Children’s Author Stayed…

What a fantastic couple of days we had.

My friend Isobelle, who writes young adult books, came to stay with her guy. We only get to see each other every now and then, so it’s always special when we can all get together. There is something wonderful about spending time with people you've known for years. You just pick up where you left off.

Isobelle and I took charge of the important things in life and made the pizzas while having drinks. The smell coming out of the oven was enough to make us all hover around the kitchen like starving seagulls. They tasted even better than they smelled, which is saying something because they smelled magnificent.

Meanwhile, the guys started talking about guitars.

As anyone who lives with a man who owns more guitars than common sense will know, "talking about guitars" is merely Stage One.

Stage Two involves bringing the guitars out.

Stage Three involves discussing pickups, strings and amplifiers in a language nobody else understands.

And Stage Four, naturally, involves playing them.

Before long, our dining room had turned into an impromptu music session. We all threw song suggestions around, although finding the right songs proved harder than expected. Some songs you love listening to just don't work when you're sitting around with acoustic guitars. Still, that hardly mattered. The laughter between songs was every bit as enjoyable as the music itself.

After demolishing far too much pizza and somehow finding room for dessert, we sat drinking, talking, laughing and generally solving none of the world's problems.

And that, I think, is the beauty of nights like these.

Just friends, food, music and conversation. Real life, in all its ordinary glory.

The next morning, they flew back to Brisbane while the Squeeze and I headed up the freeway with my son in the back seat, on our way to my daughter's house for her son's fifth birthday.

One minute you're sitting around with guitars and homemade pizzas, and the next you're watching a small person blow out candles and wondering how on earth five years have gone by so quickly.

All in all, it was one of those weekends that remind you what really matters.

Not followers.

Not likes.

Not algorithms.

Just family, friends, laughter, and enough pizza to feed a small country.

And honestly, I wouldn't swap that for the world. 😊

Children's Author Staying – So I'm Not Blogging 😊

One of my best friends, Isobel, is coming to stay tonight. She's a children's author, young adult mostly. We live in different states; us in Victoria and them in Queensland so I don't get to see her that often. I think the last time was a couple of months ago and I stayed at her place on the Great Ocean Road. Fantastic place to write with a view of the ocean...

She's bringing her guy and so, with the Squeeze, the four of us are going to make pizzas and do that strange thing people used to do before social media.

You know?

Converse.

In the real world.

We probably won't have a phone between us. No social media. No doomscrolling. No arguing with strangers on Facebook. Nothing.

Bliss.

We'll probably have a night of music. Playing it, rather than just listening to it. Pity the only instrument I play is the tambourine. 😊 We have a couple of acoustic guitars, a mandolin, a ukulele, a slide guitar, a cigar box guitar, a Fender Telecaster and a Stratocaster, just to name a few.

And I still can't play a bloody thing.

But I love nights like this.

Because as much as I enjoy writing and social media, nothing beats sitting around with good friends, eating too much, talking rubbish and laughing until your sides hurt.

It certainly beats the Squeeze and I sitting in front of the television every night dreaming of a different life.

Although, to be fair, he's probably dreaming of a life where I don't exist.

Mind you, after twenty five years together, I suspect I've crossed his mind as a murder suspect more than once.

Still, he'll have to keep me.

I know where the guitars are hidden.

The Death Of Embarrassment

I don't know exactly when it happened, but I think embarrassment died sometime around 2015…

There was no funeral. No minute's silence. No flowers.

One day people simply stopped being ashamed of anything and carried on as though this was perfectly normal.

Once upon a time embarrassment was useful. It stopped you from doing stupid things in public. It prevented you from dancing on restaurant tables, filming yourself sobbing after a break-up, or announcing intimate bodily functions to complete strangers.

It acted as society's handbrake.

Not anymore.

These days people record themselves crying and upload it to millions of strangers. Couples broadcast their arguments. Families reveal every scandal. Influencers discuss things with the internet that previous generations wouldn't have discussed with their doctors.

And apparently this is now considered authenticity. I'm old enough to remember when people suffered humiliation in private.

If you tripped over in the street, or at the shopping centre as I did… You got up as quickly as possible and scurried away for checking on the bruises.

Now you end up on Facebook with dramatic music and hundreds of views.

They film themselves having emotional breakdowns. They confess things online that should probably remain between themselves, a close friend and perhaps a licensed therapist. Nothing is off limits anymore.

Births.

Deaths.

Divorces.

Medical procedures.

Family feuds.

The strange thing is that nobody seems embarrassed by any of this.

Meanwhile, I still apologise to mannequins if I bump into them. I whisper when discussing personal matters at the chemist. I still lower my voice when talking about money. And if I accidentally wave back at someone who wasn't waving at me, I spend the next six years considering emigration.

Perhaps I'm showing my age. Or perhaps embarrassment existed for a reason.

Maybe not every thought needs to be shared.

Maybe not every moment needs an audience.

Maybe some things are meant to remain private.

And perhaps civilisation began its decline around the same time people started filming themselves crying for content. Because if aliens landed tomorrow and spent ten minutes on social media, I suspect they'd quietly return to their spaceship and decide humanity wasn't quite ready for first contact.

And honestly, I couldn't blame them.

Why Is Everyone Filming Everything?

Nobody experiences life. We document it for strangers.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way we stopped experiencing life and started documenting it. Filming it. Apparently nothing happens anymore unless somebody records it.

Nobody just goes to a concert anymore. They record the concert. They hold their phones in the air for two hours filming something they'll never watch again while blocking the view of the poor bastard behind them. Annoying? Well, I've been that poor bastard, so yes. I've also had the pleasure of being the blocker at times. Jon Stevens on Saturday night, for example. But I only filmed a little of it, just so the world would know I was there.

That seems to be the way of it now. People don't go on holidays. They create content. Nobody eats lunch. They photograph lunch. Nobody sees a sunset. They film the sunset. Nobody attends weddings. They spend half the ceremony trying to capture the perfect angle for Instagram while the bride and groom are standing there wondering if anyone actually saw them get married.

My son got married last year and the celebrant asked everyone not to film. They had professional photographers taking millions of fantastic shots that anyone could have later. They simply asked everyone to enjoy the moment. Sans phone, at least for me, was fabulous. Well, it was after I got over the first withdrawal symptoms!

I saw footage recently of people filming fireworks. Fireworks! As though there won't be another lot next year. As though their grandchildren are going to gather around one day and say, "Grandma, please show us that blurry video of New Year's Eve 2024 again."

And don't get me started on people filming complete strangers having meltdowns in supermarkets. Once upon a time you'd quietly think, "Hell, that bloke's having a bad day," and move on. Now everyone whips out a phone and hopes to go viral.

We're no longer participants in our own lives. We're unpaid camera crews. Everything has become content.

Birthdays. Engagements. Car accidents. Marriage proposals. Gender reveals. Funerals. Apparently nothing is allowed to happen unless complete strangers can watch it later. And the strange thing is, I don't think we're even doing it for ourselves anymore. We're doing it for people we don't know. People we'll never meet. People who will scroll past our precious memories in about three seconds before watching a cat fall off a sofa.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but sometimes I think the best memories I have are the ones nobody photographed.

The holidays where nobody carried a phone.

The concerts where everyone sang instead of filmed.

The dinners where we talked instead of taking pictures of our food.

Perhaps memories were never meant to be content.

Perhaps they were just meant to be memories.

The Professional Wrestlingification of Everything

I've come to the conclusion that professional wrestling escaped the ring years ago and quietly took over the rest of society.

Not actual wrestling, of course. Nobody is getting hit over the head with folding chairs in Parliament. Although some days, I'm not entirely convinced that they shouldn’t be…

No, I'm talking about the “spectacle”.

Everything has become bigger. Louder. Angrier. More dramatic.

Nobody simply disagrees anymore. They destroy. They annihilate. They humiliate. Apparently, every argument must end with somebody being body-slammed into oblivion while a cheering crowd waves digital signs in the comment section.

Politics became wrestling years ago.

Then social media joined in.

Then the news.

Then celebrities.

Then influencers.

And now ordinary people seem to have joined the cast. Every opinion requires an entrance. Every disagreement requires a villain. Every discussion needs heroes, betrayals and shocking plot twists.

Even corporations have learned the game. Once upon a time companies sold soap powder. Now they issue statements. They take sides. They apologise. They clarify. They release carefully worded responses to controversies nobody had heard of six hours earlier.

Everything has become theatre. Nothing can simply exist without an audience. If a celebrity breaks up with their partner, we pick teams. If two billionaires have a disagreement, we choose sides. If somebody says something stupid on Twitter, half the internet grabs popcorn while the other half searches for a folding chair.

The strange thing is that professional wrestling has always known exactly what it is.

Entertainment.

That's the joke.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are pretending this endless drama is perfectly normal. Perhaps that's why everyone seems exhausted. We're living inside a twenty-four-hour pay-per-view event. And there are no off-seasons. No wonder people are tired. No wonder everyone is angry. No wonder we're all permanently waiting for the next shocking betrayal, devastating comeback or explosive revelation.

Personally, I miss boring. I miss the days when the most exciting thing that happened was someone forgetting to put the bins out. These days, civilisation apparently collapses three times before lunch.

And somewhere, in the middle of all this madness, common sense is lying unconscious under a folding chair while Karen from Facebook climbs onto the top rope to defend her views on seed oils.

Honestly, if aliens landed tomorrow, they'd probably assume humanity settled its differences through professional wrestling and YouTube comments.

And frankly, I wouldn't blame them...