It occurs to me, now that I'm running my own business, that this is a very good idea. For example, here are 10 reasons why you might be too stupid to be my client:

• three days before I run your focus groups you ask me --with venues, equipment, materials and participants all organised and approved--if you can change the entire focus of those groups.


• you insist on me recruiting your friend for a focus group because he's from the 'target audience' only he turns out to be deeply anti-social and not be part of the target market at all.


• on the afternoon of a focus group you ask me if you can change the already approved and printed materials I am going to use.


• you think that I can run eight individual testing sessions in the same amount of time I quoted to run two hour focus groups each with 8 people (no, that does NOT count as half as many people) and on the same budget.


• you submit a quote to me two days after the deadline I indicated clearly to you in mail and over the phone.


• you tell me you need me to begin working immediately, then inform me I must wait until a service agreement goes through, which will take about five weeks.


• when the service agreement comes through several weeks later and I'm already working on another project, you throw a tantrum because I'm not immediately available.


• you ask me to review your site design and then neglect to give me the latest version of it to look at.


• you tell me that you don't like any of my web site designs and, when asked which web sites you do think are well designed, tell me that you don't use the internet.


• you short-pay my invoice by exactly the amount of sales tax you are supposed to pay.

Some people are too stupid to live.

Monkey Business

8 down. 112 to go.

That's a whole lotta monkeys. Go me!

What's all this monkey business about then?

This time two years ago, I was swanning around in a new wardrobe, flaunting a 10-kilo svelter figure and aiming to drop another 10 from it.

Not long after that, shit happened.

Some of it was good shit. Like marrying Ghost.

Some of it was shit shit. Like losing my job.

A lot of it was the sort of shit that had me reaching for remedial Tim Tams in quantities that would make Dr Atkins spin in his grave, if he wasn’t such a fat bastard when he croaked.

And so, I find myself two years later with the equivalent of 120 average male marmosets** hanging off my body. Mostly around my hips and thighs. And while they're excellent at picking fleas, they do not make for an attractive look.

I find myself on a quest. A quest to lose 120 marmosets. I’ve chosen to record my progress in terms of marmosets, simply because a) they're really cute, b) most people could lose the equivalent of a marmoset just having a good crap and c) monkeys make everything better.

Good, healthy monkey-loss runs at about 2-4 marmosets a week. It should take me about until November to rid myself of my marmoset infestation, barring unfortunate incidents with bananas. I'll be doing this with the help of the well-known support group, Monkey Watchers. I'll also be using motivational statements like 'Nothing tastes as good as getting those fricking monkeys off your outer thighs feels.'

Any support from my loyal and deeply confused audience would be appreciated.

Here's to less monkeys!

* For the uninitiated, Ghost and I have taken to use the word 'monkeys' in place of most expletives. It helps stop us from dropping the magic word in front of mum and, as I've mentioned, monkeys make everything better. Face it, you could flatten your thumb to a bloody paste with a hammer, but if you yell "MONKEYS!", you're going to grin.

** That's metric monkeys, not imperial monkeys.

I got home today from a lovely picnic in the Fitzroy gardens (where an engagement was announced and tennis balls were slobbered on and someone got to lie on a blanket without her pants on and was solemnly informed by her Aunty Tree that this was as good as life got, at least until she started having sex) and disinfected and re-bandaged my thumb, as I'd sort of done a bit of a crap job of it at the picnic.

As I did so, I made up a nice milky solution of Dettol, a disinfectant that has been used by mums all around Australia (and the UK, I believe) to disinfect nasty wounds and scrapes. It's brown and has a very distinctive smell. I could not even begin to describe it, other than to say that, for me, Dettol smells like getting better.

Many moons ago, on my very first visit to the US, I was holidaying in lovely Maui (Old Lahaina Town to be precise) and had gone for a bit of a wander about the hotel gardens. Being the complete klutz that I am, I managed to bang my foot against a volcanic rock and rip off a toenail completely.

Ow. Buggering ow. Buggering fucking ow.

I hobbled, bleeding freely, into the lobby and asked for a first aid kit. They looked at me like I had just shat on the American flag while slaughtering kittens. Now, please note, I had not asked for a doctor or a lawyer or US$20 million in reparations, just a first aid kit so I could bandage up my toe and go back to my walk. After much fussing and dithering (and rude behaviour on their part) and while I bled all over their lovely tiled floor, I got a first aid kit, hobbled into a corner and started to fix up my toe.

Only they didn't have anything that smelled like getting better.

I nearly cried.

After all the hassle they had put me through (I had AIDS, I was going to sue, I did it deliberately, blah, blah, blah), all I wanted was my mum, some Dettol and a bandaid. Now, I'm sure there was something in there appropriately disinfectant-y that would have killed all the requisite germs, but it just didn't smell like getting better.

In a long, rambly, round-about way, I had a similar experience in the US on my last holiday. No blood, this time, but I realised how much a part of me something was.

Before I go on, I know Ghost's family reads this and I should point out that nothing said beyond this point has any bearing on them at all. They were wonderful, welcoming and friendly and put on a wonderful Christmas for Ghost and I. They just weren't scorching temperatures, cricket on Boxing Day and flaming plum pud.

For years, I've wondered what Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere would be like. A Christmas where a hot meal at lunch time made sense because it's not 108F outside and where there really was snow and holly and mistletoe and all the stuff they sing about in the carols. Last Christmas, I got my opportunity, spending it in the US with Ghost's family.

And suddenly, like hydrogen peroxide not smelling like getting better, I realised what it was that defined Christmas for me.

Christmas has nothing to do with Jack Frost nipping at your nose. It is searingly hot and the kitchen's a steaming furnace and mum has to wipe sweaty strands of hair out of her eyes as she pulls the turkey out of the oven.

Christmas is stupid christmas crackers with naff toys in them and those ridiculous paper hats which the requisite uncle or aunt refuses to wear and which sag in the heat. It's the lame jokes that come packaged inside and the sharp 'POP' as you pull them.

It's the red-faced pride on mum's face as she brings out the revered pudding, flaming with brandy, and the crap photo you always try to take to capture the blue flames dancing over its surface. And it never tastes as good as you imagine, but you always eat far too much of it anyway.

It's going for a walk with the family after lunch in the blazing afternoon sun, with the requisite uncle or aunt who refuses to go because they're too sleepy from eating all that triptophan, and ending up at a football oval where someone's frisbee or nerf bullet or something or other ends up irretrievably stuck up a tree.

It's a quick game of cricket where hitting the fence is a six and Aunty So-and-so doesn't have to go out first time because can't really see the ball coming at her, but is a bloody good sport for playing anyway.

It's waiting for the cool of the evening to finally hit and picking at the left-overs as darkness falls, despite still being stuffed from lunch.

It's a lazy picnic by the beach or in a park on Boxing Day, the following day, with your family and the dogs and the left-overs and whichever toys didn't get irretrievably stuck up a tree the day before, where you all lay around on the picnic blankets and stuff yourselves all over again and remember just how fucking lucky you are.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what Christmas is all about for me.

Don't get me wrong, Christmas with Ghost's family was magical and wonderful and I'm glad I spent it with them. But Dettol will always smell like getting better and Christmas is spent in the sun.