I Wish I Had Dropped Politics From the Title.
Chapter 6. Normality A Go Go!
Chapter 7. The Marriage Manual.
Chapter 8. Food, Politics and Marriage Vows.
Chapter 9. Just Life!
Chapter 10. Fat For All.
Chapter 11. Takeaway.
Chapter 12. Absurdities.
Chapter 13. Dog’s Heart, Wolf’s Liver.
Chapter 14. Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.
Chapter 15. You Call That Rational?
Chapter 16. Why Can’t I Live in Fantasy Land?
Chapter 17. Recipes
Chapter 18. Afterword
About the Author

Foreword

If you are reading this forward in a bookshop, in the hope of ascertaining what percentage of this book is devoted to sex, and weighing this proportion up against the cost of the book, I can give you this simple advice. BUY THIS BOOK!. You can be assured that there are many references and thoughts in this book that should not be made available to your eight year old offspring. So, please consider this fact when you begin reading this book at home. Do not leave it lying around.
If I might be as bold as to make a suggestion, (now that you are on your way to the cashier to stake your rights as the outright owner of this copy, and continue to read while you wait for your credit card to be checked for worthiness) that once you have read this book, it can be filed happily with your recipe books. This small piece of advice should give you a small clue as to subjects other than sex, that are visited in this volume.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This phrase has stayed with me since childhood. Being that was a long time ago, I cannot remember who to credit with passing this wonderful insight to me. Possibly a grandparent, or perhaps an answer to a question on an early sixties quiz show. Regardless of origin, it has stayed in my brain. This is remarkable, because so much knowledge has not stayed in my brain. While some people, who are far more intelligent, intellectual and just plain smarter than I, manage to retain mammoth libraries of information in their ‘sponge like’ minds, I have always thought that my mind is akin to a craggy reef. As knowledge and information pass through my mind, like the water through a reef, I retain only what ‘sticks’ to my protuberances. It is a pity that this little gem of wisdom is of no use whatsoever, as I believe it is for me, hopelessly inaccurate.
Therefore this book will not consist of lengthy quotations and excerpts from previous books on the subjects at hand, neither will it be a chronicle of the reading habits of my life. This is a volume of thoughts, insights and cynicisms of an uneducated middle aged being. After reading avidly during my life, the thoughts of philosophers, intellectuals, prominent thinkers, poets and Oxford comics who elucidate their views from the heights of our society, I believe my views can be firmly categorised as the opposite. I will however take the liberty on some occasions to mention some of these writers, if only to credit them with inspiring me to think, look and learn.
At some point while reading this book, you will surely reach a pivotal moment where you will close the book, put it down, and silently wonder. What the hell it is this book about? The author seems very confused, and his writings have no logical pattern, reason or rhyme. If you reach this, or a similar conclusion, I praise you now, in advance for your incisive observation. If however, you read this book with a voracious appetite and interest, and suffer from the ‘I just cannot put it down’ reading syndrome, and think thoughts as you read such as, ‘I know this feeling’, or ‘Yes, I have asked the same question’ then you are probably a poor soul like me. Aged between thirty five and fifty five, with an Australian or possibly English childhood and teenage upbringing that prepared you for a full and happy life in Victorian England. However you have had to live your adult life in the screamingly open, permissive, free, ever changing years of the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. And beyond. My reasons for writing this book were initially cathartic, but during the early stages of writing I realised the reasons had shifted to ones of an out of body experience and nature. I could look at myself and laugh, and laugh and laugh. What a complete idiot I have been for most of my life. Hopefully, one day, I will change this impression I have of myself.
The reason I have issued early warnings regarding the possibility of young children reading this book (that you hopefully now own) is to save you the reader, the embarrassment of a child of eight or nine saying, “I know all this stuff, We learned it at school in grade two!”
So I give you these thoughts, not from a vantage point of looking down, but from looking up and across.
1 Should you still be reading and waiting for your credit card to be approved, I would add this further piece of advice. If you believe yourself to be easily offended by normality and have a deep and kindred feeling of admiration for John Howard or a love of Mills and Boon classical literature, maybe you should put this book back and look for a colourful book of pasta recipes.

Chapter 1. Why Am I Here?

May I start at the beginning? “Why am I here?” Why indeed! Why must be the most used word in the English language. I am sure it is also totally overused in every other language. If I was an educated man, I could begin now to fill this entire page with translations of the word why into one hundred and fifty languages and dialects. But as I am not educated, I will simply say that a puzzled look and tilting of the head is universally accepted, as proof that the ‘why’ question is universal in it’s asking.
Never a day goes by in a human life without this word or feeling. “Why am I here?” “Why was I born?” “Why do I have to go to work?” “Why didn’t I stay at school?” “Why is my wallet empty?” “Why do I have to pay tax?” On and on ad infinitum. Just reflect on your day, and try and count the number of times you asked why today.
After all this time of the existence of intelligent human beings (and some not so intelligent ones) on this planet, why is it we cannot answer these seemingly simple questions? As a species we have been able to cure dreaded diseases, travel into space, discover the answers to our physical world. Even map every strand of DNA in our bodies. But can we, as an intelligent race answer the question, “Why do I feel so fucking depressed?” in a logical and informed manner? No! For all our understanding of the world around us, the one matter that we do not understand is the emotional and self indulgent psychology of the human animal. Oh yes! I can hear you now, espousing the ideas and conclusions of any number of ancient, latter day or in between sages of wisdom. There have been one thousand times more answers than there have been questions through our eternity. But, I ask you this. Why, if these answers are presumed to be correct, do we continue to ask the question? “Why?”
Forty Two! This was the famed answer to a vital question asked in the novels by Douglas Adams. The question was, “The Life, Universe and Everything?” After waiting millions of years for the computer ‘Deep Thought’ to calculate his answer to the question, the ‘Askers’ were to say the least, a little pissed off at the answer. They had imagined a much more complex, thought provoking and above all, conclusive answer to their question. What the hell did 42 mean? It was ‘Deep Thought’ who pointed out to them that they may not have asked the right question. Could this be applied to the continued asking and answering of our questions about ourselves? Have we had an unending supply of answers to the wrong questions over millennia? Have the answers been so complex, because in not being satisfied with the answers we have been given, we have believed, by simple reasoning, that we must ask a more complex question? I have read and listened to many who profess expertise in the area of understanding the human mind and emotional behaviour. While many have given me delightful morsels of insight and understanding, just as many have bored me to sleep with the endless use of something I despise. Talking for the sake of listening to one’s self. Domination of a conversation or opinion, so as to fake superiority.
2 Anyone who can write a five part trilogy gets my vote of confidence. There are many like me, who hope for a sixth part of the three part series. Our hope is slim though as poor Douglas is now departed!
As I am sure everyone has done, I have read books, or listened to eminent members of our academia or political elite drift into a type of speech that uses an abundance of words. Tied together in long uninterruptible sentences, dotted with words that would send almost everyone to a dictionary or French phrase book. Are they trying to communicate? Not at all. They are generally simply filling up space with their own importance. To appear smarter than their audience or readers? I thought this the answer for some time, but I have now come to the conclusion that the reason they do this is that the answer or hypothesis they are trying to communicate is actually very simple and concise. But to phrase the answer or hypothesis in ten words or less, would make them feel inadequate. What a waste of a degree in Astrophysics if asked, “Is the Sun hot?”, and the educated answer was “Yes, very hot”, instead of a dissertation about the Big Bang theory, the relationship of Einstein to his favourite dog, the fact that the answerer once met Carl Sagan while roaming the halls of Cambridge trying to arrange a meeting with Stephen Hawking.
Could it be that there are some among us who have arrived at their own answer already of “Why am I here?” These being of course those among us who know they are here to fill in the silent areas after a question! And for as long as possible!
It should not be said that I suffer from inverted snobbery. I respect anyone who has made the effort and undertaken the hard work and sacrifice needed to complete a successful formal education. Many times, right up to this day I have considered abandoning the stereotype of my life’s path, and venturing off to the world of the young. To university at a mature age, and fill a void I have felt. And this may happen.
Why am I here? Without an education I so much wanted and still want. Merely because my youth existed in a different time and place. My youth existed before our Australian Prime Minister exclaimed that we should be the ‘Clever Country’. Before Gough Whitlam embarked on a rampant three year period that for the first time in Australia’s history, ignored economics and gave us social reform. The like we had never seen, and have not seen since. The era of my youth was an era that held firm to the view that a tertiary education was the privilege and domain of the elite. The norm then was for boys to find an apprenticeship at fifteen, because to stay at school for another two years was a waste seeing as though one would never go to university anyway. For girls of course, they had two choices, hairdressing or a short secretarial career, just to fill in time until they could do something useful like get married. It was a time also of immense change in society, but also a time of immense rigidity in a country still firmly tied to the apron strings of a Mother country twelve thousand miles away.
It was a time when a news reader aspiring to read the news on the ABC needed to jettison his Australian accent, and fake a Surrey or Kent accent to be accepted. It was a time when we still stood to attention for a Queen we never knew, and did not know us, and for a country that was foreign to almost all of us. It was a time our political leaders said “all the way with LBJ” and took our youth into a war that was not ours to fight. It was a time when as a country we were so immature, we were disappointed if a TV or radio journalist, did not ask an arriving celebrity at their airport interview, “What do you think of Australia?’ The celebrity always had to lie. The poor creature had only just stepped off a plane, was suffering from jet lag, and if he or she was lucky the only exposure or knowledge of Australia would have come from the airline cabin crew.
Nevertheless, to satisfy the fragile egos of a country of isolated, parochial, immature and ignored people, the answer was always the same. “Oh, it is a wonderful country. The people are so warm and friendly.” It always seemed to me that the answer was scripted by the Department of Foreign Affairs. On rare occasions when some drugged to the gills rock star defied the code and said something along the lines of, “I dunno, I just got here man!” He would be pilloried through the press for his entire visit, and probably be arrested on trumped up drug charges and deported.
It was a time when our country was still very European, and also very, very white. It is not so long ago. Today we say somewhat jokingly, “Scratch an Aussie, find a racist.” In 1968 you did not need to scratch. Racism was still Government policy!
These are some of the reasons that “I am here”. They are part of the answer to the simple question.
From the moment we take our first breath after surviving what has looked to me to be a traumatic start to life, we are moulded by our surroundings, prevailing attitudes, experiences and guidance and advice from our peers and superiors. One of my first memories of life was trying to hold my pet cat by the tail when it wanted to do something completely different than what I had in mind. Since then, holding a cat by the tail has always invoked an image of extended claws and blood. I see young children doing as I did, and want to rush to them and give them the advice of my years of experience with cats and tails and blood and scratches. But do they heed my advice and warnings? Nope! They will nod and agree, and as soon as I am out of ear shot they will yank as hard as possible on the cat’s tail, and then run to their mothers arms, covered in scratches all over their small and innocent faces. Their little T shirt covered in blood. And of course their mothers tell them, “Oh poor baby, that nasty pussy cat!”
Next day, the cat is taken on a one-way visit to the veterinarian and is put down for reacting so normally to having it’s tail almost yanked off. Some things in life repeat themselves ad nauseam. No matter how wise or knowledgeable we become as a race or species, we start all over every time a new life is formed.
I once reprimanded a young child visitor, who decided it was a great idea to clonk my dog on the head with a rather large rock. Luckily, the dog was a very timid and good-natured dog, (and also somewhat semiconscious from the blow to the head) and had not gone for the young child’s throat and tore her larynx out in revenge or self-preservation. In reprimanding the young girl of only four, I said something very stupid. “How would you feel if I hit you on the head with a rock?” To which the youngster replied in action and not in words. She picked up the rock and hit herself on the head! Presumably she was preparing herself fully to answer my stupid question. However, before she could regain consciousness, her mother started to abuse me and the moment was lost.
Why are we here? To learn must be part of the answer. To learn for ourselves. Not to be given an answer in length in a language we do not understand. Just as the little girl did not seem to understand me, in actual fact she literally did. It was I, the purveyor of wisdom who did not understand that she was looking to answer my stupid question with the full fruit of experience. Just as I ask my accountant, “Why do I have to pay tax on profit that I don’t have?” I always nod understandingly at his answer and dare not expose my ignorance by telling the truth at the end of his answer. The truth? I never understand a word he says. So inevitably, I make the same mistake next year, and pay more tax than I probably should or could have if I understood anything of accountancy or the tax act.
I could fill pages here about the power of chaos and how the tax regimes of the world use the power of chaos to obtain order, but I shall resist, and take my uneducated thoughts to something much more fundamentally important. FOOD!

Chapter 2. What is Food?

“It’s petrol for your engine.” I was told as a youngster. “Eat your crusts to have curly hair!” “Eat your food or you will get sick.” There are many expressions we remember from childhood relating to food. All of them seem to indicate that there are dire consequences ahead if we don’t eat our beans, peas, carrots or Brussels sprouts. Meal times were always a chore as I remember childhood. As parents we all want our children to be fit, strong and healthy. We do anything we can to promote health and well being in our offspring. The one point many of us seem to miss, overlook or just forget, is that food is a sensual pleasure.
If a small child likes the look of something. Swoop! Into the mouth it goes. Thumbs, bread crusts, rusty nails, shoes or mouth wateringly tempting dried white dog shit! It is the first test a baby or young child applies to discoveries to ascertain the acceptability of an object or substance. This sensual approach to discovery is fought by the wisdom of the parents. “Get that out of your mouth. Dirty! Yuk!” screams an emotional, paranoid and grossly inexperienced parent. The reaction invoked in the child is that it must be bad. “This oral testing technique doesn’t seem to be too popular around here!” thinks Junior. And Junior is correct! It is very unpopular. So with the natural ability to learn, Junior, still believing his technique is fine and dandy, (also considering he doesn’t have too many other methods developed yet) modifies his behaviour, and conducts his oral testing out of screaming range. But the dinner table is very much within screaming range.
As if to prove the freshly developed theory Junior has reasoned, Mum and Dad try and coax food into Junior’s mouth. “Ahh! Junior reasons. I am not falling for that. One mouthful and you will start screaming at me.” So Junior squeezes his lips together with the force of a bull terrier and nothing passes his lips. Now Mum and Dad start a different type of screaming. “If you don’t eat Junior, you are going to get sick and die!”
Lost in the logic of all this, Junior looks up innocently at the two paranoid and very confused adults in front of him, and wonders, “Why am I here?”
In contrast, I watched an experienced mother of eight, and a now grandmother of a multitude, simply notice casually, a young grandchild making its oral presence felt towards what was probably going to turn out to be a very unpleasant tasting or possibly mildly poisonous pot plant. Without disturbing the conversation, or the ambience of the family gathering, the grandmother nonchalantly took a piece of cake from the table, and handed it to the child. She delivered it with only a smile. Now this looked a much more interesting assignment for the child who grabbed the icing smothered cake with glee. Within moments the mother of the child was starting on the very predictable. “Oh God, the baby is going to make a mess with that cake. I only washed her dress this morning!” The grandmother replied, “Oh it is a pretty dress Dear. Where did you get it? I am sure it will survive a few more washes!”
As all of us who have been parents know, there is very little preparation for becoming a parent. For many of us, if not most, it comes upon us rather suddenly. Even for those of us that may have planned well ahead. The day that first baby arrives home; life becomes one very steep learning curve. As usual, typical of our species, we just have to find out for ourselves. How vividly I remember the mother of my children reproaching her mother for unsolicited advice. Don’t we all know everything? And what we do not know, we would prefer to find out for ourselves.
If you are searching for a point to my rambling so far, I am happy to enlighten you. I would also say that you are very impatient, as I believe this is only page fifteen! I bow to your want of an explanation however. My point so far is this. As often as we ask questions, and just as often as we are displeased with the answers, in the end what we really want is to find out for ourselves.
3 Please feel free at this stage, to put down the book, look inquiringly at your spouse or relative or whoever may be sitting next to you watching television, and ask this question. “Is there anything you do not know that you would like to know?” If the answer is any more high brow than, “Yeah, this weeks winning lotto numbers.”, you are sitting next to an intellectual, otherwise, I shall rest on my point.
So why am I bothering to write this book? My answer is the same as any other author or thinker. To ferret out truth. Albeit, my version of it, and for my own understanding. My only hope is that it may be a simpler truth than many other truths you have read. Maybe this is the preserve of the uneducated. Simplicity. Unlike the Astrophysicist with a need to expand his answer as to whether the sun is hot, I would answer you thus. “Of course the sun is bloody hot. It was over a hundred today, and I have a sunburned nose to prove it!”
Do you hanker for any further embellishment to my answer?
This chapter started out with a simple question. What is food? Other than being an essential of life, along with water, which for the sake of this point, I will simply include in the category of food then not mention again, it is fundamentally a sensual pleasure. Sensuality is a word that has been brutalised and twisted, but to me it is the collective or individual feeling or feelings conveyed by our senses. Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound. I shall cover the more broad aspects of sensuality later, but for now I will concentrate on the sensual attraction of food. As with the baby’s natural and instinctive desire to discover, and have questions answered via oral testing, our passage to maturity continues with this same instinct intact. As much as we wish to deny our instincts; we believe we are maturing and becoming intelligent and do not need or desire so called animal instincts, but instead rely on self-gathered information and intelligent research. We also rely on the opinion of others, peer and superior.
If this is true, why is it that our saliva glands run with animal instinct, and activate at a moments notice, and completely uncontrolled by conscious thought. Haven’t we all seen saliva shoot embarrassingly from our mouth in an uncontrolled reaction to the advent of the sight or smell of a forthcoming taste sensation? For all our self motivated questioning of this phenomenon, and whether we could learn to control it, or whether it was done intentional or not, the fact remains that we cannot control our saliva glands. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves, or be convinced by others that sugar, toffee apples, chocolate or a rare tender beef fillet are poor additions to our sought after ‘healthy eating regime’, why is it that our basic instincts react to these delights? They will offer sensual pleasure for our oral sensual appetite, but more importantly fulfil a basic and simple purpose. To satisfy the most fundamental, life sustaining animal urge present in our being. Hunger.
For all of us, different foods attract, and some repulse. Others repulse by mention, but with application of the baby’s natural method of testing, we discover that we may just enjoy a previously repulsive food concept. If this were not the case, no one would ever develop a love for olives, oysters, any form of edible internal organ, onions, chillies or hot mustard. But over time, and with an inbuilt need to try new things, and experiment, we all develop tastes for previously distasteful food concepts.
I was asked by my partner, girlfriend, spouse, life mate, de-facto, (it is an annoyance to me that the English language cannot invent a word that sounds pleasant and loving and describes a woman who is not married to man, and therefore cannot be referred to as a wife, but is everything a wife is to a husband) if I would like to try a recipe she had been reluctant to cook for many a year. “Sure, what is it my love?” To which she read the beginning of the recipe. “Lamb loin chops cooked in coffee, orange and chocolate!”
My first thought, of intuitive acceptance of my devo’s wonderful expertise in the kitchen, was overwhelmed by the negative reaction of not only my dried up saliva glands, but also by my stomach which was sending definite signs of pre-emptive rejection of this newly devised concept. My second thought was of course to say, “It sounds wonderful my love.”
4 I have tried to get excited about lentils. Really, I’ve tried.
5 If I may be so bold, perhaps I could start suggestions with the words ‘Devo’ for the feminine and Devor for the masculine. I have invented these by the normal contraction method used in the English language from the word devoted. Understanding that they are not likely to catch on, perhaps someone can develop this thought further and be the first to end this continuing embarrassment for an increasing percentage of the population in the western nations as marriage becomes increasingly irrelevant.
6 Recipe 1. Chocolate and Coffee Lamb Chops.
This recipe is a delight and so simple. Take as many lamb loin chops as you need to feed the number of mouths. For each four chops, squeeze one orange and add a few shreds of finely chopped orange zest to the juice. Make ¼ cup of rich coffee. Gently melt 2 oz of dark chocolate in a saucepan, and add coffee and orange juice. Pan fry chops and pour sauce over chops when serving.
7 Read previous note for the definition of this new word.
So it was to be. That night’s menu was lamb loin chops, cooked to perfection with a juicy pink centre, covered with a sauce of strong espresso coffee, dark melted chocolate and orange juice. Served with steamed vegetables and pasta rolled in olive oil and garlic. Accompanied by a mandatory bottle of Merlot and the company of the woman I love. My first mouthful was watched intently by my devo, as she waited with baited breath for acceptance or rejection of her new creation. As I let the new sensual combination of these simple and well known tastes meld and create an exciting new palette of taste for my taste buds, I judged very quickly that this was a taste I liked, and liked very much. As a smile of acceptance and pleasure came to my face, and nodding affirmatively with my mouth still full of lamb, chocolate, coffee and orange, my devo smiled and started on her plate.
In the history of human kind, nothing has superseded the simple test a baby uses, of putting something in the mouth to prove or reject concepts of potential enjoyment or satisfaction. No amount of discussion, advice, smelling, consideration or questioning would prove whether these lamb chops would taste good or not. Only the simple act of tasting could prove the pleasure hidden in the initially unlikely tasteful description.
In a similar experience, a friend named Houba, on holiday in Sydney for a year from the French part of Switzerland often talked of how she missed fondue. Especially during the winter months of her stay. So it was that my devo (who is also Swiss French, so hence you understand the connections here) and I were invited for a ‘fondue evening’. Now, I must preface this story with some basic information about fondue. Firstly, most Australian’s understanding or association with fondue comes from the fact that every married couple receive at least one fondue set as a wedding gift, but never have any call to use it. Secondly, fondue to the Swiss is not only a very, I repeat myself for emphasis, very special dish, but also a special occasion, complete with ritualistic ways of eating and conversing during the partaking of the said fondue. The recipe calls for specific and very specially selected cheeses, none of which are available at Coles or Woolworths.
8 Recipe 2. Traditional Swiss Fondue.
This will be short. Melt three of the smelliest cheeses you can find in a saucepan and then dip some bread in and taste. Urgh!
9 If you are married, check out those boxes of forgotten treasures in the garage or shed, and see if I am right that you will discover a fondue set. If you have no idea what one is, here is the description of what you are searching for. One funny shaped saucepan, one spirit warmer and a set of six long, slender but delicate forks.
For this particular evening’s repast, three extremely exotic cheeses were melted and melded with care and with the knowledge and skill of the entire Swiss history of fondue preparation, seasoned to perfection by Houba and her husband Houba. (Yes, they both had the same name. Very confusing.) Served on the dining table with much ado, I was instructed in minute detail by my devo and Houba in the etiquette of fondue. First attach a small piece of bread firmly to the fork. Dip the bread into my own personal glass of Kirsch and then swirl my fork with flair around the bottom of the wonderfully prepared cheese mixture so as to accumulate as much cheese as possible on my Kirsch soaked bread. I watched as my fondue experienced dining partners dipped their bread and swirled their forks, and smiled in obvious delight at the taste sensation that had passed into their mouths and caressed their taste buds. The looks of sheer pleasure on their faces indicated the fact that they had very much missed their beloved fondue.
I was taken by the pleasure that was so obvious in the faces of my friends and my devo. Fondue was without a doubt a taste sensation. With great expectation, and a salivating mouth, I took up my small fork and firmly attached my first small square of geometrically perfect French bread. Then, as instructed, dipped the bread into my glass of Kirsch, then directed my fork into the steaming pot of exquisite melted cheese. Rolling my fork constantly on route to my mouth, as to not drip cheese over the table, wine glasses and my trousers, I successfully negotiated the much awaited morsel onto my expectant taste buds. Three expectant faces watched me as I took that first mouthful.
I remember being given vinegar on a teaspoon by my mother when I was young as a cure for hiccoughs. The face I used to pull at the taste of pure vinegar was now replicated in front of my friends. My palette had not been expecting anything so violently salty. Before offering my apologies at my lack of manners and self control, I emptied the glass of Kirsch into my mouth in an attempt to rid my mouth of what was to me a foul and disgusting taste.
After much discussion, and embarrassment by all, I settled on being very satisfied just dipping the very good bread into the very good Kirsch, and enjoying the meal albeit, cheese free for me. My three dining partners were not displeased at having more cheese each for themselves, (as they insisted that the fondue was perfect, and I believe it was, and also that it was a less salty version than what they would have preferred, but had prepared this one to ‘ease’ me into fondue) and nor was I displeased at having more than my fair share of Kirsch!
Point? Simple. No matter how much we are informed, it is the individual who makes decisions affecting themselves. Could any amount of research have told me that I would not like fondue? I love cheese. I eat bread with a passion. I would never refuse a glass of Kirsch. So, how could I have reasoned prior to tasting, that I would hate the taste of fondue? The same applies to the lamb chops. My research prior to actual eating, would have told me the combination of lamb, coffee, chocolate and orange would be disgusting. What delights do we miss by using preconception to decide our likes and dislikes? Could it be that the open mindedness of the baby’s oral testing of the world around it has not been improved upon by endless questioning and answering?
As with all our senses, individually we all have differing tastes, like, dislikes, loves, hates. Can any be categorised to encompass all of us? Is there one food or taste that is universal in acceptance or rejection? It is in the end an individual, and possibly an emotional decision. Emotion you ask? How could emotion be a part of the simplistic consumption of food? I can here the cynical saying, “Oh yes, I get so emotional about my food? Well, I say to you, yes, I am passionate about food. I love food. I love the taste, the texture, the sensual pleasure I derive from tasting, eating or simply looking at food. Listen to chefs and presenters of television cooking programs, watch food lovers preparing food, and watch as they almost reach orgasm as they explain their passions for aromas, textures, tastes, subtle flavours, exotic spices and often the aphrodisiac properties of foods.
Cream! Let me wander through the magic of this heaven sent liquid. It is majestic to me. Nothing compares to cream. It is the wonder ingredient in almost as many dishes as the imagination can hold. It is also a food that excites and entertains. We all laugh at a cream pie to the face. We have all fantasised of making love to a partner covered in whipped cream. (For those who are reading this book for the parts about sex, this mention was a mere slip. The juicy chapters follow a little later.) The mere thought of strawberries and cream invokes the thought of love (and of course tennis at Wimbledon). One of my later life discoveries was a simple use for cream. In mashed potatoes. Never again could I eat mashed potatoes without the magical addition of cream. My pre-cream days of mashed potato eating are dead forever.
10 Recipe 3. Creamy Mashed Potatoes.
Just add fresh cream to stiff mash potatoes and then whip until smooth.
Variation: Creamy Scrabbled Eggs
Just add cream to scrambled eggs when nearly fully cooked.
As I have the good fortune to share my life with a cream aficionado, I have resigned myself to being a little wider around the girth for the rest of my breathing days. A small sacrifice for the oral bliss bestowed upon me almost daily. It is an oddity I have noticed since I have been living with my devo, that we often, as all do, run out of milk. But never do we seem to own a cream deficient refrigerator!
The discovery of cream as an essential ingredient in so many recipes has been a late arrival in my life. It has taken many years, two divorces and many changes of address and innumerable bouts of depression and anxiety to lead me to the exact moment of meeting my devo. As it was she who awoke me to the wonder and versatility of cream, I can only say that the painful road I travelled on my life journey to find her has been rewarded. It is impossible now for me to imagine my pre-cream life. You may certainly think I have gone completely overboard here, in relation to the importance I place on cream, and the role it plays in making my life a happy, pleasant and meaningful existence. And I will leave you to your own judgement. For it is not for me to try and convince you on this subject. I find blissful contentment in the consumption of cream, and have not a shred of concern that it may induce narrowing of my arteries, or raise my cholesterol count, or take two weeks off my life expectancy. Cream simply makes me happy. I enjoy it. I love the sensation it brings to my taste buds and tongue. I adore the contented feeling my stomach sends to my brain after a rich cream sauce settles into my digestive system. How could I listen to the health doomsayers when all they can promise is a few extra days of a life without cream?
If there is a point to this book, (which is highly unlikely because I tend to lose the point rapidly in a verbal conversation, so there is a one hundred percent chance of me losing my point completely in thousands of written words) it is this. What is the point of worrying, questioning and pondering the point of human existence, when there is only one salient fact to work with? We have only one life to enjoy. The prospect of another life (afterlife, reincarnation, spirit existence or any other form contemplated by religious belief, hope or cult doctrine) is pure speculation and hope. Surely clinical logic and sensible reasoning would say that this one known life and existence we have been given should be enjoyed to the fullest. And if, after enjoying our last breath, we discover that we do get another life, (in whatever form) what a bonus!
In the title of this book, you will notice, if you are observant, that I did not include the subject of religion in my uneducated view list. The simple rationale behind this omission is that I did not want to discuss a subject that is sensitive. My God, if you look at history and take away a couple of minor wars that were economic in their beginnings, what you are left with are wars started over religious bickering. Not being a military man, I do not profess any profound understanding of war. Neither do I profess to have any theological education. With these two deficiencies in my knowledge, it seemed logical to leave the subjects well alone.
I will say however, that to live your whole life in a manner governed by a creed, decree or doctrine that offers as a reward for sacrifice of many of the joys of this one life, a vague hint at the possibility of another similarly bland life, leaves me wondering. This is probably the time to exit this subject that was not listed in the book title, and head straight back to the far safer and enjoyable topic of food.
Just sometimes, food can be full of surprises. Last Friday evening while enjoying the mandatory after dinner delights of coffee, Raspberry Crumble and Chinese Fortune Cookies with friends and my devo, I cracked open my fortune cookie in the hope of finding a true and complete understanding to my existence. While reading the remarkable insight into my life force, which was written in very small and obviously secretive font, (and struggling to find just the right place in my bifocals to discover and decipher the secret message) I placed a half of the aforementioned cookie in my mouth to obtain the oral pleasure of this two part experience. As I read the secret message, so deep in it’s understanding of my inner being; “You will travel much”, it said, and I was astounded by the accuracy, and lost in the deep and spiritual double meaning clear in the message, I closed my teeth onto the cookie. The first initial ‘crack’ sound that comes from eating a fortune cookie has always been a sound that I have enjoyed. The second sound I heard and felt inside my mouth was a little less rewarding, but no less exciting. It was a different sort of ‘crack’. This one had an enamel and amalgam type of ‘crack’ sound to it. A new and surprising metallic taste, with a condiment of small drops of blood, all melded in to the overall experience of the cookie and the insightful message.
11 Except that a lot of innocent people get killed and maimed for no good reason.
12 I don’t feel this word ‘devo’ is working all that well. From here on in, I will refer to my partner-lover-defacto-girlfriend by the romantic nickname I have given her. Morticia. She was blessed by me with this name because of the severe crush I had on Morticia Addams when I was a child.
As one does in these situations, I immediately called on the experience of my tongue to establish the goings on in the molar territory of my mouth. It reported back in an instant that it had found a rather large part of a rear molar missing in action. I deduced from this discovery that I was probably correct in interpreting my taste buds recent message about the ‘blood tasting’ condiment.
All this activity took a mere few seconds to happen, but all with precision and accuracy you would expect from a highly trained and sensitive set of sensory organs. It was only a mere few seconds more, before another sensation became apparent. Pain! This was immediately followed by an involuntary verbal expulsion. “Ahh fuck! I broke a tooth on the fucking cookie!” This of course bought a totally new ambience to the dinner table. One in which I added little to the conversation before bidding all a goodnight, and travelling home on a Friday night with the full knowledge that dentists do not work weekends.
It was also then that I realised it was a special Friday. The 13th!! This explained all! Now I understood why I lost half of my precious tooth. Why one of our friends lost a fifty dollar note. But, I was lost as to use this theory on the other remarkable event of the evening. How did we win the raffle for the enormous meat tray? Perhaps this was part of the irony? My mouth would not be ready for T-bone steaks for many a day.
13 To satisfy any curiosity you may have regarding the meat tray prize. It all resides in our freezer, awaiting my return to dental perfection.
There is never a good time to experience pain with food consumption. The two just do not go together well. Of course it is well known and might I say under appreciated, that the combination of pain and sex, can be a delightful experience. More on this later. The other combination that is a little more well known and accepted by many is the combination of food and sex. For a multitude of cultures and societies, the two have often been side by side, hand in hand or complimentary in the quest for pleasure. Toga clad Roman rulers and members of the Empire’s social elite, enjoyed nothing better than near naked, or very naked young nymphs serving them peeled grapes, wine and figs, while young adolescent boys in similar attire waved large fans to induce a more comfortable temperature. The eating of food, and the drinking of wine was a part of the sensory experience. As was watching the evening’s entertainment of sexual activity on the rugs before them. The performers of the evening’s entertainment were of course motivated to perform to the fullest of their physical capabilities. The choice between fucking oneself stupid, or conversely, being fucked stupid in full view of laughing, rude, arrogant and glutinous morons, was highly preferable to being the next attraction at the Colosseum.
Gluttony, whether used to describe a person’s excesses of eating, drinking, sex, stamp collecting or accumulation of wealth, is a word that invokes a vision of greed, lust and selfishness in the perpetrator. Could this word and vision be also a reaction to the accuser’s jealousy? Am I one that should be accused of gluttony for my lustful and insatiable appetite for cream? When is excess, excess? When is enough, enough? Where is the line that separates acceptable and unacceptable? And who is the judge? In my uneducated and humble opinion, the only judge worth listening to is yourself. I am of course not promoting behaviour or actions that are unlawful, or would create offence to others who may not share your judgement. I do however believe that the Roman gentlemen referred to earlier were only partaking in what at that time was considered perfectly acceptable and very enjoyable.
A brief glance at food, fashion, morals and behaviour over only a short period of our existence as a modern society reveals the rapid changes that affect our levels of acceptance. Consider the minute period of time between 1960 and 1999 in Australia. Every facet of our society has changed. Similarly also in many other western cultures. The one facet that has been singularly Australian in this process of changing attitudes and tastes has been the food we eat and enjoy in our homes and restaurants. 1960 was firmly a time of the ‘three veg and meat’ meals. Sundays was roast dinner day. The special treat of the week was of course Friday night fish and chips.
Today we enjoy food from every corner of the earth. There is no doubt that this is due to the most successful and harmonious immigration scheme ever achieved by any country in the world. Today we eat for enjoyment as opposed to simple sustenance, as was the case in 1960. To see and hear people discussing and savouring food is a wondrous achievement.
In 1960 food was definitely just simply ‘petrol for your body’s engine’. Today food is a sensory delight. Still just as important to the maintenance of simply living and ensuring our body’s function, but a new enjoyment has been added. An appetite for the unknown, unexpected or sought after flavours that promise oral orgasm. The expectation that lights our saliva glands and ignites our passion. Call me a glutton anytime, I will not be offended or dissuaded. My body has two distinct appetites, and as these are both natural, and have existed in mankind forever, I refuse to not follow the curiosity they both invoke.
I like curious people. If I were to describe myself in one word, curious would be a very suitable description. The want and desire, which can be insatiable sometimes, to know, can be a hard control. Often, the only way to satisfy curiosity is to experiment. I wonder who first experimented with coffee, chocolate and lamb chops. Undoubtedly it was a curious person.
Reverting back to hunger and appetite for a moment, it has been a constant source of wonder to me, how similar the two basic appetites are. Both are necessarily a part of our instincts to perpetuate our species’ survival. Both are instinctive, although it takes a few years to figure out the second, (and it also occupies a great deal of time and consideration during our younger years.) Both can be insatiable desires until satisfied. And once satisfied, disappear completely, and to a satisfaction that is so full, that it is almost incomprehensible to imaging the desire returning. Or is it possible that the satisfaction of either appetite fulfils both at the same time? At the completion of a three course meal, and with my stomach crying out in pain for me to at least have a heart and let my belt be loosened by one hole, the last thing I could possibly imagine is wanting to immediately sweep the table clear, and have sex on the table. No. Indeed not. My hunger for food is satiated, and so it would seem is my lust appetite.
Conversely, after a late evening of total abandonment and the fulfilment of my testosterone induced appetite for rampant sex on the living room floor, all I want is to enjoy the ‘petite mort’ and go to sleep! Food? Not likely. Just a glass of water and let me die in peace!
I am not sure whether my theory regarding the link of the two appetites will stand much scrutiny from experts in these respective fields. All I can say is that I am very comfortable with my conclusions, and from my own personal experiences, I am satisfied that I have conducted enough research on the matter to be fully convinced, and therefore a complete believer in my own theory. Do not believe from these previous conclusive sounding statements, that I plan to rest on my laurels. No, I will continue with my line of research into this connection with great enthusiasm. Perhaps if I reduced the meal to two courses, the chances of sustaining enough of the remnants of the lust appetite may survive to allow the possibility of having the will to clear the table, and spontaneously enter into rampant copulation with my Morticia. This proposition is of course based on the fact that Morticia and I are dining alone. If we are not, then perhaps this experiment had better be continued at another time.
14 Vegetables had to be boiled all afternoon in 1960, and meat cooked for nearly as long to ensure perfection. Don’t your taste buds hanker for the delights of 1960?
15 One of which is food. The other, as I have mentioned before will come in following chapters. I promise!
16 Or morning, or afternoon!
17 I just adore this expression. I know I promised not to use expressions that had you running off to a dictionary or French phrase book, but this one is too much of a favourite. To save you looking for your French for Traveller’s handbook, it means ‘little death’. A perfect description for that ‘after sex, couldn’t give a fuck about anything’ type of feeling.
My father often said to me, when the very infrequently visited subject of sex entered a conversation between us, “Just give me a hot dinner any time!” It used to puzzle me for many years, but all of a sudden, the expression has taken on an understanding and depth for me. This may prove to me, that as I embark on what I thought was ground breaking research, that my father has already concluded this investigation well before me. Perhaps I should just drop him a note, or telephone him and simply ask if he has already conducted the ‘two course’ experiment that I am only theorising about. He has in all likely known the answer to this question for many years, and has proved it or disproved it many times to be sure of the answer. Will I ask him? Of course not! This, as with so many questions about life, is something I want to find out for myself. Where is the fun in being told the answer? I may as well throw my curiosity straight out of the proverbial door!
Far better I call him up and ask him what the weather is like there. Or should I reserve the right to compare my notes with him after my experiment is complete. No, there is no point in that either. It wouldn’t matter. Who would it benefit? I am sure my son will not ask me for the answer when he is ready to ask the question. He will, as my father and I have done, find out for himself.

******

Sitting alone in a restaurant, watching all the comings and goings of people and their social habits and customs, is a lonely but not unpleasant experience. This occurrence happened to me recently while travelling interstate. I had arranged to meet an old friend, but bad luck struck our plans, as his daughter had an accident at work. He received the unfortunate news as he was on his way to meet me for lunch. Concerned for his daughter’s welfare, but undeterred, I decided to lunch alone. Obviously, with my friend on his way to the hospital, I was to have lunch alone anyway, so I should rephrase and say I continued with the planned lunch at the appointed restaurant, but planned now to enjoy it alone.
As a very normal hungry male, I can assure you that as a sight, there is little to compare with what I am about to describe. I ordered my meal. Fillet Steak and Bugs served on a flaming sword. Sounded delicious! Not to mention, the vision of the food being served from a flaming sword to my plate. The expectation was mouth watering. A pre-lunch beer satisfied my working morning’s acquired thirst. After a passage of time of approximately fifteen minutes, a sight to behold materialised before me. From the swinging door to the kitchen, which was fully in my forward view, came a tall, leggy blonde. Her face adorned with a smile, adding extra appeal to an already charming face. Her wavy blond hair cut to sit just on her shoulders. Shining red high heel shoes that craved attention from any man. A small, barely noticeable red G-string. Her young, buoyant, full and proud breasts, adorned with slightly erect nipples as a result of the ambient air temperature. And held aloft in her right hand was my flaming sword of fillet steak and bugs! She glided towards me, unhurried, on her mission to deliver my meal.
I had not pointed out to you earlier, the nature of this particular restaurant. Needless to say, I did not want to spoil the element of surprise in my revelation. Of course I knew of this eating establishment prior to my luncheon appointment. It has a fame that is known well outside its city or state boundaries. Many have copied this particular restaurant’s concept, but very few have succeeded. The one missing ingredient I have noticed in copiers of this famed place is class. Simply a lack of class. The success over now decades, has not been because naked women serve tables. This, one can get anywhere. What makes this experience totally enjoyable is the combination, and satisfaction of the dual appetites.
18 For those concerned about my friend’s daughter. She hurt her hand and has made a full recovery.
Firstly the food is first class. First class in preparation, taste and presentation. Without any of the provided trimmings, the meal in itself would satisfy any discerning pallet. The addition of well delivered service by attentive, intelligent and diligent table staff, is always an attraction at any restaurant. But add to these solid foundations a touch, or in this case, lashings of the erotic, and you have a sensorial pleasure feast. Being served attentively by intelligent naked women is something I would never refuse. My maleness, and the fact that sight is my most powerful sense, worked to satisfy both of my appetites at once.
My only regret for the afternoon was that I should have left a little earlier. For some reason, some of the class I felt earlier was stripped away when one of the waitresses was ‘raffled’ as a serving dish for strawberries and cream. A little fat man, with balding head, and a well developed belly, was proclaimed the winner. She lay naked on his table, and watching him eat cream dipped strawberries from various parts of the young woman’s body just took the top off what had been a wonderful experience. Had I won the raffle, maybe my viewpoint would have been different. Could I be honest enough to answer this question?
There are some, I am sure, who would find the concept of this place repulsive or disgusting. To you I say, you are entitled to that view, and I will not argue to dissuade you from your view. In return though, I would ask you for the same respect of my views. I just loved it! I want more. I cannot wait to go back. Maybe my Morticia will come with me next time, so she can give me an alternative viewpoint. It would also mean there is a possibility of ordering TWO flaming swords! Of course, this leaves me wondering. Would they be delivered by one naked woman with both arms raised in the air in triumphant approach to our table? Or would they be delivered by two naked women? Each looking like a nude, walking, talking Statue of Liberty. My mind is ablaze with the possibilities! Both of my basic appetites are alive and running.
Food and sex. Our basic cravings. Our basic sustainers of life. Both simple to the extreme, but so wonderfully complicated, sophisticated, varied, discussed, analysed, scrutinised, practised, maligned, twisted, revered, rejected, infected, neglected, tested but on the whole enjoyed by us all. Call me a glutton. I shall not be embarrassed or shamed. And why should I?
Is this a question we should, or must ask ourselves? Are we embarrassed at our behaviour or indulgences? Or are we so bombarded by self-righteous, self-opinionated tabloid media, and bible holding, God fearing do-gooders, that we are forced to continually reinforce our own sense of values, morals or good taste. Sensationalised reporting by tabloid media (which unfortunately accounts for a vast percentage of our mass media merchants) would have us believe that every single food group can cause severe illness, disease and death. If you change channels, or newspapers, your chances of finding a similar sensational story about the ‘miracle’ cure of some exotic disease by the very same food group. None of this crap is news. It is crap. Mindless crap! When a new weight reducing diet devised by some crackpot, based on the consumption of only cabbage, combined with walking one kilometre a day on your hands makes good copy for a seven minute feature on a current affairs program, all I want to do is ask; “Who paid the so called journalist to get this shit on air?”
Like it or not, and believe it or not, food is a great topic for tabloid media. It is used as a tool to prey on the vulnerable. Mothers concerned about their children’s health. Elderly concerned about their sensitive and slow working digestive systems. The overweight. Now this demographic needs looking at for a moment. The overweight. Who are these people? Two hundred kilo giants? No. The overweight are a massive percentage of the population. This is why they are such a great target market. As a marketeer, you can’t miss it! Any woman whose body is not the right shape for the cover of a magazine, or could not earn $30,000 for appearing with her legs spread for Playboy, or any woman who wears a dress size larger than size 8 is overweight! Any man who does not have the stomach of Adonis, and a backside in the mould of Mick Jagger is classically defined as overweight. Our western media, (and wanking fashion houses) have created a system of measuring the human body so as to place 99% of the population over the limit of acceptable appearance. This might be all well and dandy if you happen to be a pre-pubescent sixteen year old girl suffering from an anorexic complaint, (I think I inadvertently described perfection in that line), but for me, as a man and not a wanking fashion house owner, please give me a woman with curves! Hips! A backside that I can firmly grip with both hands. Breasts that move when a woman walks! Give me a little weight any day.
19 Or Iggy Pop as my Morticia notes on my first draft of this book.
The mere thought of the media induced ideal of the perfect woman is a turn off for me. What earthly attraction is there to a man of a flat chested, female stick insect with hollow black eyes created by starvation and vomiting? There is a complete lack of normality in this vision. Yet our media and society continue to push the notion that if you are a woman with any one single curve on your body, you are overweight, and hence the logic works, that you have a problem! Therefore you should heed the advice of the media and buy the $35.00 book describing in detail how to change your diet immediately, to include only cabbage. And also how to learn to walk on your hands for one kilometre a day. To any woman who has fallen for this high pressure selling, devised by very clever and astute marketers and highly respected business entrepreneurs, and reinforced by the power of ‘independent’ paid media, I say to you. Look at yourself again. Take off the media supplied ‘funny glasses’ you have been fitted with unwittingly, and enjoy being a woman. Enjoy life. Do not believe all the lies.
And for us men. I am fit, healthy and happy, with a small overhang of my belt. To be honest, if I inverted my stomach measurement for my chest measurement, I would certainly be an Adonis.
It is interesting to look back, only a short time, to say 1940. What was a desirable woman then? I can tell you. She was a grossly overweight woman by today’s standards. Venture back a little further. It is simple. Look at paintings by the masters through the last four or five hundred years. Particularly the nudes. What do you see? Big, fat, flabby, unsuntanned bodies. Bodies fed on real food. Healthy bodies. Another item for thought is this. Why is it that it is an undeniable fact that the human race is becoming bigger and taller every generation, yet our half-witted media and fashion industry portray us getting smaller? Ignorance of the bleeding obvious always annoys me. When it is not ignorance, but sheer greed for profit that drives a lie, then I get fucking angry. Independent journalism! Honesty in advertising! What a pair of oxymorons.
20 Rubens, Morticia suggests in a note on the first draft.
I have very little to say on the subject of diet regimes. Simply because most are complete bunkum in my opinion. However, I will impart my few simple food rules I have maintained for many years, and feel that they have benefited me enough to espouse their worthiness.
Eat one serve of a green vegetable each day.
Never eat the same meat two days in a row.
Eat two servings of bread each day
Drink three glasses of water every day.
Enjoy creating and eating food.

Anything else is up to you. I might point out that rule number five is the only one that I cast in concrete and always adhered to strictly.
My passion for food will return later in this volume. It has by no means been exorcised fully in these first few pages. Perhaps I could refer to this section as the entrée portion of the book. Whilst enjoying the topic, and having fun in the process, I believe it only fair that I should honour my commitment in the forward of this book, and now devote some pages to a subject that was promised at time of purchase. This also may be a good opportunity for you to place the bookmark here, close the book, and make yourself a cup of coffee. You may also feel the need to relocate yourself to a part of the house where no one will be disturbed by your sniggering or gasps of outrage at the following content. One final word or warning. There are no more recipes for quite some pages. If your prime motivation in buying this book was for recipe ideas, I must say I did warn you that you might have been happier with a colourful book of pasta recipes. But seeing as you have ventured this far, why not let you hair down and just try a few more pages. Just for the hell of it! You never know, you may just enjoy it.
Oh, sorry. I forgot one thing. If you have young children about, who show tremendous curiosity for books, and have learned to speed read at the age of five, I would suggest this is the starting point for gluing pages together. Either that, or tear each page out as you have read them and discard. This also creates a foolproof system for never losing your place in a book.
Ok. Enough said. I am out of here. See you in the next chapter.
21 Or eat them! Suggests Morticia, but I think she is now being very silly, or has delved too far into the bottle of cognac to continue her unpaid job of proof reader.

Chapter 3. Sex? I’m Confused.

Is sex a noun or a verb? An adjective or pronoun? Is it just a matter of selecting the correct tick box on an employment application form? I am sure this thought has crossed your mind, as it has mine. I always want to do the following on one of those stupid forms. Especially official government forms such as tax and census.
Sex? ----> Yes Please!
M ☐
F ☐
To anyone that does not see the humour in this, I suggest that it is time to close up the book, and go find a Reader’s Digest to fill in the rest of the evening.
What is this sex stuff? This is a question I first asked at age four. This is a question I continue to ask at age forty three.
Because of a warp in the time and space continuum of my life, I have found myself located two hours ahead of, and three thousand miles east of my fifteen year old daughter. This has not diminished our close relationship or our ability to communicate. In telling her that I was starting to write a book in part about my understanding of this sex mystery, she laughed and made a comment somewhat derogatory to my knowledge of the subject. Letting this bypass me on the premise that my daughter was just exercising her ability in Australian ‘put down’ humour, I marched forward.
“I have had to discover this for myself” I said to her, hoping for a little more sympathetic response, and continued “It would have been easier if I had have had sex education classes at school like you do.” Her reply caught me by surprise. “Dad, I finished those classes a couple of years ago. How much is there to learn?” I stammered for a reply to my fifteen year old daughter who had in one short sentence, reduced me to a blithering idiot. Her addition of “If you don’t know anything, just ask me Dad” shattered the last of my pride. Could it be that this warp in the time and space continuum had inverted my universe so totally, that forty three year old fathers received advice on sex from their more knowledgeable and sexually educated fifteen year old daughters?
After talking to my daughter about any other subject I could think of for half an hour, I said goodnight, and then sat in silence and wondered whether I had embarked on an embarrassing project. Writing a book which was to include my thoughts on the subject of sex. But that I probably possessed only a small fraction of my daughter’s educated knowledge of the subject.
That was last night. My confidence is back now. I want to forge ahead. To risk being a laughingstock is a small price to pay in the pursuit of my ultimate goal. To be published.

******

In any other book I have read on this subject, the author usually outlines their authority to discuss or lecture on the subject. Degrees, doctorates, vocation or experience. So how do I describe my authority to delve into this delicate subject matter?
22 I think this sounds much more exciting than simply saying divorce.
23 All my life people who know me have said. “You’re just a bloody dreamer.”
In a well known and respected British medical journal, (whose name I will not mention as I am not sure of my legal standing to mention by name, but it’s name begins with a capital L, so I will leave you to guess) a well-regarded English University medical research unit published the results of an extensive research project they had conducted into a often discussed anatomical conundrum. To what purpose did the knob shaped head of a penis serve? (Please excuse me if I have phrased this crudely, but how else can one describe this?) Their research had been extensive and thorough. And also expensive. Seventy five thousand pounds worth of expensive! Not only did their respondents include one thousand university students, but also the data from a five thousand person telephone survey. Overwhelmingly, by a seventeen to one ratio, the respondents, male and female, confirmed the researchers initial theory. The only logical, and now irrefutable reason, proved by the data collected in their research, was that this globular enlargement served only one conclusive function. To heighten the enjoyment of the male in the act of coitus.
Now, this was powerful data. Difficult to argue with, and gained at much expense to the public purse in England. However, a sex therapist in France was unconvinced. She understood the method of data collection, and had no doubts the English researchers had conducted their research to the highest possible standard. But, could this conclusion also be true in France? (France being a country within spitting distance of England, but in as far as the subject of sex goes, the two countries may as well be on either sides of the universe! I could even draw a comparison thus. France being the Big Bang of sex, and England being the Black Hole!) After a wait of not more than six months a research grant of two million francs was made to the French researcher, to conduct her own research into this much debated subject, and to establish if the same conclusion held true in France as it did in England.
Her research was extensive. A far broader sampling of the population than the English had done. Questionnaires were prepared asking detailed and very sensitive and intimate questions. All necessary to establish once and for all the definitive answer. Perhaps because of the more open minded attitudes of the French population in general, the respondents numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A far better sampling than the English, and hence would be conclusive.
The result after many, many months of data collation was finally published in the same Journal. (Remember, the one starting with a capital L.) The findings? Overwhelming in its conclusivity. By a ratio of one hundred and eighty five to one, the result confirmed that in France, contrary to England, the knobby globe on the end of a man’s penis was categorically there to enhance the pleasure and heighten the orgasm of the female during coitus.
These two opposite findings had me wondering. Could this just be a nationalistic difference? A cultural divide? Or were the results influenced by a lack of objectivity by the researchers? After all, it is common knowledge that the English and the French have differing viewpoints, and may I suggest even differing moral and cultural attitudes towards sex. I became perplexed by this seemingly inconsequential matter. Did it matter anyway? Each to their own I always say, so should the answer matter. Probably not, but it nevertheless ate away at me. All this money spent to arrive at no conclusion. What to do?
Without the qualifications, experience or respect in this field of medical and scientific research, there was absolutely no hope of me obtaining a government grant to conduct even the smallest research project. If I was to do anything about this, it would have to come from my own resources. I decided I would do it. Setting myself the goal of resolving this sensitive issue once and for all. Even if only for my peace of mind.
With funding supplied by the potential future income from my as yet unpublished, but sure to be best sellers, (manuscripts for three of these potential literary classics live in the bottom drawer of my desk, awaiting the destiny they deserve. Of finding their way to a literary agent or publisher with a death wish! Most are very polite in their refusal to invest large sums of money in my as yet unknown literary classics. “Unfortunately, we do not handle this genre of literature. We do however wish you good luck in finding a suitable publisher”, is the normal response. I plan a new strategy. And this is why I am now confident of future income. Working on the presumption that they do not in fact read the carefully prepared, double spaced pages, but only the genre description I include on the manuscript cover sheet, all I have to do is categorise my works differently. ‘GENRE: CLASSIC/BEST SELLER’. Logic, reasoning and animal cunning at work here!) I headed off to a local public bar to begin my studious campaign for the truth.
The very first question I asked was directed at the matronly, and nearly smiling bar maid. “Do you take credit cards?” Her reply was an affirmative nod, so I was underway. I signed the credit card docket with my hand shaking just a little. The shaking could have been induced by the excitement of becoming a best selling author, but more was the truth, as a reaction to seeing the vast sum of twenty five dollars on the docket, and the knowledge that I may not be rolling in those potential millions by the time my credit card bill arrived. I had not considered this timing issue in my plans. Too late now I thought, so onward I marched and signed an expansion to my debt base.
Buying a round of drinks for the luckily, few patrons at the bar, I began to tell them of my conundrum. The full and unedited version of the facts. The dilemma I wished to solve. Not for the world, but just for my own peace of mind. Why is this ‘bulbous thing’ there? After hearing my eloquent if I may say so, version of the story, they all looked at me as if I was stark raving mad. Any doubts I had to this effect were clarified by a rather large fellow. Dressed in the standard Aussie working man’s uniform of faded blue singlet, navy blue Yakka shorts, pull on Blundstone boots and overhanging beer gut, he stood from his stool, drank my beer in one gulp, looked down at me from all of his six foot plus frame and announced directly to my face, “You perverted little poofter!” before walking out of the bar to his Mack truck.
Not a good start I was thinking to myself. I was reassured by the sight of the remaining few enjoying the free beer. I believed I was still in with a hope. Alas, I was wrong. With the emptying of each (free) beer down the gullet of these stereotypical Australian public bar drinkers, my knowledge of the Australian slang, vernacular and put-down-humour was increased. Ranging from a plain, simple and precise “Get fucked!” to “You need a bloody brain transplant!” and including one priceless gem, “Thanks for the beer, now go stick you head in a bucket of shit! Back door bandits like you aren’t welcome in here!”
I was becoming a little forlorn. Calculating the six beers I had bought at $2.80 each, for a total of $16.80 worth of insults, I figured I had only $8.20 left of my research money, and no answer in sight. I discussed my dilemma with the matronly bar maid, who even though she gave off an unpleasant and cold persona, was the only person I could talk to, given the fact that the public bar was now void of patrons. Although bordering on being polite, I sensed that even she would prefer, if only for economic reasons, that I was not here.
Downhearted and ready to accept defeat, I drank my last mouthful of beer, and readied myself for my exit. At this point, the matronly bar maid placed a fresh beer in front of me. She was obviously very experienced at her job, and was vigilant and attentive in noticing that my glass was nearing empty. Alongside the beer, she placed $8.20. I look at her with what must have been a look of confusion, or at least surprise.
“Listen Luv,” she said in a motherly tone, “There’s your change. This one’s one me. But before you go, can I give you a word of advice?” “Yes, of course.” I stumbled.
“Aussie men don’t like to talk about sex Luv. It just isn’t the done thing. They like to tell dirty yarns, but not to discuss what is private, you know what I mean?” I nodded in agreement, and defeat.
I finished my beer, and wished adieu to the ‘woman of wise words’. She beckoned to me with her index finger to come a little closer. I wondered what the hell she was up to. But I did as she asked, and as I leant forward, she whispered in my ear. “If it is any help Luv, it is a well known fact that your ‘Little Willy’ has a knob on the end to stop you hand slipping off!” She ended her words of wisdom with a huge belly laugh and wished me a good day as tears of laughter started to glisten in the corner of her eyes.
So there you have it. An understanding of my credentials on which I stake my claim to be able to authoritatively discuss this subject. Not only have I completed an extensive and might I add, personally costly research project on this subject, but also, unlike the mega expensive yet unobjective international studies, I reached a positive and undeniably irrefutable conclusion. One other qualification I have is that I had my embarrassment gland removed at an early age, and unlike many in my field, I am not shy to say the word ‘penis’.
24 I must be honest. It is easy to say this in writing. I am not so sure I have the confidence to shout it aloud in a crowded city street.

******

At age four, many things can be confusing. My first recollection of total confusion occurred behind the kindergarten I attended. I had been playing in the sand pit, and being a country boy, saw no need to make the journey indoors, when all I needed was a pee. The back fence seemed a far more convenient place. Mid way through the exercise, I noticed a co-attendee standing at my side. I immediately established that she was a girl because she had a dress on. She pointed as only young children can do, and asked ‘What’s that?”
I was at a loss as to how to respond to such a stupid question. I recall I checked the fence to see if there was a spider or lizard that may have been the subject of her inquiry, but no, she seemed to be pointing to my, as I new it then, Willy. “Willy!” I responded and was lost by the stupidity of this line of questioning. Maybe this was just a name thing. I had struck this before. Parents seem to go to extraordinary lengths to invent ‘home grown’ names for things they had trouble dealing with; so one thing could have ten or more names in the street.
“Where’s mine?” she asked. (Later I was to discover that question is a very female domain, and not restricted to the under five year old demographic!) “Your what?” I naturally replied, still awfully confused. (To this very day, I still become awfully confused under intense questioning by a member of the opposite sex.) “My Willy!” she replied almost angrily. “I dunno.” I responded, accompanied by the almost mandatory shrug of the shoulders. “But I want one!” she started to cry.
By this time, I had completed my assignment, and had replaced all my personal equipment back in my shorts, and was readying to return to the sand pit, where action was aplenty. “Look between you legs.” I said as I started to return to the sand pit. I was thinking how stupid girls were. It was at this point that my life changed. In an instant she had her dress held up and her pants down to reveal, (to my complete and utter astonishment) nothing! I cannot remember if I felt sorry for her, but one thing was clear at that point. She very definitely did not have a Willy! She insisted I look, and I had to admit she was right. There wasn’t even a small one hiding.
I didn’t fully appreciate the knowledge I had gained at that precise moment, because confusion was reigning supreme. And it took a while, some days in fact, to confirm the fact that yes, all boys seemed to have Willies, and it would further seem from a limited amount of study at kindergarten that girls by default did not.
In today’s modern, technological, electronically informed, Bill Gates dominated society we live in, information such as this may be easier to access. As opposed to my ‘find out by pure luck and accident inspired guessing at life’s mysteries’ upbringing in a late 1950’s Australia that could not even pronounce the word sex due to the lack of anyone hearing the word said out loud, so hence no one uttered it, (maybe thought of only in bedrooms with doors locked and lights out) today’s babies must get it easier. Not being a recent father, I can only has at a guess that in this new, rapidly changing technological world, new born babies are more than likely taken from the delivery ward, and immediately deposited in a Microsoft designed ‘Introduction to Windows’ crib. And by taking advantage of a new born’s instinctive grip on to everything and anything, a ‘Grip Sensitive Mouse’ is placed in the baby’s hand. An interactive screen located at the focal point of the baby, (approximately 1.5 cm from the nose) and headphones are used to give the baby all the vital information it needs to survive in society.
25 Now commonly referred to as a GSM device.
As an added bonus to being Windows 98 proficient and finding out information as vital as that boys have Willies and girls don’t in less than two hours, the GSM also records fingerprint details, registers the new citizen for a Medicare card in exactly sixteen years time, updates the electoral role for eighteen years time, and passes the fingerprints to every Police Force in the country as well as Interpol. Social Security is also notified, and unless the mother applies for cancellation due to extenuating circumstances, the first welfare payment will be in the post by days end.
This advance in modern society is all well and dandy, but I believe I will stay with the past at hand. As I would imagine my readership (I am dreaming of a number bigger than one million here, but reality seems to keep interfering and indicating a vastly different number in a range of less than seven) is older than three years old, (i.e. pre Window 95) so more empathetic to my tales of woe and accidental discovery of sex than a ‘know it all in two hours’ post Windows 95 child.
After the basic discovery of an anatomical difference between boys and girls, the going got very tough. The road to discovery was not an easy one to follow. For a start, ending kindergarten and starting primary school bought a tremendous obstacle to information. It would be a number of years before I could re-establish communications with girls. The age I was entering at ‘big school’ was an age of hating girls. Boys just did not talk to girls. If you got caught, there was a very good chance that the school bully would call you ‘a girl’, and beat the living crap out of you. This put a dampener on my enthusiasm to discover this as yet undefined mystery that would be later in my life referred to as ‘sex’.
To underline the danger I lived in, it was just bad luck that had me sitting next to a girl in the lunch shed at age six and a half, and innocently I entered a negotiation for her peanut paste sandwich. I hated the way my Mum’s tomato and cheese sandwiches went all mushy by lunchtime, but as she indicated she liked her tomato sandwiches like that, it was easy to conclude a satisfactory exchange. My interaction with a girl, even though it was only based on pure greed for peanut paste, and a hatred of soggy bread, was duly noticed and reported to our school bully. He was a fat Greek kid, whose name eludes me to this day, but could inflict bone-crushing kicks to the shins. My personal cost for one peanut paste sandwich, were two bruised shins that took a week and a half to lose that neon blue and yellow hue. ‘Discretion being the better part of valour’, and ‘better a live coward than a dead hero’ were expressions that typified my next few years. The mystery would have to wait; otherwise I stood a good chance of being crippled by age eight.
After a hiatus of many years. Enough to forget that there was a mystery at all; events rekindled my interest in this matter that had remained un-named and forgotten for so long. The mystery now had a name. Sex. But what was it? And what do you do with it? As I mentioned earlier in this book, an answer can be of little help, if you have no idea of what the question is that you should ask, or should have asked. But there were hints to follow up. And blind alleys and red herrings and misunderstandings to ensure I lost my way.
Little girl: Mummy. Do you and Daddy have sexual relations?
Mother: Yes Dear.
Little Girl: Then how come they don’t visit?
26 I apologise for confusing topics here. I will try to avoid politics until the appropriate point in the book.
27 We have Americanised this to ‘Peanut Butter’. For the story’s accuracy, I have used the exact words printed on the jar in 1962.
28 Recipe 4. Mum’s Soggy Tomato and Cheese Sandwich.
The simple secrets to these very soggy sandwiches lie in two fundamentals. One. Always prepare with frozen bread. Two. Create two layers of sliced, (preferably over ripe) tomatoes encasing between them one very thin layer of cheese. Even simpler. The order is: Bread, tomato, cheese, tomato, bread. Perfectly soggy by lunch time, every time.

******

Guilt! A very powerful motivator and tool of obedience unsurpassed for effectiveness and control. Especially of children. In the early 1960’s it was an essential child rearing tool and society control. It was used by any form of authority that had any form of power or need to persuade. From parents to Governments. Fear was another great tool, which will get a smaller mention due to its connection with guilt. What is guilt? In simple terms it is having your small brain programmed to immediately react when you do something. At the moment of enacting an action, and sometimes if the program is particularly well embedded, at the conception of the thought of the possibility of planning an action, an alert is subconsciously raised that says, “You’re gonna get into trouble!” Or another well known alert, “If I get caught I will get a belting. Better move my bum to the vacant block down the street.”
Guilt promotes alternative behaviour. Sometimes this was done for the child’s own protection. As in, “If you go near that stove I will give you a belting!” created a fear, but also a guilt if you happened by the stove, and inadvertently got just a little too close. It must be wrong to go near that white thing in the kitchen. There was little mention of being scolded by hot water or getting burns and needing skin grafts. The fear and guilt was enough. Being dragged from the side of the road and being told as you are dragged by the scruff of the neck that “I’ll kill you, you little brat if I catch you on the road again!” is a good example of a guilt implant being created. This in-building of guilt about going near the road was effective in keeping me away from the road, but it created a greater fear in my brain of my mother than it did of the dangers of being squashed by a car on the road. But, I did feel guilt manifesting in me when I ventured to the front garden. I was innocent up and including the fence line. Further than that I was guilty!
Guilt also hangs around for a long time. Reshaping itself over the years to be truly active and relevant to each new stage of life. As a brain program, it is one of those little blighters that can be very hard to erase.
1962 revisited. Location: Bathroom. Situation: In bath.
Any six year old boy can tell you, if free from a guilt complex, that he has discovered that his penis (Willy in this era and case) does not always look the same. Sometimes a little longer, wider, skinnier, shorter or even dumpier than the last time it was inspected. As its singular function of freeing up room in the bladder for more cordial, coca cola, water or ginger beer is performed a number of times a day, and has to be held and aimed correctly, Willy changes do get noticed. As a six year old, I knew this too. No big deal. Until it became a big deal.
This big deal came about in a flash. On entering the tepid water of my daily bath, I happened to notice that Willy was in one of its silly upward and firmer modes, and noticing my mother noticing, I immediately laughed. The humour to me was the fact that it looked funny just poking out of the water like that. Like a little submarine’s periscope. My chuckling at my submarine humour was cut short extremely promptly by the sudden lash of my mother’s tongue.
“It is not funny. You naughty little boy. That’s very naughty. Get out of the bath this instant!”
Silence prevailed as she towelled me dry. The matter had been discussed fully. Nothing more was to be said. I gathered this from the silence that was maintained. A concept was now firmly in place in my small brain. My Willy was not something to be discussed, looked at, admired, laughed at or mentioned. Any change in condition of my Willy was naughty. Anytime he was to get into one of his silly upward and firmer modes, I was to feel immediately guilty. This was going to be difficult, as over the coming years of my young life, I would discover that no matter how hard I tried, my penis was one part of my body that was difficult to control, and obeyed very few of the social controls I was sure I should have possessed over its behaviour. For a young boy or adolescent in a family home environment, just getting out of bed in the morning could take on mammoth proportions of guilt, anxiety or embarrassment.
This one seemingly unimportant and minor experience, similar I am sure, (but not confirmed by returned questionnaires) to many young children of the sixties and before, created the guilt. The beginning of the program that would be embedded in my/our brains as children. Before long this guilt program was enhanced by teachers and relatives. “That’s dirty!” was a favourite expression I can recall being used on probably hundreds of occasions. It is only now that I realise that these key phrases were used to trigger the guilt program any time we ventured close to the truth about sex. Is it any wonder I got told, “That’s dirty!” I was in a no win situation. No one was going to tell me anything. So I had to find out for myself. And if I was discovered looking for clues, out would come the guilt lines. “You dirty little boy!” for looking at a bra advertisement in the Woman’s Day magazine.
So the safest way was to only seek information from my peers. This was not the preferred or, in hindsight fastest road to the truth. But it was the only safe one. It was a process of questions and answers and the application of logic. Where do babies come from? Simple. This question’s answer went unchallenged for a number of years, because the answer around our school was so logical. From the navel of course! Why else would it be there? It seemed safe to assume also, given that we knew that mothers had babies, because Dad’s didn’t go to hospital, that girls navel’s must have some special qualities. It must just open up or something!
Satisfied with this fact, now clearly established and beyond doubt, we added the known fact that babies drank milk from breasts. Most of us had baby brothers or sisters and had seen this happen. This fact just added weight to our understanding so far. Boys had these small nipple things the same as girls, but the girl’s ones must be special. Like the navel. Easy. All locked away. Mystery solved.
Until, someone threw a spanner in the works. I believe if my memory is correct, I was around ten years old when this bombshell hit. A girl had heard her mother getting very angry with her older sister. Her sister was fifteen. She had been caught by her mother kissing a boy! Now, the bombshell was this. The younger sister heard her mother explain to her elder sister, that kissing a boy could lead to her getting pregnant.
Well! This was news. Yes, we knew what pregnant was. Mum with fat tummy and baby. But we had not figured on this new angle. Babies didn’t just happen. The woman GOT pregnant. And by KISSING! Boy, now we were on the track of something entirely new. In a few days we had the bugs in the theory worked out. Ones such as, why didn’t you get pregnant when you got kissed by a relative. This was easily explained by a girl in grade seven, who was obviously more mature and hence wiser than us underlings. (We all figured this because we could make out ‘bumps’ on her chest under her school jumper.) She explained, that you only got pregnant if the boy put his tongue in the girl’s mouth. Since relatives did not do this, we accepted her explanation as gospel. At last I believed, as I am sure many of my mates did, that we had this mystery completely solved.
Back to the time of the infamous bathtub incident. A little before in fact. Curiosity is I believe a wonderful quality in any one. It drives us on an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. This surely is a good thing. Still at an age, (five I think) when I believed my parent’s best endeavours at openness and attempts to educate me with the open invitation of, “If you want to know something, just ask”, I accepted the invitation. Not familiar with the concept of ‘good timing’, I chose the time to be when I was seated in the back seat of the car, with Mum driving. She had just picked me up from kindergarten, and one of her girlfriends was seated in the passenger seat. She lived next door to us, and Mum gave her a lift from time to time to and from her job. My timing also coincided with the moment my Mum was driving up a steep hill called Mount Misery. I believe with the aid of hindsight, that my Mum was also a little nervous about driving at that time, but had no choice, as my dad was away working. So it was at this moment that I took up the open invitation.
“Mum?”
“Yes Derek.”
“What does fuck mean?”
This was the point that I believe we nearly had the family car plummet down the almost full height of Mount Misery. The rest of my memory of the incident is a bit scratchy, apart from the fact that I did not get a satisfactory answer to my question. A giggle from my Mum’s girlfriend is a vivid memory though.
A full and clear explanation and meaning of fuck would have to wait. It would be a long time coming.

******

I lived in a small country town in 1962 at age six. A new State Housing Commission house in a new State Housing Commission area was my home. It was built of asbestos, which in 1962 was a wonderful building material and allowed for the modern look of my new home. I do remember it being called a ‘contemporary’ design. How wonderful! (It would be a couple of decades yet before asbestos was declared a substance that could kill from the damage asbestos fibres could do to lungs. Descriptions of painful and agonising death from exposure to asbestos would not hit the newspapers until well after I vacated this house.) It would be over a year after moving in to our new contemporary, modern State House that the road on which we lived was sealed with bitumen.
It was however a great location to be six years old. So many other kids my age to play with. (My sister was only one then, and totally useless as far as playing with went.) Collecting cow beetles, climbing trees, breaking other kid’s toys and them breaking mine, and crying all the way home to Mum. And once composure had been recovered, back to the fold, for a cow beetle race.
There was also much discussion and gossip to be undertaken and possibly understood. All the news of the suburb. Topics were of a general ‘finding out about life’ type subject, and would range from a new puppy to a new brother or sister, through to why girls cry when you hit them, or how many crackers you had bought for ‘Cracker Night’.One particular topic of gossip though, was number one on the list for many, many months. This engrossing mystery was called ‘The Dutch House’.
29 Cracker Night was called Guy Fawkes Night in my childhood. It was a family fireworks night to celebrate the attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. It has been said that Guy Fawkes was the only man ever to enter Parliament with a positive intent!
The ‘Dutch House’ was a house exactly the same as every other house in the street. Contemporarily built in asbestos, with a low slung post and rail chain mesh front fence. Painted in a pastel yellow being the only way to differentiate it from the other houses. Some were painted in pastel blue, pastel green or for some lucky families, pastel mauve. The reason the ‘Dutch House’ had gained such a rapid notoriety, was because every parent in the street was talking about the ‘Dutch House’ in secretive whispers. Whispers that we children overheard in small and fragmented pieces. It was our task as a group to try and piece together our collective fragments so as to discover what the mystery and intrigue was all about. The intrigue was of course amplified by our collective parent’s warnings not to go near the ‘Dutch House’.
Our first solid fact discovered, was that it was called ‘That Dutch House’ by our parents, because it was occupied by a recently immigrated Dutch couple. We all knew what an ‘immigrant was, but we did not know where this country called Dutch actually was, because it did not rate a mention in our school atlases. This was the beginning of a perplexing mystery. We did wonder whether this Dutch country could in fact be on another planet. This concept was not totally accepted, but nor was it totally and categorically rejected. On many occasions we would ‘stake out’ the ‘Dutch House’ by hiding from view, and spy on the occupants as they arrived home from work. They were indeed mysterious people. They spoke a gibberish we had never heard. Sounds from the throat we overheard, we tried to copy, but we always sounded like we were just choking.
A new phrase was added to the mystery when the girl next door said she heard her Mum and Dad say that they had ‘Wife Swapping Parties’ at the ‘Dutch House’. Now this was a concept for a lot of discussion. ‘Wife Swapping’. What could this mean? For days and weeks we discussed the various possibilities that could arise from this notion. One of the first conclusions was that if our Dads swapped their wife, that would mean we would have someone else’s Mum to cook dinner for us. This we thought was good logic. And if this happened, would our new Mum know what we liked to eat? Would she know how to use the washing machine? Would she drive us to school? What if our new Mum did not drive? So many questions to answer.
Would our new, temporary Mum bring her own clothes or use Mum’s? Would Dad give her a kiss when he left for work each morning? We sniggered at this thought!
Our list of questions, including where the country Dutch was, would not be answered. The topic of the ‘Dutch House’ faded into memory when the ‘Dutch Couple’ moved from the suburb.
Only in later life, when reminded of this, did I realise that this poor young couple had been painted with a brush of ignorant stereotyping by a suburb of small minded immature people. They had left because they had been victimised by the residents of the suburb. Their attempt at a new life thwarted by ignorance and the self righteousness of naïve gossiping men and women. To be Dutch in 1960’s Geraldton naturally meant that you practised wife swapping. That is what Dutch people did. Everyone knew that. Very few, if any, knew that Dutch people came from a country called the Netherlands. Some had heard of Holland, but would never have made the connection.

******

Since arriving in Australia just over two years ago, my Morticia, my girlfriend-lover-de facto-wife-etc, noticed that making new friends was taking on a definite tilt. She had made many men friends, but had found the going tough with women. She became confused as to why, although polite and courteous, women kept a distance. An invisible screen that she could not break through. She raised the subject one evening, and spoke of her frustration and confusion.
I replied to her that the answer was very simple. Being Swiss, from Geneva, with a distinctive French accent she was immediately recognised as French. Now the stereotypical French woman, to a typical mid-aged Australian woman is of course a woman addicted to love and sex. She knows this because she has seen French movies in which French women always appear naked at some point in the movie, and read books with characters who have been French. Mills and Boon and such like romance novels are full of these wonderfully stereotypical French female characters. They are all and always love and sex driven. She also knows for a fact, that French women ooze natural sex appeal that is irresistible to any male. The equation of French female equalling nymphomaniac is therefore proved true. And when encountered, she is someone of which to be very wary.
The Australia male of course is not slow at mathematics. He knows the same equation! Derived from similar reliable sources to his Australian equivalent female.
French female =Nymphomaniac!
Will our country (and others) ever rid itself of naïve and ignorant stereotyping?

******

Life is just one big mystery. Anyone who claims to know it all, and has the confidence to say that they are in no doubt or confusion about anything at all on the subject of life or living or society or tax law is either a liar, or a politician. In my experience it is very difficult to tell the difference between a liar and a politician. I can only profess this probable difference. A politician is paid from the public purse to be a consummate and respected liar. As for a liar not on the public purse, they must carry the stigma of being an ordinary and unrespected ‘lying little creep’. Until, that is, they lie their way into public office, and become elected on a ‘bagful’ of lies, (called promises now!) and take their seat in one of our many parliaments or Local Councils. I live in constant amazement at how well our modern society has been structured so as to accommodate some of the less able (‘truth challenged’ I believe is the polite term used nowadays) in our midst, and create institutions where they can go to work and feel like they are contributing to society. Our parliaments are very specialised ‘sheltered workshops’ in fact, but with just a little pizzazz!

******

More common than a liar, is someone who is just uninformed, unaware, oblivious, ignorant, lazy, or naive. This group of people are just normal. If this group was categorised and tagged, and removed from the planet’s face, only politicians would remain. Of this group of people, the ‘unaware’ make up the majority.
Some years ago, a friend who was also a doctor, had a puzzle he just could not solve. As a caring and assiduous family practitioner, he took his patient’s interests to heart. His patient’s liked him very much, and to many became a family friend, as was the case with our family. In many cases he had delivered young babies, who in time had their babies delivered by him. One particular family had been patient’s of his for many years. He knew the whole family, their medical histories, relationships and respected their Greek heritage and customs, and sometimes their little idiosyncrasies. Most important of all, he was a friend to the entire family.
His puzzle was this. Number one son had been married for two years and his wife had not managed to produce a grandchild. You will notice in the last sentence that it is very definitely the wife that had not produced the grandchild. This was the problem. My friend the doctor had performed every conceivable test on the poor downhearted young woman. She felt anxious in that she had not performed her duty as a good wife. And he could find nothing wrong with her. She was as fit and as fecund a young woman as he had ever seen. There was no reason that he could find to explain the barren marriage. In an effort to help the family, he invited the husband to come and see him for a chat.
Very soon after the consultation began, the doctor suggested that a sperm count might be the next step in solving the mystery. This suggestion was met with rage by the young man. His manhood was not under question at all. It was his wife who had a problem. “There is nothing at all wrong with me” he insisted, and from this the doctor gathered that it was pointless for the time being, in pursuing pathological tests. He calmed the young man down with some family chat, and football scores and tried a new approach.
Explaining the ovulation cycle of a woman to his patient, he started to probe as to whether the couple had misunderstood the times that were more conducive to success. He remembered discussing this with the wife, but she had been embarrassed to talk about the subject of sexual intercourse, insisting only that she knew about the cycle.
With a small chart as an aid, the doctor started to explain about the rise in temperature towards peak fertility, and that it may help if the young man’s wife started a daily temperature chart. It was when the doctor began this sentence that bells started to ring. “With the knowledge a temperature chart, you will know the best time to have sexual intercourse…..” The doctor was interrupted rudely by the young man, who knowledgeably said, “I know about this doctor. I am a good husband. I do what I must do. And every time the blood comes, I do my duty.”
The doctor sat flabbergasted for a moment, and then stood from his seat and came around to his patient, and sat down next to him and said, “My friend, we need to have a little chat.”
This story tells me that the only difference between this young man and myself, was that we went to different schools. Had I not stumbled on a few more pieces of information prior to my first marriage, also at a young age, I am sure that I would have been kissing my wife until our lips were chapped, in an all out effort to fulfil our baby making desires.
Being unaware of some of life’s little mysteries can cause far bigger problems. It is easy to say that our parent’s should take responsibility in this area in particular. But times, prevailing attitudes and social taboos must be considered here. With many issues of the past now being dragged into today’s news, and the tragic consequences of some of these I do not try to diminish, I do wonder if we are attaching an immediate and knee jerk guilty verdict on well meaning people of past eras. It is very easy to prove guilt and convict a past attitude, custom, believe, doctrine or even a state law that was practised by a person or group acting in another place in time.
Example. Twenty years ago, I used to smoke cigarettes on a state public transport bus. This is now illegal. Can I be prosecuted for that now? Simplistic argument I hear shouted at the page! Yes, it is a simplistic argument. And no, I cannot be prosecuted. I ask though, where does the line begin in being able to prosecute the past? Where a law or attitude has remained unchanged, there of course is no discussion. But when both the laws and attitudes (and morals in many cases) have changed over many years, can society retrospectively prosecute. This is about judging a guilt with the advantage of hindsight. I believe it to be an unfair proposition, but will leave you to ponder.
If there is one taboo, in western societies in particular, it is very definitely that sex thing! As often as we try to convince ourselves that we are now living in a sexually liberated and sexually tolerant society, we fail miserably. Could it be that we pre 1970 babies are too well programmed with the sex/guilt association, and that post 1970 babies are programmed with an even far more fearful dissuasive mental program? Death by AIDS! Serious illnesses such as hepatitis! A sex/fear mental program.
Whichever is the case, there always seems to be a mental and almost clinical decision to be made prior to having a sexual encounter. When I was young and discovering what sexual activity actually was, (there was a lot of trial and error involved at this particular point in my life) the only real fear was of two things. Well three if you count the fear of getting the lady or girl serving behind the counter of the chemist shop to serve you instead of the man when you wanted to buy condoms. Back then of course, for the information of younger readers, condoms were not displayed on little revolving racks, in easy picking reach. No, they were hidden somewhere in the chemist shop, and a search had to be carried out every time you tried to purchase a packet. I used to hate the ‘smart arsed bastard’ chemist at my local pharmacy, who thought it a great joke to murmur just loud enough so anyone not completely deaf could hear his mumbling of, ‘condoms, condoms, now where are they” as clear as a bell for two miles! His coup de grâce, after locating the condoms, was to yell at the top of his voice, “Pack of six or twelve?” I hated that bastard!
Back to the two fears. One was of course, getting a girl pregnant. Hence the condoms. And no thanks at all to that bastard chemist, and many bastard chemists like him either. I wonder how many unwanted pregnancies were caused by that smart arsed bastard’s cruel treatment of poor innocent and easily embarrassed, (and guilt ridden I might add) boys whose only crime was to have reached an age when their body chemistry and evolutionary instincts drove them to an ever pressing primeval urge to fuck anything remotely female? To make matters worse, these young hormone driven men, myself included, knew that after the savage and barbaric ritual we had survived in just preparing for the possibility, we knew our odds of successfully completing our mission were extremely slim. This caused another problem. Because it was such a trauma to purchase condoms, (yet again, that bastard chemist is to blame) and the time it took to put them to the use they were designed for, they tended to stay in a young man’s wallet until needed. While one owned condoms, there was no sane reason to revisit that bastard chemist! Hence, after residing in a wallet in a young man’s back pocket for a few months, rubber does give way to fair wear and tear. So I am sure that even when life went well for young men then, there was a fair to good chance that the precaution of a condom was a rather hit or miss affair. It must be said, that that bastard chemist was only reflecting an attitude of the times. Sex outside of marriage did not really happen. He was just having fun with us. He knew we were hopeful, but we wouldn’t do anything. Unfortunately, the bastard was right. Well, most of the time.
Second fear. Something called V.D. I wasn’t completely sure what it actually was back then, but my mates and I had heard someone mention ‘The V.D. Clinic!’ So it was medical. Apart from that we were a bit in the dark. We did however know about ‘crabs’. One of my mates got them and showed all of us in our gang. Hard to see at first, but on closer inspection you could see them moving. We were all jealous, because apparently you could only get ‘crabs’ by having sex. So this proved that our mate had scored a fuck! In all the bragging and bravado we used to try and convince our mates that we had ‘scored’, there was rarely any way to prove or disprove the fact. But hey, who could argue with someone who had irrefutable proof like a case of ‘crabs’! If you are wondering how my mate solved his little infestation problem, I can tell you this. He was shit scared of going to see that bastard chemist. So he went to the pet shop and bought a bottle of dog flea rinse. Apart from a bit of redness and mild to chronic irritation that lasted only a couple or three weeks, and a funny sort of walk for the same amount of time, he assured us that the treatment was successful.
Apart from fear, there was this guilt business to handle correctly. Apart from close mates, this sex subject was never mentioned. By anyone! It really felt as though it was a solo effort for life. No help. No guide books. (Except for National Geographic which had lots of photos of tits, and an occasional Playboy stolen from an elder brother or uncle.) The only certainty with regard to sex, made clear by the world outside our close group of ‘like confused’ young men, was that it was a criminal offence to be a homosexual. There were two words in common usage then. ‘Poofters’ and ‘Homos’. The word ‘gay’ would be a long time coming. We were fairly sure what these words meant. Sodomy wasn’t a word we knew then, so if we needed to explain the concept to a younger peer, who was just a little more in the dark than we were, we would tell him that homos were men who fucked other men’s bums. This seemed to cover it satisfactorily. The concept of, and the word lesbian did not exist then. It would be a few more years before I would be aware, (and society in general) that homosexuality could also apply to women.
So, I was on my own in this sex thing. At least with the other appetite, there was some help at hand. Once, visiting family friends, my parents were offered these funny things called olives. Black things in a small jar. I asked if I could try one. “Of course” I was told, “But you probably won’t like them.” I tried one. It tasted awful! The second one tasted marginally better. I had a feeling that these olives were like cigarettes. The first one nearly killed me, but with perseverance I would end up loving these little black things.
With the sex appetite, things were not so easy. “Would you like to try oral sex?” was never a question I heard asked of me. There is a very solid appetite connection here. Between the black olives and oral sex. The appetite for both did take some acquiring, but once acquired, well, I know I will never lose my appetite or passion for black olives!
“Try it, you might like it” was a phrase I heard as a kid when served a food I had not eaten before. (While on the subject of food, I just realised that that fortune cookie induced hole in my molar has not been attended to as yet. My tongue has just confirmed the fact again by sending a pain message from being caught yet again by the sharp piece of enamel clinging to the molar’s root. I do not like pain. But as you have probably gathered, I am also one of those people who live in fear of dentists. Yes, I know, be tough, grow up, and make an appointment. Ok, I will. Tomorrow. Or maybe Monday week. I think I have a busy week coming. I hope!) If I had had this easy opportunity to establish likes and dislikes, and maybe I will try it again type of potential likes, when it came to my non-food appetite, it would certainly have reduced the time it took to discover what my actual sexuality was. (One’s sexuality is a recent addition to my vocabulary. Back then it had no name. Just funny feelings and desires.) Now this is of course a nonsense. It just could not happen in the same form of, “Try it you might like it” scenario. But the opportunity to talk about a few confusing points might have been a help. Sure as hell my mates were of precious little help. Apart from having a few people to boast about imaginary sexual conquests.
The closest any of us really got to a sexual victory, apart from my mate who had crabs, was masturbation. What a godsend! Why didn’t someone just tell all of us hormone crazy young men about this outlet for the testosterone build up? In a way they did I suppose. It was generally understood, and the message delivered loud and clear from a few mature and knowledgeable fronts that yes, there was a thing called masturbation, but it wasn’t to be discussed, apart from the simple warning that it would send you blind! With my success rate with girls, I lived for a few years with one concrete and absolute certainty. I was going to go blind!
We can all be made to believe the most incredible lies, if the lie is delivered from a credible and trusted source. We can also all be unaware of a truth or reality when it is hidden in the bottom draw of a filing cabinet, stored in a dark basement, behind a locked door for which the key has been lost. But told later, after making a complete and utter fool of yourself, “Oh, why didn’t you just ask?” was a perpetuation of the teasing lie. In the 1960’s you learned as a youngster, DO NOT ASK! The only results that would be achieved from taking up the invitation was to be called a ‘dirty minded little boy’, or at best, ‘you will find out when you get a bit older’. Or ‘ask your father’, which if you did only got you into a viscous circle because father would immediately refer you back to mother. Find out for yourself. It was easier.
For a four year old, is it any easier to ask now than it was for me? Would a sixteen year old of today get a straight answer from his or her parents? The answer is in both cases, in the vast majority, yes, of course. Times have changed, and changed for the better. Society is far more open, and has a more open mind and understanding attitude towards truthful and useful ‘life information’. However, it may be a mute point, because if I categorise and label my early years as the ‘ignorant age’ complete with all its failings, what are we to make of the new era of the ‘information age’ from which our young generation gain so much of their knowledge? It may be that both generations learn about life from outside the family.

******

An organised, structured, well designed and implemented life plan has not been a process I have succeeded in planning or executing. A sense of order and neat methodical application to a task has not been a high priority for me at any time. So any likelihood of organising my thoughts into a rational and logical order in this book is a hopeless wish on my or your behalf. As mentioned in a prior chapter, tearing a page out of this book once you have read it, is a practical suggestion to know exactly where you were when you put the book down. But if order is a high priority to you, may I suggest keeping the torn out pages, and once finished reading the book, just put them back in an order that suits you better, or you believe may suit a subsequent reader. The reason I make this comment is to warn you that I am about to skip right back to a beginning of this chapter, with a beginning that I believe could be better than the one I have already written. But not wanting to waste the words I have laboured over in version one of the beginning of this chapter, I plan to ignore the clear fact that this chapter has already started, and just proceed on an ‘unaware, I did not know’ basis by beginning this chapter again with a new version. So as to not look completely stupid, I will not put the chapter title in again, but just carry on as if nothing has happened.

******

Sex! What is sex?
Well, it depends on which variant of the noun sex you are dealing with. Let me begin with what my little pocket sized edition of ‘Dictionary for Dummies’ says in reference to this subject.
SEX /sεks/, n. 1. the condition of being either male or female.
SEX /sεks/, n. 2. Biol. the total of physical differences by which the male and female are distinguished.
SEX /sεks/, n. 3. the natural desire of attraction drawing one sex towards the other
SEX /sεks/, n. 4. men or women seen as a group.
SEX /sεks/, n. 5. to find out the sex of.
SEX /sεks/, n. 6. sexual intercourse being the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by ejaculation; coitus; copulation.
Now that this is clear, and might I add, so cleverly simplified down to the very essence of the subject in my little ‘Dictionary for Dummies’, that there is hardly any need to go any further with clarification. In fact, after reading these entries it is hard to fathom what all the fuss in about in relation to sex. Surely, as a concept and fact of life there is not all that much to it. Why have I lived a life of almost complete mystery, confusion and intrigue with regard to this sex business, when really it is so simple? If I consult my ‘Dictionary for Dummies’ in regard to the other appetite, it is far less specific and clear.
EAT /it/, v., ate /eit, εt/ eaten/’itn/ eating; n. 1. to take into the mouth and swallow. 2. to destroy as if by eating. 3. to cause to worry or trouble, what’s eating you?. 4. to take a meal. 5. to make a way by or as if by corrosion. 6. to waste away with longing, eat one’s heart out. 8. eat out, to dine away from home.
Now if I had been sensible and had simply gone to a dictionary in my kindergarten days, and read these two entries, chances are that I would have made more sense of the concept and meaning of sex, than I would have done with the concept of eating. In my opinion, the problem has been that complicating the simple, and simplifying the complex is something, as a species, we have made into an art form.
To contradict myself however, of the six definitions of the noun sex, none really are as simple as they sound. In all honesty, number 6 is the clearest of them all. Nice and mechanical, clear and unambiguous. The first definition would have had me in a spin for years trying to find out about my ‘sex condition’. (I should not use the past tense here, as I have just reconsidered this last sentence and have come clean and honestly tell you that I am still confused as to what my male condition is, or should be, or could be.)
I was on the right track regarding number two definition, when I made the startling observation behind the kindergarten that kids with dresses could well all be ‘Willy deficient’ by default. As far as number three is concerned, well, all I can say is why oh bloody why has a whole society, NOT, for some obscure reason, noticed the word NATURAL in this definition. To have been told that “this was a natural desire and attraction”, would have saved millions of people over a millennia I could imagine, a lot of heartache, guilt, fear and frustration. I know it would have saved me a lot of wasted time and emotional energy. I do not feel I need to delve any further into these definitions. I have located the key that unlocks the door to understanding.
It is all quite natural! Has been all the way along. What a relief. As natural as eating. Sexual desire, and hunger. Both appetites, equally natural and normal. Perhaps I will rejoice the discovery with a celebratory dinner with a couple of gay friends, and end the evening drinking beer in a S&M club watching people get their rocks of by being whipped ever so erotically, by a leather and latex dressed ‘Mistress of Discipline’!
30 Sado-Masochism for those unfamiliar with what S&M means.
Ooops! Have I misinterpreted the meaning of natural and normal? I must have done, because my ‘guilt’ program has just started to run again. I can hear it starting to get into gear. Here it comes. Oh boy it is loud!
MY GUILT: “You dirty, disgusting creature. You should be ashamed of yourself. How could you? As if befriending homosexuals is not bad enough, you now want to delve into perversion. Disgusting!”
MY CONSCIENCE: Ok, I give up! I cede to the wishes of my guilt. Tomorrow I will look for a virgin wife, a house with a white picket fence, in a neighbourhood with a church. I also promise to undertake sex ONLY as a means to make a family, and only out of a sense of duty. I also promise that I will do it quietly in the matrimonial bed with the lights out and door locked, and will remain as fully dressed as practically possible so as to ensure my own, and my wife’s dignity.
MY GUILT: No need to be facetious.
MY CONSCIENCE: Why don’t you fuck off and let me enjoy my life!
MY GUILT: You are a dirty foul mouthed creature. You need help. Have you considered psychological help? It is nothing to be ashamed of.
MY CONSCIENCE: Hey Guilt! Surely you have completed your role in my life. Well over forty years is a long stint. I am clear. A clear conscience! There is no useful purpose you can serve. Why don’t you go away?
MY GUILT: I can’t go away. I am stuck in here. You will just have to learn to live with me. Will you stop swearing at me if I promise to try and be a little more flexible? A little more tolerant. A little more 90’s than 60’ in attitude.
MY CONSCIENCE: All right. I’ll try. It would be so much easier if we could find a quiet time and space to resolve some of these issues. A time when we are both comfortable and relaxed. There is hardly enough room in here for simple rational common sense and everyday thinking. Most of my time is taken up with a matter of an overdue credit card. Handling all this moral, ethical and ‘what’s normal’ business as well could really overload his CPU capacity.
MY GUILT: Why don’t we meet when he’s watching the football. We can have the whole place to ourselves!
MY CONSCIENCE: Terrific idea! See you an Saturday afternoon.
Agenda of topics to be carefully thought about during Carlton v St.Kilda. So what is to be considered normal? And who is to judge what normal is? What is normal sex? Can sex be normal? Am I normal? Who is normal? Do I have to be normal? Can I be normal? Do I even care? What will I do about my credit card?

Not a Chapter. Just Autobiographical Egotism

It is normal to begin a book such as this with a few notes about the author. Alternatively these notes can be found on the back cover with glowing references from famous names to give credibility to the author. I have not used the back cover for this purpose because I don’t know anybody famous. And I cannot afford to pay one either. I did meet one famous person. Willy Brandt, the ex Chancellor of Germany sat beside me on a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok. I said hello to him, he nodded in acknowledgment of my greeting, then immediately ordered what was obviously not his first double scotch for the day. Downing his drink in mutually polite silence, he then fell asleep and stayed that way for the entire flight. With sour grapes in my thoughts, I don’t think a recommendation from Willy would have made my chances of selling one book any better.
I digressed. This opportunity for the reader to gain a little insight into the background and life of the author, helps in understanding from what perspective the writer is coming from and possibly why he is writing the book. I wanted to give you, the reader, this customary offering. The reason I have strategically placed it here in between chapters three and four is firstly so you could get a feel for the subject matter and now merge that inkling with the now to be admitted personal curriculum vitae. Secondly, to add a touch of individuality to this volume. And thirdly, well, I forgot to do it at the start, and I don’t know how to re-format all the previous chapter headings because I have just upgraded my WP software and I haven’t read the on line help yet.
My progression from being simply a two cell possibility and progressing by division into a four cell near certainty, took place in the obvious anatomical location, but geographically took place in a small country town called York. Sixty miles away to the west of York, nestled on the coast of Western Australia stood Perth. Perth is the most isolated city in the world. Nearly 2000 miles from the nearest city. It is also the most western city of the most isolated country in the world.
Some months later, I was born in Northam. Located 30 miles from York. I believe my mother had to make this journey to find a doctor who owned a pair of forceps. There wasn’t a pair to be found in York. I had apparently shown, at a pre-early age, my tendency to like to sleep in. Being three weeks late and a little over cooked, and my mother being built like a waif on a diet, it was intelligent forward planning to find a doctor who could apply some leverage to the extraction of an overweight lazy lump of a baby.
Back to York with a few bruises around my head, I lived until the age of four in the company of a cat which learned to tolerate having its tail pulled, and a playmate of a similar age to myself, named Sandra if my memory for names serves me correctly. I stand to be corrected on Sandra’s name as my memory for names can fail me less than ten seconds after an introduction. So venturing back forty three years for a name is fraught with danger. Not being the industrial and economic epicentre of the world, my Mum and Dad decided to leave York on the pretext that there was no work for my father. I agreed to accompany them on this new adventure. Plainly they felt a need to escape the small town mentality and discover the world.
So it was that we moved to Geraldton, a small country town 312 miles north of Perth! Remember Perth, the most isolated city in the world. Well now I was geographically exactly 252 miles further away from the most isolated city in the world. With these geographical facts starting to emerge, I trust you are getting a hint as to why I could not find some answers to some questions I had as a child. It took another six years (maybe closer to seven) before my parents got the travel bug again, and finally we moved to the most isolated city in the entire world. Perth! The ‘Big Smoke!’.
In 1968 I was twelve years old, and have a silly little memory, but one that will tell you something of what living in Perth was like. The television news bulletins were like a jigsaw. If any news of importance happened, say in Sydney, we would have the news read to us, but with no footage or pictures. In three days time, when the film of the news item had been flown to Perth, it would be shown. If the news happened to be of an international event, say in London, it could take two weeks to see the footage, and by then no one was interested. There was no contingency for flying news film out of Perth, because no one anywhere else in Australia would be interested in three day old news from a place they hardly knew existed.
I would have to wait, until I was twenty six years old before I ventured to Sydney and out of the social isolation of Perth on a regular basis, and until I was thirty to leave on a one way ticket. Since then, I have been a chronically habitual traveller, a pathological seeker of information and knowledge, and a meeter of new people and friends. Not simply satisfied with finding answers to my unanswered questions, I seek to find questions I haven’t even thought to ask as yet. Probably a symptomatic result of wanting to know everything I perceived that I didn’t know in my first thirty years. There is a distinct possibility that the total of every word in this book adds up to the entire social, cultural, historical, economic, political, scientific and general knowledge of a three year old that has lived their entire life in London, Paris, New York or Sydney, but I cannot contain my excitement at writing about my life discoveries. If nothing else, this book might prove a best seller in York, Geraldton and Perth.
My career path in retrospect reminds me of a nursery rhyme I remember as a child. ‘There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile…’ As logical and well planned as ‘mad woman’s lunchbox’ comes to mind; also a term dug out from a long ago memory. Simply listed in broad and not chronological categories, I have been a printer, a salesman, self employed trader, guitarist, environmentally inspired society dropout, husband twice, father, poet and ever hopeful as yet unpublished author. (Should anyone be reading this book in a printed form, and be able to verify that they have not met me, please take a ball point pen and correct that last entry. Simply draw a dark line through ‘ever hopeful as yet unpublished author’ and replace with ‘well known, successful and extremely talented PUBLISHED author.’
There is a growing temptation I feel to continue with this interlude between chapters, but I do not want to give any possible impression that I may be displaying egotistical tendencies. Raving on about myself could induce this impression, so I will cut short what has been a most enjoyable session on my little Toshiba laptop, and leave you with one last piece of information about myself. Just to round off your insight into my personal life.
I wear a beard. I have for most of my life. Except for the time early in life when I didn’t. The reason is not one of vanity, or an attempt to induce a mature studious look about my person, nor to satisfy fashion trends as they come and go. No, the reason I have a scruffy greying beard is that I am chronically lazy, and I prefer to put the valuable time it would take each morning to shave to a better use. Extra sleep!
It is time to return to the main subject matter of this book. But before I do, I would like to just let you have a little useless information. While typing these ego inspired lines, I was watching a football match on television. The game finished with Carlton beating St. Kilda in cake walk. I don’t know why, but for some reason my head is aching. Surprising really, because it takes no brain power at all to watch a football match, and even less to type a few lines about myself. I must be coming down with something!

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.11.2010

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