Bum Bag Fanny Pack

I’ve been searching for a classic double zipped, adjustable strap, patchwork leather number for a while.

I mean, if you’re going to wear a bum bag, it’s gotta look authentic. Forget those little nylon excuses for a practical waist pack and why use a backpack when everything you need is sitting right above your groin?

It’s been almost 10 months, my name is listed next to every op shop till within a 5km radius of my home: Ali – call ASAP at the first sighting of a patchwork leather bum bag or any Ken Done.

Every week I would step into my local Salvos and be greeted with a sad head shake from the volunteer at the counter, “maybe next week Ali, next week”.

I put a call out on Inner West Buy Swap sell and still nothing. It was uncanny. For something so mass produced in the 1980s and 1990s, I couldn’t find one anywhere except on bloody eBay where someone was asking $50 for a fanny pack listed as ‘vintage 1990s dork bag’. 

I’m no dork. I’m just a super practical parent who wants a suitably ace looking bag near my fanny which contains all the right things: phone, purse, wipes, pineapple lollies, keys, superball, stickers and a box of sultanas. Let’s just call it a Mum Bag.

The thing is, I totally found one last weekend in an op shop in Beechworth. The brown leather patchwork bag was hanging amongst a crowded hat rack jam packed with bags from all decades. I grabbed it with both my hands and held it close to my chest. I could smell the leather tan as I crumpled it between my palms. The zips were worked in, it had been loved and now it was mine, all for $1.99.

I pulled the bright yellow and red price tag off as soon as I purchased it, adjusted the waist band and clipped it around my tummy. I took my purse and phone out of my tote bag and popped them into the main zipped compartment and walked out of the store with pride.

My next stop was the greengrocers. I chose some fruit and easily reached into my bum bag, found my purse instantly and paid the grocer without the nervous fear of fumbling around for wallet and money.

It was too easy. Way too easy. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

It wasn’t even five minutes into my first leather bum bag outing that a stranger walked past and said ‘BUM BAG’ out loud, eyebrows raised.

I was in Beechworth, so I didn’t think anything of it.

A day later I returned to Yarraville and while out with my pooch – carrying poo bags and dog treats in my handy new zippered front bum pack – not one, but two people commented on my bum  bag within a minute of turning off my street:

“My grandma has one of those. She also wears parachute.”

“Are you going to a costume party?”

It was hurtful. I’m sure these strangers were trying too hard to be nice and were just using the bum bag as an excuse to talk to me. But I started to feel self-conscious. Perhaps the Mum Bag craze wasn’t going to take off. Perhaps my practical solution for carrying heaps of shit in front of me just wasn’t going to work.

Or perhaps I’m just way ahead of the times, using a radical invention of the past to fulfil my needs of the future (you can even wee while wearing these things).

So I’m gonna keep bumming on and wearing my fanny pack in the hood. I’d like to see you wear one too. Trust me, they’re excellent. They’re practical. And they’re downright sensible, so-much-so that my bum bag is probably the most grown up thing I own (apart from a kid and a house and an original koala velcro wrist purse).

Long live the bum bag fanny pack!

The eighties mum

Paleo, green-eating parents look away! I just made jelly crystal bikkies.

And they are so fucking tasty, I've already eaten four.

So what! My kid cleans his teeth (sometimes I have to pin him down or bribe him with an episode of Rabbids) and has been on his bike for the past two hours smashing leaps off jumps and scraping his knees through classic burnouts. 

I sometimes wonder if my own  mum, in her drop waisted summer frock, ever felt slightly guilty or required any justification for when she made us these as kids in the eighties? 

We were skinny little runts of kids running around the paddocks, told to stay outside until we were hungry. It was awesome. We were too busy to be hungry. But when we were, we would kick our gumboots off at the back door, run inside and smash one, two, three rock cakes in a row. If mum had made her cinnamon scrolls, hell we'd be floating our way back to the house from the fort Pepe-le-Peu style.

So I'm sure it's all in good measurement and of course, all in good taste. Whatever it is, these bikkies aint gonna last.

Super easy to make, thanks to  CWA. Have a go, maybe mix some colours together and then you will be a bloody legend at the park.

JELLY CRYSTAL BIKKIES

Courtesy Berris (of course) Sharman, TAS CWA branch

225g softened butter

1 x packet of jelly crystals (I used red)

2 eggs beaten

3 cups of SR Flour

1 tablespoon corn flour (don't ask me why)

Cream the butter with the jelly crystals, beat in the eggs, add the flours. Roll into little balls then press the top of them with the back of your fork. Pop in a pre-heated 180 degree oven for around 15 or til golden-brown.

Be an adult. Wait five minutes for the bikkies to cool. Breath. Then chew.

Bam! Jelly Crystal Bikkies

Sir Wrecks-A-Lot

Life got a bit chaotic. I found a dinosaur sticker, covered in dog hair and random fluffy bits (perhaps a feather), stuck to my bum. I found said sticker at around 3pm on my way to a radio studio. I had been at work for almost seven hours with a skanky T-Rex stuck to my big butt. It did not lie. I was tired. Life was chaotic.

So last weekend I overpacked the Trunkie and headed off to my folk’s house in country Victoria. The plan was to palm The Kid off to my mum while I peeled off my face and buried my sunken sockets into a pillow.

Alfie LOVES going to Granny and Pa’s house. Their house has ALL the things: a massive yard, lawn, rocks, a fireplace, a worm farm, a passionfruit vine, an orange tree and a trailer. Sometimes the trailer is filled with horse poo for the garden. But most of all, and the absolute highlight of the trip to Granny and Pa’s, is the dollhouse.

My mum built my three story dollhouse when she was pregnant with my younger brother. She thought it would keep me focused while she was busy with my little newborn baby brother. It’s painted mission brown and cream, the colours of the early eighties, and stands over a metre tall. It’s deluxe. I played with my dollhouse right through to my early teens, redecorating the whole three stories, putting floral fabric on the walls and corduroy down for carpet. It was super plush even for my Sylvanian Families.

When we arrived at Granny and Pa’s house Alfie ran into the spare bedroom where the dollhouse sits, pulling open its doors and sweeping all its contents onto the floor in one swift arm movement. I bit my tongue seeing all the teeny tiny porcelain cups and saucers being thrown across the floor, then swept up by my son’s chunky club hands only to be placed in the back of a plastic cement mixer truck. I felt the tension fill me to my brow as Alfie shook the cement mixer, allowing the porcelain set along with two Sylvanian Family baby bear cubs and a makeshift washing machine made out of an old Keen’s Mustard tin, clash against each other creating a big nostalgic milkshake of doom. Then he tipped the contents out and walked over the precious items, not even feeling the teeny tiny bear cub in its teeny tiny handmade gingham playsuit squishing between his toes.

He was on a mission. I could see it in his eyes. He was in T-Wrecks mode. He was looking to smash up a storm.

He grabbed two trucks, one in each club and drove them through the plastic windows, bulldozing the baby bear cub’s parents over and tearing through the corduroy carpet, knocking over the tiny vase of dried flowers, the miniature sink with teeny tiny taps and ripping the makeshift books off the tiny shelves.

‘Evacuate, evacuate’ I cried. I was too late, the dollhouse was on its side, its contents spilling onto the floor. I stood and stared at the scene like I was seeing Janet Leigh hanging out the bathtub in Psycho. 

I was devastated. My mum rubbed my back.

Alfie was already off and running. Apparently Pa was burying a dead rabbit under the passionfruit vine (apparently it helps them grow big and strong – country style blood and bone).

I spent the next hour resetting the dollhouse, putting everything back in its place, the way it should be. The babies were put in their cots, ma and pa bear were sitting in the loungeroom watching an eighties-esque TV (Alfie asked me what that was) in front of their cellophane paper fireplace. The three story house became warm and friendly. I felt relaxed again. I closed the big doors with a big satin bow. Sigh.

I went outside to play with Alfie who was building jumps for his trucks and digging holes in the garden. He was filthy, like he had been eating soil and drinking from the hose. The house had been turned inside out with a trail of destruction, like Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs, behind him.

Before we left the country to head back to Melbourne, I untied the bow of the dollhouse and took one more look inside. Everything looked just right, except, lying in the corner of the bathroom, next to the makeshift toilet made out of a matchbox with a circular hole cut in it, was a T-Rex sticker, similar to the one I found on my bum a few days earlier. I put it on the toilet. It felt right. Big butts don’t lie.

Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina

It’s a famous line in the Kindergarten Cop flick

You know the one, where the little boy’s so slick

When he states to Arnie, in the classic one liner

That ‘boys have a penis, and girls a vagina’.

It’s stuck with me for all of these years

A line that’s shouted with peers and beers

But now with my two-year-old boy in tow

He thinks it’s something that everyone must know.

While standing in a very long bank queue

My son (who is also fascinated with poo)

Went up to a stranger, and pointed at his dacks

And shouted ‘doodle?’followed by sniggers and cracks.

The man looked at me, unsure what to do

I explained that my son had just turned two

That he was curious about the thing in his nappy

But talking about it seemed to make him happy.

The tantrums themselves are awkward enough

But how in the hell are you meant to handle this stuff?

There’s a time and a place for this chat, to be frank

But it’s not the time, nor the place when we are in a bank.

It’s no different at all when we go to the zoo

Where there are plenty of doodles and a whole lot of poo

We explore all the gardens and eat picnic feasts

But it all gets exciting when we check out the beasts.

Just last week, we watched the elephants play

My son glued to the fence on this rainy day

Then a male elephant weed and boy it was a hit

And on top of that he took a massive shit.

Oh the squeals of delights, from my son and other boys

Who were all lined up, attracted by the noise

The other parents and I all rolled our eyes

I was thankful that the excitement was no surprise.

In my household filled with blokey gents

Where it’s rare if anyone is wearing pants

I feel left out because I’m ‘missing a tail’

But at the end of the day, I’m proud to be female.

This ode first appeared on BubbaWest.

Summer Dreams and Ice Creams

There’s something in the air and it smells. It’s not just the smell of teen spirit. It’s the smell of summer. But it’s different this year and it smells so good.

The smell is popping up everywhere I go. At a recent dumpling showdown with friends, an argument broke out about whether it is ‘Creaming’ or ‘Creamy’ soda and then it reached new heights on the difference between brown or red soda, then it went even further as to who made it better: Kirks or Tarax? (In my opinion it’s Creamy, it’s brown and Tarax did a ripper version in a black can with a gold stripe).

As a kid, my brothers and I were only ever allowed soft drink at special occasions. We would have Creamy Soda or Pasito at Christmas and it was such a treat.