Blood on the Fridge: A Cautionary Tale

It was like something from a horror movie. There was blood everywhere. It splattered on the work-top, the floor, the fridge, me. It was gushing out of my hand, streaming down my wrist, collecting at my elbow and dripping onto my legs like some sort of mobile Jackson Pollack painting. Except I wasn’t very mobile at that moment. I was rooted to the ground, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at the bright red blood pumping out of my hand at a frightening rate. It felt like hours, but in reality probably lasted for about three seconds. As soon as my brain caught up with my eyes and my nerve endings, the screaming started. Howls of pain and disbelieving shock. I could think of nothing but the gaping wound on my hand at that moment, but musing on it now I am surprised our neighbours didn’t come round to check we were alright. I sounded like I was being torn from limb to limb but heard not a peep from them. It’s good to know that if I am ever brutally attacked I can’t count on them to save me.


But back to the slasher movie: The Husband ran out to find me clutching my hand, eyes wide, rooted to the spot amidst a splattering of blood. “What have you done?” he cried. I tried to tell him but the wrong words tumbled out of my mouth. I tried again but a mish-mash of words came out, all in the wrong order. Defeated, I pointed to the knife lying on the work-top where I had thrown it, stained with warm blood. Quickly taking in the situation, he led me to the sink and turned on the tap, forcing my hand under the water. It hurt. And did nothing to stem the steady stream of blood gushing out of my hand. “There’s a lot of blood,” he said. Yes, I can see that, I felt like screaming, so now what? He grabbed my uninjured hand and placed it on the wrist of the slashed one. “Hold tightly and lift it above your head,” he ordered, as he disappeared into the bathroom. I screwed my eyes shut, not wanting to see my own blood anymore. With my vision gone, my other senses were heightened. I could feel my hand steadily throbbing as it pumped blood out of my body. I could smell the warm, wet scent of iron. I could hear a drip, drip, drip. Thinking that the tap hadn’t been turned off properly I opened my eyes momentarily and realised that the sound was not water dripping from the tap but blood dripping from my raised hand. The blood combined with the water in the sink to form a rusty coloured puddle that made me feel nauseous. I shut my eyes again.

The Husband seemed to take an age and all I kept thinking was that with every second he was gone, I was losing more and more blood. He eventually reappeared armed with antiseptic wipes, a huge wodge of toilet paper and a thick roll of bandages. By this point, there was so much blood it was hard to see the wound but I could tell from the grim look on The Husband’s face that it wasn’t good. He pressed the toilet paper to my hand and wrapped the bandage around it, pulling another bandage tightly around my wrist in an attempt to cut off the blood supply to my hand to allow it to clot. I sat meekly on the sofa, arm propped up above my head, the tears having abated, shock starting to set in. The Husband brought me his hoody as I began to shiver. I started to lose feeling in my hand and my fingers were turning blue. It freaked me out. “My hand is dying!” I cried. “No it’s not,” The Husband replied. “You’re killing my hand!” I insisted. Grim-faced, barely containing his irritation with his frightened patient, he unwrapped the bandage. The wound started to bleed again. “You’re going to have to go to hospital,” was his sombre analysis, “I think you need stitches.” “No,” I countered, furiously shaking my head, “no, no, no, no, no”. I didn’t want to spend my evening in a hospital waiting room but, more than that, we are off to the Ningaloo Reef tomorrow for a snorkelling holiday and stitches and water don’t really mix. I wasn’t about to shelve my dreams of swimming with whale sharks. “I won’t complain that my hand’s about to drop off,” I promised, “and I’ll stop wiggling my fingers just to check they still work. Wrap her up again!”

Half an hour later and the bleed had stopped. The Husband loosened the bandage slightly and I went to bed feeling very sorry for myself. A restless night followed and I was awake when The Husband got up. As I am normally comatose at this ungodly hour of the morning, I knew something had to change. I begged him to take the bandage off and felt better with each unwrapped layer. When all that remained was the plaster, I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt free again. The good news was that the wound hadn’t bled, the bad news was that my hand had a definite blue tinge. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. I was probably in self-preservation mode, my body ensuring that my hand didn’t fall off in the night. I am pleased to report that I think I’ll live. My hand is gradually regaining its colour and it seems to be working (I keep wiggling my fingers just to make sure). The horror movie is over. As if to remind me never to wield a knife towards my body again, I found a spot of blood on the fridge this morning, which is just what you want to see at 5.30am.

Lessons learnt? Knives are dangerous. Especially when they have been sharpened the night before without your knowledge. You can never rely on your neighbours to come to your aid in a potentially lethal situation. And your hand won’t drop off if you bandage it tightly. But it will hurt a lot.

The Expat Wife's Prerogative

I don’t often take full advantage of the fact that I have no set working hours and can take time off whenever the mood takes me, but on Friday afternoon I luxuriated in one of the benefits of life as an expat wife. I set aside the entire afternoon to chilling out in the garden with a fellow Expat WAG and my good friend, Sauvignon Blanc. There’s got to be some benefits to living in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles away from friends and family, and this is certainly one of them. This may surprise many of you, but I hadn’t indulged in such an afternoon before – I suppose I have always assumed that I would be assuaged by the guilty knowledge that I was enjoying myself with gay abandon whilst The Husband was hard at work. I did have a few guilt-ridden thoughts of him slaving away as I leant back against the cushions and sipped my vino but I figured, as the one who washes and irons his clothes, cleans the house, cooks all his meals and does all the shopping, on top of trying to launch my own career as a writer, I was entitled to a bit of me-time. And, being Friday afternoon, it was practically the weekend anyway. Who really works on Friday afternoons?


It also meant that I was extra-specially nice to him when he came home. He was treated to a hug, a kiss and a beaming smile at the front door when normally he gets a shouted ‘hello!’ from the other side of the house. There’s no lipstick touch-ups or ribbon in the hair for him normally (or ever, to be honest – he’s lucky to find me with even a slick of mascara most days. I live in the desert – who’s going to notice?!). So I started the weekend early and had a lovely afternoon with a bite of lunch, a bottle (and a half) of some very nice wine and a good three and a half hours of girly chat. I'm not going to feel guilty about it - sometimes a girl needs that, especially in Karratha.

Ad-hurts

I think I could get a job making regional TV ads in Australia. Seriously, I do. I have never seen ads quite like the ones they show on the telly here. Picture this: the ad starts and you see a shop-front. A couple then walks in through the door hand-in-hand, smiling so much you’d think they were going in to buy an engagement ring or pick up a lottery win. But the camera then focuses in on the sign above the door and it’s an estate agent. Thrilling. You then get a montage of shots of them talking to the smarmy looking agent, being shown around a house, picking up the keys, all the while smiling so hard their jaws are going to hurt for weeks. Played over the top of this is a jingle of the type that I sing to The Husband about myself . Yes, I often sing about myself, him, the two of us together, often adding in what I’m doing - “I’m cooking very nice things, yes I’m a wonderful cook, Matty is so lucky, oh I am such a great catch” – those sorts of things, and all to some spontaneously made-up tune. You can imagine how good those songs are. Well, the jingle accompanying this ad is of the same calibre, if not actually below par – my songs are at least upbeat and catchy. This is sung by a man with an incredibly annoying, whiny voice, with these inspired lyrics: “We’re the real estate people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your neigh-bour-hood; we’re the real estate people in your neighbourhood...” – you get the drift. You end up wanting to throw something at the TV.


Another one of our favourites is an advert persuading indigenous women not to drink, smoke or take drugs when they’re pregnant. The acting is appalling – I think they must have literally grabbed people off the street to do it. It’s so bad it’s like they’re intentionally acting like someone who can’t act. “Con-grat-u-lations. You. Are. Pregnant. That. Means. No. Drinking. Smoking. Or. Drugs.” The best part is when the expectant mother comes in for a scan (after the camera has already shown her drinking a can of JD and Coke – product placement, anyone?) and it’s bad news. “Oh. No. Your. Baby. Has. Brain. Damage. It. Will. Need. Care. For. The. Rest. Of. Its. Life.” The lack of emotion in her voice is brilliant – she’s telling a woman that her actions have permanently harmed her unborn child and it sounds like she’s just going through the motions and she’s actually thinking about what she’s going to have for lunch.

I know these companies and organisations won’t have a lot of money to splash on making a top-class ad but they can still be clever or funny (and not the laughing-because-it’s-so-bad kind of funny) or at least involve actors that can at least act half decently, even if they are pulled off the street. They are memorable, however, and at the end of the day that’s what they’re trying to achieve. It’s not necessarily good to be memorable for the wrong reasons though. I certainly wouldn’t risk stepping foot in that estate agents in case they all break out into that dreary song. “We’re the real estate people in your ...” Oh no, it’s stuck in my head now!

It's Crud for K-Rudd

It’s the big news of the day – hell, the year – in Australia. The country of kangaroos, surfers and a woman called Matilda who just loved to waltz has a new prime minister, and not just a new prime minister but Australia’s first ever female prime minister. It’s a huge thing for the women of this country and a historic day for Australia. The only thing is, I didn’t think they’d had a general election. Well, that’s because they haven’t. Labour, Australia’s leading party, have done just what their British cousins did and have elected a prime minister of their own choosing. The difference is, Kevin Rudd did not step down because he knew the public wanted him out. The former prime minister of Australia was forced to resign because of lack of support within his party – his own party wanted him out. They went to Julia Gillard, asked her to stand against Rudd, and she agreed. Rather than force a ballot, as he knew the numbers were against him, he saved himself the embarrassment of being voted out by his own party and gracefully stepped down this morning.


Of course, you can’t separate the public from this. The main reason so many of the Labour party wanted him out is because his popularity with the people of Australia has plummeted over the past few months, largely due to his backing down on a massive climate change initiative that was key to his environmental strategy and, more recently, his hugely unpopular mining super-profits tax. With a general election looming towards the end of the year, Labour was terrified that the public was increasingly showing support for the Opposition. They thought that they would fare better at the election with Julia Gillard at their helm.

So, what do the public think of all this? The leaders of a country are supposed to be serving their people, after all, not their own party’s interests. The general consensus seems to be that people like Julia Gillard, that she will be a competent leader, but that they would have preferred to have made that decision for themselves. Many people feel betrayed by the fact that the system’s factional leaders and union bosses have overturned the votes they cast at the last election. Whatever they currently think of Kevin Rudd, they voted him into leadership, not Julia Gillard. They wanted the opportunity to decide whether to get rid of him and vote in a new leader. They now have a leader, making decisions for their country, that they did not elect and they are angry they have been left out of the process. They are angry that this could happen at all. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the upcoming election when the people of Australia do get to decide. Will they see Gillard as a backstabbing bitch who shafted the man she was supposed to be loyal to, or as a strong female who saved the Labour party and can lead their country to greater things?

I do feel sorry for K-Rudd. Ok, so he made a few mistakes but he also did some great things for this country, most remarkable of all perhaps was keeping Australia largely out of the recession that has mired most of the rest of the world. And we mustn’t forget the historic day he apologised to the Stolen Generation on behalf of the Australian nation for the terrible sins of the past. Australia doesn’t often make it into international news but that was something that the world paid attention to. Since then, he has tried to close the wide, gaping gap between indigenous and white Australians. His departing speech, which listed these and the many other achievements of his since winning power just two and half years ago, was emotional and he struggled to fight back the tears. I’m not surprised – he has had a horrible 24 hours. For not only the majority of your party but your deputy, who is supposed to be loyal to you, to stab you in the back like that must hurt. It would be like a member of your family horribly betraying you. And yet the astonishing thing is that he has maintained that, rather than go on the public speaking trail where he could not only get out of all that political in-fighting but also earn huge amounts of money, he will remain in the Labour party. He must be crazy. Maybe his party were right to oust him after all!

Has the Google Generation Gone Gaga?

Google is a wonderful thing. As both consumer and journalist, I don’t know what I’d do without the ability to search for any piece of information I need by simply typing it in and pressing ‘enter’. I can still remember the days of reaching for one of the big red books in our Encyclopedia Britannica collection for help with homework or, failing that, persuading mum to take me to the library to search for it there. Of course, neither of those options would help with current, up-to-the-minute news and information. To be able to access a world of information at home, at the push of a button, is truly a remarkable thing and you’d have therefore imagined the ‘now generation’ to be more knowledgeable, with their ability to be constantly informed about breaking global news events, scientific discoveries, important governmental decisions, the views of countries around the world. Of course, that would actually involve searching for those things – it all depends on what you type into that search engine and the incredibly scientific research I conducted into this made for some interesting reading.


To gauge what three developed countries – Australia, the US and the UK – felt were the important matters of the day, I wanted to know the information they were most desperately seeking. I typed in ‘is’ followed by the space bar to bring up the ten most popular searches on each country’s Google directory page and what I found was somewhat alarming. The top search was the same for each country, indicating that it is a matter of deep concern for the people of those nations. It was this - ‘is Lady Gaga a man?’ Yes, that’s right, the developed world is desperate to seek the truth of this matter of international importance. In fact, ‘is Lady Gaga a hermaphrodite?’ ranks as the third and fourth most searched for question in America and Australia respectively. Perhaps it should be discussed on Question Time.

The US appears to be a nation of hypochondriacs – both ‘is bronchitis contagious?’ and ‘is tonsillitis contagious?’ makes it into its top ten. Our American friends also seem to share an obsession with Justin Bieber with the Aussies, but whereas Australia just wants to know whether he will be visiting their country, the US wants to know if he is bi-sexual. Bieber fever obviously hasn’t hit the UK yet but there does seem to be a lot of rumours going around about celebrity deaths. The eighth most popular search is ‘is Leona Lewis dead?’, although apparently we Brits are far more concerned with the fate of the huge star that is Barry Chuckle. Yes, the question of whether Barry Chuckle, of the Chuckle Brothers fame, is dead is the second most popular search on google.co.uk. I have to confess that this intrigued me so I clicked on it and up popped dozens of sites claiming that the ‘to me, to you’ star has been found dead in a brothel in Belfast. But fear not, Chuckle Brothers fans, this shocking revelation appears to be an elaborate hoax, or at least that’s what the official Chuckle Brothers site (yes, there really is one) states – according to them, it’s a hoax that has been around since 2008, more recently resurfacing this year.

I do find it rather alarming that out of the top ten searches in what are supposed to be three of the most educated countries in the world, not one is of serious international importance. And no, I do not consider Lady Gaga’s gender or Justin Bieber’s sexual orientation a globally pressing matter.

What is perhaps most worrying is the search that ranks eighth and fifth in Australia and the UK respectively – ‘is it wrong to sleep with your sister?’ Maybe I should go and live on a boat in the middle of the ocean with The Husband after all.

Yo-ho-ho And A Bottle Of Rum

As The Husband was working on his birthday, I decided to organise something special for the following day, something we definitely couldn’t do in Reading. We, and eight friends, set sail aboard Spinifex Spray, a magnificent 12-metre ketch, complete with pirate flag fluttering high above us. As we would be later told by the skipper, a typically crusty old barnacle of a seafarer, the skull and crossbones is in recognition of the founder of the island we were sailing from and the first Englishman to set foot on Australian soil, the pirate (or ‘profiteer’ as he preferred to be known as) William Dampier.


After a false start, whereby we hung around the wrong jetty and were almost taken out by a launching vessel, we finally made it to the correct pontoon where the sailing boat was standing proud in the water, masts reaching up to the sky. Unfortunately, our skipper was nowhere to be seen. Ignoring the urge to call, “ahoy there, matey, permission to step aboard your vessel?”, I shouted, “Hellooo?” and managed to sound like a nosy neighbour instead. A few seconds later, Brad popped his head up from the cabin. Rather than the young, tanned, ripped blonde surfer-type I had imagined from the name, Brad turned out to be a silver-bearded man in his late fifties with leathery skin and a muffin-top. He was, however, incredibly friendly in that relaxed Aussie way, as well as impressively knowledgeable about the history of the area. He welcomed us aboard and we deposited our snorkelling gear, bags and eskis before settling ourselves at the front of the boat as we set sail out of the harbour towards the Dampier archipelago, a group of 42 islands off the coast of Dampier and nearby Point Samson. It’s a world of white sandy beaches fringed with coral reefs in crystal-clear waters, where turtles, dolphins, whales and a host of other marine life can be found. If it wasn’t for the constant presence of the huge gas and oil projects on the Burrup Peninsula (the whole reason we’re here, of course), we could have been sailing through some Caribbean islands. It was stunning and, with the gentle rocking of the boat, the wind in our hair, and a deliciously blue sky above us, completely and utterly relaxing.

Our first port of call was Malus Island which, like all the islands around here, was completely deserted. If this was Queensland, the bay would be rammed with tourist and private boats alike but we had it all to ourselves in this little-visited spot of Australia. Brad docked the boat within swimming distance of the beach so we donned our snorkelling gear and jumped into the refreshing, transparent water. I was so busy packing my stuff into a bag to put into the little motor boat and then getting my gear on that I didn’t think about the Things That May Kill Me in the water, and it wasn’t until I was jumping in that a flutter of nerves hit my belly. I tried to comfort myself with the fact that with such great visibility, I should be able to spot anything nasty – I shouldn’t just be suddenly confronted with something appearing in front of me from the gloom. With so much beautiful coral and such an array of dazzlingly colourful fish to see, I actually barely gave thought to the nasties of the sea. I just made sure that I stayed near to one of the boys so that there was a reduced chance of me getting attacked first!

All that swimming gave us an appetite, so we waded around to a cluster of rocks that was home to a plethora of oysters. I am not normally a fan of the slimy creatures but when this fresh they’re actually pretty good. Brad armed us with a hammer and we happily opened up the shells and popped the molluscs straight into our mouths – you can’t get much fresher than that. It was then time to hop into the small boat – I managed to fall into it backwards, legs akimbo, in a very lady-like manner – back to Spinifex Spray. We spent the rest of the day cruising around the archipelago, stopping at another beach, and generally totally exhausting ourselves. It was a tough day.

People can diss Karratha all they want, but we’re incredibly lucky to be able to do something like that on a Sunday. The worrying thing now is that The Husband has decided that we are going to buy a boat and spend the rest of our days sailing around in it. That would be fabulous for a week or so but I’m sure the lack of a proper power-shower, a push-button flushing toilet and a full kitchen would soon set tempers flaring. I wouldn’t mind a sailing holiday – as long as there was someone to do most of the work of course (I don’t want to spend every day of my holiday tacking and winching and tying knots in rope and whatever else sailors do thank you very much) – but living on a boat? Not unless it was a Russian billionaire type with full-sized bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, sitting room and library. He’d better get saving.

Creaking Into Another Year

It was The Husband’s birthday on Saturday, though I won’t embarrass him by revealing what age he turned. Ok, I will. He is now the grand old age of 29, which means that he is less than a year away from being officially Old. It was his last birthday in his twenties so you’d imagine he’d want a wild party or to go out with a bunch of mates, right? Wrong. It appears The Husband is Old before his time as all he wanted was a meal in with his wife. I suppose it’s sweet that he wanted to spend his birthday solely in my company, though I suspect the real reason, other than the fact that he hates a fuss being made of his birthday, is that he is so exhausted these days that his ideal way to spend his nights off is a quiet meal in and a movie (or, at the moment, a bit of footy) before retiring to bed at around 9pm. Which is exactly how his birthday was spent. We started with ginger mojitos and an antipasto starter, followed by lasagne and sticky toffee pudding (both specially requested by the birthday boy – he’s normally on an enforced healthy diet so he relished the opportunity to be allowed to eat some gut-busting food), paired with a lovely South Australian Shiraz. All of this was consumed to the delightful drone of the vuvuzela as he watched some dreary World Cup game. Immediately following his second large helping of sticky toffee pudding, he staggered into the bedroom and lay on the bed in a comatose state, moaning that he felt sick. Two minutes later he was fast asleep. And thus ended his final birthday of his twenties. He still managed to wake up the next morning with a hangover though – he really must be getting Old.