Whaddaya Reckon?

I've been ten years out of Australia now and realise that the word 'reckon' is the one that confuses most other non-antipodean English speakers.

It just means 'think' or 'consider' in a more casual sense but instead of saying, "I think we should have chicken for dinner tonight," we Aussies say "I reckon a roast chook would be pretty good."

Our daughter Carly, arrived in Switzerland at twelve years old and went to an international school with friends owning a lot of different accents and backgrounds.  Now nearly twenty two years old, Carly is partly Swiss, a bit Aussie and in her third year of living and studying in Scotland.  When we facetime each other, she often points out that my Aussie accent and colloquialisms are much stronger than Dean's, despite the fact we both went to country high schools in the same state..

But today, I want to ask youse all something.  Whaddaya reckon about me starting a wee YouTube account featuring me in my Dog Walking Lady-clothed finery, sharing a few not particularly earth shattering (but certainly) true escapades, opinions or bravely revealed personal embarrassments?

Whaddaya reckon?  I'd really like your feedback.  You see, I love writing.  I write serious stuff for a 'living' but 'living' in reality is that Dean has the job that keeps us housed, fed, clothed, educated (Carly) and healthy and I get a bit of freelance stuff that I'm inordinately grateful for and then hate myself for having to politely submit my invoice, wait over a month to get paid and then overthank them for it.  To say that I contribute financially through writing is akin to letting a hedgehog hold the balloons.  Maybe I should just enjoy the opportunity to do it rather than consume my soul in anxiety about not being a contributor financially. (That's a topic often discussed with my psychiatrist).  I reckon that last sentence has lowered the mood a bit!

On a more positive level, writing and talking seem to be a similar thing in my world.  My family are bored to tears hearing my stories over and over, and the mundane or weird ones that I write about on Medium or here aren't ones that they're going to rush to read.  I'm Kath/Mum after all: they see enough of me when I shower with the door open to let the steam out or when I start ranting about 4WD owners who don't have roof racks or two bars and just use them to pick up their kids.

Very quietly, I've had a YouTube account for a few years and only used it to share some old Milly clips and two of Felix. It is, to put it charitably, very neglected and rarely watched.  Not unlike my attitude towards my personal grooming regime.

To start us off, I'll share this one of Felix with you now.  It was posted a few months back but will only take a little over a minute of your time to watch and hopefully end up with a smile.  This Spanish shelter dog that we adopted at three-and-a-half years old literally jumps for joy when it is his dinner time.

That was filmed in October and he STILL performs the same enthusiastic and energetically joyful dance for his evening meal.  Breakfast is different because Dean takes him out for a walk and I fill up Felix's bowl ready for his return. His reaction is to slide around the corner at sonic speed while skidding on the black and white mats, madly skitter around the kitchen bench to inhale his crunchies before I can say 'Hello there, Mr Speckles, how was your walk...."

You can see that I'm avoiding talking about my own old bonce being on YouTube.  I'm not famous, nor a stand up, an endearing animal or a public performer and never have been.  The world needs youth, intelligence, glamour, useful tips and not a 52 year old who still laughs when she sees French shower caps labelled 'douche bonnets.' 

It's Dean's fault, really.  He's known for saying "I love you" at the precise moment when I'm doubled over emptying the kitchen flip top bin under the sink so that only my grey marle tracksuited arse is in his vision, so he's not one for inane compliments or promising me a rose garden.

It was a genuine surprise when admitted to me that he had been reading my old blog back in the day but is also now reading the ones on Medium and right here.  I even teared up a little. He said that he reckons I could try and say 'em out loud, like a short stand up on YouTube.  

Firstly, I ain't short and secondly, the idea of stand up scares the undigested corn kernels out of me.  Vanity isn't something that would be ascribed to me, I don't think, but there's a tiny little 'give it a go, what have you got to lose' voice that sometimes emerges from behind the cacophony of self-doubt.  What if I simplified things a bit and sat down, in my normal clothes, in my own house, and just chatted for a bit?  Would that work, you reckon?

Obviously I'll need to learn how to edit and cut out the erms and ahhhhhs and incessant playing with my glasses.  But maybe we could all have a laugh at an old gal that will try not to take up too much of your time but make you feel glad to be you and not her?

If you could feel the nervous sweat and the red heat of embarrassment on my face as I'm writing this, waiting for the YouTube video to be uploaded, then try multiplying it by one hundred.  It's my first attempt at sit down.  It was done off the cuff and quite rightly needs to be tightened and better edited.  My hands are shaking.

But it's time to give it a go I reckon. I really truly would like your feedback, bad, good or indifferent.  I'm more than happy to stick to the occasional blog and keep my face of YouTube if the world truly doesn't need it.

Honesty is appreciated, but please be kind about it.  There ain't much I can do with this face!

Playing (desperately unwanted) Footsie

Of course. Even if you're repelled or amused in a disgusted sort of way, if you click on those infernal Facebook adverts, they will continue to offer you even more.

On an intellectual level, this is understood, but the 'you've got to be KIDDING me - they think that THIS is what I'm looking for' curiosity for further thrills and giggles wins out every time.

And so, we have more butt ugly shoes that the Facebook algorithm gift pixies think I'd gladly throw my money at.  Why should I suffer alone, why not share them with you?

Again, I'm not five years old. Nor a virgin.  However, they do give me cravings for a hot pasty slathered in tomato sauce....

If your partner has been asked by the midwife to tear his anguished eyes away from your straining face to take a look at the baby's head while it's crowning, he's likely to faint.  Instead, why not ask the nurse to wear these shoes so that he can be spared the more graphic images of a shredded vagina and imagine it more like a badly designed leather rose instead?

These have 'wild' in their title, and many minutes have already been wasted pondering just why that word was considered a good descriptor for the loudest pair of shoes a librarian could only dream of wearing after hitting the Pimms and lemonade.

High heeled thongs.  Yes, we call them thongs.  Flip Flops.  If the painful toe grabbing lessons learned by 1990s mule (shoe, not donkey and horse offspring) wearing fashion victims weren't observed, how in the hell is someone supposed to keep these on their feet whilst, call me crazy for assuming this, walking anywhere?

Oh bugger it.  These toe flats are not just 'distressed,' they've melted.  I'd look like I'd fallen asleep too close to the fire if I ventured around town in these hand-stitched atrocities.

Noooooooooooooo............ they've only gone and SKINNED Elmo, buffed his fur to an unnaturally mirror-like shine and put his EYEBALLS back on so he'll be forever tortured in being witness to wherever his IQ challenged wearer decides to take him. 

I've mentioned before that I've got large feet.  Unless a flash flood has dramatically occurred and a couple of canoes are needed to save all elderly and infirm inhabitants of the village, I think I'll leave the two of the words they've used: 'fashion low' to speak for themselves.

Many's the time I've wanted a beach tent to protect the top of my feet - but not the toes, mind - when taking out the recycling.

Now look.  These would indeed look great on someone with sexy legs happy to strut their stuff in a heaving Mykonos nightclub.  But seeing as they've been recommended for me, a person whose legs resemble fluoro tubes filled with cottage cheese.... not so much.  A walk to the recycling bins would be memorable, however.

There's a lot to analyse here.  Firstly the model is pigeon-toed.  Secondly the sneakers have a wedge heel on top of the third and most obviously challenging issue, that of the unwieldy stacked platforms.  This footwear style seems a particularly cruel choice to offer a young girl who, as they're described as 'sports' shoes will put them on only to wind up knock-kneed in a ditch before even reaching the first hurdle.

Okay yes, there's humour here.  Despite this, a kitchen curtain ruffle and a pearl-studded pineapple is not going to give you a comfortable stroll through the dusty paths of ancient Delphi.  You will end up with toes more suited to curling around a parrot's perch and the rough end of the pineapple is likely to reward you with a blister on the top of the second toe.

Let's get out the chamois that's been sitting in the car door unused for years; some roses from an old chocolate box and steal the laces from dad's work shoes.  And the result: sheltered workshop meets pissed-as-a-newt during lockdown when Netflix is unavailable.

I dare this woman to run anywhere with just a square button holding her feet to the sole of her sandal.  Why not just paint them on, they'll be just about as useful.

And thus I conclude, ready to step outside with Felix in my hiking boots.  They're fragrant with mud and definitely smell as though a bit of unwanted horse manure has taken up residence inside the wide tread indents and the inside lining is now so loose it comes out when my feet do.  Even so, none of the above will be under consideration when I'm back online looking for my replacement pair.

Balance that Ronald McDonald would envy

I have big feet.  For a woman, having big feet can rate right up there with a zit invading your schnozz on job interview day except that size tens don't dry up and disappear in a couple of days.

My feet grew to their full size when I was only fourteen, so I hadn't yet grown into my height or final bra size, yet had hooves I could waterski with.

"Never mind," said Dad, "You'll always have good balance."

A recent bout of vertigo has made a lie of that promise.

Despite this burden, somehow I trudged on (easy with clown-sized clodhoppers) and am only occasionally reminded of my oversized appendages when rummaging through boxes of shoes on sale.  My size is EU41 /Australian 10 /UK 8.5 or US 10.5 and these are never the ones found at half price.  Lockdown restrictions and the anonymity of online shopping has been a relief for me.

These click and pay services naturally result in Facebook grabbing that data (amongst many other varied topics) and offering me what they consider are helpful suggestions on what shoes to buy next.

I'll readily admit that twelve months of nearly constant lockdown here in France has most decidedly NOT resulted in my becoming a local, or effortlessly stylish. I dress in dog walking clothes immediately after waking and in the course of the day take Felix on about four walks totalling 12 kilometres. It seems pointless to shower and change until his last walk at 6pm.  It is only then that I shower and change into my pajamas.  Why get dressed when we have a 6pm curfew?  Felix's bedtime 'walk' is a mere toddle around the block so that he can empty his bladder before bedtime.  A baggy parka or hoodie disguises my bralessness and as for the PJ pants well, who cares? It's 11pm and dark.

So back to the shoe suggestions.  These are the ones that appear on my timeline daily:

Please understand that running shoes and birkenstocks are the only shoes I've purchased online these past twelve months so yes, comfort reigns supreme.  However I still do not want to be seen wandering the walking trails with what appears to be the over-inflated love child of Papa Smurf and a wandering triceratops.  I dare anyone to believe the advertisement's statement that these abominations are anything remotely 'fashionable.  Reply to Facebook's suggestion:  'Delete.'

Bad photoshopping of the colour aside, these pointy looking 'comfort' slippers look torturously uncomfortable.  As someone who reluctantly and only very briefly embraced the mules phase in the 1990s, the exhaustion and cramp from your toes clawing furiously to keep the infernal things from flying off into the road in front of you is not worth it.  'Don't show me this advert again.'

These would look fabulous on a youthful and zany host of a children's after school show.  On a fifty two year old in a twelve year old grey polar fleece, puckered black yoga pants and hair not tended to since summer...?  Men with kind smiles and butterfly nets would be tiptoeing behind me.  'Non!'

Oh ferphucksakes, I'm not FOUR. 'Report Ad.'

Even Olive Oyl and dodgy computer art can't save these witchy poo pumps.  Yuck!  'This advert is annoying to me.'

These might be rather natty if it was 1922; I was a man and about to jump aboard a moving locomotive.  Or walking through a forest with all of my belongings tied up into a kerchief hanging from the end of a stick?  Drinking an ice cold coca cola and hearing jazz for the first time?  'Sorry, it's a 'no' from me.'

I guess you never know when Napoleon might need a few of us expats to prepare for a winter defence of the CERN hadron collider.  'Hide ad.'  Please.

The large size of my female feet has already been discussed.  These pointy-toed monstrosities would enter the room a good ten minutes before my nose would.  No, facebook, I don't 'already own this' but please 'Hide Ad.'

The imagination runs wild picturing the frazzled female who willingly selects these shoes.  She's short, solidly built and has had E bloody NOUGH of you.  Those flat ends are from rage kicking anti-vaxxers, people who walk on just-mopped floors and fellas who let their noses hang over their face masks on public transport.  We can all identify with her anger and the shoes are a big bright red hint as to the annoyance levels reached by the wearer.  'Why am I seeing this ad?'

If you like or have purchased any of the above-mentioned shoes, then I wish you well.  Perhaps Facebook figured out your tastes and requirements better than it has mine. All I can use in my defence is that they have also suggested novelty butt plugs, stomach reduction surgery and a device that removes ear wax the size of a cashew nut. Judge that how you will, it's time for me to put on my walking boots and take Felix out for his afternoon constitutional.....