Author: writerunblockedrepublic

In this world of computer tech and AI, some days I just wish for an old fashioned hotline. Just a plain, direct, simple link where I can actually speak to a human being.

I’m not trying to avert an international crisis, but after spending hours on the phone, on hold, listening to all the bots loop the same scripted lines, over and over, I find myself craving the most basic luxury – a real conversation with a real person.

When I was young (young-er), I used to dial the radio hotline, to request a song or to try my luck in a competition. Back then, the DJ would answer the phone direct and for a teenager, speaking to this mini type celebrity, it was pretty cool. It was easy and immediate.

That’s the thing with telephone bots, they’re not direct, they are trying their hardest to not connect you to anyone. They just send me round and round the mulberry bush, until I’m dizzy with frustration.

I mean, the President of the United States has a hotline – a real one – that connects them straight to other world leaders and security officials etc. What it allows is for a personal exchange to ensure misunderstandings are prevented. I feel being the president, that this definitely is a good thing to have……….. and on some days, I want one too.

There are days, I wish I had a hotline to my Dad in heaven, just to say hi, or ask his advice on something, or just to get through direct to him to tell him I love him. A direct line, no hold music, no bots.

Don’t get me started on the hold music. This is a whole experience in itself – loud enough to scare the dog, but catchy enough to stick in my head and haunt me for the rest of the day.

Imagine having a hotline to God! Yes, we do through prayer ultimately, but, wow, calling him up and getting him direct on the line and having him sort it out pronto, well that would be something.

I’m not ‘all against’ AI bots. Olive the chatbot on the Woolworths supermarket live chat, is an absolute gem. This cutie patootie virtual assistant is impressive. I order groceries online nowadays and inevitably, it can be common for the human packing my order to make an error.

I can hop onto the chat with superstar Olive and with minimum fuss I can sort out a refund. I feel an affinity towards Olive, she doesn’t muck me around, she asks direct questions and most importantly, she solves the issue. Nothing to complain about here. I feel Olive is my friend. She restores my faith in the robot uprising.

Anyway, that’s my two cents — now I’m curious: what’s your best (or worst!) bot moment?

*Image by macrovector on Freepik

Every time my nephew comes down from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, my opening line when he arrives is ‘Go to your room.’ It’s a standing joke and even after so many years, we still all laugh and he jokingly hangs his head and trudges off dramatically with a ‘fine, I’ll go to my room.’

Why do I say it? Well firstly because I think it’s funny and firstly, because it makes Drew feel at ease and automatically like he’s part of the family, which he is anyway, but this comedic gesture just slams that point home.

It’s funny because it’s completely out of place — he’s just walked in the door, hasn’t done anything wrong, and I’m already sending him to his room. But that’s exactly why it works. The moment he hears it, he knows he’s home. He knows he belongs here, in this house where teasing is affection.

It’s a grand opening line, that’s just a brilliant icebreaker, and seems somehow to set me up as the cool Auntie. It’s the perfect mix of mock authority and comedy, which Drew loves. It’s become our tradition, and it never fails to make him and me grin.

It’s our secret handshake in sentence form — part joke, part welcome, and part reminder that family is built on the tiny, repeated things that only make sense to the people who share them.

Every family has its folklore — those odd little sayings and inside jokes that seem ridiculous to anyone else but mean everything to the people involved.

Who would have thought that a scolding line – something a kid would dread hearing – would turn into a family in-joke and create for Drew the feeling that he belongs here, that we have our own script and our own rhythm.

Drew has an incredible sense of humour, dry, funny, witty, clever, hysterical. He makes me laugh all the time and this is my way of giving it back and making him laugh.

It’s a lovely and funny tradition, that I now use with my other gorgeous nephews, Jack and Josh when they come to stay. It lets them know they’re not guests, they’re family.

If I’m having a conversation with Jackson in the kitchen and we’ve wrapped up the chat, it’s not uncommon for me to say to him ‘Go to your room.’ What happens – he laughs his head off and goes to his room with a smile on his face.

One day, no doubt, as this tradition continues, I’m sure the boys will repeat it back to me, laughing, when I go to visit them – ‘Right, Auntie Helen/Mum….go to your room.’

What will I do – well, I’ll laugh, and I’ll go to my room, remembering all the years the line meant you’re home.

*Image Adobe Stock

Carrying on from my love of using the word shit – it made me think about ‘a crock of shit’.

It’s an idiom. Words in a fixed order that make no literal sense. It conveys a different meaning to that of each individual word used. On their own saying ‘a crock of shit’ literally means a crock pot on a stove top, which is bubbling away, cooking shit…………no, not gonna happen in my world. It has nothing to do with crockery per se and nothing to do with shit, but together it does mean something.  

It means complete nonsense, useless or false information. When it’s voiced out loud, it’s almost said with a snort, to convey indignation, disgust or even derision.

It’s rude slang and used to express how ridiculous you think something is. We use them in our house.

Jackson tells me he can’t go to work as he needs to study for an exam – tomorrow. A crock of shit. What he means is, I haven’t studied enough and I’m going to fail the exam, it’s not my fault, but I’ll need to get onto it and have the night off work.

This one is totally me. I’m just going to the supermarket to get ‘a few’ things. A crock of shit. I come back with five bags of shopping, spending $300 on the ‘few things’, plus snacks, plus other items I randomly yanked off the supermarket shelf, because they were on sale.

What about the dog ate my homework. A crock of shit. Although Roxy the beagle has chewed my affirmation deck cards and angel cards. Am I seriously going to see your homework come out of the dog’s backside next time it does a poo?

This one drives Simon mad. I’ll only watch one more episode. Sure Helen. A crock of shit. This means I’m attempting to watch one more episode, but I keep falling asleep, I finally get through the one hour episode, but it’s no longer 11pm, it’s now 2am.

Simon uses these ones. I didn’t see your text, my phone didn’t beep, there’s something wrong with my phone. A crock of shit. Maybe if he turned his phone off silent, he’d hear the text or missed call. If I want to reach Simon, I call Jackson, and he has to take his phone to Simon. Drives me mad.

What about I’ll pay you back next week. A crock of shit. In Monopoly money maybe.

Jackson misses Uni. My alarm didn’t go off. A classic crock of shit. It always mysteriously fails when he’s had a late night.

If you hear me say traffic was a nightmare, sorry I’m late, don’t buy into it. A crock of shit. I just left home 20 minutes later than I should have.

Today, Jackson didn’t answer his phone. Why? Because he was in the shower for 20 minutes. A crock of shit? No, fact actually. I arrived home and he was in the shower, having his usual very long shower.

Would love to hear about some of your crock of shit moments?

I love whimsical words. I naturally use them to pepper my speech to make it interesting. Again, this comes from Dad, who gave me a love of words.

Am I talking about the Italian pastry dessert, er, no, I have eaten cannoli, but I’m more a tiramisu girl – coffee, mascarpone – yum.

When I can’t really say ‘holy shit’ in public, even though it’s my number one go to exclamation, or ‘holy f***’, not so common, tend to use ‘shit’ way more. I can go Dad’s route – ‘holy moly’, but there’s something about ‘holy cannoli’. It’s light-hearted and doesn’t have the crassness of ‘sh**’ or ‘f***’.

‘Holy cannoli’, fits in well with my other frequent ‘go to’ words – ‘wow ‘or ‘oh my God’. It’s cute, quaint and playful and I love playful words. It makes what you’re saying sound more dramatic, and it lets everyone know something surprising has happened.

I can soothe people with my voice, but I can also shock them with my voice.

When Jackson was little, I’d read lots of books to him. 101 Dalmatians was the favourite by a country mile.

BUT, when it came to The Three Little Pigs, with a voice full of inflection, snarling my words and determined to create the best reading experience for Jackson, ‘holy cannoli’, I really stuffed up.

It was meant to be a simple bedtime nursery rhyme story, not a story creating a horror experience for Jackson and literally blow the brick house down.

The big bad wolf comes and says, ‘Little pig, little pig, let me come in.’ The little pig says, ‘Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.’ So, the wolf says, ‘Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down.’

Jackson was so terrified, that he struggled to sleep for over 3 months. Every night, he checked under his bed for the big bad wolf and every night he insisted the big bad wolf was outside his bedroom window.

I had created a monster – me!

I did end up reading him The Three Little Pigs down the track, when he was a bit older, but I did it in a whimsical, airy-fairy, gentle, whispered lullaby way.

When Roxy, the beagle, escapes and runs, it’s ok, because when I use my loud voice, you can literally hear me to Timbuktu. When I use my loud voice, birds fly out of trees in fear, to get away from me.

The way I yell ‘Roxy’, it ain’t sugar and spice. It’s blood-curdling. Roxy, well, she stops rocketing up the road, freezes, sits, then starts running back home, without checking for traffic. She zooms up the driveway and pelts back into the house, petrified, because Mum has screamed the entire neighbourhood down.

Maybe next time she bolts, I could try them all – ‘holy sh**, holy f***, holy moly, wow, oh my God, tiramisu and holy cannoli’ and see what happens!

Does anyone else have whimsical words they love to use?

The roller coaster, gotta make the most and, dance, dance, dance the night away. Helter skelter, maybe I can help her, dance, dance, dance the night away.

One of my favourite songs as I was growing up. Had a cool beat, and the instrumental at the beginning, in the middle at the end, had a bit of a Greek bouzouki vibe.

Barry Blue was the artist, and I loved the music video of him dancing around in blue satin.

I have the song on my playlist today. Pardon the pun, but it never gets old.

My sisters and I in the seventies, had a mixed party hits album. We would play this album over and over throughout the years, dance around the living room and sing into our hairbrushes.

My sisters and I, well, we definitely got our dancing shoes on and were dancin’ on a Saturday night.

I can’t remember the name of this album, but it was a good one! Gary Glitter, Slade, Brian Cadd , Olivia Newton John singing Let Me Be There, Rick Springfield, Hush, Elton John with Crocodile Rock, and Sister Mary Mead singing the pop version of the Lord’s Prayer.

Does anyone remember the name of this album?

Throughout the seventies, Barry Blue was on a number of TV shows with ABBA and toured with them in 1973-1974. This made him the coolest of cool in my eyes. Between Dancin on a Saturday Night, satin, my ABBA socks, ABBA t-shirt and ABBA mug, my hairbrush as my microphone, I was living the dream.

These times with Susie and Angela, with our vinyl records, covering off on the best of the seventies, with mixed album compilations, ABBA and of course Countdown. We rarely missed a show. Who didn’t love Molly Meldrum and the music! Sunday night, it was a staple in our house.

I loved that Countdown, featured ABBA, I mean they had to really, so many of their songs were in the top 10 in Australia. I always remember Molly Meldrum saying he didn’t play it one week and it was met with absolute outrage from the fans, that the following week he started playing it again. It was number one on the Countdown Top 10 for 14 weeks! I was ok with this!

One thing is for sure, in today’s helter skelter world of music, there is no comparison to the seventies upbeat disco four on the floor beat.

Go the mirror ball!

It was a common term in house when Jackson was growing up. He had no interest in food whatsoever. When we started him on farex, he spat it out. Cucumber, tomato, strawberry, bits of apple, toast with vegemite, peanut butter, or honey, he spat it all out. Eventually he spat so much, he choked and vomited. His eating has kept my stress levels humming along at a not so nice pace for the last 23 years.

To put it in perspective, when he was four and we took him on his first cruise, he attended the kids club. One day, with forty-three kids in total, they went for ice-cream. He was the only, and I mean only kid that refused to eat the ice-cream.

We found a few trusted dishes over the years. My spag bolognese if I cooked it the same every single time worked. Change the recipe slightly, i.e. add in a bit more mushrooms and he was onto us and spat it out. Take him out to dinner, order spag bol, forget about it, one mouthful and he was out.

Up until he was eight, I cooked massive batches of food. It was good stuff – beef, chicken, or fish, with about nine different vegetables in stock. Portioned, stored and frozen in one heck of a lot of Tupperware containers. My cupboard was full of plastics.

This worked a treat, IF and only IF Simon mashed the living daylights out of it. One tiny lump and we were doomed. Jackson would gag, choke, and spat it out.

Simon would mash, I would inspect, Simon would mash, I would inspect, eventually we declared it ready for Jackson consumption.

As he got a bit older, we turned to hotchpotch. Jackson got excited about hotchpotch dinner. So, we ran with this for many years, even today it can work.

What is hotchpotch in our house? True to the meaning of hotchpotch, it was a motley assortment of things, none of which made sense. Not a meal, but a mish-mash, mingle-mangle, odds and ends of assorted food.

Jumbled and disorganized, with no structure. It was no steak and three veg, lamb shanks with mash, or roast meat with roast veges. Whilst it made no sense to us, to Jackson it made perfect sense. We were happy, as he was getting food into his little belly.

The winner was one chicken strip, two chicken nuggets, half a dozen chips with barbecue sauce (tomato sauce didn’t cut the mustard). Sometimes we could add a fish finger.

We got brave and added in five peas and two bits of carrot. They remained on his plate, but we kept trying. Mashed potato worked, but only if it were 150% lump free and it had to have the right mixture of butter, milk, seasoning and would you believe a squeeze of mayo.

Today, hotchpotch might be two party pies, three sausage rolls, two chicken nuggets and a few chips.

To be honest, we didn’t have a lot of combinations, we would run with what worked until it didn’t.

If we ran out of options, Maccas nuggets and chips was a good filler that worked.

Once for a bit, we were desperate. His school lunch came home every day. We bought a stack of cheeseburgers from Maccas and froze them. He would take one to the canteen at lunch time and ask them to heat it up…………it worked. We didn’t like it, but it was better than him going for days without food.

We were told he would grow out of it, at 23 this hasn’t happened, we were told not to worry, no kid in Australia starved, we still worried. So, hotchpotch remains a staple.

There was no logic schmogic to it, but there was no denying that hotchpotch worked.

After a bad hip injury left me limping, in pain and debilitated for three and half years, surgery spat me out the other end, a mess. Those years of dragging my left leg around, unable to walk down the street, well, it took a toll on me, not only mentally, but physically.

Being awake at 1am, from the pain, meant I was up late most nights, avoiding going to bed and snacking. The scales and the mirror were not my friends during this period.

My fat scared me.

My health was in a constant state of decline. I didn’t know how to get off the merry-go-round.

I wished most nights – tried hard – to conjure up a fat thief. They looked like a fat cat genie in Aladdin’s bottle. If only they would grant me one wish – I wasn’t greedy – and steal my fat away.

I wanted to be burgled, and I wanted to report to the police that it was a fat theft, and the thief had stolen my fat. Of course, I didn’t want to press charges, but perhaps if we could find them, we could bottle them up and they could steal fat from others that desperately needed their help.

Struggling to sleep from pain, I though this was reasonable. I just wanted my fat gone, stolen, taken, removed, thieved by the thief. They could have it, I would never ask for it back. Please come in by the stealth of night, and without force, steal my fat.

I yo-yoed through every diet and eating plan, you name it, I tried it. Yes, I lost weight, yes, I put it all back on.

Eventually, I came to realise this dastardly thief was never gonna come and it was going to be all up to me to organise the theft of my own fat.

Next stop – counselling – to get to the bottom of why. It goes back to my childhood. My displaced mum, being Greek, her love language was food and to be honest the only time I felt her love, was when I ate the food.

Bingo! I had all the answers, so I thought. Seems having the answers can make you feel better, but how to stop years of food abuse every time I hit an emotional barrier?

Now that I knew why, I thought I knew how to fix it. So back onto yo-yoing through every diet because this time it would be different, this time I knew what I knew, and it was all gonna work. Yes, I lost weight, yes, I put it all back on.

After much soul searching, I ended up sitting down with a weight loss surgeon and July last year, had gastric sleeve surgery. I had done a lot of work mentally to prepare and was hopeful and positive.

I knew this was a tool only and that for the rest of my life, I would need to be kind to myself and understand that I ate the food, because I felt Mum’s love. Only now, I couldn’t fit it in anymore. I loved this new arsenal in my toolbox.

I still get emotional, but instead of food, I do something personal, read, write, massage, go to the gym – something that gives me – me time – which in turn lets the emotions settle.

12 months in and 30kg down, the fat thief has been and gone, they’re now in my past, a figment of my imagination and one that I am hopeful will never return.

Dad was an avid stamp and coin collector. Back in 1991, just after the Communist rule ended in the Czech Republic, he was excited to go home for the first time in 42 years. Before escaping Czechoslovakia in 1949, he gave one of his friends his prized stamp collection and told him to look after it for him, which he did, and Dad brought it home with him on that trip. Those stamps are with his grandson Jack in Adelaide.

On this trip, he travelled all over the Czech countryside with old friends and had a good visit with his Mum, who was not well. He asked his Mum if she wanted anything and she told him – a colour TV – Dad bought her the biggest one he could find. Sadly, one week after Dad returned home, she passed from a blood disease.

I have met my gentle grandma Marie, she visited Australia a few times over the years, I remember those times with a heart full of joy. She couldn’t speak English, but her eyes shone with love for our family. You could feel it deep in your heart.

I remember thinking of grandma with a sense of profound admiration. She had barely seen her son for the last 42 years, she hung on until he came home to visit and then, I believe, thought to herself, I’ve seen my son, that’s enough and passed quietly. That’s kismet – meant to be.

My sister, Ang and I also had mini stamp albums, Dad was always giving us stamps off letters from the Czech Republic or Greece, plus he would buy us stamps. I don’t know where those stamp albums are today, I wish I’d taken more care of mine.

Along with the stamps, coins were a big thing for Dad. He collected as many unusual coins that he could. In later years, as money was tight and he was trying to pay tuition on three private school fees and bills were mounting up, he made the monumental decision to sell his stamp and coin collection. It was a selfless act that must have broken his heart.

After that, he collected one dollar coins and fifty cent pieces. He was always looking for the ones that were different, such as commemorative coins.

Late last year while holidaying with my family on Hamilton Island, in the Whitsundays, I was walking through a bar and was shocked to see a 50 cent piece on the floor. We’ve become a cashless society since Covid and as I picked up the coin, I looked over my shoulder, I’m certain my dad was there. It was a sign.

A few months ago, whilst going through a stressful time, I hopped in my car and noticed something wedged at the back of the passenger seat. I pried it out. I was gobsmacked to find a commemorative fifty cent piece. I mean, the only person that sits in the passenger seat is me, when Simon drives my car and I don’t carry cash!

Same day, I went into my son Jackson’s bedroom, on top of his desk sat two fifty cent coins – no other money – just the two coins.

I felt calm, I knew Dad was telling me he was around and that I was on the right track. I’ve always felt his support, in life and in death. Love you Dad.