When fun is fraught with too much effort.

 Are you having fun yet? Is this the best time of your life? You’d better put on a corset; otherwise your sides may split. Sometimes I think the end of the year is one long Forced Fun Friday.

 If you are unfamiliar with FFF, this is the drinks session popular in city office blocks to help staff wind down at the end of the week. Everyone is supposed to instantly forget about their troubles and smile, smile, smile. Until their cheeks hurt. The pressure is intensified when five days becomes 365.

 Now don’t get me wrong. I love New Year’s Eve. Whether you go out or stay at home, it’s lovely to watch the fireworks and laugh at the awkward commentary on TV. It is a very fine tradition. But it’s stressful. Going out requires a logistical plan devised by the Israeli army. If you drive, where will you park? If not, how on earth will you get a taxi? Walking home is akin to an obstacle course dodging drunken teenagers, drugged up Gen-Y’s, and couples close to copulating. It really is a wild ride in some parts of town.

 Staying home is fraught with danger too. What if your pet poops itself at the frisson of fireworks? Will your earplugs dull the sounds of rowdy revellers returning home? And who will you share your special moments with? You know those moments. They generally go along the lines of: “I’ve had a terrific/terrible year and I hope 2013 will be the same/different”. I’ve always found it amusing that we chunk time in to bite-sized pieces.

 If something dreadful happens on January 1, it stains the entire year. Herein lies the significance of New Year’s Eve It’s as if we can wash away the horrors of the past. On weekend away years ago I was confronted by a huge sign on the wall of our cottage that said, RELAX. Immediately, I tensed up. It was like someone was pointing the finger at me saying “Oi! You! You look terrible! Shake off that city living and RELAX! Right now!” I felt like a failure. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t de-stress on demand.

 That’s how I feel about New Year’s Eve. Sure, it’s fun. But it’s forced fun. It’s supposed to be one of the best nights of your life. If it’s not, you feel like you’ve missed out on something. Or even that it’s a bad omen for the following year. We might have a little more fun if we lower our expectations. And try to relax.

And on that note – Happy New Year!

These days, everybody wants a piece of you.

They’re a plague of the suburbs: the shopping centre squatters. These are the folk who set up stands outside the stores, selling everything from mineral make-up to car accessories. (Just make sure you don’t mix those up, scouring your skin with a chamois or putting lipstick on the bumper bar.)

 They make a trip to the shops an obstacle course worthy of Sally Pearson. “Madam, I would like to talk about your skin,” one slippery salesman said, before shoving an $80 jar of Dead Sea Exfoliant under my nose. “In the Middle Ages, wine was used as a chemical exfoliant,” I replied brightly. “So I’m off to stick my head in a bucket of chardonnay.”

 Everyone has the right to make an honest living, but how much more space can these shopping centre squatters devote to the almighty dollar? “Quick, there’s one square metre of unoccupied space. Let’s find a tenant!”

 At one Westfield last week, I discovered a pint-sized brow bar. Women were lined up to have stray hairs torn from their heads. Sure, it was fun putting bets on who would cry or grind their teeth, but it was undignified.

 It’s like those billboards being towed by motorbikes. No, I’m not going to sign up to Foxtel because you are blocking my lane! Other sources of advertising annoyance include environmental groups sending out letters by snail mail instead of email, politicians who address their mail-outs to “Dear constituent”, doorknockers at 5pm who ask about your electricity bill, phone-callers at 6pm offering telecommunications deals and pavement charity hustlers who want to garnish your wages.

 Just for one day, I’d like to live without advertising. I’d have to turn off the TV, radio, computer, mobile and home phones, and bin the newspapers. But there are hidden dangers: discount vouchers on the back of shopping receipts, ads inside books for the next exciting instalment and competitions on food labels.

 Maybe the only place to avoid advertising is inside the womb. Research shows the poor little suckers can hear at six months’ gestation. How long before clever companies devise ways to get to the foetus? Mums-to-be could make a few extra bucks by playing a recording of “Coke is life” to their swollen bellies. You may think I’ve gone too far. But free samples of baby formula are given out in maternity wards, in a promising form of advertising to vulnerable mothers.

 Which brings me back to shopping centres.  If I’m struggling with seven shopping bags, I am not in the mood for a sales pitch. These squatters should be evicted.

Do women know what men really want?

 Ok, for a moment, let’s pretend that I’m a 25-year-old heterosexual male. It’s Friday night and I’m out on the town, keen for…OK, sex, yes, but with someone I might also like to eat breakfast with in the morning. Some of us like to chew toast and eggs rather than our own arms off trying to escape.
  So what do I see? Blow-up dolls – hundreds of them. All Kim Kardashian look-alikes, with their padded chests and hair and eyelashes stuck on with glue. I see cleavage and thighs and – as she downs her fourth vodka – other bits I really don’t want to see, not least because my mates can see them too.
  They’re funny these girls. Smart, too. But they look and smell like sweaty sausages sprayed with perfume, and they’re deck-stained to the ankles. I wouldn’t mind a kiss, but those lips look as inflated as jumping castles. And, God, the nails – terrifying talons that could do some serious damage down below.
  Of course, I’m not a 25-year-old male. But if I’d said all that as a mid-thirties woman, you delicious young things would yell “Get lost Grandma!” But stay with me for a minute – I’ll shout a round of mojitos – because I’ve asked these boys and, truly, that’s what they think. Well the nice ones; the jerks will take what they can get.
  Yes, they do love a molten leg and a short skirt, but those tart trotters you can’t even walk in even when sober need to go. Ditto the hair extensions. Seriously, guys want freshly washed, soft and beachy. You know the chick Zac Effron falls in love with in The Lucky One? The blonde in denim shorts and gumboots? The one who loves her dogs? Her.
  They like personality and originality but not fierce. Yes, you might like fierce, your girlfriends like fierce, and you’ve been raised on Rhianna’s brand of scowly sexual liberation, but the guys? They like Pippa Middleton’s bum – even though they’ve never seen her bum, only the outline of it, in a bridesmaid’s dress, no less.
  Writer A.A. Gill reckons if you asked men what they’d like to see women wearing, they’d say, “me”, “sweat”, “a smile”, “baby oil”, and “chocolate sauce”. But in truth, he argues, they prefer painted red toenails, women in men’s shirts, tanned legs in cowboy boots and, wait, a girl who walks confidently. “The cantilevered – tits and knickerless -micro dress thing is a gawp and a guffaw,” he writes, “but it isn’t what most men want their girlfriends to wear – that’s not about respecting you (sorry), it’s about what his mates will think of him.”
  If you’re any sort of feminist, here’s where you shout, “Who cares what men think? As if we dress for them!” And no, you shouldn’t. But surely gallivanting about like Barbies at a Hugh Hefner pool party, your self-worth as deep as your spray tan and barely a bra strap to distinguish you from your friends, is as big a tragedy to your smarts and imagination.
  Come on girls, you’re 20. You’re not supposed to conform to some tired template of flesh, tramp-stamp and silicone. You can annoy your parents with something better than that. They were Goths, punks, hippies, and mods, and Dr Martens. Go on, grab a pair. They’re so much comfier than anything you’re wearing – whether the boys like them or not.

Back in the old days……

 Whenever I feel like a laugh, I talk to a young person about technology. “Once upon a time,” I say, “If you wanted to call someone, you picked up the handset on the phone, which was plugged into the wall, and dialled. There was no answering machine. If they weren’t there, you had to call back!” Inevitably, their face becomes a mask of horror. “But what if it was, like, an emergency? Like, you saw Kim Kardashian in the street. In Sydney! And you had to tell someone?” This is when I shrug, shake my head, and start with “Back in the old days….”
  Then, I recollect my first mobile phone. It was a flip-phone that was as long as T.V remote control attached to a battery the size of a briefcase. It weighed nearly a tonne. Back then, we thought we were at the cutting edge of technology. You could talk on a phone while walking down the street! Who would have thought that would ever be possible?!
  Then came Facebook. Finally, you could share photos with friends. Of course, we used to do that on slide nights, all snuggled up on the couch marvelling at the magic of transparencies. Believe it or not, these older technologies are cool again. (I’m not exactly sure whether the word “cool” is cool, but that’s another story.) Polaroids are back. So is the pinhole camera. And a handset you can plug into your iPhone.
  I don’t know whether it will stop brain tumours – I’ll get back to you on that. But it’s certainly a hit with the young folk. I listened with rapt attention as my best friend’s 14-year-old son pored over his new iPhone, pointing out the slim shape and fancy features. Then I pulled out my purple handset. “Oh, my GOD! Oh, my God!” he stuttered. “That is so bad, it’s good!” Whatever that means….
  Now, he wants one. Apparently all the stuff I grew up with is retro. Vicariously, I’m hip. Next on the list is the typewriter keyboard for the iPad. I miss the clatter of regular old keyboards.
  Maybe the key is to embrace new technology, while fondly remembering its ancestors. Like Facebooking the next slide night, tweeting a picture of a typewriter, or handwriting, scanning and emailing a letter. Another opportunity to begin a sentence with, “Kids have it so easy these days…”