The Mysterious Hooded People

Yesterday morning, at around 5:30am, I had to go to the chemist. I felt mildly scared going out to the car in the dark, given that there had been a trespass or potential break-in nearby a couple of weeks ago at 4:00am. But we have a sensor light in the carport, and it made all the difference.

I jumped in my Beetle and started driving through the backstreets that eventually led me to The Parade at Norwood. It was very dark and there wasn't a soul around. That was until I drove past a house where a sensor or outside light was on out the front and I saw three people with hoods over their heads standing near an SUV in the driveway.

I looked more closely as I passed, but I kept driving, and I was in two minds about what I had seen. It would have been a huge coincidence to witness another example of criminal activity in our suburb within weeks of the other one. Apart from anything else, where I live is supposed to be one of the safest suburbs in Adelaide. Or are we in the midst of a crime wave?

It could have been three young thugs stealing the car, or it could have been three people who lived at the property and were particularly cold on what was a wet winter morning. The light was so bright that I would have thought someone in another house would notice if anything suspicious was happening, but then, being so early, most people would genuinely have been asleep.

The thought that gives me some comfort is: what are the odds that I would actually witness such a crime? I'm always focusing on the possibility of something happening that it doesn't seem possible I would then stumble across such a brazen act of larceny taking place right in front of me. I tried to process and understand what I'd seen as I continued driving to the all-night pharmacy.

I bought what I needed, and just as I was leaving, I saw these big, beautiful, fluffy bed socks. I had to get some for Mum and me, so I bought two pairs. As I drove home, I passed the house where I had seen the mysterious hooded people. I thought I might see a police car there, but there were no lights, no people and no car. I guess I'll never know what really happened there, but it does make me think.

When I got home, it was just before six. I had intended to go to bed for a while, so I woke Mum up like I usually do before I crashed. We talked about my sleep, and I told her how worried I was that I wouldn't be able to manage it during training for the call centre job I'd just gotten.

Mum then told me that she had been up the previous night thinking about me and my sleep situation. She said she didn't think I could be the only person in the world with such a problem and that there had to be a way for me to fix it. She went on to say that she didn't want me to live my life like this, with my sleep being such an obstacle to finding any sort of personal or professional success.

I really appreciated Mum taking the time to talk to me about my sleep, but what surprised me most was hearing that she had been awake the night before thinking about my wellbeing. I couldn't believe that another person had actually spent more than just a brief passing moment worrying about me. I felt incredibly lucky that Mum cared enough to think about my situation in such detail.

Mum and I agreed that I should go back and see the sleep psychologist I had been seeing a while ago. While I saw her for years and nothing really changed, she knows a lot about sleep and may have some ideas about how I can get through the first week of training for my new job. That's if I actually get to the first week of training. I have a funny feeling that my police check, and the delays my spent conviction seems to cause in these processes, may prevent me from moving forward with the role.

So, I slept for a while in the morning and into the afternoon. At 5:00pm, Mum and I had an appointment at the hairdressers for our weekly blow-dry. While we were there, the owner, who I think is just a lovely, beautiful man, asked Mum and me for a favour. Next week we are the last appointments booked in, and Stella, our hairdresser, will be there on her own. The owner asked if we would mind staying back until Stella had closed up the salon so that we could all leave together and she wouldn't be there by herself.

Mum and I said of course we would do that. It's just another reason why I think that if I ever had a husband, I would want one just like the owner of this salon, because he is genuinely one of the good guys.

All day I had been in a message conversation with Liam, just about everyday things, and then last night we got into a deeper and more meaningful conversation. I asked him if he would be a reference for me again for the job at The Centre, which he said he would be happy to do. Then I told him about my criminal conviction.

He said it was incredibly brave of me to tell him, and his reaction actually made me feel a lot worse about it. I recognise that using a mobile phone while driving is both serious and dangerous. I don't deny that. But in my circumstances, I didn't hurt anyone while using my phone while driving, and the only reason I ended up with a conviction was because I didn't want to go to court and see some stupid judge.

So, was it brave of me to disclose to a friend that I have a spent conviction arising from what I regard as an administrative error? No, it wasn't. In fact, I want to shout to the world that I've got a spent criminal conviction. I want to tell everyone who asks. Let's see how brave people think I am.

That reminds me that I have to contact the volunteer coordinator at the organisation where I will be calling people on home detention and let her know my availability for next week. I'm going to show up for that volunteer gig and I'm going to talk to those criminals because we are the same.

On paper, I am the same as them. And the honest truth is that I believe I am worthy of a second chance, and they might be too.

It's currently 4:52am on Friday 14 August. Two days left until my birthday, and I can't predict how I will actually feel on Sunday. I've been thinking a lot about my life and, in particular, how long ago certain major events actually were.

Last night I talked about my life at around the age of five, when we lived in our first big, beautiful house where I had red tartan carpet in my bedroom. After we left that house, we moved to another very large two-storey mansion, which was elevated in an affluent suburb directly behind horse paddocks.

I would have been around ten or eleven when we moved there, and it was within walking distance of the elite co-ed private school my brother and I started attending around the same time. I would have loved to have lived in this house when I was a bit older. The entire upstairs was for my brother and me. We had a bedroom each at opposite ends of the house, with a large loungeroom in the middle. We had an intercom to downstairs, and the bathroom had two showers, as though it had been designed to accommodate a whole collection of children.

Something else really cool about this house was that we had a laundry chute where we could send our clothes straight down to the laundry. There was also a pool and quite a large backyard. I loved this house too. I think about our first house and have said that if I were rich, I would buy it. In fact, if I were really rich, I'd buy all three family houses I've lived in. But this second house really was quite magical.

When I started at my new school, where the children of some very wealthy families went, I made friends with a girl named Susan who lived a few houses down the hill from me. Susan's father was a famous artist, and they also had a beautiful house. She had a pony in the paddocks in front of our houses, and we started walking to school together, always stopping to feed her pony along the way.

I look back at this particular school now and see it as elite and exclusive, and it was, but at the time I didn't think negatively about it at all. In fact, I loved it. I had my friend Susan, but I was also friends with three girls in my class, Sophie, Lucy and Amy. We were best friends, and we were also known as the BPs. This stood for the Bitch Patrol.

I remember all of us having a sleepover at my house one weekend. I had a large keyboard with a button you could press that would start playing a preprogrammed song using the keyboard and some other instruments. The BPs and I decided to start a band called the Teacups. I think we were inspired by Jimmy Barnes's children's band, the Tin Lids.

Our first song was about a cup of tea. From memory, the words went something like this: "Drink, drink, drink, baby let's drink. When you're dancing with me and you're singing with glee, I know afterwards you want some tea, so come on baby let's drink."

We sang it along to the preprogrammed music on the keyboard. We had big plans for the Teacups. We recorded ourselves singing on a cassette tape, and the following Monday I remember telling my teacher about our band. He invited us to sing in front of the class, so we belted out our "Drink, Drink" song and were met with wild applause. The teacher seemed genuinely impressed.

I think the next time we were invited to perform was at a talent show on a school camp, but somehow the Teacups never made it big.

Another time I remember the BPs sleeping over at our house was when we attempted the 40 Hour Famine. We had been sponsored by a whole range of people and had raised a significant amount of money for people our age, but I think we were only a couple of hours into the famine when we got hungry.

I remember telling Dad that we were starving. We all went downstairs and sat around the kitchen table while he made us Vegemite on toast.

At school there were some pretty snobby kids. There were also other kids whose parents probably worked three jobs to send them there, but some of the really rich ones could be problematic.

There was one boy I knew to be very wealthy who came from quite a prominent family. In class, we were seated around two tables pushed together to create a large square. I remember this kid, Alex, sitting opposite me at the other end of one of the tables. We were talking about a family we both knew, and one of the girls in the family was Asian and had been adopted. He then went on to make an extremely racist comment about her, something along the lines of, "She's a stupid Chink."

Even at that young age I was enraged by that sort of blatant racism, so I shoved the entire table into him and he fell off his chair. The teacher started yelling at me, but Alex got himself together, stood up, pushed his chair back in and the class went on. I remember that very clearly.

Alex was an elitist, racist snob, but he wasn't all bad. Over my three years at the school, we ended up having some laughs. I remember once he put a ruler up the sleeve of his blazer and asked me if I thought I could bend his arm. I went in hard trying to bend it, and suddenly the ruler cracked. My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open. I thought I'd broken his arm. He just laughed and laughed, and I ended up laughing too.

He moved from that school to another school that attracted a similar demographic, and I have actually crossed paths with him as an adult. I remember when I was friends with some really dodgy people, I had a girlfriend who particularly enjoyed the company of men. I bumped into Alex one night and we all sat down together. My friend probably saw this incredibly rich and, I guess, good-looking chump and just latched onto him. They went home together, but I cannot think of anything worse than spending the night with a man like him.

Something else I remember about living in that house is Susan. She wasn't part of the BPs, but we spent a lot of time at each other's houses. I remember that on Friday nights she would come over and we would watch Beverly Hills, 90210.

There was an ad for Hungry Jack's that used to come on with Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" playing in the background. I know this sounds ridiculous, but that ad used to make me long for something. Or someone. As an adult, I noticed Hungry Jack's using the same song in an ad again, and instantly I remembered how the original had made me feel all those years earlier.

Susan and I used to eat KFC on Friday nights. There was no Uber Eats back then, so one of our parents would take us to get it. There was some sort of flavoured chicken that we absolutely loved. I can't remember exactly what it was now. These days I don't eat chicken, and strangely, that particular memory makes me feel a little bit sick.

While we lived at this house, we had Nanny. We always had Nanny. She had been with us since the day I was born. But we also had a live-in nanny for a while. She was a bit of a stick in the mud.

My dad used to own a farm, and our live-in nanny, Emma, was from a farming family in the same district. She had a small room next to mine. I remember on her first night with us, I got my rocking horse alarm clock, which made the sound of a horse neighing when the alarm went off. I set it for 11:00pm and hid it in her wardrobe.

I still remember Emma knocking on my bedroom door, completely freaked out by what she'd heard. I showed her the alarm clock and she sort of laughed, but I don't think she was cut out to be the nanny for my brother and me.

The second floor of the house had this beautiful balcony that looked out over the horse paddocks and across Adelaide. To the left there was a side street, then another house and then a large cemetery. Sometimes at night I would think about the cemetery, although I actually think living that close to one would probably bother me more now than it did back then.

Once, Mum was overseas and Dad took my brother and me on a camping trip. On the way home, we were going to drive straight through, but my father decided to stop at a caravan park and we camped there for the night.

The next day, when we finally got home, we went to the door at the back of the house that we usually entered through. It was already open, and my dad instantly knew someone had been inside.

We walked in and the place was an absolute mess. There was graffiti everywhere, with paper, photographs and food all over the floor. The computer had been smashed, windows had been broken and what struck me was the amount of effort the people who had done it had gone to. The house had been completely ransacked. Both floors.

What I remember most is that before we went away, I had attempted to make some toffees and put them in the freezer. They hadn't set properly, and whoever had been inside our house had taken them out and squished them into the kitchen carpet.

I was so scared. I really was.

We called the police and they came out. They said the break-in had probably happened the previous night, the very night my dad had decided not to drive directly home. I sometimes think about what might have happened if we had come home that night while those people were still inside the house.

The police thought it was likely to have been done by people known to my parents who were also aware of our travel plans. That night, my brother and I stayed at Nanny's. I remember thinking about how brave my father was. He stayed at the house alone and didn't seem scared at all. I felt so bad for not staying with him, but I was far too frightened to sleep there.

Dad kept what had happened from Mum while she was travelling overseas, but when she got home, she said she had sensed that something was wrong from the way he was talking to her.

Something that really annoyed me happened about six months later. After being particularly nice to me for quite a while, my homeroom teacher told me how proud of me he was and said that he'd heard about the break-in.

I was so angry. He had known the whole time and hadn't told me that he knew. It suddenly felt as though he'd been giving me some sort of special grace because of what had happened, and for some reason, I hated that.

I used to stay over at Susan's place a lot. I would just walk down a couple of houses with an overnight bag. She had a bunk bed in her room and I used to sleep on the top bunk. Her family were very arty. She went on to become an artist herself. Once we had a big fight, and she came up to me at school with a love heart tin. I thought it was a peace offering but when I opened it, it had some of her pony's poo in it. 

While I was in junior school Dad used to make me take a brief case to school instead of a backpack. It was actually incredibly embarrassing, but he thought it was more efficient. It wasn't until the school counsellor who was the wife of one of Mum and Dad's friends advised him that a backpack is better ergonomically and also socially, did he allow me to go back to a backpack.

When I was in Year 6, I had a huge crush on a Year 7 boy named Adam. I was still in junior school, and he was in senior school. I remember buying him a big box of grape-flavoured Warheads. I think I got someone to walk them up to him after school had finished one day. He took the Warheads, but he wasn't into me. In fact, someone told me not long afterwards that he'd said I was ugly and he hated me.

I think back to that comment, which wasn't an isolated one. It used to get me down, and I would think about the number of times I'd heard that I wasn't good-looking. But I think you have to be gentle with yourself. I was a very awkward-looking kid, and it took me a while to grow into myself. I'm not particularly happy with the way I look now either, but I don't necessarily think that means I'm ugly. I think the way I look is a combination of both my mother and my father, and I have to be proud of that.

By the time I reached middle school myself, I remember Nanny would be there exactly on time to pick my brother and me up from school. The problem was that I wanted to hang around for a bit and talk to the other students who were waiting for their parents or nannies to pick them up. So, I asked Nanny to start coming 15 minutes later, and then I pretended she was always late.

In my first year of Year 7, I was in the first class in South Australia where it was compulsory to have a laptop computer. It was an exciting time, but there was also a bit of controversy surrounding it. Like I've mentioned before, there were so many wealthy families at this school, but there were also families who put everything they had into paying the school fees.

I remember asking my homeroom teacher what happened to the students whose families couldn't afford a computer. She told me that the school had programs in place to help families who were struggling, although I can't remember what my response to that was.

I sometimes think about what it must be like at the school now, when I'm guessing every student has a laptop. It's certainly good for computer literacy, but probably not so good for the parents' bank balance.

I didn't have a lot of luck with boys while I was at this school, but I remember there was one guy who was a boarder. He was from a farm and he was incredibly naughty. Lucy told me that he liked me because I had a good personality and he didn't care that I was fat.

I have to laugh now. These kids were incredibly passive-aggressive. I didn't like him anyway. He was later expelled for drugs.

Another time, I was sad about something, and my friend Sophie told me she had something that would cheer me up. I asked her what it was, and she said that this boy Nick had asked her why she hung around with "that fat girl", meaning me.

I'm still not quite sure how that was supposed to cheer me up, but I laughed to make it look like it had.

During my time at this elite and exclusive private school, the girls and I used to lie down on the lawn or across some bricks, and then another girl would sit on our stomachs and slowly move her way down our bodies. We were trying to imagine what it might feel like to have a baby.

I look back at that now, on the cusp of 45, and realise that I never did find out what it felt like. And I think it's okay to grieve that.

When I left that school, my many friends and I had lots of goodbye parties, and we all cried as I walked away from the classroom for the last time. We tried to stay in touch, but eventually the BPs disbanded.

And I never received any more pony shit from Susan.

Ordinary Business Hours

I was so excited yesterday morning when I received an email from Australia Post telling me there was mail waiting in my PO Box. I couldn't get down to the post office fast enough, and when I arrived, I found two letters sitting in my box.

I raced home and used my special letter opener to open the first one. To my surprise, it was from a bakery in Northern Ireland confirming that they do sell sausage rolls and providing some information about the different varieties they make. They had also included an entire page of photographs of their sausage rolls. At the bottom of the letter, the woman who had written it said that if I had any further enquiries, I could contact her, and she included her email address.

I think once I have gathered all the responses together and had the book bound for the Attorney General, I will email her and explain why I originally wrote to the bakery. I'll also send her a photograph of the finished book so she can see what her letter became part of.

The second letter was from the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He had provided copies of both their oath of office and oath of secrecy, which was exactly the kind of response I had been hoping for when I started writing to police forces around the world.

You could not wipe the smile off my face during the brief period I was awake yesterday morning. I eventually went to bed feeling completely satisfied that this was a wonderful start to both my sausage roll and police oaths projects. Hopefully, these will be the first two of many responses to arrive in my PO Box over the coming weeks and months.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was successful in my quest for a job in a call centre in the Adelaide CBD, working the night shift. The recruitment was done through an agency, but the work itself will take place within a reputable company, which means it is essentially a temp job. All my references have now been checked, and the only thing left is for me to clear a police check before training starts in just over three weeks.

Initially, I was incredibly excited about getting the job. I started thinking about how the hours would work with my current schedule with Mum, and it seemed almost perfect. Then I remembered the police check and realised that might be my downfall.

I have a spent conviction from 2013 for using my mobile phone while driving. It isn't simply a traffic infringement because I contested the original fine and then didn't rock up to court to defend myself. I didn't want to personally face the judge, so the matter went ahead without me, and I ended up with a conviction and a $25 fine. In 2023, the conviction became spent, which means it isn't supposed to appear on most police certificates, although it can still appear on certain checks, including some involving work with vulnerable people.

When I applied for a police check for my job at Lifeblood, it took more than three weeks to be cleared. I was told the delay may have been because I have the same or a similar name to somebody else in Australia, however I feel confident the likely reason is the conviction caused the delay while they determined whether it should be disclosed. Whatever the reason, I know my current police check could potentially take a similar amount of time, and with training starting in just over three weeks, there is a possibility it won't be completed in time.

I think the old me would have been incredibly anxious about this because I really do want the job. This time, though, I can see that there are also several reasons why it might not be the right fit for me. The actual working hours are good, starting at 8:00pm and finishing late, but the training is from 9:00am until 5:00pm, Monday to Friday, for an entire week.

I know one week of ordinary business hours probably doesn't sound particularly daunting to the average person, but for me it would mean a week of severe sleep deprivation and fatigue, and I worry about the physical consequences of that. I mentioned yesterday that I had thought about staying in a hotel in the city for the training week, and if everything works out with the job, that is what I will do.

I asked Mum if she would come and stay with me, but we have the cats to think about, and I suspect she would get bored in a hotel without access to her shows like Emily in Paris and NCIS. I don't particularly want to leave Mum at home for an entire week either. When I ripped open my toe, I told the doctors not to send me to the plastic surgeon because I didn't want to spend even one night in hospital away from Mum. A week feels like a very long time by comparison, but I genuinely think staying in the city would be the only way I could get through the training.

There is also the possibility that working nights might not be quite as perfect as it initially sounded. The money is very good for my station in life, but I would miss my nights at home with Mum. I also wouldn't be able to take leave during the first six months, and I had my heart set on taking Mum away somewhere.

So, there are pros and cons, and I've reached the point where I think I will genuinely be happy whichever way it goes. If the police check comes back in time and everything falls into place, I'll give the job my best shot. If it doesn't, perhaps that simply means I am supposed to head in another direction.

On Friday night, I'm going to my friend Hussein's house and we're going to work on my résumé. Then, on Sunday, which is my birthday, I'll send off my application to the Centre, where they still have customer service positions advertised.

By Sunday night, I will have done everything I can for both jobs. After that, there is nothing more for me to do except wait and see what happens. I'll leave the outcome in the hands of the employment gods.

I've been watching Underbelly: The Golden Mile, which is the third series of Underbelly. It revolves around the goodies and baddies of Kings Cross during the period from 1988 to 1999. I'm down to the last couple of episodes, and after receiving my first police oaths yesterday morning, it's interesting to be watching a television series that focuses on such cunning and blatant police corruption.

The series also deals with the treatment of whistleblowers within the police force, and some of it really is sickening. I remember when I was living in NSW, after my job at the courts, I worked in the Criminal Law, Legislation and Policy Division and also in the office of the Director of the Attorney General's Department. The Police Commissioner at the time, Andrew Scipione, used to come into the office from time to time, and he was a particular favourite with the ladies.

I think about police corruption in much the same way I think about corruption in organisations like the defence force. It's infuriating. Public office comes with an enormous amount of trust, and for someone to deliberately misuse that position in the way some of these NSW detectives did is, to me, unforgivable.

There is actually a really bad rape scene in the show, and the portrayal of the victim suggested that she never got over it.

It's now 3:47am on Thursday 13 August. Just three days until the big 45. I remember I was in the car once with Mum and Nanny and I asked them if they felt their ages. They both said no, and I was surprised when they also both said they felt like they were in their mid-thirties.

I remember when I was 27 years old, I was in a casual relationship with a 42 year old man. He was actually a big manager of a Centrelink call centre, and he was also a true bastard. But I remember thinking how old he was, and now here I am 18 years later. In so many ways, I live like someone much younger than I am.

I've been through the whole no husband, boyfriend, children, house, job, assets or education thing, and I talk about those things all the time. But I wonder if they are really the things that age you. I feel like I have a certain level of maturity, and I've sometimes received feedback from people that I seem wise, although I don't think I am.

The thing is that I am trying to catch up with my age. I'm trying to get a job. I want to create some sort of artwork that I can make money from so I can eventually put a deposit on a house. I don't want a man or kids, but I am trying to get a degree, albeit for about the millionth time. But the thing is, you only need to be right one time. And I'm hoping this time is that one time.

In ten years, I will be 55 if I live long enough, so that gives me ten years to get myself together and put all of my determination into doing something good. I've had thoughts about writing thousands of letters and creating epic artworks with the responses. I've thought about writing to every politician in every parliament of every democracy in the world and asking them what it means to them to be an elected official within a democracy.

I've thought about aliens, zoos, cryogenics, florists, restaurants and hotels. I literally want to write to everyone. But if someone sat me down and said I had one chance to do whatever I wanted with my life, but I could only do one thing, I would say I don't want to leave this earth without having done something to help the Palestinians. But I'm not going to write too much about it until I've been there and seen it for myself.

They say that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I hope I'm not dying, but I will say that I've been thinking so much about my younger years lately. I know it's because I'm about to enter a new phase of my life. It's not a case of letting it all go, it's more a case of realising how unbelievably long ago it all was.

Nearly 40 years ago, I was five years old. I remember being five. We had a big, beautiful house in the suburbs, and my bedroom had red tartan carpet. I would get really scared at night, so it seems some things haven't changed. Mum and Dad's bedroom was at the other end of the house, and in the middle of the night I would run down the hallway, tell them I was scared and ask if I could sleep in their bed with them. They always said no and sent me back to my room.

I remember moving bedrooms to the other side of the hallway, and next to my new room there were stairs that led downstairs to a cellar. I used to be so scared of that cellar. I can't remember what I thought was down there, but I know it terrified me.

We had a big, beautiful pool in the backyard and, oddly, lining the brush fence between us and the neighbours were palm trees in the middle of suburbia. We also had a pomegranate tree near the pool. One day I was riding my bike around the spa, which was attached to the pool, and I fell in. I couldn't swim, and my dad's son from his first marriage, who I do not identify as my brother, saved my life.

Because it was such a big house, there were a couple of different outdoor areas. Out the front we had a mulberry tree, and Mum raised silkworms on the leaves. We also had a fenced-off area with pheasants and a number of other birds.

I don't know what made me think of this, but my brother and I once decided that we wanted to make a newsletter for the neighbourhood about Sonny and Cher, of all things. We put the idea to Mum, and she suggested we choose something that more people might be interested in. So, we started a wildlife newsletter instead, which Dad printed at his office, and we letterboxed around the neighbourhood.

A lot of people came through that house. Mum and Dad had their big, powerful friends, and Dad's four children from his first marriage used to regularly stay with us. They were in their early twenties at the time. Through all of this, and from the very beginning, there was Nanny.

Nanny sometimes used to walk from her house to ours. It took her about an hour, and she would talk about doing it to lose weight even though she wasn't anything close to fat. Nanny picked us up from school every single day and waited at home with us until one of our parents got home.

I remember the really old school dial phones, where you put your finger into the number and turned the dial around. And the answering machine! I remember Mum checking the messages. We also had a big aquarium in the kitchen that looked spectacular with all the fish swimming around. It was a tropical aquarium rather than a marine one, but some of the fish still looked exotic to me. I was mesmerised by them, and I distinctly remember the smell of the chemicals in the water.

One day, my brother and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when Mum walked in wearing this beautiful grey suit with black floral patterns on it. Somehow, Mum ended up telling us that the suit was from Fletcher Jones. My brother and I went into hysterics because we thought "Fletcher" meant "fart". Mum became really self-conscious and kept asking us why we were laughing.

Another time, Mum had a whole group of visitors gathered in the kitchen. I walked in and gave her a hug, then looked at her, put my hand on her stomach and asked if she was pregnant again. Everybody in the room laughed. She wasn't pregnant. She had just put on a few pounds.

My dad was very strict. I remember Nanny once bought me a Kylie Minogue cassette tape and Dad restricted the times I was allowed to listen to it. We also weren't allowed to watch Neighbours, although Nanny always let us watch it at her place.

My dad was a complicated man. I remember the day his mother died, he went into the lounge room at the front of the house and shut the door. I always think about that and wonder if he did it deliberately so we wouldn't see him grieving. I think he did.

Mum and Dad used to have lots of dinner parties, and my favourite nights were when there would be a whole group of people sitting around our big dining room table, telling stories and laughing. As I lay in bed, I could hear them out there, still awake, and it made me feel so safe.

When Nanny wasn't looking after us at night while Mum and Dad were out, Mum's two nieces, my cousins, would often babysit us. They were stricter than Nanny, but they were also pretty good.

Every Christmas, Dad held a Christmas party at the house for his supporters. I remember carrying trays of food around and offering it to the guests. Mum and Dad would hire tables and chairs, as well as glasses and cutlery, especially for the occasion. They were big parties, and they were always held in the front yard of the house.

Something else I remember about living in that house was chain letters. So much of my life now revolves around letters, but back when I was a little kid, people used to send actual handwritten chain letters through the post. They would instruct the recipient to make copies and send a certain number of them on to other people. There was usually some sort of threat at the end saying that if you broke the chain, bad luck would come to you or your family. I remember getting those chain letters in our letterbox.

If I ever became super rich, I would buy that house from its current owner. In fact, I would buy all three houses my family owned around Adelaide and the one we owned in Canberra. But if I could only buy one of them, it would be this one.

I still drive past it sometimes, and from the front it looks remarkably similar to the house I remember. I'd love to know what they've done with it inside. Nearly 40 years have passed since I was that frightened little five year old running down the hallway to Mum and Dad's bedroom, but whenever I drive past that house, I still remember exactly what it looked like on the other side of the front door.

Everything I've Got

Yesterday morning I had the assessment centre for the call centre position I applied for. I had been up all night Monday night, so I couldn't drive into town and ordered an Uber instead. It picked me up a little after 7:30am. The assessment centre was at 8:45am for a 9:00am start, but I wanted to beat the traffic and get there early.

My Uber driver was incredibly impatient, weaving in and out of traffic and taking what I'm sure he thought were shortcuts. Mostly, they seemed to create more of a headache and annoy other drivers. Despite his efforts, I was in the CBD by around 8:00am and was dropped off right outside the building.

With plenty of time to spare, I wandered into an arcade next door and found somewhere to eat. There were no croissants, so I settled for a tomato and cheese sandwich before making my way to the ladies, where I was treated to a spectacular little work of art: the sign for the women's bathroom had a beautiful arrangement of Braille underneath it. I took a quick photo while a woman walking past looked at me rather suspiciously.

There seemed to be so much more Braille on this sign than I'm used to seeing. I hoped it meant it was more descriptive.

I then made my way back to the building where the assessment centre was being held, which is also the office of the company the job is with. It was a huge building that housed the offices of a large number of organisations. Two escalators led to the first floor, where the recruitment agency had told us to wait.

At the top was a large reception area filled with big, beautiful chairs and tables in front of a marble-looking reception desk. You can see the reception desk below.

To the right of the reception desk was a secure access point for employees with swipe cards. I took a sneaky shot of it, which you can see below.

As I sat there, more candidates started to arrive and take seats. I knew they were there for the assessment centre because they would go up to the reception desk and ask if they were in the right place.

It was actually a really interesting spot to position yourself between 8:15am and 9:00am because loads of people were arriving for work. I took notice of who greeted the receptionists because I've been a receptionist in so many different places, and you always remember the people who take the time to say good morning.

It got me thinking that reception is the only sort of employment I've had in offices like these. I've never had the sort of job where you arrive at an office, sit down at a desk and have some level of flexibility in what you're doing. I've worked in call centres, but just like reception, you're bound to the phone.

Most of the people I saw arriving for work yesterday morning looked like they were under 40. I saw the odd older person, but I was surprised by how young the workforce seemed to be. The receptionist was kept busy, mostly issuing swipe cards to employees and directing those of us there for the assessment centre to take a seat and wait for the recruitment agency to come and get us.

The job itself is with a company, but the employment is through a recruitment agency, so it's essentially a temp job, albeit one they seem to take very seriously when deciding who to place with the company.

At 9:00am a roll was called. I would say there were around 15 of us, again mostly young, although there were noticeably a few older people and I was one of them. We were issued temporary swipe cards and name badges before making our way into the office space where the assessment centre was being held.

There were introductions from the recruitment agency and the company, and then we got down to business. We had a series of spelling and listening tests followed by a group activity.

At previous assessment centres, I can recall being given tasks like choosing from a list of professions who you would take to Mars if you were colonising it and had to populate it. You might be given a list of hairdressers, doctors, lawyers and plumbers and have to decide who would be most useful. Although I always feel that something they don't stress enough in that particular activity is the need for fertile young women to physically bring the new population to life.

Anyway, yesterday we had to put a series of emergencies in order of priority and explain why. Our group started with a multicar accident and then ended with a cat stuck up a tree. They weren't just interested in our answers, but in our reasoning and how we worked together as a group.

I made the joke that I wanted to put the cat up the tree as the first priority, but when you looked at some of the other options, including someone who had stopped breathing and suspicious activity around a school, it became pretty hard to defend.

We had a break and I got talking to another candidate. She was lovely and a lot younger than me, but it was interesting because she told me she had applied for the night shift because she was an insomniac. I shared my own experience with her and we talked about that for a while.

Then came the bit everyone was waiting for: the one-on-one interviews. I was last of the lot, and while I was waiting, I snapped the photo below of the view from the room where we had been conducting our activities.

The photo doesn't do the view any justice. There was huge floor to ceiling windows with a spectacular view of the city landscape. I also noticed how amazing the planes looked as they tilted at an angle while climbing into the sky to reach their cruising altitude.

My interview was with a man from the company and a woman from the recruitment agency. By this point, I was so tired that my interest in the position had become secondary to my need for sleep. But I managed to string a few sentences together when they asked about my customer service background.

I was confident, assertive and sounded very sure of myself. This is a far cry from how I usually present at interviews, and in this one I probably came across as a little too sure of myself.

They asked me what area I thought I might struggle with. I told them that in my previous employment it had pretty much been mandatory to be nice and friendly as part of the role. The call centre I was applying for is not the sort of place where it would be appropriate to be overly friendly, and I told them I might find that difficult to adjust to.

Then they asked me how I would manage that, and I told them my professionalism would carry me through. And then, for some reason, I kept talking.

"To be honest, with your previous question I was grasping at straws. I don't think I would struggle with anything because I feel confident stepping into any call centre environment."

I instantly stopped myself and corrected what I'd said.

"I know that sounds incredibly arrogant, but I feel at home in a customer service environment."

I really felt that the blatant arrogance I had just demonstrated to my interviewers would have disqualified me from any claim to one of these jobs, so I thanked them for their time, finished up and caught a taxi home.

When I got home, I told Mum about the morning while trying desperately to keep my eyes open. I eventually made my way to bed and fell asleep, only to be woken about an hour later by a phone call from the recruitment agency.

They told me I had been successful in getting a role on the night shift at the call centre.

I couldn't believe it.

The version of myself I presented during the interview didn't feel like who I really am, and in many ways, I was embarrassed that I had spoken that way. But I thanked them for the job, and they told me the offer was pending one final reference.

I needed another reference from a supervisor, so I contacted a man I used to volunteer for, and he said he'd be happy to fill in the form.

The lady at the recruitment agency explained that training will be from 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday, for one week. After that, the rest of the training will be done on the night shift schedule, which starts at 8:00pm and finishes late.

While I was at the assessment centre yesterday, I was so tired. I remembered them telling me that the initial training would be held during the day, and as I sat there, I kept thinking, I don't know if I can do it. I couldn't do it with Lifeblood, and I don't know if I can physically manage a week of training while struggling so badly with my sleep.

But if I can just get through that one week, I will have the perfect job.

So, I've made a decision. If the job goes ahead, meaning there are no problems with my spent conviction or anything else that might pop up, I am going to get a hotel room in the CBD for the duration of the training. I'm going to take four or five alarm clocks with me, sleep when I can and force myself to get up when I have to.

I've thought about the implications of leaving Mum at home without me, and it's not something I want to do. But I will still be available to her whenever she needs me, and I really feel this is the only way I'm going to get through that week of training.

It's funny, isn't it? With all the trouble I've had with sleep deprivation, I know that when I turn up to these assessment centre type things I probably just seem completely normal, like it's just another day. It makes you think about how little we really know about what other people are going through. You never really know what it took for someone to be there on any given day.

It's currently 4:16am and I'm sitting here at my computer under the heater this morning. Usually I have the cool air on, but it was so cold I couldn't bear it. It's Wednesday 12 August and there is no escaping Sunday 16 August, which is my birthday and the point in my life when youth really will be completely gone.

It was already gone probably at 40, but every day after 45 is one step closer to 50 and then, all of a sudden, I'm a senior citizen!

In saying that, in my heart I don't really feel old. I feel misplaced within society. I have none of the markers that seem to come with age. I'm unmarried, I don't have children, I don't even have a partner, I don't own a house and I don't have a job, although I've just been told I have one with a reputable company, albeit as a temp. Sometimes I feel like the years went by and I have nothing to show for them.

On the cusp of my 45th birthday, I am reminded of my 21st. Mum arranged this big dinner at what was then the Radisson Playford Hotel. All of my family was invited and all of Nanny's grandchildren were there, but as far as friends went, they were few and far between.

I had spent the previous year at business college, where I'd made a small group of friends. They were mostly girls from the country and we'd all become quite close, but they were new friends. I invited four or five of them to my 21st, along with two of my old good friends. And that was it.

I also invited a few of my brother's friends, some of Mum's staff and some of her friends, but there was no big group of girlfriends surrounding me. It felt strange because I think my friends from business college probably assumed I had a whole other group of friends somewhere, but the truth was that they were really it.

I think a lot of that came from all the moving around I did as a kid and then, as an adult, from temping. As I changed schools and workplaces, my groups of friends changed. I was still on good terms with the people I'd moved on from, but they weren't part of my day to day life anymore. At that particular moment, my friends from business college were my current friends.

I didn't have a close best friend to stand up and make a speech either, so Dad made one. It was a really awkward speech. He talked about how I went horse riding as a child and I was so scared I started crying. It was weird, and at the time I was embarrassed by it, but looking back now I think Dad got me.

He was a bit of a loner himself. I remember when I lived in Sydney, he told me he wanted to pay my rent because he knew I was all alone and lonely over there. I think he understood something similar when he looked at me at my 21st birthday party.

The other thing is that Dad was so used to making speeches, and yet this one was a little weird and uncomfortable. But he just did not care. He couldn't have cared less what anyone thought of him. He made that speech for me, and my whole family placed enormous importance on my 21st birthday. But I didn't.

As soon as the formalities were over, I was picked up by this boxer I was seeing. He took me down to the beach at Largs Bay and we just talked all night. But make no mistake, I left an entire party full of people at the Radisson Playford on my 21st birthday and went off with this man.

That should tell you something about how desperate I was to be loved then. It's not a feeling I have now.

It wasn't long after my 21st that I started to make two new groups of friends. The first was a group of really dodgy characters. I had gone to school with one of the girls and her brother, and a whole group of them would hang around at her parents' house.

The other group of friends I made was through the Young Liberals. I never really fit in with them. They were all university educated or still studying, they had good jobs and they were also incredibly conservative, although I didn't really understand that back then.

I became heavily involved with the dodgy crowd for a while, but eventually broke away from them and pretty much hung out exclusively with Young Liberal types. I had two boyfriends through the Young Liberals, and my second boyfriend, Nick, had a lot of friends, so together we formed quite a crowd, even though some of them were technically in different factions.

I don't know whether I did this to prove something to other people or to myself, but I decided to have a big party for my 26th birthday. I had it upstairs at the Historian Hotel and I literally invited everyone I think I'd ever met.

There was a whole stack of Young Liberals and conservative politicians, but I also invited people I'd worked with in call centres. I remember my mother's personal assistant coming up to me and subtly pointing out the different socioeconomic backgrounds of some of the people in the room. She said only I could pull that off.

I know she wasn't trying to be a snob, but it was an incredibly snobby comment. She was right that there were very different types of people there, but I said it back then and I'll say it again today: I genuinely believe we are all equal. We're all the same. We all have the same value, and money or the lack of it means nothing to me.

At the party there were two big white screens, and I projected the movie Little Shop of Horrors onto one of them. There were no speeches, and even though there were a lot of people there, it was actually a little uncomfortable. But I think I felt good that I'd managed to get such a big crowd together.

Dad told me the next day that he thought there had been a good number of people there.

If I had a party like that now, I'd be lucky to get ten people there. But I think it would take more than a large attendance at a party to make me feel good these days.

Yesterday I didn't stay up all day watching Underbelly: The Golden Mile. I physically couldn't keep my eyes open. But I'm going to watch a few episodes this morning and then get a bit of sleep. I love the Underbelly series. They're all really well done.

Last night I did the Census online for Mum and me. I thought it would be thrilling and that we would be undertaking a ritual similar to the one that took place in Roman-occupied Palestine at the time of Jesus, but instead it just asked a series of pretty straightforward questions.

It is kind of cool, though, the way they aimed to capture Australia on the night of 11 August 2026. I particularly liked how the questions revolved around the people who were actually at your house on that particular night. 

I was so disappointed that I didn't get a job with the Census, but I guess now I have this opportunity in front of me with the call centre job. It's just going to take everything I've got to get through that week of training.

Oddly Appetising

First thing yesterday morning, I went to Ingle Farm Shopping Centre to a hairdresser I only ever visit on Mondays. There's a reason for that. Most hairdressers seem to be closed on Mondays, including both my old and new salons. I suppose it makes sense. Saturday is usually a busy day, so closing on Monday gives staff Sunday and Monday off in a row.

Leonardo's is open on Mondays, and I went there yesterday for a blow-dry in preparation for today's assessment centre and interview for the call centre job. Ingle Farm isn't particularly close to where I live, but I happened to be shopping there one day when I felt like getting a blow-dry. Leonardo's had an appointment available, I was impressed with what they did, and I've been going back sporadically ever since.

My appointment was at 9:00am, and because I arrived a little early, I took a walk around the shopping centre. That's when I was reminded of our state Attorney-General.

I recently discovered that he has a fondness for sausage rolls, which prompted me to do some research into their history. I discovered that sausage rolls originated in Britain, so I wrote to bakeries in countries across the former British Empire asking about sausage rolls in their part of the world and whether they would share a recipe. I also sent letters to 75 bakeries across the UK, and I have another 75 sitting here waiting to be sent to bakeries around Australia.

I haven't received any responses yet, but international post can be extremely slow, and I imagine it's even slower at the moment because of the war in the Middle East.

Anyway, I was reminded of the Attorney-General and my sausage roll letters because, as I wandered around the shopping centre, I came across three bakery-type places selling sausage rolls.

I'm a vegetarian and, in many ways, completely repulsed by meat, but every now and then I crave a Balfours sausage roll. I used to buy them from the tuck shops at so many of the schools I attended, and I loved them. The sausage rolls you can see below reminded me of those old Balfours ones and they even looked oddly appetising.

I could also see how the ones below might appeal to someone walking past. Maybe not first thing in the morning, which was when I was there, but they did look nice and toasty with crisp, golden pastry.

The last lot of sausage rolls didn't look quite so appealing. They almost looked lonely sitting there next to the pasties, as though someone had just shoved them onto an otherwise empty tray and forgotten about them. Somehow, if I were a carnivore with a fondness for sausage rolls, I think I would have walked straight past them.

While I was killing time before my appointment, I also took a stroll through Coles. There I came across a beautiful display of flowers and plants that somehow made the whole mundane experience of grocery shopping feel a little more delightful. There was something lovely about seeing all that colour and life in the middle of an ordinary supermarket.

As it edged closer to 9:00am, I made my way back to the salon and sat at one of the tables outside while I waited for my appointment. Below you can see Leonardo's just beginning to open up for the day.

The last time I was at this salon, a beautiful Greek lady named Katherine did my hair. She had just turned fifty, and I really enjoyed chatting to her while she did my colour. When I called to make yesterday's appointment, I was told Katherine was on leave, but her 27-year-old daughter, Eliza, was there and ended up doing my hair instead.

Eliza and I talked about her mum for a while. Katherine was on holiday in Greece, and then Eliza told me that she was getting married next year to a man she had met online. As I sat there talking to her, it occurred to me that we could almost be the same age. Except, of course, we couldn't. The reality was that I was much closer to her mother's age than I was to hers.

Her 50-year-old mother is my generation, while Eliza's generation, in many ways, feels completely foreign to me. It was a slightly strange realisation, particularly with my own birthday just around the corner. I quickly processed that, then I took two photos around the salon. The first is of a workstation much like the one where I was having my hair done.

The second photo I took was of the back section of the salon, where several floor tiles had been broken and the area had been sectioned off while they waited for them to be repaired.

I like this salon. It has the feel of an old-school hairdressing salon and reminds me a lot of the place where I started my apprenticeship in Alice Springs 27 years ago. After reconciling myself to the fact that I am now officially a mature woman, I thanked Eliza for a great blow-dry, jumped in my Beetle and came home.

That morning I heard from Liam, who sent me a flirty little message, and then I went to sleep for a while. I woke up in the afternoon and watched NCIS with Mum while I did some planning for my book. Ever since then, I've mostly been watching Piers Morgan and Al Jazeera on YouTube, keeping up with what's going on in the world.

Earlier tonight, Liam sent me a message saying he was on his way to the hospital with his partner, who had suffered a suspected stroke. The moment I read that message, any lingering doubts I had about ending our little inappropriate conversation disappeared instantly.

The most important things in the world are our family and the people we love, and I knew then that I would no longer engage in any kind of amorous or sexual dialogue with him. More than anything, I hope his partner is okay.

Having said all of that, I think I may have been a little harsh on him when I wrote about him last night. In so many ways, it does take two to tango. While I certainly think people can cross boundaries in relationships, Liam felt comfortable crossing those boundaries with me partly because I allowed that kind of relationship to develop between us.

It's extremely tragic, though. I've been thinking about my experiences with men. There were casual relationships, or what the current generation seems to call "situationships". There were flings, suggestive text messages, missed opportunities and even some traditional relationships. But there was one thing there wasn't: a great love story.

I've been enamoured with men. I've been attached to men, and I've certainly found comfort in some of them. But I've never been in a relationship where I can look back and honestly say that I loved the man I was with.

In saying that, I did love a man once. And that was the Judge.

It was instantaneous, irrational, overwhelming and completely involuntary. It was more powerful to me than any other force I have experienced during my time here on earth. I feel as though the greatest love I could ever have experienced would have been the love I had for a child, but what I felt for the Judge seemed like something supernatural altogether.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to love a man that way and have him love me back with the same intensity. Now that would be a beautiful thing. I'm not entirely convinced that kind of love really happens between two people, but if it does, and somebody gets to experience it even once in their lifetime, how incredibly lucky they are.

Having written this blog for just over two years, I feel as though it has been my apprenticeship for the writing I really want to do. I have an idea for a trilogy, and at the moment I'm going through old letters I've written, along with thoughts and ideas I've accumulated over the years and putting together a plan. Then I want to sit down and finally get the whole thing out of my system.

I wrote a novella back in 2011, but I was in a severely altered state of mind at the time. When I look back at some of the things I wrote, I find it quite upsetting because it takes me straight back to that period of my life. Then I'll read other parts of the book and wonder where on earth they came from, because some of it makes far more sense than I would have expected.

Once I start the first book, I have a feeling it will all pour out of me. There's a sense of urgency about getting it written now, and I think turning 45 has something to do with that. You never know what might happen with your health or circumstances in life, and there is something I really want to say. More than that, there is a story I feel only I can tell.

There are some legal considerations with the characters. They won't be based on particular individuals, although some will certainly be inspired by people I have known, so there are still things I need to be mindful of. The reality is that the odds of getting the first, second or third books published are highly unlikely, so I probably don't need to worry too much about the legal side of things just yet.

I'm not really writing the books because I expect them to be published anyway. I just want one person to read them. I don't care who it is. Any old person will do. I want someone to sit with the books and read the story from beginning to end, but I don't want them to tell me what they thought of it.

I don't need a review or an analysis. I don't even need to know whether they liked them. I just want another person to have read them.

And then I can go about my business in peace.

It's now 4:32am, and I have to be in town at 8:45am for the assessment centre and interview for the call centre job I applied for. The call centre will be incredibly intense and full-on, but I think I have the professionalism and maturity to manage myself within the parameters of the role.

In saying that, I don't desperately want the job. Initially I did, largely because of the hours. The shifts start at around 8:00pm and can run for anywhere between five and eight hours. Theoretically, that works perfectly with my current sleep cycle. The problem is that they told us the initial training takes place over five days during a traditional 9-to-5 working week, so I would have to work out how to manage that.

In the information they've sent about the session later this morning, they've said they want to see our personalities and will be observing how we work with other people. Twenty years ago, I would have wanted to be the loudest voice in that crowd. This morning, first and foremost, I'm just going to be myself. But I also think I'll sit back a little and let some of the younger ones make the noise.

There's an interview component as well, and I think I interview reasonably well. The difficult part is explaining the enormous gap in my resume from the years when I was caring for Dad and also studying. Fortunately, I have some volunteer work on there, and I think my experience calling elderly clients and checking on their wellbeing has helped me get this far in the recruitment process.

Not that I volunteer for that reason. I absolutely love that role, and I intend to keep doing it until the day I die. In some ways, it almost feels superficial putting it on a resume and presenting it as experience, because that's not why I do it at all. Mostly, I include it because I'm incredibly proud to do it.

I also sent the recruitment agency the police check that I finally got back from Lifeblood. It showed no disclosable court outcomes, and they thanked me for sending it through. They've said I may need to obtain another one, which could create another little headache. It should come back with exactly the same result, but because the last one took so long, I worry that another delay might start raising eyebrows.

There are certainly things about this job that appeal to me. The money is good, the eventual hours suit me, and the experience would probably look good on my customer service resume. But if I don't get it, I don't think I'll be terribly disappointed.

I've actually put together another application for the Centre, which involved working my way through some fairly lengthy job and person specifications. I'm seeing my friend Muhammad on Friday night, and we're going to fix up my resume together. I'll send the whole application through on Sunday, which happens to be my birthday.

Something I've been thinking about now that I'm seriously looking for employment and planning to try harder than I did with Lifeblood, is that I need to sort out my sleep. I could see more specialists and spend another ten years following sleep schedules or trying different medications, but at some point, I think I simply have to find a way of making my life and my sleep coexist.

I've been thinking about Neanderthals and other hominins and their sleep habits. Part of me imagines that they went to sleep when the sun disappeared and woke when it rose again. But maybe they didn't. Perhaps there were times when they had the strength and stamina to remain awake for extraordinarily long periods while hunting, travelling, protecting themselves or caring for their families.

The traditional sleep schedule is, at least in part, something around which modern society has organised itself. We have collectively decided that darkness generally means sleep, daylight means activity, and certain hours constitute a working day. But I sometimes wonder what our sleep patterns would look like if we were completely removed from clocks, alarms, working hours and all the other constraints. If we were simply allowed to go wild and sleep whenever our bodies told us to, who knows what we would do?

As for me, my first step comes after the assessment centre and interview this morning. I'm going to try to stay awake for the rest of the day. To keep myself occupied, I've got the remaining 12 episodes of Underbelly: The Golden Mile to watch, and then tonight I'll do the Census with Mum.

I'm actually excited about doing the Census, although I admit I'm still a little wounded that I didn't get a job there. I would have been a perfect fit.

My Final Hurrah

The other day I was wandering through Foodland and had a look in the meat fridge. I'm a vegetarian, but I'm used to seeing all sorts of meat cut into neat slices, ready to be picked up by the next carnivorous punter. But when I peeped into the fridge the other day, I saw what I think might be the most grotesque thing I've ever seen: chicken feet. I snuck a photo, which you can see below.

I knew people ate chicken feet, but I thought they were something you'd find at an Asian supermarket or a specialty store, not Foodland. I don't know how people can eat them, I really don't. I think all meat is disgusting, but oddly, I sometimes crave things like steak or corned beef. I have never craved chicken feet, though, and I would love to know how anyone could be planning a meal and suddenly think, "Gee, I could go some chicken feet."

To make up for the horror of the chicken feet, when I got to the checkout I saw a number of beautiful bunches of flowers. Three of them had been wrapped in a sparkly type of paper, which instantly caught my eye as they shimmered under the lights. I took two photos of the flowers, which you can see below.

After my eye-opening little trip to the supermarket, I jumped in my Beetle and made my way down to Norwood for an eyebrow wax. As I drove, I kept seeing flashes of the chicken feet, and my mind played tricks on me, imagining I was eating them. I scrunched up my nose and tried to think of something else.

Whilst I remained deeply disturbed by the lengths humans will go to satisfy their hunger, I walked through the mall at Norwood and, in front of another Foodland, I saw more beautiful flowers. They finally put an end to the darkness that had been inhabiting my mind.

I think one of my favourite things to see is bunches of flowers sitting in buckets of water outside a shop. Whether that be a florist or a supermarket, as it was in this case, I just love the atmosphere that buckets of flowers create. There's nothing artificial about them. It's this natural, beautiful display of flowers, and I can imagine these sorts of displays being set up hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

I love it when you pick up a bunch of flowers from a bucket and water drips everywhere, and there's a little bit of chaos before the formalities of purchasing them begin.

These flowers at both Foodlands really brightened my day. I know supermarket flowers can sometimes get a bad rap, but they are just as beautiful and perfect as the ones that come out of any of those elitist florists about the place.

Throughout this blog I have established that I am without a partner, and I have been without one for a very, very long time. I've also talked about how I haven't engaged with a man romantically, or in any other way, since 2013, which is 13 years ago. I've had the odd flirtation, but I haven't really been open to anything.

That's because I feel gross. I've put on so much weight, I feel old, and I've been told I have unconventional looks. It's been so much easier to hide away, which is what I have literally been doing. I go through phases where I want someone, phases where I want to be alone, and phases where I think that maybe, once I've lost some weight and I'm feeling better about myself, I might meet someone.

But in general, I am happy without a man. I don't want a man, and I feel like I have made so many mistakes in the past that any relationship I entered into would cause reputational harm to my partner. So I just want to be alone. I really do.

But I've had an unusual experience over the last week with a man I know through a society I used to be a member of. I've actually mentioned this man before. His name is Liam. He is the manager of a cinema, and I attended a fundraiser there a couple of months ago and saw him. I sensed there was a little bit of a flirty vibe from him, but I can never tell what a man is thinking about me, so I just assumed it was nothing.

I applied for a call centre role which required me to invite four people, whether they be former managers, peers, professors or even friends, to provide me with an online reference. Since Liam and I had worked together through the society, I sent him a message and asked if he would mind filling out the reference form for me as a peer. He said he would be happy to.

Then we got texting.

The first day we texted for a really long time, hours, just about everyday things. Liam has a partner who he has been with since 2018, and initially I thought nothing of this text exchange. Then one night he was working at the cinema. All the staff had gone home and we were texting. 

It was like I was with him in real time. He was in a projector room, then he moved into the dark cinema, and while he wasn't overtly being sexual with me at first, he started talking about what he was thinking about doing in the cinema. Then he asked me if I would like to come and meet him there one night.

I said yes, knowing full well that I would never go, but things became really flirty. I told him about how I am usually up all night, every night, and on this particular night he went home and then stayed up talking to me until 5:00am, which is my safe time, when the fear tends to subside.

We have been speaking every day since. He has been very sexual with me now, and he has also mentioned feelings. From my perspective, I haven't done anything to end it, and I don't know why.

Make no mistake, I have no respect for him. I really don't. If he actually likes me, he is telling me that he is willing to have conversations like this with other women while he is in a relationship. He is outlining his behaviour to me, and it is incredibly unimpressive.

I'm going to cut him off. I feel bad because he really is a very nice person, but I don't appreciate the sentiment. It's weird too. Men are usually more interested in me for my personality rather than making such explicit sexual demands, but to each their own.

I don't want a man. I really don't. But if I did, I would never get into a relationship with someone who had spoken to me like this while they were with someone else. On top of that, I would never be with a man who left his partner for me, because how could I ever be happy with someone all the while knowing that our happiness had made someone else so unhappy?

If this man had established a solid friendship with me, and then maybe found himself single at the same time as me, perhaps something could have happened. But that's the only way it can happen with men who are in relationships or married. 

This experience with Liam started off as thrilling, to be honest, but now it just feels cheap and nasty and I want to distance myself from it. But it made me think about the last man I was ever with.

My goodness, it was so long ago. Thirteen years. That's a whole lifetime. I was 31 years old and I still realistically held onto the dream that I would meet someone, settle down, get married and start a family. It was only two years after the humiliation with the judge, and I was nowhere near healed from that, but I remember thinking it was about time I got back out there. Not necessarily to look for someone, but just to put myself out there.

I had a girlfriend who was having a party. I can't remember what it was actually for, but thinking back now, it could have been her 30th birthday. She told me she had a friend named John who she wanted me to meet. I hate being set up. I always feel inadequate, like the man I'm being set up with might be disappointed to be set up with me. But because it was a party and lots of people were going to be there, I told her I'd love to meet him.

John was a journalist, and he was just like so many other journalists I have met: a little sarcastic, cynical and funny. He was also incredibly good looking. John was around 15 years older than me, but that seemed like nothing after the relationship I'd had in my head for the past two years with the 60 year old judge.

There was a bonfire outside and both of us were staying over at my friend's house, so after a few drinks we made our way inside. I remember the video clip for Britney Spears' song Hold It Against Me was playing on the television, and that song always reminds me of this night whenever I hear it.

Thinking about it now, I think I was trying to prove to myself that I was attractive, so I led John into one of the bedrooms. I am so shy I can't put it into words, but after we started kissing, I literally took my top off and removed my bra. I remember seeing his face. He just fell back on the bed as if he couldn't believe this was happening, but we got together a couple of times that night.

We woke up the next morning and made a few jokes about how quickly we had slept together. We agreed to call each other, but we didn't. I remember asking my friend how he was and she said he was good and asked if we were going to meet again. I said probably not. I liked him, I really did, but it just didn't feel right.

We spoke again when an older journalist I knew from his workplace died and I contacted John on Facebook about it. We got talking and decided to meet up again.

At the Crazy Horse strip club.

The reason we went there is because I was at art school and I was drawing strippers as Lady Justice, and I wanted to get some ideas for poses. He was a guy and I figured he wouldn't object to going to a strip club, so we went there. I've been to the Crazy Horse a couple of times to look at the poses of strippers, and I always talk to the strippers, but I am yet to meet one who is willing to have a philosophical conversation with me about publicly taking their clothes off for the pleasure of men. Actually, most of the strippers I've talked to pretend to be lesbians because they want me to buy a lap dance, which I've never done.

We left the Crazy Horse and went to the casino, where we started kissing, and that eventually led us back to his house. I stayed the night and the next morning there was a knock on his window and this young kid yelled out, "Dad, let me in." John jumped out of bed, put his index finger over his lips and laughed as he told me to keep quiet. His son had left something for school at the house and his mother had brought him there to pick it up. John has three children with his ex-wife.

John and I met up countless times after that. Most of the times we met in town, we met at the casino, where he loved to lose his money. We had a few nights at his house, and I remember one night we smoked marijuana before we had sex, which I know some people like to do. I don't really see any benefits to it because it literally just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. That was the last time I ever had a joint, and I will never have another one again.

I started to see John as a potential partner. I even wrote to every local council in South Australia and asked them if they referred to the public toilets in their jurisdiction as "the John." I got some hilarious responses, and I think the staff at the councils enjoyed that one, but I never gave them to John because we finished our casual relationship before all the responses came in.

I asked him if he would ever have any more children and he said no. He also said that he had been neutered.

John and I went through stages. At first, I think I was too keen, then I lost interest a bit and he became keener. Eventually we drifted apart, but back then I never thought in a million years that he would be the last man I was ever with.

I honestly think he might have been my final hurrah.

He had a few qualities which made me resent him a little bit, but the truth is that he was a beautiful soul. I've seen on Facebook that he has a partner now, as I imagine he would 13 years on, and I hope he is happy and in good health.

It's 4:34am and I am counting down the minutes until 5:00am. I shouldn't be wishing away time like this, but for some reason 5:00am makes me feel like the long, dark night is over.

Every day that passes is a day closer to my 45th birthday. I don't really know how I feel about it. If you asked me if I was happy with my life at the moment, I would say yes, I am. I feel I am on the right path to gaining some sort of meaningful employment, I've got study plans and I've got my mother. From a more practical point of view, I also have somewhere to live and I have a little bit of money.

But all of that could change in a heartbeat, and I know at some point it will. My brother is big on presenting reality to me, and he keeps asking me what I'm going to do when my mother is gone. I don't want to think about it, so I haven't made any plans, but I am forcing myself to get a job because I know that will make things a lot easier on so many levels.

I've also spoken to Rebecca and I outright asked her, should my circumstances change and I need somewhere to live, can I live with you for a year and pay you rent? She said yes, and I can't tell you how secure that made me feel. At least I know I've got an extra year to sort myself out.

With potential employment coming up, I've had to change my study plans again. I've applied to re-enrol in the Bachelor of Journalism, which is online, but sometimes I think I should just give up on university. I've tried so many times to get a degree, and I either want to go back to work, lose interest, or something happens.

If someone asked me what I really want to do, I would say the Bachelor of Fine Arts because I am a conceptual artist. But while I'm working and looking after Mum, I cannot afford to go to uni four days a week. The Bachelor of Journalism will be good because it will give me credentials to have some articles published somewhere, but the Bachelor of Fine Arts teaches all the things I wish I knew. Ceramics, photography, glass, sculpture, drawing, painting. I took for granted all that time I wasted when I could have been studying fine art.

I don't actually know why I feel I need a degree. I think I have it in my mind that if I want to emigrate to another country, I will need a degree. Whether that is true or not, I don't know, but it's always been in my head that life is so much better with a degree. Any degree. I go through stages where I question it, but it is true that having a degree makes employment a lot easier, so I will probably pursue journalism.

Life is going to be different for me when I turn 45. I've got an appointment with a trainer and I am going to take a year out of my life to get fit and healthy. I'm not looking for any quick fixes to lose weight. I am going to do it properly and consistently over a year.

I've got my letters, which I am going to continue with the passion and dedication they deserve. I've got my mother, and I am going to revolve my life around her while I still try to build something for myself and my own future.

I'm also going to stop having cheap and nasty conversations with men I barely know. I've only done it twice in 13 years, but I think I can do better than that.

So, things are a little messy while I wait for jobs and study, but I feel that with 45 looming over my head, things will come together soon enough.