When should you judge a book by its cover?

If you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, then what the hell should you judge it by? The blurb? The title? The author photograph? I know, I know – the saying is about not judging a person by their looks, but having a good cover can make or break a book. Or so I've heard. This is all new to me.

When I was writing the design brief for Day Six I did some research on covers I like. And here they are. I got most of them from the now sadly defunct blog Book Design

What covers designed to you like? What makes a book jump out at you from the bookshelf?

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Subtitle, Subtitle by Kingdom for a Subtitle

I think my book, Day Six, needs a subtitle. And now I've done the research I'd say it is pretty much essential. A good subtitle can really sell a book, especially when the actual title isn't that informative, like say Day Six.

Paul McCarthy in his article Compelling Titles and Subtitles  says that the title and subtitle are the most important words that an author will write. No pressure then.

 
I thought I'd look around at other subtitles and see what sort of thing authors come up with. Here are two of my favourites...


One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw.
A good pun is so pleasing. You know this isn't going to be a dry, scientific-jargon riddled yawn-fest because of the use of humour in the pun and the words 'Natural History.' He could have gone for the workaday History of the Screwdriver and the Screw. I wonder how well that would have sold? 


How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Dementia, Ma and Me.
Again the wry humour is pleasing to the reader. Even though dementia is a devastating illness, the humour is gentle enough to still be respectful to the topic. This author is quirky and interesting, and has the strength of character to find the humour in difficult circumstances. You know this isn't going to be a depressing read. It might even be uplifting. Also the 'Ma and Me' gives a relaxed informality and a feeling that the reader will be included in the inner workings of an interesting mother and daughter relationship.


But back to Day Six. Here are the options I've come up with so far. None of them jump out at me.


Day Six; of motherhood and madness (a bit to similar to Hill Billy Gothic)
Day Six; the story of one of the toughest start to motherhood there is
Day Six; through motherhood, madness, hell and back
Day Six; babies, bottles and madness
Day Six; tears and trials of a mentally ill mum
Day Six; my road through pyschosis, depression and motherhood
Day Six; from hallucinations to health with my newborn baby
Day Six; surviving becoming a mum and loosing my mind
Day Six; how I became a mother and lost my mind
Day Six; gaining a baby but losing my mind
Day Six; a story of birth, psychosis and depression
Day Six; how to survive birth, psychosis and depression
Day Six; baby plus me equals insanity
Day Six; when the baby blues go bad

What about changing the title?

Am I Cameron Diaz; when motherhood and madness collide
I'm going to cure cerebral palsy. With dental floss; becoming a mum and losing my mind
I can control dogs with my mind; my mind bending motherhood journey. 

Which do you like best? Do you have any other suggestions?

Synopsis

I need to write a synposis of my book DaySix for my publishers.

How does this sound?

Day Six  is story of one of the roughest introductions to motherhood you can imagine. Jen Wight breaks the taboo around mental ill health to honestly recount her experience of developing post partum psychosis and then severe post natal depression. She tells the tales of being convinced she was Cameron Diaz; that she and Obama were going to use FaceBook to save the world; and that she was going to cure cerebral palsy with dental floss.

One scary night she experiences regressing back through her 'past lives' to become a sixties housewife, an aboriginal women living when Cook first sailed through The Heads into Sydney Harbour, and finally the first chimpanzee to communicate with words. 

And it all started on Day Six of her son's life.

She uses her experiences to explore her relationship with her sister who has schizophrenia and to illustrate that while mental illness can be devastating, there is hope that things can get better.

Words with Foes

Ever the late adopter I have recently got into Words with Friends. And when I say got into I mean TOTALLY f'in addicted.

I play with two friends in London, one in Cambridge, one in Bristol, one in LA and two in Sydney. So at various times of the day and night I get the delightful ping and rush to my iPAD to see what dastardly words my global community of scrabble heads have come up with now.

Who's the best? Well the one in Cambridge obviously. It is the town of the clever people dummy. She doesn't use lots of fancy words but seems to always be able to land on the triple word score whenever my back is turned. The next best is one of my London friends. He comes up with the most obscure words. I sometimes wonder if he just sits there trying out all the possible combinations until WWFs eventually gives in and says yes.

This game, our first, he's come up with Feria (Latin for "free day" was a day on which people, especially slaves, were not obliged to work) and then in a fiendish move added an e at the end to create Feriae (which is just another way of spelling Feria.) He then used the e for the word cate (n. Archaic A choice or dainty food; a delicacy) landing the C (four points) on a triple letter.

He is a writer and editor and has a brain almost the size of a planet, but when my friend at work Jarred told me about an app you can get which gives you all the possible answers, I began to wonder. Jarred said he wished he'd never got into that app because it takes all the fun out of the game. He doesn't play any more.

I think it is good to play with a range of people. You can learn from those better than you as they reveal the tricks of the scrabble trade and you learn all the two letter words like mu (twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet), di (meaning two, twice or double), er (an ancient people inhabiting parts of what are now northern Armenia, northeast Turkey, southern Georgia, and northwest Azerbaijan) and qi (or chi the circulating life energy that in Chinese philosophy is thought to be inherent in all things). And you never know when these words might come in handy in general life.

You can tussle with those on a par with you as you race for the end of the game with barely more than a few points between you. And you can beat those worse than you – always an ego boost. That being said, I'm worse or on a par with all the people I play with so I'm missing out on the ego boost. I'll just have to walk past more constructions sites.

So I'm learning new words and exercising my brain, but no doubt I'm addicted to a computer game. Is that going to be a bad thing?

Between 30 Rock and a hard place

I was shocked and horrified to hear on Radio National the other night that the wonderful and marvellous 30 Rock's finale show was being pitted against The Big Bang Theory, and that it might not win. The thought of anybody preferring BBT to 30R makes me thing some people just aint wired right.

How you could prefer Sheldon to Kenneth, Raj to Tracey or Penny to Liz?

I think BBT is mildly amusing and will watch it when I've got nothing better to do.

That reminds me I must get to the library to get something better to do.

It's B Day

Yesterday was The Boy's birthday. To celebrate the fact that we have survived a year (and what a year) we'd planned a nice BBQ picnic in our local park, what with this being Australia and mid summer and all we thought we'd be safe. But the rain gods had other plans for the day with torrential rain and gale force winds forecast. It was set to be a day like our wedding.

So we started looking at alternative plans and scoped out our two nearest RSLs and a local indoor play-zone called Play Planet. Harbord Diggers has a covered play area but with open sides so we thought - nah. If the weather is going to be anything like our wedding day, the rain would be coming across the horizontal rather than the vertical.

 Then we tried another local RSL in Balgowlah, plenty of space, but the Bistro shuts at 2.30 - exactly when we were planning our do.

So our last hope was Play Planet. We trooped in and were shown around by a clueless young lass, who couldn't say if we could book one of the sofa areas because, 'I don't know how that stuff all works.' She suggested we ring the next day in the early morning to try and book but that we'd still be able to fit in even if someone had booked the two sofa areas.

Dutifully The Norwegian sends out emails and texts to let everyone know. The next day, B day, dawns and we try to ring Play Planet. No answer. We try five times over the course of the morning, until The Norwegian ventures into the storm to drive up there and see what is what. He comes back at 1.0 with the news that it is closed today. A fact the staff failed to mention. Arggh! We have an hour and a half to find another location for seven children under 4 and fourteen adults.

Another ring around unearths The Steyne, a local pub that used to have a reputation for bar brawls but now a family friendly venue. Apparently. At 1.30 The Norwegian send out another email. One friend cancels as controlling her two children in a pub would be a nightmare. So the Norwegian rings everyone and tells them not to worry and that we will try and reschedule.

So in the end it was only two families that joined us in our flat for bubbles and cake and a lovely time was had by all.

Day Six

I have almost finished writing my book, Day Six. It is about the crazy things that have happened to me since having a baby and developing post partum psychosis, from thinking I was Cameron Diaz to experiencing what felt like regression back through time to become a chimpanzee. I have a publisher interested, they just need to wait and see the final draft before they give it the thumbs up/ thumbs down.

In the meantime I whiled away a few minutes finding out if there was a website already using the name Day Six. Google told me....

Day Six - a Dutch progressive symphonic rock/metal band. (day-six.com)
Day Six Bicycles - in Milford Michigan asking me to ‘Join The Comfort Bike Movement!(www.day6bicycles.com)
Day Six Creative - a branding firm specialising in toys and gaming in McKinney Texas (daysixcreative.com) On Day Six - the Christian dating site ‘with Integrity and Style.’ (www.ondaysix.com)

Aint the inner net wonderful.

If the shoe fits

It is my first day back at work today. Last night I polished my shoes for the first time in 12 months. I know. Sorry Mum.

I wondered how many people use shoe polish now, or even know of its existence. And how many shoes are chucked away when they are just scuffed. I imagined pair after pair of unloved shoes filling up landfill, (although a few would find their way to charity shops.)

Shoe polish has a nostalgic feel; the smell, the cunning opening mechanism on the side of the tin and the dark fingermarks on the polishing cloth. The need for newspapers, brushes and time doesn’t fit with the way things work today. You can’t get a shoe polishing app.

It reminded me of my old trombone teacher, Mr Sharman. He used to polish his shoes every night (ex-military). He was a marvellous bellow of a man with a barrel chest, a blue blazer with brass buttons, large flat feet and neatly brushed silver hair. Though his shoes were many years old, they were bright, shiny and seemingly indestructible.

Maybe I should start up a campaign for the resurgence of shoe polish as a way to reduce waste? Saving the world one pair of brogues at a time.

Wailing Car Park

The other week I went to our local mall, Stocklands Balgowlah. They have a barrier at the entrance and a little machine that gives you a ticket if you ask nicely (and press the button). The machine has a mini digital screen that usually asks you to 'PRESS THE BUTTON' or 'PLEASE WAIT.'

But yesterday the car park gods had struck and the display was malfunctioning. It said 'PLEASE WAIL.'

I was having one of those days and imagined letting my head fall back, my mouth swing open and a allowing huge despairing wail to come out of me. But I didn't do it. There was someone behind me queue to get in. There was someone to my left at the other barrier. There was the part of me that worries and flicks nervous glances to see what other people think.

Next time I thought. Next time.

Goodbye Bump

Goodbye Bump

Goodbye reflux,
Goodbye indigestion,
Goodbye heartburn, my old friend.
Goodbye hot-foot syndrome, kicks to the colon and river-dancing on my spleen.
Goodbye sciatica, sore tail-bone and needing three pillows to sleep.

Goodbye dizzy head-rush, neck pulsing, strangulation by neck muscles feeling.
Goodbye racing pulse and less breath than breathlessness,
Goodbye bursting bladder, constipation blocked diarrhoea.
Goodbye not being able to sit up, roll over or stand up with ease.

Goodbye 'Twins?', 'God you are huge!' and 'When's your due date?'
Goodbye mood swings, and tearful moments
Goodbye always being hotter than everyone else and needing to sit down all the time
Goodbye painful pubic bone and random twangs or twings
Goodbye bump, hello feet, hello ankles.

Goodbye bump?

Goodbye holding you close everyday, all day.
Goodbye guessing which bit of you that is?
Goodbye your kicking freaking out the Norwegian.
Goodbye bump.
Hello baby.
Hello Boy.

Written the night before I had Lukas when we didn't know what his name was going to be.

Rental Smental

The Norwegian and I had our first taste of the competitive world of the Sydney Rental Scene today. The flat we are staying in is great, but they are selling, so we need to find another more permanent place to rest our heads.

Rental properties are only available for viewing for 20 minute slots between 11am and 1pm on a Saturday. All of them. This means you end up choosing to view places that are close to each other rather than the ones you actually like. If you do like a place you have to fill out an application form with TWO work references and TWO property references. They choose who they like the best. If you REALLY like a place you are advised to put down a deposit – refundable if the owner doesn't like the look of you. We've heard tales of people secretly putting down larger deposits than requested to show willing, and agreeing to higher rents just to secure their ideal pad.

Earlier this week we had cleverly chosen four flats all within walking distance of where we are now in East Manly, but we woke this morning to the heavy rain that Sydney sometimes enjoys. The Norwegian calls Sin Rain. It comes in large and heavy doses and would have Noah racing to the hardware shop. As our flat was also being shown for four seconds to twenty prospective buyers at 11am and we had to clear out anyway, we piled on the gortex and sallied forth.

By chance we have ended up living in one of the pricier areas of Sydney, a little enclave of very expensive houses, but there is the odd apartment block to keep the plebs like us out of the rain. Maureen, the agent showing us flat number one, was a well groomed forty, with a smooth but surprisingly voluminous black bob and a woollen shawl draped over her shoulders. She didn't have a coat.

'Quite some weather hey?'We all take off our shoes. The flat was shabby, woefully out of date (seventies brown bathroom tiles anyone?) and carpeted throughout – which is a no no for us. She half heartedly extolled its virtues without quite being able to hide that the place makes her feel itchy.

'Two balconies. With harbour glimpses.' She opened a door onto one and the sound of a jack hammer from the building work next door drilled into the flat.

'And for East Manly, you won't get cheaper than $410.'

The info on my sheet said $430. The Norwegian asked about the lack of fridge and she told us about a white goods hire place on Pittwater.
'So do you have much furniture already?' she asked.
'No nothing.'
'Well there is a Salvation Army shop also on Pittwater. You can find lounges*, beds. Very reasonable.'
The Salvos! I looked down at my drenched jeans, rat-tailed hair and soaked anorak. One of my socks has a hole in it.

We said our goodbyes to Maureen and young man in a baseball cap who has just arrived and struggled through the sheet rain to the next property, getting slightly lost on the way. As we squelched up the drive we spied a figure through the rain trying various keys in the lock. It is Maureen. She is completely dry.

'How the heck did she get here so quickly, and bone dry,' I whispered to the Norwegian.

This flat was much more popular with at least four other couples interested, but again, no good for us, carpeted throughout and though much bigger, outdated – this time 80s avocado. They are asking $520 a week - $2253 pcm. Much too much.
We were the first in and smiled at the guy in rubber gloves who opened the door, clearly the current tenant in the last stages of cleaning up. The other couples piled in, grim faced and the strangest competative vibe developed as we poked around the flat, all in our socks. Even though I didn't like the flat I started panicking that someone else would get it. It felt like a race.

In one of the bed rooms, the Norwegian and I were peering at the tennis courts beyond the back yard. Rubber Gloves wandered in and the Norwegian asked if his tennis had improved living here.
'Oh, yes. Well not much.'
We all smiled and laughed. A little girl ran into the room, followed by her father. We smiled at her, then him. He grabbed her hand and steered her out of the room without a glimmer of teeth.
'You know,' Rubber Gloves whispered when Maureen was out of earshot, 'This place needs a lot doing to it to be habitable. Mold. That is why we are moving out.'
'Thanks for the heads up,' I said as he pointed to the tale tell green smudges on the wall. It never hurts to be nice.

We skipped the next viewing as I couldn't bear to think what a $350 a week place looked like and headed to a local café, that over looks Little Manly Beach for a coffee to warm up. A group of divers were just disappearing into the blue-grey water. The distant view of Sydney CBD was completely obscured by mist and clouds.

The last place was no better, small, cramped and carpeted and we trudged home, socked to our socks. We made tea and huddled around the electric heater.

Finding a flat might take longer than we thought.

*lounges are sofas.

Crouching Tweeter, Hidden Blog

I've decided it is about time to make my blog private, so I'll be sending out emails inviting you my newly privitised burblings.

If you don't get one, and would like to carry on reading, send me a message and I'll do the do.

Ta

Hard Rubbish Day

In a break from all the visa gloom and job doom, today has been great as it is Hard Rubbish Day. Not as you might think, a hard day that was also rubbish, but the day when junk-burdened Sydneysiders leave a load of stuff on the pavement in front of their houses for the council to take away.

I have just spent a happy hour wandering around my area poking through piles of tat with my fellow junk lovers (aka poor folk) while getting sniffily ignored by posh people walking their Labradoodles and Doodleman Pinschers.

There is a great deal of rubbish, and I do literally mean rubbish; cracked pieces of wood, plastic bags filled with leaves (pretty sure that is not 'hard rubbish' millionaire person) and rusty metal poles, but there was some great stuff too.

If we were more sure about our living arrangements I would have been quids in; sewing machine, firestick, table football, wine rack, plates, cups, bbq tongs, table cloth, curtains, vintage suitcase, sofas, chairs, tables, a box of tacky jewelry, tvs, videos, DVD players, fans and BBQs. Most of it looked like it needed some serious TLC and who knows if the electricals work, but fuck, it's free.

It surprised me how many photographs were thrown out; happy smiley people in faded photos and in one box, piles of albums. The strangest thing I found, carefully tucked away in a plastic folder, was a photo montage of someone's glistening gut shots from all angles. It was accompanied by a medical report (with full name and address details) giving the owner the all clear on his liver. Phew.

Even though we still could be going home, I could stop myself from picking up,

Duffel Coat (Mambo) in perfect condition
3 T-shirts (Billabong and other random makes)
Shorts (Grey)
Patricia Cornwell Book (the only book I saw)
CDs (Basement Jaxx and Café Del Mar)
A tray (for breakfast in bed)
Thermal Mug (for winter walks on the beach)
Silver Ring
Esky

The next one is in 6 months. It makes me want to get sponsored even more.

The importance of a relaxed groom

I went to an excellent, cheap yoga class in Manly Community Centre last night. I like going to yoga classes in drafty community centres rather than in swish expensive ones with tinkling fountains and up lighters. This is not (just) because I am a tight wad. It is because they are usually run by eccentric teachers and peopled by the most interesting, yet also eccentric, fellow students.

I've been taught by a sturdy German woman in a small hall in Stoke Newington, who was the first person to notice and celebrate the fact that I can move my little toes independently from the rest of my toes; a crazy curly-haired Welsh yogi, in a in a Cardiff sports centre who implored on a regular basis, 'How can anyone survive, without yoga. How? HOW?'; and an otherworldly, serene Cornish dude who served chai and taught me how to meditate in Buddock Waters. He – as a pointless aside - was originally taught by the crazy Welsh lady. Apparently the world of yogi's who teach in community centres is a small one.

So I was pleased to have found a community centre type class here in Manly.
The class is taught by the formidable Man Yee. A petite Chinese woman with the body of a gymnast and the kind, smiling face of a particularly happy nun. I spent the first half of the class thinking that her name was actually Man Lee, which gave me a huge amount of misplaced pleasure.

She teaches with skill and compassion, which is more important than you might think as yoga is not just another form of exercise or way to achieve the body beautiful. It is a more rounded, dare I say, holistic form of physical activity.

Throughout the lesson, as she gave instructions, raising her voice for the hard bits, I drifted of into wonderful three-second kung fu daydreams as she sounds, at times, like a female Bruce Lee. At one point I was distracted from my forward bend by the pleasant puzzle of working out what she meant when she said, 'This pose work your groom. Best to focus on your groom and also have a relaxed groom.'
Even though I have been going to yoga for years on and off and am quite good at some of the poses, I have incredibly tight hamstrings. It is a dream of mine that I will one day be able to touch my toes. At the end of the session when I told her how much

I had enjoyed the class, she said,
'You are good in the arms,' and gave me a little wry smile.
'I really need to improve my hamstrings.'
'Yes, yes,' she said, 'you really do have very conservative legs, Jen.'
'I suppose they are,' I said.

Take that Mr Brown.

Dee Why Sealife

Living in funny old Dee Why has had its moments.

I've been lucky enough to capture some photos of the wildlife here include one day after a storm and a number of strange jellyfish and other creatures were washed up onto the beach.






















There were hundreds of blue stingers or blue bottles at the hide tide mark with their long tentacles plastered to the sand trailing back to the waterline. The Norwegian was speaking to a woman who grew up here and she said as a child they used to pop the sun dried stinger bodies for fun like we would pop bubble wrap.
















There were quite a few clear jellyfish as well as these strange creatures that looked like frilly, mini, blue ghosts, perhaps baby blue bottles? They moved occassionally.

The weirdest thing was a small rock that was encrusted with the moving mouths of a number of shellfish. They were opening and closing, dark red creatures, like thick wet feathers, were pushing in and out in a hopeless fashion. If I were the anthropomorphising kind I would say they were thinking, 'oh shit, where did all the water go?'

















It was like the end of the world.

Home Sweat Home

I went to a Bikram Yoga class this week. This is the famous and controversial school of yoga, called McYoga by some, that has swept the globe. It involves doing yoga in a hot room. In a really hot room.

The room I lay in, waiting for the class, to start was 40 degrees C with 40% humidity. It was somewhat smelly, as the large space was filled with other people who were also lying there sweating. This yoga studio has been running for a while. Three classes a day, seven days a week for five years, in a room that rarely gets an airing? You do the sweat maths.

The idea is that the hotness allows you to stretch more deeply as muscles and tendons are relaxed, and the sweating speeds up the excretion of toxins. Hence the smell. I got really dizzy a couple of times, nearly yo-gagged, and had to lie down on my drenched towel. They say that the fact Bikram Yoga is so hard, the very challenge itself, gives rise to a increase in self discipline and self confidence. I say, Hhhhhmm.

It was very hard. If the instructor hadn't asked me, to stay in the room if I felt unwell, 'so I can keep an eye on you,' I would have hot-footed it right out of there. Through the class I heard, amongst the usual groans and puffs, a series of guttural almost desperate i'mgoingtodie moans coming from a brunette somewhere in the middle of the room. I was thinking, 'you go girl, I'd be groaning like a troll if I didn't have this stiff-upper-lip-english-reserve thing going on.' Afterward I saw her talking to a friend in the changing rooms. Turns out she is deaf and those are just her noises. Sometimes I wish I weren't so dumb.

Another older women to my front right was wearing leggings with no underpants. You may wonder how I knew she wasn't wearing underpants. Well I think these may have been her favourite leggings as they were - shall we say - worn in the seat area. During one bending forward pose I could see more than I've ever wanted to see, of a middle-aged woman's rectum.

As well as 'don't look at ladies leggings when they are bending over', my other tip would be not to wear a white top to Bikram Yoga. Mine went completely see through after about one second of intense sweating, so my friend with the leggings wasn't the only one flashing it about.

But it was so hard, and I was concentrating on just doing at least some of the asanas without keeling over, I didn't really give a flying shoulder-stand if the toned and tattooed yogaboy behind me could see my nipples. I don't think he did either.

Everyone was sweating. The water bottles were sweating, the walls were sweating, even the curtains were sweating, but I have never seen a person sweat so much as this uber-bendy woman in the front row. At one point she was standing on one leg, hands in front of her chest. Her elbows were pointing down and sweat was dripping of them. Actually I think the correct description would be 'running off them.' I don't see how she had any water left in her body. She should have just been a empty meat sack in lycra shorts and an Ohm tattoo.

Afterward I did feel strangely accomplished, though it took three hours of water sipping and melon eating to get rid of the pounding headache once I was back in the flat. No doubt my enthusiastic, kindly, though vague-on-the-science, instructor would say it was the toxins I was expelling. She did also say that by breathing deeply I would release more iron into my blood stream. I'm pretty sure that is not how hemoglobin works.

I paid $20 and can come as often I like for 10 days. I feel compelled to go again, despite the headache and the fact that I was a ravenous hosebeast the following day. I had to run out at 10.30am the next day to get a slice of toasted banana bread as my stomach was groaning like a deaf girl doing yoga and disturbing everyone in the office.

One last tip. Cycling to Bickram yoga on a hot summer day in Australia is almost too stupid to consider. Don't.

A rose by any other title...

I’ve been playing with the Lulu title tester.

Type in the title of your book to be and the tester will calculate the percentage chance you have of your tome being a best seller. That is if you finish writing it, get accepted by an agent, get it accepted by a publisher…

Anyway, the first stumbling block for a Hackney comprehensive educated girl such as myself is the series of questions they ask after you have keyed in the title.

Figurative or Literal? OK I get this. To Kill A Mocking Bird vs The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But then the next question asks...

'Title grammar type is a' with a drop down of many options including ‘possessive case with noun’ and ‘noun modified by verb or place.’ Somebody pass me the Valium.

Do I need to know these things to be a writer? Should I admit that I don’t?

My book, Hard Very Severe, came out as 63.7% chance of being a bestselling title, so I’m off to the bookies, though The Bible scored 35.9% and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory scrapped 14.6%. Though they do say, ‘the Lulu Titlescorer should, in practice, always be combined with use of your own low-tech judgement.’

http://www.lulu.com/titlescorer/index.php

More pillow talk

The Norwegian has informed me of another bit of sleeping/talk/nonsense I came out with last night.

I was well on the way to sleep and he came in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I jumped and said in a bitter and accusatory tone,

'I thought it was an umbrella.'

This made sense. His stubble can almost be as prickly as the spokes of an umbrella. Almost.

Then in my sleep befuddled state I realised I was telling him off for kissing me good night which didn't seem right. So I thought I would offer a logical alternative option for kissing when he hadn't shaved. I'm nice like that.

'Next time, kiss me with the soft of your bottom,' I said and swiftly rejoined the pillow.

The Wrong Trousers

There are some amazingly good looking people in Bondi Beach, mainly wearing low key yet achingly hip clobber.

But there are also a lot of men wearing speedos – so it balances out. They wear these speedos proudly, often with words across the top of their taught, toned buttocks spelling out the name of the life surf saving club they belong to; Icebergs, North Bondi. Some – inexplicably – have the words 'budgie smugglers.' Please explain?

You do also get some real glamour pusscats teetering along on wedges, for-display-only bikinis and sunglasses with lenses the size of dinner plates. But the other day I saw something so wrong,so pointless - even more inexplicable than bird trafficking swim wear.

It was a pair of trousers that even Wallace and Gromit wouldn't even try to fix. They were lime green, high-waisted net affairs. The weave of the net was large, so each hole was the size of a 5 cent piece. They afforded no sun protection, no modesty, no warmth and definitely no impression that the wearer had a functional brain. It looked like her legs had been attacked by an angry neon fisherman's net still going through its 80s rave phase.

It certainly put the speedos into perspective.

Shark! Shark! Shark?

Surfers are a fairly macho bunch. Even the 'oceanbelongstoeveryoneman' ones are. Why? Because it is really hard and can be dangerous. Sharks, drowning, sunburn.

The other day we were at Whale Beach – a beautiful spot on Sydney's North Shores watching a group of surfers as the sun went down. They were surfing at the north end of the beach by some flat rocks. Cunning surfers save their arm strength by trotting along the beach, over the rocks and jumping in past the breaking waves and hey presto there they are.

But in a break from the norm we saw one guy paddling for the rocks and scrambling out in flailing, heaving, crablike fashion. Surfers while not being macho are cool. Cool, cool, cool. But not this guy.

He was being encouraged by a women and teenage girl on the rocks and as he scrambled out he turned to the other surfers and all three started shouting,

'Shark! We've just seen a shark.'

The other surfers turned and nodded. The women continued to call,

'Shark?'

Had they heard? One guy put his thumbs up, smiled, swivelled his board shorewards and paddled serenely for a wave.

The three came passed us on their way to inform the lifeguard further up the beach. The guy I saw was probably about 18. On his short, pointy board the words, 'Death or Glory' were marked in Gothic script.

What would I have on my board? Patience or Moderation? Happiness and Calm? Doughnuts or Beer?