I always thought I’d make a good paparazzi...

...but after today I know I was wrong. Very wrong. At one point, as I was standing on the deck watching Kim Kardashian step off a boat, a big man stood on my foot. Another knocked my pathetically small camera and another turned as he was zooming past me to shout: “If you wanna be a pap, you’ve got to run!!!”

Eff off, I thought. I don’t run for anyone. Patronizing bastard.

She was rather beautiful, in an overly made-up, orange way. Although I didn’t much like her dress. Or her 12 inch heels. Or her whinging American drawl when she asked her fleet of homosexual hottie men and female cling-ons where her sunglasses had gone. I stood behind her as the commotion commenced and took a picture of her ass, as I hear she’s had implants in her butt cheeks to give her more curves. It definitely looks like she has. Fucking stupid if you ask me… why doesn’t she just shove more cake down her face and get a job on a swivel chair like the rest of us? Oh…. right… because that would stop her making workout DVD’s, sex tapes with her boyfriend (the last one leaked and scored her a $5 million deal with with Vivid Entertainment – kerching!!) and trashy TV shows about her life, which basically consists of doing not much at all, really. Apart from looking hot.

I’ve considered the fact that maybe I’m jealous of Kim Kardashian. Hmmm. She does have nice hair I suppose. But seriously, I think I’d rather be anonymous with a modicum of talent and dignity than rich and famous for flashing my body parts. I mean… she’s gonna be old one day. Her bum implants will be somewhere round the base of her spine while her tits are round her knees and who wants to go out with a circus freak?

And what does she actually DO, anyway? I hardly care enough to Google her and find out. Oh, alright, I will…. Hmmm…

Ah right… OK, so according to Wikipedia, in July 2008, Kardashian announced on her blog that she was “working on her own perfume line to be released in 2009.” That’s nice. Bet she labored for hours in that laboratory, mixing all those chemicals, shoving her barnet into a hairnet and conversing with the “cool sciency people”.
“The perfume, Kim Kardashian, was released into stores in February of 2010.” Was it? Bloody hell, I must have missed that. Shit. I really want to smell like an it girl now… all leather handbags and chiwawa! But wait, there’s more.

“In March of 2009 Kardashian launched an endorsement with Shoedazzle shopping…. Kardashian co-owns a clothing boutique called D-A-S-H with her sisters Kourtney and Khloe.” Ah that’s awesome, I guess. She must spend aaaaages behind that desk, sorting out the tills, dealing with the accounts and… oh wait, no, she doesn’t. She just gets on boats and planes and… her tits out… while everyone else flounders in the shadows of her awesome presence and watches as she takes the credit.
Nice Kim, love your work.

I have to say though, it was good to see life through a pap’s eyes. They’re the people behind the person behind the person who made someone else famous. They’re the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, the plankton in the ocean of fame. God… how depressing.

I guess I could do it as a hobby. You never know, I might get a hot-shot that’d propel me to the top. I might end up making a fortune!!! Or at least… enough to get an ass reduction.

I just woke up from the weirdest dream...

...which may or may not have been a result of eating half a chocolate rabbit for dinner, after getting back from work at 10pm, (it’s the dairy products, so I’m told). I can’t remember the start of it, but basically I was out with mum, dad and a younger version of my brother (back when he was 11 I reckon), when a giant tsunami struck. It swept us up… and instead of screaming for her life and demonstrating the ultimate motherly panic, my mum popped her head up from the frothy waves and said quite calmly: “We’d better swim towards Market Rasen”.

Now, for those who don’t know, Market Rasen is actually a town and civil parish within the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. And it’s shit. Why anyone would want to swim there having survived a giant tsunami in Australia is beyond me, but hey, that’s the logic of dreams… and maybe of my mum.

Anyway, so we get to Market Rasen, having been swept up in about three more tsunamis on the way, and there’s a little red house made of wooden planks, and an elderly man who beckons us inside. Only inside, it’s more like a youth club, complete with scruffy couches, Russell Brand and a chiwauwa. Yes, Russell Brand had also survived the tsunami, which started in Australia and swept us quite effortlessly into Market Rasen.

Well of course I was delighted. Russell’s my dream man, so should he be the only male survivor of a global tragedy eligible for mating with, God’s done a fine job of answering my prayers… albeit whilst ignoring absolutely everyone elses:
“Prevent global disasters, you say? Well how can I possibly be doing that? I have to make sure Becky Wicks ends up with Russell Brand!”
“Awww, thanks God, that’s really nice of you but…”
“Oh, no, no, don’t be silly Becky. You’re perfect for each other! Here’s a little tsunami to kill off all competition.”

The chiwauwa was so cute and even smaller than a regular chiwauwa, which are all pretty bloody small anyway. Towards the end of the dream, when our little red house had been struck with about 15 more tsunamis and a wall of fire which was actually a moving pier with a flaming fairground on it, the dog was all wet and dead in my arms… very sad. Everyone kept on surviving all these disasters until the very end, when we all spotted the biggest tsunami of all coming towards us. At this point, my friend Autumn, who miraculously appeared from nowhere as friends often do in dreams, put a spade next to me and said that if it sliced me in half when the wave struck, it would be better than drowning, which I thought was remarkably considerate of her.

They say that if you die in your dream, you actually die in real life. I’m not really sure who presented this theory, as surely anyone with proof would already be dead. But true to form, just as the wave was about to strike and the spade was about to hit me, I woke up, made myself some coffee and wrote it all down. What do you think it means? I’ll be damned if I know, but I won’t be eating any chocolate rabbits for dinner again tonight, that’s for sure.

This week I've been thinking...

...rather a lot about working on a farm. Everyone I’ve told this to so far has furrowed their brow and dipped their chin in the same disparaging fashion, but their cynicism is only making me want to do it more. Screw them all; I think I’d be a great farmer! Of course… I wouldn’t want to muck shit or milk cows, or wake up at 4.30am to harvest crops, or lug a hoe about. If anyone’s gonna lug a hoe about, it’ll be the hot farm boy who takes a shine to me and my well-disguised lust for rugged country men in checked shirts, dungarees and tattoos of roosters on their upper arms. Cock-a-doodle? Yes I do. I’d play it cool for a while, obviously, but he’d charm me eventually with a moonlit horse-ride, the squishing of a deadly spider and the words: “Care for a spin on my combine?” Imagine how romantic it would be!! Like Brokeback Mountain… only… not.

I’ve looked into various options, but the one I like the sound of the most is one called WWOOF. Sounds a bit like a dog with a stutter, but it actually stands for ‘World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms’. The concept is that you pay $60 for a book which lists all the organic farms in your chosen country. This automatically makes you a member, and you’re free to pack your rucksack (or in my case, bright pink wheely bag, darling), find a nice piece of hay to chew on and hitch a ride on out to whichever participating farm sounds most appealing.

I’ve heard there’s one lady out in the bush in Victoria, who needs help looking after injured baby kangaroos. There’s another which encourages daily yoga practice and one that helps the women learn to cook with all the organic stuff they produce! I think this last one sounds most appealing. I can barely open a can of ravioli, so cooking up a treat around a giant wooden table, wearing a gingham apron, having flour flights with the cowboys before feeding them my warm, apple pie sounds right up my alley. (And no, that wasn’t a metaphor. Filth-wizards!!)

I’m aware I may be romanticising farm life just a little, but in all honesty, I romanticise everything, so I’m used to dealing with regular reality checks by now. I think I can handle it. Farm life sounds like fun. I stayed on a sheep farm once, in New Zealand. It was run by this zany woman from Alaska who wrote books about herbs and grew marijuana in a plot behind the parsley. Her husband was a Kiwi who built airplanes in his shed – just little ones mind – but he had dreams of flying that stayed with him, even when he wasn’t high. I remember looking at that couple as we all sat round the dining table at night, thinking, one day, I want to live like you do. And why should I wait until I’m 60?

Oh feet, how you itch!! How you shuffle under that desk, and oh head, how you dream. These voices, they’ll be the death of me. But then, maybe Sydney will. Or… maybe Sydney guys will. They’re all a little self-centred in my experience. If I work on a farm, I will get to spend lots of time with Australia’s “real” people, who are not, as I’m quickly beginning to realise, ego-crazed radio presenters and pretentious fashionista posers, hanging out in overpriced bars. Real Australians work on the land and drink beer from the can, and wear hats with those funny corks hanging off the rims, to ward off flies. Real Australians hunt crocodiles and dive with stingrays and call each other Sheila. They live in tribes, in towns of three or four people, with only one satellite dish between them. They make pies from road-kill. They murder big, scary bush-beasts with their bare hands… even the girls.

Can a city girl survive in the outback? Can a spoilt princess, changed immeasurably by Dubai’s glitz and glamour swap it all for some rubber gloves and a cow’s ass? Probably not… but something’s making me really want to see. You don’t actually have to pay for anything on the WWOOF scheme, except the journey there, so there’s really very little risk if I do it... aside from the fact that if I do give up my glamorous media job in the city and wind up sunburnt, knee deep in possum shit and organising the nightly hoe-down for a bunch of middle-aged gay farmers with beer-guts and gumboots every day, I might not be allowed to get it back. But that’s a small risk, isn’t it? I mean… there will always be other jobs…. won’t there?

Electrifying encounters…

So here I am, drinking my coffee, checking up on Perez Hilton, when I get an early morning text message from The Electrician. It’s kind of taken me by surprise… I mean, I never thought I’d hear from him again. It’s been a whole week. But the text reads: “Are we cool? I kind of thought you’d call.”

I’m angry. I’m really quite angry that he’d say this, because this is a guy who just last Sunday, accused me of being a double-dating slapper and I swore I’d never speak to him again. He didn’t come right out and say it of course, but he texted it, so it was just as insulting.

Basically, what happened was, I met The Electrician late on Friday the week before, for a drink in a cocktail bar, conveniently located just a 15 minute walk from my house (my rule is that if the other person has a car, I’m not bussing/cabbing/training it to any first date… the man can come to me). So we actually had a really nice night. He showed up a little late but I forgave him when he walked in because he was hot. Being hot always adds a few points back onto the chart if you’ve fucked up, of course.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by this down-to-earth, humble English guy, who’s lived in Sydney for the last ten years and makes an honest living as an electrician, drives about in a huge van with his company name on the side, and in his spare time… wait for it… hosts game fishing expeditions in far out places for the rich and famous. Thrilling or what?! He even rides with them in helicopters! I was hooked. Leaning over my Bundaberg I was already imagining the awesome trek we’d take through the Russian wilderness in search of the rumoured Mutant Milligan Spike fish… only visible to human eyes between August and September, on a full moon.

We had a great night getting to know each other, the game-fishing electrician and I… and before I knew it, I realised I actually quite fancied him. There was no little voice in my head screaming his faults, even though he had a bit of a wonky smile and his shoes were quite possibly a little too shiny… it was all blocked out thanks to the fact that he was calm, intelligent and sexy in a rugged, tradie, fisherman sort of way. He even insisted on buying all the drinks… something I’ve noticed Aussie men just don’t do. We ended up making out in a jazz bar and I agreed to a second date.

We went to Bondi Beach for date two. Ate Italian whilst watching the wind pick up a storm over the sea and then he drove me home in his clapped out van, which he calls ‘the Titanic’ because it’s so fucking huge he can never park it anywhere. Adorable, right? We’d had another night of chatting during which he asked me if I was dating anyone else, to which I answered no. Well, I wasn’t. In all honesty, I was totally wrapped up in him; the fisherman-electrician and our sparks.

Date three, he came to meet me from work and drove me to a gig I was supposed to be photographing. He didn’t come in though. He went home and then came all the way back to fetch me afterwards, took me out for a cup of tea before driving me home again and promising to take me to Palm Beach the next Sunday. I could feel a beautiful romance budding… something fun for once, someone slightly mysterious who I couldn’t quite read, who liked me and wanted me exclusively already. I was mentally packing for the fishing trip – though I’d have to buy a new hat in Russia, obviously. I think you know the kind I mean.

So, Sunday morning rolled around and I hadn’t heard from him… bar one text the day before, asking what time I wanted him to collect me in honour of our beach trek. It had graduated to a picnic and he was, apparently, planning an entire day for us in his head. Only, I woke up with a mouth tasting like I’d spent all night licking carpet. Having met some old friends from NYC down in the Rocks the night before, we’d got a little pissed on red wine. I asked if we could go a little later when I got his text. He’d sent it at 8am on a Sunday… I mean for Christ’s sake, only God and joggers are up at that hour on a Sunday. Our textual exchange went something like this:
Him: It’s OK if you wanna make it another day.
Me: Ugh. If it’s really OK, that might be gd. How bout easter fri?
Him: Thanks
Me: ?
Him: I spent lots of money on food n wine and didn’t go up the coast with my mates, I feel like a fool. Plus u probably met someone else and stayed over at his and ur still with him now n that’s why u can’t go.

I know!!! Of course, that last text was enough to make the voices start screaming again “NEXT, DELETE, ERROR”, but I was hungover and angry, so I replied:

“I was out with my friends and I said sorry. You’re being a bit harsh accusing me of things like that. Take someone else to the beach.”

And bar one text saying how much I’d “hurt” him (ugh!) I never heard back. Until now. And he’s asking if we’re cool! AND he’s saying he hoped I might have called. What. Ever, Mr Fisherman.

I just wrote back and said to be honest, anyone who says its fine to change a plan and then insinuates I’m some sort of double-dating hussy and acts like a needy princess after one week of meeting me, is not driving me to an idyllic beach in a car that looks like the fucking Titanic. I told him I had a jealous, possessive boyfriend once and I wasn’t about to go down that path again.

Shame as I really liked The Electrician. And now I really do want to go game-fishing in Russia with a helicopter full of celebrities. There must be another way…

Scariest woman alive...

My friend just sent me this video of a very, very scary woman, who he said will be me in 20 years. I think it'll be more like 10 years if I keep working late nights. Someone's lost a mum/gran/sister/aunt to this mess of a human being though. Very sad.

Running away from boys...

Having had a rather hectic day in the office, running around and rushing out late, I rocked up to the bar in which I’d arranged to meet my Internet date, slightly out of breath, with my strapless dress hanging marginally below my bra (as usual). He didn’t stand up. He clearly saw me come in, but for some reason, pretended he hadn’t. THE CHEEK! Had he been hot, I would have been pretty upset at this. I would have thought something like “F*** am I REALLY that gross? I mean I know I’m a sweaty wreck and my underwear was just on display in public, but am I honestly so bad that he’s pretending he’s not my date, right in my line of vision?”

However, because he was slightly ugly… well, not ugly, but definitely odd looking, I just adjusted my dress and thought “How annoying, I can’t believe I rushed here.”

He cocked his head like a confused Labrador and grinned only as I plonked myself down next to him. He revealed two wonky teeth set in his gums at a very disturbing angle. I tried not to reel back in my seat as I performed a quick analysis. Up close he looked like a middle-aged, Kendal mint-cake eating lesbian woman crossed with an inebriated Cheshire cat – absolutely nothing like the slightly grainy, black and white profile picture he’d posted online, in which he was poised with a cello, making him look arty, sophisticated and deep (so I thought). Ok so my own picture wasn’t exactly me as I look having run three blocks in a dress that’s too big for me, but still. I felt a little deceived as he bore his beady eyes into my face and wrapped his fingers round his beer like an evil old man about to ask a very naughty question to an innocent child (ahem).

I waited for him to offer me a drink, as his glass was almost empty and I was clearly in need of one. His eyes never left my face, or chest, as he started talking about himself. He’d had a flood in his office two days before we met. Uh oh. It was pretty bad and he’d been forced to mop. Apparently... wait for it... the office hadn’t been designed with flooding in mind and it had also been built with certain materials that I’d never heard of before. I tried to sound intrigued. Big mistake. “Oh really? You’ve never heard of that material before?” he replied incredulously. “Oh well… it’s a very versatile form of blah blah...." EffingHELLblahBLAH whatever-where's my drink?!?!

I called the barman over and ordered my own drink, at which point he stopped talking and hurriedly ordered another one for himself… and then proceeded to talk about his time living in Japan. Apparently all the girls were dying for a western boyfriend over there and he was swamped with offers. There were too many numbers in his phone to call… so he says. I asked if he knew any Japanese. Even bigger mistake. He knew ten popular phrases, and he was damn well gonna list them for me, one to ten, with in-depth explanations for each one. Jaaaysus!

Now, maybe I’m a bitch but in the first five seconds of meeting someone, who clearly needs a drink and perhaps some form of greeting, (in no particular order), at what point does it even cross your mind to talk about materials prone to help in the prevention of flooding? And Japan?? I’m all about a decent conversation covering randomness… I recently spent about an hour discussing the attributes of cockroaches with a guy who used to live in Costa Rica, but this was just a little too much.

It got worse. I ordered another drink. He never asked me anything about me… my absolute favourite topic, obviously. He just talked and talked and talked me into a bored stupor until I sent “the text” quite sneakily under the table. “The text”, of course, is the one all girls send to their best mate when they’re on a first date – a progress report if you will. Mine read: “I’m running away. Put the kettle on.” I looked up to find the Cheshire cat staring at me intently once more and before I knew what was happening, his hand was reaching for my face, and he was stroking it. This time I DID reel backwards, asked him what the FCUK he was doing, to which he just grinned that gummy grin again. Uuurrgh.

I stood up, told him I had to go and he followed me outside, at which point he grabbed me again and tried to kiss me. I pushed him off, seeing his freakish mouth bearing down on mine in slow motion, imagining an actual repulsive, gob to gob encounter and wanting to puke. “Um… that’s not going to happen,” I said quickly, before turning round and running away. Yes, I actually RAN down Crown Street, all the way back to my house. I’m 30 years old, and I’m running away from boys.

When I got back, he’d sent me a text. It said: “I just wanted to confirm. When you said ‘that’s not going to happen’, did you mean just then, or never?”

Something tells me he should probably go back to Japan. And I should go back to Oasis Active… or perhaps not follow the crowds online anymore. There must be someone decent left in the real world... somewhere? Hello???

A is for Alphabetised CDs...

The date I had last night was an hour and a half of my life I will never get back. What an absolute douche. Seriously. I’m getting a bit sick of online dating in Sydney if I’m honest. When I first activated my profile, I thought the free site ‘Oasis Active’ was a gateway to all sorts of exciting adventures, a wonderland if you will, full of interesting men all dying to wine me, dine me and,… well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I couldn’t wait to get going… was practically chomping at the bit to have my pick of the crop, but what I’ve plucked from cyberspace so far can only be described as fucking awful. Maybe it’s me? No, SURELY not? Is it me?

Well, maybe a bit of it’s me. I do tend to scrutinise every man who sits before me like a mad professor prodding at a beetle under a microscope. Sometimes, the guy won’t have even made it through the door and to my side before I’ve dismissed him for having shit hair or bad shoes. A little voice in my head shouts “NEXT” before he’s even bought me a drink and therein lies my problem. I’m too picky. I’ve been spoilt.

Sometimes I think I might have just dated way too many men from the Internet in the past, and now a little part of my brain sparks up in their actual presence and categorises them without me even asking it to, like a computer: Too short. Too fat. Older than he said he was. Libra. Taurus. Won’t sing karaoke with you. Warning Warning. Warning. Delete!

There’s too much choice for single people, these days, isn’t there? I mean, why linger on something or someone who’s not absolutely everything you desire, when chances are, everything you desire is right around the next corner? And hey, if the next awesome boyfriend’s not around the next corner, he might be around the one after that? Or the one after that. But if you don’t keep turning those bloody corners, you’ll never know.

Back to last night. To be honest, before we met up, I just wanted to cancel. We’d spoken on the phone quite late the night before and he’d sounded a bit dull, but determined to silence that irritating voice in my head, which at the time was screaming: “He’s probably wearing stripy pyjamas and sipping hot chocolate, surrounded by his alphabetised CD collection – DELETE HIM!!”, I agreed to meet him anyway. Even better, he said he really didn’t mind whizzing by my workplace once I’d finished for a quiet glass of wine round the corner, which meant I didn’t have to go to any effort at all to give him the chance he rightfully deserved. Perfect.

I finished work late… another night of filming and uploading a video of the presenters at the radio station performing a stupid task (last night it was snorting Whiz Fizz – how delightful) but I still managed to arrive before he did. I had a bit of a flirty exchange with the cute barman in the pub, who knocked 50 cents off my glass of Merlot, and settled myself into a chair. I was texting Stacey when he turned up. Part of me wanted to run away. As he stood grinning like a full moon in front of me, the first thing that went through my head was: “Karaoke man”. He looked exactly like the kind of guy who might run a mobile karaoke business. Usually I love people like this – they’ve given me HOURS of pleasure – but not because I’ve dated them.

I realised I should probably get up and do the obligatory peck on the cheek thing, so I did, and it was then that I clocked the mass of wrinkles round his eyes and mouth. His profile said he was 34. He looked about 50. Holy shiz!!!

In all my years of online dating I have never, ever actually met someone who’s lied about their age on their profile. I mean, you hear about it happening all the time… maybe I’ve always been lucky in that respect, but this guy had clearly not only told one huuuge fat porker of a lie about his age, but he’d also uploaded a photo that didn’t look anything like him. The guy in the photo had been 20 years younger, tall, slim and very, very smooth.

Just when I was thinking it really couldn’t get much worse, I was struck by the fact that his head was massive and he actually had a pot belly. He looked like a helium balloon wrapped in a black and silver cowboy shirt. Ugh. Everything about him was ugh. No wonder my freak-radar had picked up the image of his middle-aged pyjama wearing lifestyle. I will never doubt that little voice again.

When he came back with another glass of wine, he sat down and grinned at me again, eyed my crossed legs in my new pink skirt and said absolutely nothing. I thought I’d initiate a conversation, which went something like this:
“So, how old are you?”
“I stopped counting at 36”
“So you’re older than 36?”
(more grinning)
“But your profile said you were 34”
“No it didn’t!”
“Yes, it did, because I don’t go out with guys who are older than 34”
“No, you must have read it wrong”
“I’m sure I didn’t. Anyway, how old are you really?”
“I told you, I stopped counting at 36”
“That’s nice, but mother nature didn’t. So how old are you really?”
“You’re not going to leave it, are you?”
“Well, I kind of want to know the person I’ve agreed to go out with isn’t lying about his age… I think that’s kind of creepy.”
“I stopped counting at 36”

At this point the voice in my head was screaming so loudly I thought I was going to pull my hair out, but I did a pretty good job of finishing my wine, listening to him talk about how much he loves to travel and how much he loves working from home (probably wearing pyjamas) without acting like a bitch. When we were done, he offered to drive me home. This would have been a nice gesture if he hadn’t shown up quite tipsy after being at a dinner with friends (or another bad date, probably) and then proceeded to drink even more. Again… ugh.

I walked outside with him, told him I’d be fine in a cab, at which point he stopped outside a silver hybrid sports car that looked like a fucking space pod and asked “Are you sure?” with another infuriating grin. He was clearly waiting for my jaw to drop open at the greatness of his awesome, zillion dollar vehicle, but I decided I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, so I acted like I hadn’t noticed. He got out his keys, waved them about a bit, obviously disappointed he wouldn’t get to demonstrate a drunken wheelspin at the next set of lights and waiting for me to change my mind. He asked: “How much is a taxi home gonna cost you?”

“I’ll stop counting at 36” I replied, before walking off into the night. Tosser.