KerrieJean.com

Dearie me, plug those kerfuffle valves, mercy mercy, mercy…….Serenity Now!

For before us - and particularly for *Gwennie – these will be the most difficult of days…..

Personally, I haven’t been as fraught since I was thrown out of the Roxy Theatre in 1974 with my date – a Yanco Agricultural High School Rugby League superstar.  

The crime?

Multiskilling. Watching ‘The Godfather’ and having a quick grope while being under the official insidious Nanny State ‘The Godfather’ viewing age of 18.

Pathetic, unfair, criminal. [As if Gwennie would have wanted to be provide 'grope parental guidance' (GPG), as if!]

Anyway, now is now…… and Red N’ Ready and Mr Ab-Do-Man have got three horses’ heads in their beds:  those of Messrs Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott. 

And make no mistake, everybody in rural Australia wishes that Bob (Seat of Camelot 1), Tony (Seat of Camelot 2) or Rod (Seat of Camelot 3) was their rep.

[Camelot: The hottest seat in town. Cr: Ken McCown: flickr]

So much so that last night I dreamt that Bob The Kat - the man with the glorious Future Shock of  hair that The Mousse Man, Mr Tim Mathieson, will surely be working on by 2pm today – was the Independent for Riverina.

In my dream, I was head of the ’The Ministry Of Fear’  – dispatched by Red N’ Ready and Mr Ab-Do-Man to find out what Bob The Kat’s demands were for the seat of Camelot 1.

This is what he told me:

‘KJ, of  all the places in Camelot 1, I love the Leeton the mostest…..

Chockablock with good, fine people…….

Tell Red N’ Ready and Mr Ab-Do-Man that this is what they demand, what they deserve……..

NOT to be given fast broadband but for everyone to BECOME Very, Very, Very Fast Broadband……

Babies delivered at Leeton Hospital will have access to the latest technology as their birthright……… 

A keyboard surgically attached to their tummies which will receive signals from a base station at Grong Grong….

Leeton will be the first rural community on the Pacific Rim where everyone’s middle name will be their Broadband signal…..

For example:  Cory Grong Grong 34567 Dodds, Sarah Grong Grong 34897 Morgan.

Because everyone in Leeton IS Very, Very, Very Fast Broadband, life will change KJ – for the very, very, VERY betterest….

Mass at St Joseph’s? Two minutes with communion, 45 secs without. Aussie Rules games? One quarter. NO time on. A typical date with a crumbed king prawn cutlet supper?  Forty five seconds with tartare sauce, 29 without.  Intimate conjugal activites? Four seconds – down from nine.

What this all means KJ is that the good folk of Leeton will have much, much, mucherest morest time to do the things that count…….

……Day trips to day spas in Wagga Wagga, bacchanalian pizza nights in Griffith, educative family excursions to ‘The Home Of The Kelpie’ town, Ardlethan…..

Tell ‘em KJ, you tell ‘em……..

AND while you’re at at it, tell ‘em the good townsfolk of Leeton want the life blood of a fairly big bit of Australia, the complete Murray-Darling system, diverted their way.

They wanna put a record rice crop in…….

Not too bloody much to ask……not bloody much at all…..’

*Gwennie (mum). Last sighted doing her own heart stress test – wandering up Pine Avenue yelling:

If Abbott becomes PM, I will live, if THAT ABBOTT becomes PM, I WILL live……to have another perm!!!

Test results? Inconclusive.  (God, God, GOD!)

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Oh dear, please feel free to talk among yourselves about anything…..

I am in no fit state to check my derma filler levels let alone lead a democratic discussion.

*If anything good can be taken away from all of this it is:

The fact that all of us still have the services of Under The Table Top Man (UTTTM), kerriejean.com’s political and diplomatic correspondent. UTTTM will be under all of the the tables that count all week. 

Thank you UTTTM and Keep Cool.

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Oh yes, there is something else………

Coming Soon!

An historic development for kerriejean.com: the simultaneous release on-line, on the airwaves - and on Corey Grong Grong 34567 Repeater Dodds - of the ground breaking, controversial series:

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

[Cr: National Library Of Congress: flickr]

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

*Narrated by stage and screen superstar, Mr Colin Moodie .

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

 Follows the gripping and pathetic escapades of a 50-year-old journalist…..

She’s broken down, busted, kaput.

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

And she’s returning to her hometown looking for advice and succour.

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

I’ll tell you one thing for free: I’d hate to be in her shoes!

SOMETHING IN THE HAIR

On, in and all over kerriejean.com SOON!

*****In the meantime, go on……..gouge a few minutes out of your obscenely frantic life and join the kerriejean.com commentariat…..
Just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Regressive-Repulsive-Repugnant Thoughts, Free-Floating-Anchored Anxiety…….

EVEN sudden and inexplicable twinges of sympathy for the now officially ‘unhinged’ marauding, incendiary serial fete opener, the Honorable Member for Griffth……

Serenity Now!

Could it be that clear, present and mounting pressures – the impending multi-media KJ extravanganza, Gwennie’s insistence she’ll drop dead at precisely 10pm on August 21st if  ‘that Abbott’ gets in, relentless controversy over my new fringe (’looks great’/'looks s***house’) – be threatening the very centrepiece of my Personal Coping Strategic Plan?

Could it be that KJ’s KERFUFFLE VALVE is about to blow?

[KJ: 'Serenity Now!' Cr: Sarge Devil: flickr]

…..The last time my Kerfuffle Valve was seriously under threat was in the year 2000…….

Talk about a Personal Perfect Storm….

Leeton had become too big for me. Too frantic. Alienation had set in……

Coming from a family that doesn’t age at all well, even social trips to Woolies to pick up a carrot were rendered nightmares.

(KJ to old schoolfriend) “Hello Barb, how’re the kiddies?”

“I don’t know ya from a bar of Solvol. But I have got TWO things to say: ‘Get yaself some decent moisturiser and keep away from my kids…..’”

My Kerfuffle Valve couldn’t argue with that.

I had to get away - fast.

Soon, I’d secured a Winter lease on a bungalow in Currie, the capital of King Island which nestles in the wild western entrance to Bass Strait. (Yes, yes, YES….where all your soft cheese requirements come from – including those that’d benefit from a quick squirt of Exit Mould)

After an indescribably horrifying turbulent  five-valium-40-minute trip from Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport I finally collapsed in the Currie bungalow, my Kerfuffle Valve saving sanctuary…..

With two cardboard cartons…

One jam-packed with cottontails and other intimate requisites including ‘Mum’ and ‘Mylanta’. The other? A more eclectic booty – (1) Chocolate roll (unfilled) compliments of Gwennie, (1) Superior ‘Mawson Hut’ brand doona and (12) bottles, celebratory Riverina *’Golden Gate’ Spumante.

*Everything under control - Kerfuffle Valve firmly secured.

The night closed in……

Working furiously with a combination of six gas cyclinders and three tonnes of old growth forest, I’d even managed to bring the Kerfuffle Valve sanctuary’s parlour temperature up to two degrees.

Then, IT started…….

A noise not unlike that in a Qantas jet engine test cell…

Incessant rumbling, then incessant whirring, then incessant roaring, roaring, roaring, ROARING…….

Every window in the sanctuary was shaking, shaking, SHAKING…….outside, the twister whipped cottage garden threatened to burst straight through the panes  – to become the parlour garden.

THEN the lights banged, flickered and died…..

Crawling on the sanctuary floor, I managed to put through a call to a loved one:

 ’Tell Gwennie I love her…….new perm, tell Gwennie I love her……new perm’. 

(Loved One)  ’Good luck KJ, good luck – trust me, I’ll make sure your super is split exactly five ways, good luck KJ, good luck….’

It must have been then that I collapsed. Caused by the complete failure of my Kerfuffle Valve.

Morning dawned clear and bright……

Stumbling out the door with a box of Bandaids and a bottle of Dettol,  triage nurse KJ was ready to minister to other not so lucky survivors of  the twister.

In the main street of Currie (called ‘Main Street’) everything was calm, quiet……eerie…..

In a small cafe, people sat reading papers while hoeing into bacon and eggs…..eerie, eerie, eerie.

I asked the woman behind the counter what I could to help.

‘In regard to WHAT darlin’?’

‘In regard to the tornado.’

‘That was nothin’……wanna coffee?’

*I relate this because I was downright fascinated to read that the King Island community has offered itself as a potential site for a superdooper asylum seeker detention facility:

 http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/king-island-asylum-plan/story-e6frewt0-1225893369820

My considered view?

You CANNOT dump vulnerable people – who’ve just risked their lives on the high seas – in the Twister Capital of Australia.

You CANNOT…..

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I intend to write more of my adventures on King Island at a later date. Trust me, I had quite a few with their repercussions still being felt right up to this day.

So, have you ever done a runner in the interests of life and dignity? 

On the National Watch, your thoughts on THE DEBATE most welcome….for what it’s worth,  I always suspect that when people present as just a bit  ’too civilised’  – UNCIVILITY lurks just below the surface.

And – anything else erupting or receding on your patch?

Trust me, nothing is too small for discussion in kerriejean.com. It’s called ‘Democracy’ and I’d very much like to show some Leadership in the pursuit thereof.

So, why not throw caution to the wind and exercise a basic right by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Dateline:  Monday, 06:0666, 2010.

The traditional election campaign dragnet has just been thrown up around Gwennie’s fibro palace  – ‘Paradise Corner’ – Leeton, New South Wales.

And, I’ve just been privy to her traditional (intense and life-affirming) election strategy campaign briefing –  and I can report all (traditional) contingencies have been accounted for.

The context?

When Gwennie’s not in full election campaign mode, her fibro palace nestles in what sociologists describe as ‘optimum community conditions’…….

Neighbours who’ve been in residence since the ending of hostilities in the Korean War….

Neighbours sharing not sponge recipes but sponges, neighbours cheerfully going broke by funding hundreds of shotgun engagement, shotgun wedding shower, shotgun wedding –  and shotgun divorce pressies.

Good people all – until the (traditional) tensions of Federal Election campaigns erupt, threatening everything from the reassuring rhythms of pacemakers to meticulously planned divorce proceedings.

(Democracy In Action! Gwennie’s election campaign dragnet – Cr: Flawka: flickr).

More context please….

All right, all right, all right…!

The facts……

Gwennie is Australia’s most rabid Labor supporter: Driven. Obsessive. Stark-raving mad with it.

And the fact that Paradise Corner’s aforementioned fibro palace is flat bang in one of The Nationals (who?) last bastions - the sprawling seat of Riverina –  gets her even more fired up.

PARTICULARLY because it is her neighbours – whom she usually respects (and incidentally) throws a lot of selfless love at on a daily basis  - keeping  Warren Truss (who?) all trussed up.

FURTHERMORE, this campaign comes with an added complication.

Gwennie is 86.

And God help me, if I hear this horrifying piece of logic more time, I’ll surely go mad with pre-emptive grief…

Labor has to win KJ – it just has to this time….

Because I don’t want to die, leave this democracy with that disgrace of a man, Tony Abbott, telling me how to live…..

So, what’s the latest on Gwennie’s campaign trail of (traditional) trauma ?

Well, I’ve just had a phone conference with my most sensible sister, Mezza-Anne.

She’s donned a helmet, making last minute preps to flee her (very posh, if I might say so myself) palace in Canberra enroute to Leeton.

Mezza’s strategy?  To ‘talk Gwennie down’…..

You know (as per usual), plonk her in the car, restain her….. take her to see the magnificant, migrating Siberian Cranes at the famed Fivebough Swamp, Bog And Wetlands.

Fat chance Mezza!

My latest communique from Gwennie says:

*She’s sticking her out the kitchen window, monitoring THE NATIONALS every movements.

*She’s outfitted for action – one ‘Shame Fraser Shame’ badge and (oh dear) one ‘Kevin O7′ sweatshirt.

*She’s cancelled all neighbourly cups of tea for the foreseeable future. (’Well, what would you do if you had 67 Piers Ackermans on your doorstep?’)

*She’s updated her funeral plan. (’I won’t have my five decent girls left short if that Abbott gets the chance to send the whole country (and me with it) to Hell In A Hand Basket, I really won’t…’)

Good luck Mezza!

Particularly since I am in receipt of this juicy snippet….

‘Our’ own aberration – a couple of  National cult members - will be in Leeton on Election Night 2010.

AND Gwennie is ready.

I love everybody in THIS family……afterall, that’s my job.

BUT, if ******** and ********* (names protected) expect to come anywhere near Paradise Corner come August the 21st, they are sadly mistaken…….

Tell them this KJ – you tell them THIS:

There’s personal issues of safety at stake here.

Nothing more. ……

Nothing less.

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All in all, a dreadful time for Gwennie – and everyone who crosses her path.

But as expected (I guess) in tight knit, supportive rural communities……

Would love to hear how you handle internecine election campaign ‘take no prisoners’ imbroglios.

And – probably don’t need to say it but I will (because everyone knows I learn towards browbeating on occasions) I’d love to hear about anything that is tickling your fancy – or NOT!

Must away – am IN STUDIO (with a superb team) putting together the upcoming radio and muti-media Kerrie Jean extravanganza, ‘Something In The Hair’. *Over the decades, it has been said that I can be ’quite strange’ to work with. Just go into Production Booth P53 at ABC Sydney Headquarters and members of the team will tell you straight out what a joyful experience it is. They will, they will……

In the meantime…….

Just click on the ‘comment’ thingo and follow the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.