Cancel the Wedding. Get Some Dignity.

“Too much to forgive,” says a friend of Isaac Heeney’s fiancée, according to the latest reports. If that reflects how Steffie Waters feels, I can understand it. What I struggle with is the familiar expectation that a woman should spend weeks weighing up whether her own peace is worth more than a relationship that has become a public bloody circus.

Heeney was among five Swans players suspended for breaching club standards. There is also an ongoing police investigation, with no charges laid. Those allegations remain unproven. The club’s disciplinary action, however, is a fact—and its standards were apparently more than these professional adults could manage.

Professional football demands discipline. Training schedules, dietary requirements, recovery sessions, team meetings. An entire organisation devoted to helping grown men make good decisions. Yet somehow, once the football is put away, basic good judgment becomes an advanced elective.

Then comes the aftermath. The damage control. The worried conversations about a promising career. The sympathetic discussion of what he stands to lose. Marvellous. Can we spare five minutes for the woman whose engagement has become something strangers discuss over breakfast?

I have very little patience for the idea that she should now help rescue the situation. She agreed to marry a man. She did not apply to become the human shield in front of his reputation.

And if she stays simply because he’s handsome, famous or exceptionally good at football, well; I think that would mean she gets what she deserves. You’re choosing a husband, love, not filling a vacancy in your fantasy team. 

We are far too impressed by sporting talent. Give a man a guernsey and suddenly people start explaining away behaviour they wouldn’t tolerate from the bloke next door. 

I’ve had three ex-husbands. I understand that leaving isn’t always simple, and I won’t pretend an Instagram photograph tells us what is happening privately. But I’ve also learnt that the years you’ve already spent with someone are gone. 

If I were in a relationship that had reached “too much to forgive,” the wedding would be off. I wouldn’t be waiting for another beautifully worded apology or a convincing performance of regret. I’d be making arrangements for my own future.

He can manage his career with his club, his advisers and whoever else is paid to sort it out.

She has a life to get on with. I hope she chooses it.

Rob Lowe Has Broken My Heart. He Doesn’t Know It Yet.

Rob Lowe was asked to name his best on-screen kiss, and he answered immediately: Nastassja Kinski. They kissed in The Hotel New Hampshire back in 1984. Apparently she was so beautiful that he was nervous.

I have taken this news with the dignity you would expect from a woman whose in her sixties. I’m going to lie down for a bit.

Of course, Nastassja Kinski is gorgeous. I’ve seen her. I’m not disputing his eyesight. What I object to is Rob Lowe still remembering a kiss from 1984 while I’ve spent the intervening forty-two years being available in a purely theoretical sense.

The really annoying part is that he’s still gorgeous himself. Rob Lowe has somehow kept the face and the hair. It feels excessive. There ought to be a limit. Boy... He ought to try being a woman. There is no such thing as a gorgeous, craggy woman!

He’s been married for decades, I’m happily spoken for, and the kiss happened on a film set before many people reading this were born. None of which makes my disappointment any less real. I didn’t ask for an explanation of who his favourite was. I was quite content not knowing.

So congratulations, Nastassja. You won a competition you probably didn’t realise was still running. As for Rob, I’ll forgive him eventually.

Probably by lunchtime.

He Rated Her Looks. What A Dick

Coco Pickering, 22, working at Commonwealth Bank has apparently become the subject of a LinkedIn post calling her “beautiful”. And now corporate Australia is arguing about it, because a young woman should be able to go to work without a man publicly assessing her appearance.

LinkedIn is meant to be a professional platform. People use it to talk about jobs, skills, promotions and the occasional leadership lesson discovered while making toast. Yet somehow this man looked at a young bank worker and decided the professional contribution he had to make was a comment on her looks.

Perhaps he thought he was being nice. That’s often the excuse, isn’t it? It was a compliment. But a compliment is usually for the person receiving it. A public post about a woman’s appearance invites everyone else to look at her through his eyes. She didn’t go to work to become content for his LinkedIn audience.

I’m sure she has a job to do and ambitions of her own. None of those appears in the headline. What does appear is her age, where she works and a man’s opinion of her face. That’s a fairly neat demonstration of the problem.

And before someone says we can’t say anything nice anymore: yes, we can. Tell a colleague she handled a difficult customer well. Praise her work. Thank her for helping you. There are hundreds of pleasant things to say about a woman at work that don’t sound like you’ve wandered in from a dating app.

The man may be surprised by the reaction. I’m more surprised that he pressed post without once thinking, “Would I write this about a 22-year-old male bank worker?”

Probably not. Which tells us exactly how professional the post was.

Good for her! What a sleazy old pig.

Grand Final...

Yesterday I didn't get to blog. Normally, I wouldn't have.  But yesterday, it was the AFL Grand Final.

It wasn't overly exciting... Well, I guess it was if you consider the score. Brisbane won by a goal; or there abouts. But they won with about 2 minutes on the clock. It was a fantastic game.

Still, last year at least we had a Victorian club playing in it. Geelong. But that wasn't overly exciting either. It was my team, and we lost.

I have been to 5 losing and 4 winning grand finals.

I'll admit; winning is better.

Why Can’t They Just Let Her Leave?

A woman decides she has had enough. Perhaps she says it aloud. Perhaps she quietly starts putting money aside, looking for somewhere to live, imagining a future in which she can shut her own front door and breathe.

And sometimes, the man who claims to love her decides she isn't allowed to have that future.

Why can’t he just let her go? It is such a simple question. People separate every day. It hurts. They argue over the house, the dog and whose turn it is to explain things to the children. Then, somehow, they carry on. Yet some men would rather kill their partner than accept that she has a life beyond them.

In Australia, 32 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2024–25. That is about one woman every 11 days. By 19 September this year, a separate public tally had recorded 51 women killed by violence in 2026. Those 51 deaths are not all partner killings, and we should never blur the numbers to make a point. The real figures are dreadful enough.

I keep coming back to the word love. We use it in headlines about these deaths as though it explains something. He loved her too much. He couldn’t bear to lose her. He was devastated when she left. But a woman is not a possession someone has lost. She is a person who made a decision.

For some violent men, that decision means a loss of control. The threats, the checking of her phone, the rules about where she goes and whom she sees may have been there long before she tried to leave. Violence is more common where a man believes he owns his partner or has the right to make her decisions.

Then we tell women to leave, as if walking out is the end of the danger. Of course, women should be able to leave. They should also be able to survive doing it. A man who threatens to kill his partner needs to be taken seriously while she is still alive to be protected.

And the rest of us have a part in this. When a mate talks about his ex as though she owes him her time, her location or another chance, don’t laugh along. When he calls constant surveillance “caring”, say what it is. When a woman says she is frightened, believe her before her photograph appears beneath a headline.

I don’t want another solemn announcement that “something must be done” after another woman has died. I want her to be able to pack a bag, walk away and get on with the ordinary business of living.

Why can’t they just let her be?  :( 

The Left-Wing Radicals Have Left the Building

Two delegations walked out during Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations: Iran’s and Cuba’s. Which is quite a feat, really. Most people who find Trump unbearable can turn off the television. These people had to get up, gather their papers and leave while the cameras were rolling.

Trump’s speech covered Iran, Cuba, drug cartels and his familiar warning that communism must never reach America. Iran’s delegation walked out as he spoke about military strikes against their country; Cuba’s left during his remarks about its government. Calling them all “left-wing radicals” makes a wonderfully punchy headline, but it does rather flatten the detail. Iran and Cuba were protesting different things.

I’m not going to pretend I’d enjoy being trapped in a room listening to Trump for 37 minutes. He can turn a speech about world affairs into something that sounds like a man arguing with every country at a very large family Christmas. But I do wonder what a walkout achieves, apart from giving him a fresh audience reaction to talk about.

Then again, staying seated and looking furious would have given the cameras something too. Perhaps that’s the problem with a Trump speech: whatever you do, you’re part of the show. The only person guaranteed to enjoy the spectacle is Trump.

Killed By Someone Who Was Supposed to Love Her...

Another three women are dead.

And, once again, the person accused of killing her is not some stranger lurking in a dark alley. It is someone she knew. Someone she trusted. Someone who may once have told her that he loved her.

How does love become this?

It doesn’t, of course. Because this isn’t love. It is ownership dressed up as love. It is jealousy passed off as passion. It is control disguised as concern.

Where are you going? Who are you talking to? Why are you wearing that? Why didn’t you answer your phone?

At first, it can almost sound flattering. He wants to know where she is because he worries about her. He doesn’t like her friends because they are a bad influence. He controls the money because he is “better with it.” He checks her phone because he has been hurt before.

Slowly, her life becomes smaller while his control becomes bigger.

Then, if she tries to leave, the danger can escalate. She is no longer obeying. She is no longer his to supervise. And for a man who believes love means ownership, her independence feels like humiliation.

That is one of the ugliest answers to the question: why are so many women killed by people who are supposed to love them?

Because some men have never learned that a woman is a person, not a possession. She is allowed to leave. She is allowed to fall out of love. She is allowed to make decisions he doesn’t like. She is allowed to live a life that does not include him.

On average, one Australian woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner. Worldwide, an estimated 51,100 women and girls were killed by partners or family members in 2023. For many women, the most dangerous place is not the street. It is their own home.

And we still ask why she stayed.

Why didn’t she leave earlier? Why did she go back? Why didn’t she report him? Why didn’t she see what he was capable of?

Perhaps she did.

Perhaps she knew exactly what he was capable of - and that was why she was terrified to leave.

Leaving may mean having nowhere to live, no money, frightened children and a partner who has threatened to kill her, himself, the children or the family pet. It may mean being stalked, tracked through her phone, harassed at work or dragged through endless court proceedings. A piece of paper saying he must stay away is useful only if he decides to obey it - or someone stops him when he doesn’t.

Meanwhile, women are told to change their behaviour. Don’t walk alone. Don’t drink too much. Don’t date the wrong man. Keep evidence. Pack an emergency bag. Change your passwords. Turn off location tracking. Tell a friend. Have an escape plan.

Women are expected to become full-time security experts while the violent man continues doing exactly as he pleases.

We need to stop treating these killings as inexplicable explosions from otherwise loving men. In many cases, the murder is the end of a long history of coercion, threats, stalking, intimidation and violence. The signs were there. The woman may have reported them. Her family may have seen them. Police, courts or support services may have known about them.

Then she is killed and everyone says, “Nobody could have imagined this.”

Women imagined it. They were simply not believed strongly enough.

This is not about claiming that every man is violent. Most men are not. It is about recognising that most violence against women is committed by men, and that silence helps the violent ones hide among the decent ones.

Good men need to be part of this conversation too. They need to challenge the mate who talks about his ex as though she deserves punishment. They need to stop laughing at jokes about controlling women. They need to teach boys that rejection is painful, not fatal; that jealousy is not love; and that losing a relationship does not mean losing ownership—because ownership should never have existed in the first place.

A woman should not need a carefully planned escape route from someone who once promised to love her.

She should not have to die before we finally believe she was in danger.

And we should stop calling it love when what we really mean is control.

I don't know about you, but the land of Secretwomen.org is looking good!!

She Went to Mexico to Study. She Should Have Come Home...

Claudia Tacoronte Aguilera was 21. She had travelled from Spain to Mexico on a university exchange and had been there less than a month when she was stabbed to death in Cuautla. She was studying early childhood education. I keep thinking about that: a young woman preparing to work with children, with her own life still barely begun.

The circumstances are still being investigated. Authorities are treating her death as a suspected femicide, while reports have also raised the possibility of a robbery. I don’t want to pretend we know exactly what happened when Claudia’s family is still waiting for answers. But we know enough to be furious. She went to a cultural event and never came home.

After a young woman is killed, there is always a rush to inspect her decisions. Why was she there? Was she alone? Should she have gone somewhere else? As though every woman can avoid violence by making a sufficiently clever series of choices. Claudia was on a university exchange. She should have been able to enjoy it, make friends, learn things, and return home with stories her family would hear for years.

Now her family has a story no family should ever have to tell. Students in Mexico have held a vigil for her, and the University of Granada has cancelled upcoming exchange placements to Morelos. Those responses show how deeply her death has shaken people. They cannot give Claudia back her future.

I hope the investigation gives her family clear answers and real justice. And I hope that, amid the headlines and the arguments about what women should do to stay safe, we remember who Claudia was: a 21-year-old student who went abroad to begin another chapter of her life. She deserved the chance to finish it.

I Have Muscles!

I’ve been going to Kieser for about three months now. Kieser is a gym of sorts, although it’s not filled with twenty-year-olds wearing crop tops and admiring themselves in mirrors. It is mostly filled with older people. Quite a lot of them look half dead.

I fit in beautifully.

We shuffle from one machine to another, carrying various injuries, replaced joints and body parts that have simply stopped cooperating. Knees don’t bend. Arms don’t lift. Backs complain. Legs drag behind like reluctant children. Nobody is trying to become an Instagram fitness influencer. Most of us would simply like to get out of a chair without making a noise.

The machines are very controlled. You sit down, adjust everything, push or pull something heavy and try not to look alarmed. Then you rest while pretending you’re not completely exhausted. Nobody leaps around shouting encouragement. There is no thumping music or Lycra parade. It is all terribly civilised.

When I started, several parts of my body seemed to be purely decorative. My legs had forgotten they were supposed to contain muscles, and my balance remained committed to keeping life interesting. I wasn’t expecting miracles. I thought perhaps I might become slightly less creaky.

But something rather shocking has happened.

I have muscles.

Actual muscles.

I noticed them in my legs first. There are definite shapes where previously there was just leg. When I tense them, things happen. Parts of my body that have been missing in action for years appear to have received the memo and reported back for duty.

I’m not about to enter a bodybuilding competition. Nobody will be rubbing oil on me and asking me to pose under bright lights. But after years of nerve damage, muscle wasting and bits of me refusing to move properly, seeing even a little muscle return feels enormous.

Kieser may look like a waiting room filled with people who have wandered in looking for the cardiologist, but it works. Quietly, slowly and without anybody yelling, “Feel the burn!”

At our age, we already feel the burn. We feel it getting out of bed.

Still, after three months, I’m stronger. I’m moving better. And underneath all the damage and disobedient body parts, apparently I still have muscles waiting to make a comeback.

Who knew?

The People Who Built AI Are Now Looking for the Off Switch

One of the co-founders of Anthropic, the company behind the AI system Claude, has suggested that powerful artificial intelligence may eventually need a compulsory “kill switch.” Not a polite little log out button. Not “Would you like to save your changes?” An actual emergency mechanism that can shut the whole thing down if AI becomes dangerous or starts behaving in ways nobody can control.

That is reassuring.

It is rather like the inventor of the chainsaw announcing, after selling several million of them, that perhaps everyone should also be issued with a very large sticking plaster.

The people developing AI have spent years telling us how magnificent it will be. It will cure diseases, solve climate change, write computer code, drive our cars, run businesses and possibly fold a fitted sheet. 

I'm a child of the 60's. Didn't these idiots every see 'The Terminator"? And it's believable. Oh not the going back from the future to try to fix things; but that AI will some day turn on us...

Now some of those people that wanted us to use it, are warning that it could become uncontrollable, improve itself beyond our understanding and pose a serious threat to humanity.

Suddenly, the sales presentation has taken a turn.

I use AI regularly. It helps me write, organise ideas, create pictures and answer questions I would otherwise spend three hours Googling before ending up watching a video about a woman renovating a caravan in Finland. I like AI. It saves me a fortune! Whereas once I believed the crappy add for sticking plasters that are going to fix my bent figures or my toe hump; now I ask AI (who 9 out of 10 times says it's crap).

I also like my toaster, and I would become suspicious if the toaster started rewriting its own software and locking me out of the kitchen.

The proposed switch would apparently need to be independently verified, which makes sense. We probably shouldn’t leave it entirely to the companies racing one another to build the most powerful AI on Earth. That would be like asking the greyhounds to supervise the rabbit.

Of course, creating a kill switch is the easy part. Deciding who gets to press it is another matter. Governments? Technology companies? The United Nations? Elon Musk after a difficult afternoon? And what happens if the AI has already read the instruction manual and quietly disconnected the button?

Perhaps we are worrying unnecessarily. AI may remain an extremely useful tool that helps humanity rather than destroys it. At present, its main crimes seem to be inventing references, giving people six fingers and confidently providing recipes containing ingredients that don’t exist.

Still, I’m in favour of the switch.

Make it enormous. Paint it bright red. Put it behind glass and write BREAK IN CASE THE COMPUTER DECIDES HUMANS ARE INEFFICIENT across the front.

And perhaps don’t connect it to Wi-Fi.

Harry - Bloody Hell. Leave Him Alone

Harry and Meghan have reportedly moved Archie and Lilibet to another school after only two days because their security team had concerns about the daily journey. Apparently, the traffic, distance and practicalities made it difficult to keep the children properly protected. Their spokesperson even made it clear that there was nothing wrong with the school itself—they loved it—but the children’s safety had to come first.

Naturally, this has become international news.

Two children changed schools. Their parents made a decision based on security advice. That should be the end of the story. But because the parents happen to be Harry and Meghan, every ordinary family decision must be examined like evidence from a particularly glamorous murder scene.

Harry cannot win.

If he brings his children to Britain, people ask why. If he keeps them in America, people say he is depriving them of their heritage. If he accepts protection, he is entitled. If he worries about protection, he is paranoid. If he speaks, he is attention-seeking. If he stays quiet, “royal experts” simply invent what he is thinking and publish it anyway.

And not a day goes by without another story about him. Harry visits somewhere. Harry looks tense. Harry looks too happy. Harry may have spoken to his father. Harry may not have spoken to his father. Harry and Meghan have changed schools. Harry probably sneezed somewhere last Thursday, and twelve commentators are currently analysing what it means for the monarchy.

Have we forgotten what happened to his mother?

Princess Diana was relentlessly pursued, photographed and hounded by the press. Harry was only twelve when she died. He then had to walk behind her coffin while the entire world watched. Whatever anyone thinks of the choices he has made since - and he has certainly made a few questionable ones - is it really so difficult to understand why he is protective of his wife and children?

He knows exactly what a ravenous press can do to a family.

Perhaps Harry and Meghan sometimes invite publicity. Most famous people do when it suits them. But appearing in public, releasing a television series or selling a jar of jam does not mean they surrender every boundary forever. It certainly doesn’t make their children public property.

Archie and Lilibet did not choose royal titles, famous parents or a battalion of photographers waiting to document their first day at school. They are children. They deserve to arrive at school worrying about lunchboxes and homework—not whether somebody with a telephoto lens is hiding behind a hedge.

Considering the press hounded Harry’s mother until the night she died; until the point that she died, you would think they might show him a little mercy.

But mercy doesn’t generate clicks, does it?

He Made It Big… Then His Marriage Didn’t

Alan Ritchson and his wife Catherine have announced they’re separating after 20 years of marriage. They met as teenagers, married in 2006 and raised three sons together. Then Alan became Reacher—a gigantic human action figure who solves problems by removing his shirt and punching people through walls.

And now the marriage is over.

There does seem to be a pattern in Hollywood. A couple struggles together for years, raises the children, survives the auditions, the rejections and probably some truly terrible low-budget films. Then one of them finally becomes famous—and suddenly they both need “room to grow into the people they are becoming.”

Apparently, the person you are becoming can no longer live with the person who helped you become it.

Of course, I’m in absolutely no position to judge. I’ve had three ex-husbands. I don’t have a relationship history; I have a trilogy. If anybody understands that sometimes love simply runs out of road, it’s me.

But it still seems such a pity. Twenty years is a long time. She was there before Reacher, before the fame and before millions of women began watching him throw criminals around while pretending to be interested in the plot.

Their statement was gracious, respectful and full of love for their boys—which is probably the best anyone can manage when a marriage ends. It’s sad, though. They made it through the difficult years, only to fall apart when life finally appeared to be giving them everything.

Still, I wish them both well. I’m certainly not throwing stones.

With three ex-husbands, I’m living in a glass housing estate.

Sandra Bullock’s Love Life Deserves a Refund

Sandra Bullock is beautiful, talented, funny, rich, successful and apparently cursed in the romantic department.

You would think being Sandra Bullock might protect you from life’s usual parade of disappointing men. Surely, once you’ve won an Oscar and become America’s sweetheart, the universe should stop sending you emotional potholes disguised as husbands.

But no. The universe gave her Jesse James.

Sandra married Jesse in 2005 and appeared genuinely besotted with him. Then, in 2010, shortly after she won the Oscar for The Blind Side, it emerged that he had been cheating on her.

Because apparently having Sandra Bullock waiting at home wasn’t enough. Perhaps he was holding out for the Queen of Sweden and a complimentary motorbike.

Jesse later admitted his infidelity, apologised and sought treatment for sex addiction. Sandra recently described that period as “really dark.” At the same time, she was secretly trying to protect her newly adopted baby, Louis, from the paparazzi. She once concealed him in a zipped hockey bag to get him safely past photographers.

Imagine winning an Oscar, discovering your husband is a prize-winning prick, becoming a new mother and smuggling your baby around like sporting equipment.

Jesse later said cheating was simply “part of life.” So is diarrhoea, Jesse, but nobody puts it in their wedding vows.

Sandra eventually escaped that wreckage and found love again with photographer Bryan Randall. By all accounts, he was kind, steady and devoted to Sandra and her children. He wasn’t collecting mistresses or turning her pain into a public circus. He simply loved her.

Naturally, because fate has all the subtlety of a brick through a window, Bryan was diagnosed with ALS.

They kept his illness private at his request, leaving Sandra to carry much of the grief quietly. Bryan died in 2023 at just 57 after a three-year battle with the disease.

She lost the good man after surviving the appalling one.

There is something particularly cruel about that. First, she gets the man who breaks her heart through selfishness. Then she finds the man who helps mend it, only to lose him through no fault of either of them. It’s the sort of storyline a film producer would reject for being excessively miserable.

And yet Sandra Bullock is still standing.

Her love life wasn’t horrible because she chose badly every time. She chose badly once. Most of us have done that, although thankfully ours didn’t usually make international headlines.

Then she chose well—and life was horrible anyway.

Jesse James was a prick.

Bryan Randall was a tragedy.

And Sandra Bullock deserved a much happier ending.  Just saying...

Apple Has Finally Fixed the Boyfriend

Apple has unveiled its new foldable iPhone Duo, and it will apparently cost around $3,500. That is quite a lot of money for a telephone, particularly when mine is mainly used for checking Facebook, deleting scam messages and taking fantastic photographs of the cat.

However, this is not merely a phone. According to news.com.au, it contains a revolutionary new feature aimed at solving one of the greatest problems facing modern women: boyfriends who cannot take a decent photograph.

The phone has something called Duo Preview. When somebody is taking your picture, you can see exactly what they are seeing on a screen on the back. You can therefore direct the entire operation yourself.

“No, move back.”

“Not that far.”

“Hold it higher.”

“Higher.”

“Good God, not directly underneath my chin.”

This means men can no longer claim that they simply aren’t good at taking photographs. Weaponised incompetence has finally met its match, and it costs only slightly less than a second-hand car.

For years, women have handed their phones to their partners and received 47 photographs in return. In twelve of them, their eyes are closed. Seven include a nearby rubbish bin. Fourteen are taken from an angle that makes them look like a garden gnome guarding a wheelie bin. The rest are mostly photographs of the ground because he pressed the button while handing the phone back.

Men, meanwhile, remain mystified by the dissatisfaction.

“What’s wrong with that one?”

My head is missing, Graham.

“You can still see most of you.”

The new phone will allow women to monitor the shot in real time, which should make romantic holidays especially relaxing. Boyfriends will now spend sunset standing six metres away with a $3,500 phone while their partners shout detailed instructions about angles, lighting and whether one thigh looks strangely wider than the other.

Golden hour will become golden forty-five minutes.

The phone may also destroy the popular boyfriend defence of taking deliberately terrible photographs so he is never asked again. This technique has been used successfully for generations. A man performs one domestic task so catastrophically that everybody quietly agrees he should never be allowed near it again. Unfortunately, Apple has now closed the photography loophole.

Even more terrifyingly, the new Apple Watch reportedly has a Live Rewind feature that can record and transcribe the previous 15 seconds of conversation. At last, couples will be able to settle the ancient argument:

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Hang on. I’ll check my wrist.”

Marriage counselling has officially entered the surveillance era.

I’m not convinced this will improve relationships. A healthy partnership requires trust, patience and occasionally pretending you didn’t hear what the other person muttered while loading the dishwasher. We do not need a watch preserving it as evidence.

Still, Apple deserves credit for identifying a gap in the market. We already have phones that recognise our faces, track our movements, monitor our sleep and know we want new boots before we do. It was only a matter of time before one began supervising our boyfriends.

I won’t be rushing out to buy the iPhone Duo. For $3,500, I don’t just want a good photograph. I want the phone to choose my outfit, apply my makeup, remove three kilos, repair the lighting and explain why I looked perfectly fine in the mirror five minutes earlier.

Until then, I’ll continue taking my own photographs.

At least I know where my good side is.

Australian Politics Has Stopped Pretending To Be Respectable

Andrew Hastie called Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce “lying cowards” over a One Nation cartoon portraying him as a traitor.

Not “misinformed”.

Not “disingenuous”.

Not “I respectfully disagree”.

Lying cowards.

Finally, political language I understand.

Politicians usually say:

“We reject that characterisation.”

Meaning:

“That’s rubbish.”

“We have concerns about the member’s conduct.”

Meaning:

“He’s behaving like a goose.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

Meaning:

“You absolute dickhead.”

At least Hastie removed the subtitles.

The whole saga has everything Australian politics needs: a former SAS soldier, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, a cartoon, and an argument about who called whom a traitor.

It’s not Parliament anymore.

It’s Year 9.

“Miss, I didn’t call him a traitor.”

“Yes you did.”

“No, the cartoon did.”

“But you posted it.”

“That’s different.”

“Barnaby, stop laughing.”

Canberra now looks less like the centre of democracy and more like a pub argument where everyone has a media adviser.

And I’m enjoying it.

Because “lying cowards” is clear. No analyst required. You know exactly where everyone stands.

Imagine if all politics worked this way.

“Prime Minister, did you stuff this up?”

“Yes.”

“Righto.”

“Minister, is this policy stupid?”

“Probably.”

“Excellent. Next.”

We’d save millions.

With Barnaby nearby, the whole thing feels like a ute, a pub veranda and someone yelling “mate” are about to enter the story.

Pauline Hanson has been around so long that if aliens landed outside Parliament tomorrow, she’d be on breakfast television by 7.30 explaining why they had failed to assimilate.

So here we are: Hastie versus Hanson, Hanson versus Hastie, Barnaby somewhere nearby, cartoons as political weapons and everyone demanding apologies.

Democracy is alive and well.

It just appears to have had six schooners.

Move Question Time to a country pub. Put a bell on the bar. Give everyone a pot.

Whenever a politician says, “I categorically reject that assertion,” they must translate it into ordinary Australian.

Nine times out of ten, it will be:

Bullshit.

Now that I’d watch.

Salma Hayek Has Turned 60. This Seems Unnecessarily Provocative.

Salma Hayek has celebrated her 60th birthday by going skinny-dipping and looking so magnificent that I’m beginning to suspect she has made a private arrangement with time.

Sixty!

I’ve looked carefully at the photographs, and I can’t see a single sign that gravity has ever been introduced to her. Everything is still exactly where it was originally issued. Her skin glows, her hair tumbles beautifully down her back, and even naked in the ocean she looks composed. If I went skinny-dipping, concerned people on the shore would immediately begin searching for the overturned kayak.

How does she look so good?

She says she doesn’t use Botox. Of course she doesn’t. Apparently, she meditates. I have tried meditating, but I spend the entire time thinking about whether I turned the oven off and mentally composing arguments with people who annoyed me in 1997. None of this has made me look like Salma Hayek.

She also credits restorative yoga, juices and generally taking care of herself. I occasionally take care of myself too. Last week I remembered to moisturise both legs. Admittedly, I did one in the morning and the other just before bed, but nobody said the legs had to be done together.

Obviously, Salma has excellent genes. She also has access to expensive skincare, personal trainers, stylists, flattering lighting and probably somebody whose entire job is to follow her around holding a bowl of berries. I don’t begrudge her any of it. If I had her money, I would employ a full-time professional to slap biscuits out of my hand and another one to gently lower me to the floor whenever an exercise involved getting down there.

But money alone doesn’t explain it. Plenty of rich people look as though they’ve been left overnight in a hot car. Salma is simply spectacular. She has curves, she hasn’t starved herself into the shape of a bookmark, and she seems genuinely comfortable in her own skin. That may be the most attractive thing of all.

There is also something rather marvellous about a woman turning 60 and celebrating by taking her clothes off instead of quietly disappearing behind a sensible cardigan. Women have spent generations being told that we become invisible as we age. Salma appears to have responded by swimming naked through the middle of the argument.

Good for her.

I don’t expect to look like Salma Hayek when I turn 60—mainly because that particular ship has already sailed, hit an iceberg and been converted into a floating casino. But I do like the idea of refusing to become apologetic about ageing.

Perhaps that is her real secret. Good genes, excellent skincare, restorative yoga, enormous wealth—and absolutely no intention of becoming smaller just because she’s getting older.

Although I still think there may be witchcraft involved.

Writing a Children’s Book Is Child’s Play. Apparently.

I have been writing children’s books, which sounds delightful. You imagine me sitting peacefully at a desk (or the dining room table; because the Squeeze claims the study), smiling fondly as a golden giraffe swallows a star or a sleek red fox paints the house like Picasso.

That is not what happens.

Writing the story is the easy part. You invent a giraffe called Horatio or a fox called Dionysus, give them a small behavioural problem, destroy part of a house and finish with a charming rhyme. Lovely. Then you begin the illustrations—and discover you have accidentally entered a long-term dispute over continuity.

On page one, Dionysus is a handsome red fox with white paws and a magnificent russet tail. By page six, he appears to have changed species, gained several kilos and undergone facial reconstruction. Grandma Sookey is no better. She arrives with big hair and makeup like a clown, but two pages later she has a different face, different clothes and possibly a different ethnic background. Nobody mentions it. Apparently, this family has experienced stranger things.

Then comes the text. At first, I thought it would be helpful to have the words placed neatly onto each illustration. That was before discovering the words were either too large, too small, in the wrong place or sitting directly across Grandma’s forehead. So now I want every picture without type. I’ll put the words in myself in Photoshop, where I can move them around until they behave—or until I lose the will to live.

There are also approximately nine hundred tiny decisions nobody warns you about. Is the fox bright red or russet? Are his paws white enough? Is the giraffe too yellow? Does Grandma look startled, terrified or as though she has just remembered she left the iron on? Is that the same chair from three pages ago? Why does the hallway now lead directly into the kitchen? And when did the house acquire a second staircase?

Children, of course, will notice every mistake. Adults might politely overlook a fox whose tail changes colour halfway through the book. A five-year-old will point at it immediately and demand an explanation. You cannot bluff a five-year-old. They are tiny continuity editors with no social filter.

Still, I’m enjoying it enormously. There is something wonderful about watching characters that have lived in your head finally appear on the page—even if they occasionally appear with the wrong face, an extra window and a grandmother nobody has seen before.

Soon I will have two beautifully illustrated children’s books: The Day My Giraffe Swallowed a Star and The Day My Fox Painted a Picasso. Then, I'll move on to the next one. A bunch of stories about a little kid and their outrageous pet!

Or I will have 147 pictures of unrelated foxes, six different grandmothers and a permanent twitch in my left eye.

Either way, something is getting published.

Can’t Type. Finals Football!

Oh I do love this time of year. Football season is coming to a close. I love a Grand Final. That minute at the start when everyone thinks they will win. The umpire stands in the centre; 100k people start screaming.  

I’ve been to 4 winning grand finals. 5 losing ones. I don’t think I’ll go again. Of course, I have to even it up; so I need another winning one!

I’ve Survived 29 Brain Operations, But a Password Reset May Finish Me Off

I have survived 29 brain operations. I have recovered from things that would cause most people to lie flat on the floor and refuse to participate in life ever again. Yet this week, I was nearly defeated by a password box.

Apparently, the password I have used successfully for months is suddenly wrong. It isn’t wrong. I know it isn’t wrong because I wrote it down after being told repeatedly that writing passwords down is dangerous. What is apparently less dangerous is allowing a website to lock me out of something I own while insisting that I prove I am not a robot by identifying seventeen microscopic traffic lights.

I requested a password reset. The website told me it had sent an email. It had not. I requested another. Still nothing. Five minutes later, both arrived together, but the first link had expired and the second apparently belonged to a different moment in the space-time continuum.

Then came the security code.

“Enter the six-digit code we sent to your phone.”

Fine. I left the website to check my messages. When I returned, the website had refreshed and wanted me to log in again. I logged in again. It sent another code. I left to find that one. When I came back, it refreshed again. This is not security. This is psychological warfare.

Modern life is full of tiny inconveniences that are supposedly making everything easier. Restaurants make us scan a QR code to read a menu, then the menu wants our email address, mobile number and date of birth before it will reveal the price of a chicken schnitzel. Car parks no longer accept coins. Banks no longer have branches. Businesses no longer have telephone numbers. If you do find one, a recorded voice says your call is important while leaving you on hold long enough to reconsider whether the matter—or indeed life itself—is worth pursuing.

Nothing simply works anymore. Everything needs an account, an app, an update, a verification code and permission to track your location. I recently attempted to perform one small task online and ended up with twelve browser tabs open, three confirmation emails and no memory of what I had originally intended to do.

And heaven help you if you click “Forgot password.” The website will demand a new password containing a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, a symbol, an ancient rune and the blood type of your first pet. You carefully create one, only to be told that your new password cannot be the same as an old password.

Which means it knew the old password all along.

I suspect we are no longer angry because life is particularly terrible. We are angry because we spend every day being pecked to death by digital ducks. One minor annoyance would be manageable. Fifty of them before lunch turns a reasonable adult into someone screaming, “I AM NOT A ROBOT!” at a photograph of a pedestrian crossing.

Technology was supposed to give us more leisure time. Instead, we now spend that leisure time updating technology, charging technology, searching for technology and asking technology why it can’t connect to the other technology sitting three centimetres away.

I’m not against progress. I would just like progress to remember the original arrangement: it was meant to work for us.

Because after everything I have survived, I refuse to be taken out by a little red message saying, “Something went wrong. Please try again later.”

Something did go wrong.

We invented the internet.

I Now Require All Purchases to Pass an Intelligence Test

I have finally found a practical use for artificial intelligence. I don’t need it to compose a symphony, diagnose the economy or create a lifelike video of Donald Trump riding a dolphin. I need it to stop me buying rubbish from Facebook.

This has become necessary because the internet has apparently identified me as a woman with skin, joints, teeth, hair and several functioning insecurities. Every time I open Facebook, I am offered something miraculous. A cream that removes age spots in fourteen days. A strip that whitens teeth without damaging them. An oil that repairs joints, erases wrinkles, improves circulation and possibly fixes the transmission in the car. There is always a distinguished-looking doctor involved, although he may actually be a dentist from Belgium whose photograph was stolen in 2017.

In the old days, I would look at the before-and-after photographs, read three glowing reviews from women called Susan and Janet, and begin to wonder. Perhaps this really was the discovery dermatologists had been trying to suppress. Perhaps a small company operating from an undisclosed warehouse had finally cracked the secrets of human ageing. Perhaps all I needed was two bottles for $79.95, plus another bottle mysteriously added at checkout.

Now I ask ChatGPT.

I send it the link and say, “Does this work?” Then it goes rummaging through the ingredients, the evidence, the company’s claims and whatever independent information can actually be found. 

Usually, the answer is a beautifully diplomatic version of: No, Carol. Put your credit card away.

It has become my official Department of 'Suspicious Purchases'. Most of which I cleaned out the other week...

The pattern is remarkably consistent. The product often contains one perfectly reasonable ingredient, surrounded by moisturiser and magnificent advertising. There may be a tiny amount of something that has shown promise in a clinical study, but nobody tells you how much is actually in the jar. The advertisement then leaps from “this ingredient may modestly improve the appearance of pigmentation over several months” to “YOUR HANDS WILL LOOK 25 AGAIN BY THURSDAY.”

They all have thousands of delighted customers. They all sell out regularly. They have all been discovered by a woman who had tried absolutely everything and was about to give up. Sometimes her dermatologist is “amazed.” There is usually a countdown clock informing me that the special price will disappear in eleven minutes, although I can return three days later and find that the clock has made a miraculous recovery.

Since I began checking before buying, I have discovered that most miracle products fall into one of three categories: they might help slightly, they probably do nothing, or they will moisturise the area beautifully while leaving the original problem exactly where it was.

The money I have saved must be considerable. I can’t give you an exact figure because that would require admitting how many times I have been tempted by a bottle of hope with a gold lid. But between the whitening strips, memory supplements, age-spot creams, joint oils, circulation devices and mysterious magnetic objects, I may have saved enough to purchase an entirely new body. Admittedly, it would probably arrive flat-packed and require a subscription.

This doesn’t mean I never buy anything. It means the product now has to survive questioning. Are the ingredients proven? Are they present in useful amounts? Are the reviews independent? Is the dramatic photograph merely the result of different lighting, makeup and someone turning down the contrast? Is there an actual business address? And my personal favourite: if this cream genuinely removed every age spot in two weeks, why wouldn’t every dermatologist on Earth already be using it?

Occasionally, the answer is that a product may be worth trying. More often, I am told that the active ingredient is sensible but the claims are inflated, the evidence is weak and a cheaper product from the chemist will probably do the same thing. It isn’t nearly as exciting as discovering a forbidden anti-ageing breakthrough, but it is considerably better for my bank account.

So I now have a rule: before buying anything advertised as revolutionary, miraculous, clinically proven, ancient, secret, doctor-approved or “not available in shops,” I send it for interrogation.

Artificial intelligence may eventually take over the world. Until then, mine is standing between me and a $69 jar of moisturiser claiming to reverse thirty years of sun damage.

Frankly, it has already paid for itself. :')