I wrote before about my mum and her wild and wacky ways. The thing is, its a family trait and I have empirical evidence to support this - Nana.

Nana is small and round. She has a face that makes you think that she’s a sweet little old woman, hell, she has been known to give treats to small children…. treats of samonellary goodness that is!

My grandma blames it on the depression. She talks about the days when she wore flour bag undies with “bakery fresh” across her buns (literally). Me, I’m not so sure about this theory. There are plenty of wizened oldies driving around in convertible porches or at least mecedes designed mobility buggies. No, there is something more pathological to her obsession. Allow me to explain.

Nana is a scrooge in the extreme. I remember as a child making toast and the toast got burnt. We are talking toast that was black as tar… you could whack it on the bench and it didn’t even dint. So, understanding that charcoal is not one of the four human dietary groups, I went to throw the toast in the bin. Nana was sleeping on the couch, or so I thought, until I heard a shrill voice behind me:

“Whaddya think you’re doing?” (my nana is not one of those nanas that uses pretty language and has neatly ironed handkerchiefs).

Me: “throwing this burnt toast away” … I dropped it in the bin, on top of various icky bin items.

It’s still fine!!! - nana got out the burnt toast, “Whaddya think we did in the depression. Didn’t have nice bread like you have today. We didn’t waste anything!”

Nana retrieved the bread. Bits of last nights dinner stuck to it, but nana conveniently has bad eyesight. Damn nana.

Now, I was only little at the time, and at this point my voice got that droney high pitched mosquito quality…”But I dont WANT to eat the burnt toast nana!!!!”

“S’not burnt. I’ll show you!” - nana got a knife and started to scrape off the burnt surface of the bread…and scrape…and scrape, until finally the knife went entirely through the bread, which disintegrated into a pile of ash. I was lucky that time, but flash forward 10 years or so and I didn’t get off so easily.

My hubby and I had come to visit. We were still in that heady rush of an early relationship, where we hadn’t got to sharing the intimacies of bodily functions and I still wore lacy matched underpants ( I have since devolved down to cottontails and sportsbras that have seen better days). We’d been at nana’s a week and I needed to do some washing. In particular, I needed undies. It can be tres chic to walk around sans undies in some occasions, but this was NOT one of these occasions.

I approached the nana (she was sleeping on the couch again… convenient that!)

“nana I need to do some washing, can I use the machine?”

The washing machine is a super dooper big one, like 7 kilos. Nana’s muu muus, whilst voluminous, don’t take up that much space. Nana only washes once a week, or even once a fortnight. I knew I was on unstable ground.

“Whatdya want to use the machine for?” She glared at me with beady eyes, as if I was about to take the last tim tam or something.

“I need undies nana, don’t have any clean”

“well, you’re not using the bloody washing machine for one bloody pair of undies”.

I returned to my room, defeated. I figured I would wash the undies in the sink. Cold wet undies weren’t that bad, I reasoned. Then nana came in. She was carrying something beige and large, folded under one arm.

“here you can wear these”. You know when you flip a sheet to get the crinkles out. It was like that… and then I saw them. They were a humongous pair of beige high wasted granny pants! They were a tent… an entire refugee family could have lived in them in relative luxury. My hubby and I caught eyes and in that one second, I was hit with the realization that he was going to go along with this. I had no allies!!!

“they’re clean” she said (thank god!) “size 20, but they’re small”…. My hubby nodded in agreement… “yeah gorgeous, I reckon you should put them on”.

Nana had that ‘don’t mess with me girly look” that means that if I don’t do what she wants she’ll hit me. Nana is a firm believer in corporal punishment, and has been known to chase me around the kitchen table with a wooden spoon. I knew I had no chance.

I put on the saggy, beige, elasticised granny pants. they came up to my bra. hoping that the sheer ugliness (and inappropriateness) of the giant knickers would get me out of the ordeal I showed nana and hubby. Nana looked. Hubby looked. Hubby stifled a laugh. I thought of wearing the undies everyday for the rest of my life to spite hubby. Then nana took a breath and said… “nah… they’re not right. Too big”.

Finally!!! Sweet reason!!! My savour!!!

Nana went down the hall, and I expected to hear the whirl of the washing machine, but nothing happened. Nana came back and without warning grabbed the side of the oversized knickers in her strong nana-hands. she fished a safety pin out of her apron and promptly proceeded to almost impale me. One side, two side. I was now wearing an ugly, beige, elasticised, granny pant nappy, with two bunches, pinned neatly on each side. My hubby at this point couldn’t help it…. he ran off to the bathroom, choking his laughter with me in hot pursuit.

So, you think my mum is bad. Now you can see where she gets it from, and yes, I do sometimes lay awake at night and wonder…. damn genetics! I hate you!

I have recently realised that I have a morbid fear of fellow lawyers. Especially the young, up and coming Hugo Boss clad types who model themselves off Boston Legal. Head to court and there they all are, in small elites (I reckon an elite should be the term for a group of them) talking about their cocktail parties & high profile clients, their firms and their expensive plans for the weekend.

Law is a profession that attracts three types. Those that want status, those that want to help the world, and those that want a little bit of both. The ones seeking status are scary, scary people - ruthless people with soothing voices that slowly erode your defenses until you crumble. They aren’t always right, but they ooze confidence to the point where you can’t help but doubt yourself… and your submission that you have worked on for the past 3 weeks, suddenly seems as simplistic as a child’s finger painting.

My husband laughed a few weeks ago as I put my makeup on, and referred to it as “my warpaint”, but later said it was an interesting comment to make. Makeup, clothes, good haircuts - they are all part of the game. I remember reading with horror years ago about a law student, who was competing in an inter-uni mock court competition. Their opposition, had turned to the poor soul and had commented nonchalantly about the exorbitant cost of the pure wool suit that they were wearing, and bagged our poor hero’s wool blend equivalent. Urban myth? no. Game playing in the extreme, yes, definitely, and the scary thing is that that pure-wool-suited student is now a lawyer, probably now with a whole wardrobe of expensive woolen suits just waiting to pounce on his polyester clad colleagues.

We are taught, in our law degrees, that we should be courteous to our fellow colleagues at all times, treating them with respect and acting towards them with candour and good faith but television presents a different image - that of the cutthroat hardline lawyer, who gets what they want regardless of who they trample in the process.

There are plenty of decent, gracious and dedicated lawyers who are willing to lend a hand to a colleague flailing helplessly in unchartered legal waters. These people are gems and they encourage a sense of reciprocity. I collect “nice lawyer contacts” the way people collect rare stamps, because they are very valuable people to know. having said that, the bad ones ruin it for all of us, because they make you hostile, encouraging everyone around them to present a perfect mask, for fear that they expose some form of vunerability.

The law profession is rife with depression… and I think that that is because lawyers are afraid to talk with colleagues about their issues and concerns. There is certainly something rotten in the state of Denmark…and it smells like Chanel no. 9.

Alright, I accidentally erased my welcome post! - I’ll post another ASAP - promise!

Right now, I’m sitting here waiting for the “Bold and the Beautiful” to come on television. I know, it’s stupid, tacky daytime television, but you know, I really can’t get enough of it. Right now, I plan my days around Bold viewing time and watching it is my treat for getting job applications done or going to the gym.

So, why the great love?

Well, it brings back fond memories, for one. I lived with my Nana for a while when I was young, and she was an avid watcher. I mean she was watching when Stephanie was young! 4.30pm was tea, bikkies and Bold time, but more importantly it was nana and little h time. Afterwards we could debrief on where the plot was heading, whether Brooke would ever get with Ridge (I’ve now stopped counting how many times now) and Stephanie’s evil plans.

But there’s more to it than that. The plot is great! You can stop watching for 6 months then pick up where you left off without having missed out on anything particularly important. I remember being told once that Australia missed 6 months of Bold and the Beautiful footage that was lost in the US, and the summary that they tagged on the front of the episode was only 30 seconds long! It’s like the junk food of the TV world, actually it’s rather more like baby food - comforting, easily digested mush.

Now there are faults, for example the people playing characters often change and the producers don’t put much importance on choosing new people that look anything like the old ones, so suddenly a blonde character a brunette etc etc. Gratuitous use of names pretty much solves this problem though. The other thing is the lack of continuity in regards to ages. Children can age from 5 to 16 in the space of 4 episodes and do, regularly.

But faults aside, it’s good fun, and like tacky celebrity magazines will always have a fond place in my heart.

I got a call a while ago. It was my mum and she never calls - this was a bad sign. I braced myself for the barrage of questions about impending grandchildren, but instead I got this:

Mum: “I want to change your name”

Me: “Ah, um… why???” ( at this point the cogs in my brain weren’t really moving…. all I had prepared was my stock standard answer of “yeah, mum in a couple of years… it’s not the right time. This was not the appropriate answer to this statement)

Mum: “I don’t like it anymore…. anyway, I’m gonna call up the Court and…..

Me: “What??!!!?? Mum, I like my name! there is nothing wrong with my name!”

Mum: “Well I have picked out another name which I like better”

Now this was scary. If I hadn’t been called the name I have now, I was going to be a Prudence. Or Ester. I got lucky… Mum must have been having a lucid day or something. Still, my sister narrowly escaped Magdalene, until someone politely informed my mum that naming your child after a reformed prostitute, no matter how holy was not a good idea!

Mum: ” I want to call you Rachel Elaine Lillian Georgina” pause…. long pause….

Mum: “You know why?”

Me: “I am sure that you are going to tell me.”

Mum: “Well, Rachel from your grandpa, Raymond (Christ, she might as well just hyphenate it to Ray-chel!), Elaine from one grandma, Lillian from the other grandma, and Georgina from your Pop”. Expectant pause…(by the way, my pop was actually George, not Georgina, in case you are wondering!)

Me: (Sigh) Mum, I’m over 18 and I like my name. I don’t want to change it. You can’t just change it yourself OK, I’m the only one who can.

Silence…. it was that kind of silence where you want it to keep going because you don’t want to hear what follows but at the same time it’s just killing you…. you know, it was a disappointed mum silence.

Mum (finally) “Well I don’t care. I’m going to change it by deed poll. I’m going!”(phone hangs up)

So there you have it. That is my mum. You see what I mean? Of course my name wasn’t changed, and if I was a psychiatrist I would probably be able to read more into it, but as it is, I’m not, and I just thought the whole thing was goddamn strange!