You know what?

I've actually realised tonight that I'm quite valued and respected around here.
I don't know what I've done or what I've managed not to do, but I've obviously written the right thing in the right way at the correct time.
I seem to be more trusted with stuff than someone whose only been with a paper a couple of months should be. I spent tonight re-working something two other people had a go at but was asked to do it "because you've got a lot more experience and we need this done properly".
Last night something similar was said to me about another yarn.
I was also asked to train a cadet (and friend, I might add) in night police.
So yeah. I'm starting to feel comfortable. And I like it here.
I love it.

Success

There is nothing I love more than the success of those I love.
Achieving something personally is, of course, a matter of pride. I tend to downplay my own achievements... basically because I could do a lot more and be a lot better than I am if I applied myself properly. I'm a bit of a fraud and I know it.
But the achievements of my friends thrill me to unnatural degrees.
Linds getting the Guardian gig, for instance, gave me more joy than if I'd slid into the job.
I sit on the sidelines at comedy gigs just willing the audience to laugh at the material my mates are throwing out there.
And I take great pride in Thom's endless string of high distinctions.
This week, therefore, I am thrilled beyond comparison. Excited. Buoyant.
Some very very deserving people are getting opportunities thrown at them. Stars are in the ascendance.
God bless you my friends. I hope it all goes well - whatever it is you want and decide.
My love will be with you either way.
x

Aw, how sweet! How gay.

Some of you were there on the very night this happened. Some of you were there one week later when we hung out for the second time. But Thom and I are celebrating one year together this coming weekend.
I'm not going to get all sentimental and teary here except to say this has been the best year of my life for a million reasons and he is the biggest among them.
We're going to celebrate by taking ourselves off to see the latest instalment in the Bourne movies (Matt Damon is my second choice these days, if Thom refuses to submit and spent the rest of his days with me) and dinner.
Not very lovely-dovey sounding I know... but frightfully Thom and Dan.
Who have become nannas over winter.
I'm kind of looking forward to summer actually.
We really need to get out.

Oh What a Night!

This is so random you will not believe it.
My friend Enda was in town for an exceedingly short space of time yesterday... and I was working. So I caught up with him and some of his friends after I finished work (at about 11.45pm) at the casino.
Kylie and Murray - some of Enda's close Perth friends were there - and also one of the three people he is travelling around the south-west with.
I say people... I mean doyenne's of Australian television and theatre.
Unfortunately I arrived so late I didn't get to meet Judy Nunn or Paula Duncan... but sitting in a chair at the table - slightly boozed but still extremely gracious - was Cornelia Francis.
I know Murray was at least as starstruck as I was, but we played it cool. Cornelia offered to buy a round of drinks and then apologised for making me go and get them. LOL.
Anyway, I'm bragging. It's true. I'm not really a name-dropper, but that was a thrill.
Goodbye.

LOL

Census for August... updated

Reading: I have such a huge stack of books on the bedside table. Flicking though a volume of Jeremy Clarkson's.
Watching: Well not Torchwood which appears to have been taken off air by Channel 10. Fkrs. Dr Who. And old episodes of The Good Life when I get home from nightshift.
Listening: Regina Spektor.
Downloading: Absolutely nothing!
Website du jour: Facebook.
Café: Not particularly going anywhere.
Pub: Scotto. Managed Brisbane, Queens AND Scotto last night. LOL.
Club: I'm too old for that shit now.
Eating: Tan Po Po for lunch... a little too often. But then, they are the happy snappy Jappy.
Drinking: Tea.
Wearing: A pair of compression pants to stop the gym pain in my legs. They work great!
Last show: I saw Rigoletto at the WA Op on Thursday night. It was wonderful. Although the set kind-of stole the show.
Next show: I'm booked to see Kate Ceberano with Kerry, then Dad and I are going to see Brenda Blethyn and Sigrid Thornton doing some Alan Bennett monologues the next day!
Can’t wait ‘til: Middle of next week when my laptop arrives. The 15" version won't be in for weeks so they're offering me the 17" version for only $200 more, rather than the $1000 more it should be. So I'm stoked.
Most recent scoop: Double fatality on the freeway. If you can call that a scoop.
Most recent purchase: I keep walking into shops to buy things and then coming out with nothing. I guess that's a good thing.
Want but can’t afford: A small pair of binoculars, for work. They'd actually be quite handy.
Need but can’t afford: Nothing.
Last nice act: The 'nice' value of this is up for debate, but I managed to keep LMcP at arms length from fuckwitted people at an after party last week... thereby ensuring she had a fun, care-free and stressless night. Which may not have happened if she'd known they were there.
Last bad act: Oh there must be something... perhaps relishing the ascendency of a woman who just regained control of her life and her house by giving a move-on notice to a young man of dubious repute.
Bad news: Night Police rounds involves a LOT of death.
Good news: I actually really love my new job, despite the death, and have been told good reports are filtering through. Which is good... cos you don't actually get feedback. LOL. But I would certainly never give up because it's all too hard and go running back to my comfort zone. That's fucking pathetic.
Goal: As ever, to be buff for summer. It's coming, too.
Yesterday I: Had breakfast with Thom and Robbie... can't remember what I did during the day... had coffee with Karen and Peter who were up from Albany... then caught up with the CNG crew at night.
Right now I should be: Visiting my Grandmother for her birthday. Which I will now have to do tomorrow as it is too late to drive to the farm.
Later today I’m: Urgh... going to the pub again. I couldn't think of anything worse right now, but it is very important that Thom goes to this event. Hair of the dog, Dan, hair of the dog...

Bring out your dead, bring out your dead...

...but only if Dan is on duty, please.
I spent part of last night at another murder scene. Sure it was an accidental death from a domestic argument gone badly wrong, but that doesn't alter the fact that when I rocked-up to ask some questions there was a dead guy laying across his porch step.
So in the last fortnight that's two murder scenes and a double fatality I've been to. And in the space of three days I've tripled the number of dead bodies I've ever seen. At least this one was partially covered and still looked recognisable.
The horrible thing was, when I first heard it on the scanner it was simply a domestic dispute. When the cops arrived they said someone had been stabbed so they called an ambulance. But as the updates and the pleas to find out how far away the ambulance was became more frantic they started to say "This is a poss 228, this is a poss 228, where is that ambulance? What is the ETA for that ambulance?"
I looked on my list.
A 228 is a sudden death.
Then the cops started doing CPR but they said the eyes were already fixed and glazed and there was no breathing. It was another two minutes before the ambulance arrived - a good 10 minutes after it was ordered. How can it take so long?
In the meantime, I listened to a man die over the radio.
Another great evening on night shift.

Horrendous

Last night I attended an accident on the freeway in which two elderly people were killed. It wasn't nice. At all.
The wreckage of metal and glass and human flesh was so intertwined that it the last seconds of the lives of the people in the vehicles played repeatedly through my mind. Crystal clear. As if I had witnessed it. Or been in one of the vehicles.
I had to sit at the scene for about three hours, watching rescue crews prize the vehicles apart, cut them open, and remove the unidentifiable inhabitants.
It was awful. And the newsroom wanted such detail. Such detail. I was shaking. And I was surrounded by macabre gawping tourists. People who couldn't resist coming down to look at the wreckage for fun. People make me fucking sick. Where is the humanity? This isn't CSI you fucking retards - REAL people died here. Detective Goran isn't down there making everything okay.
After I was allowed to leave the scene I had to go do my usual nightly rounds. I've never driven so carefully, or shook my head at so many other road users.
There are two things I want to say to everyone who reads this blog.
1) You are not invincible. Actions have consequences. Please be careful.
2) I love you. Respect yourself. Keep yourself safe.
Sorry if this seems like an over-the-top post... it's been a bitch of a night.

General Update

It's been a bit of a long week really. Tuesday night I was standing at a police post all night talking to bootscooters. The next day they found Corryn Rayney's body and I spent a couple of days sitting in Kings Park, bored off my brain, waiting for ANYTHING to happen. Such is the life of a daily journo. Mind you, there's something exciting about the boring bits, when the story is on this scale.
Otherwise, quite pleased I got into the gym for three solid sessions this week. STILL waiting for my new computer to arrive - it has been a month. And I've joined the Facebook craze everyone else seemed to have already done.
Last night Thom and I went to Cirque du Soleil. Fantastic as always. Party was still huge. Rolled in quite late after and argument with a fuckwit taxi driver, who I will be filing a complaint about on Monday. He started yelling at me and accusing him of being a criminal because I put the girls in his cab and checked his number as I did so. He was quite abusive. I was furious. Just because you look like a Pashtun Rebel doesn't mean I assume you're going to bag up my women and sell them as slaves somewhere. Jesus.
Anyway, that's my week. Night shift means I have plenty of time during the day. I'm trying to make the most of that. I don't mind working nights. I just wish I got to write more while I was doing them.

Lovely

I had Friday off. Yesterday off. And today off. Tomorrow I don't start work til 4pm. I'm feeling wonderfully relaxed.
The sun is shining - which is nice given the unceasing rain we've been having - and I have a nice, reassuring, funny volume to read.
Life is pretty good right now.
Last night I went to a dinner party and ate til I was stuffed silly and drank champagne willfully.
This evening I shall jump on stage and deliver some comedy.
Lovely.

Life is different now

And I'm not quiiiiiite sure how I'm coping.
I keep getting sent on bizarre-O undercover missions. On Tuesday night I was actually staking-out someone's house waiting for them to come home. Last night I was staking out footy training. I felt like a dirty old man sitting in my car watching the (wrong, as it turns out) team of teenagers training.
I've jumped fences, door-stopped people outside Centrelink offices, had 900-year-old upstanding respectable nuns tell me to fuck-off... this has been a more diverse and sometimes unethical three weeks than I have had since I started in this silly game in 1999.
At the moment I am on nightshift so I'm not even getting my name in the paper. I'm spending eight hours a night listening to two police scanners and trying to decipher my 327s (domestics) from my 101s (armed robbery in progress).
So if you're reading the West you can assume shitty overnight police fillers were written by me, at the moment.
And finishing at 12am also has me quite tired. My clock is all out of whack.
Still... I don't actually mind nightshift. I just don't really get the chance to dig up stories and prove my worth to them... which is a bit of a pain when I'm trying to prove myself inside six months.
Even so, I'm still convinced this move was the right decision, even if I am having a few growing pains. In the words of Bubble upon discovering seedless grapes... "I'd never go back to pips now".

Urgh... typical

So I just went to the RAC to take advantage of their brilliant 25% off all Lonely Planet Books voucher offer... only to discover that they did not have Lonely Planet Greece.
I hate you RAC. Go fuck yourselves with a biscuit.

My. Kon. Os.

Three little syllables I have been unable to get out of my head for years: Mykonos.
The beautiful azure Aegean, the captivating white-washed buildings, the golden sun and sandy beaches, the... boys. (With their hairy backs).
I've wanted to go to Greece for a long time and now, I've decided, I'm going to do it.
I'm debt free. I've paid-off my car, I no-longer have a mortgage and I'm earning more than I have in years. I can afford to save for 12 months so I can go on a holiday.
And Greece is the destination. I want to see Athens with all its history and spend a couple of glorious weeks sipping ouzo in tavernas with Thom after a day on the beach or checking out ancient monuments. I want to island hop on big white ferries and party until dawn to bazuki music. Being so close, I might even pop over to Turkey and see Gallipoli, the Dardenelles and all the jingoistic oi oi oi-ness of it.
It's a year away, but I can already taste it. I cannot wait. In the meantime I shall read all I can and try, once again, to learn the language.
I didn't think the travel bug had bitten me at all, but it clearly must have. My desire to go to Greece has doubled again and again since I returned from my Greece-less European sojourn earlier this year.
Everyone needs a goal. This is mine.

You pretty much don't want to hear...

You pretty much don't want to hear the following adjectives immediately preceding the word: Vagina.
a) sturdy
b) sensible
c) spacious
d) accommodating

You pretty much don't want to hear the following adjectives immediately preceding the word: Penis.
a) cute
b) mean
c) alternative
d) inverted