It’s a year ago today, to the minute, that we said goodbye to Benny. I have reminders of him up in the house, on my monitor, in my bookshelf but what I wouldn’t do for just one more pat or smoosh of his sweet little face. It feels like he is close by. Sometimes I even think I hear him breathing, sighing in his sleep the way he used to do when he lay at my feet. I miss him so much. I hope he is happy in heaven.

The world lost Adam (MCA) Yauch on Friday 4th May. Unless you’re a Beastie Boys fan this may not mean much. I get it, celebrities die like the rest of us, but this one hit me hard.

I’ve been reading so many blogs, Facebook comments, forum posts and commentary about it and it seems we BB fans are pretty similar. Most of us have loved them since the 80′s. They’ve provided the soundtrack to many life experiences. We matured. They matured. We grew up, together.

Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys affected my life because it’s through them that I went on the discover and explore the worlds of hip hop and punk. Their music sustained me. It was my lifeline when I was living in a strange land. It was the soundtrack to my teens, twenties, thirties. I waited with baited breath for new releases and listened to the old stuff over and over. It stings to think there will be no more of Yauch’s gritty, gravelly lyrics. Yeah, there’s been tears. Lots of them.

I was thinking about why this death in particular is so hard and I think I’ve come up with a reason, or at least the fragile beginnings of one. As we get older we need to start coming to terms with the fact that losing people, the ones that have influenced us, the ones who have shaped us, even the ones we never even knew, is going to be becoming a regular occurrence. It’s life, yes. Death walks hand in hand with life, but that doesn’t make it fair and it doesn’t make it hurt less. Adam was only 10 years older than me and the idea that he – someone who gave so much to the world – is gone, is a thought that scares the shit out of me. It makes me question my legacy and what I will leave behind. It makes me confront my own mortality.

I think about a world without MCA in it and it doesn’t seem fair. Cancer is such an asshole.

Rest in Peace Adam.

I just finished up writing for today when I got a case of the guilts. I started to think about my other characters and Book 1 & 2 of the trilogy that I have been working on since 2009. I haven’t spent time with these characters since NaNoWriMo finished and I can feel them, deep inside, where I’ve locked them up so I can complete something else.

It’s an odd feeling knowing that there are other stories waiting to be written. Or completed. Characters that are sitting patiently (or in some cases very impatiently) waiting to be written into scenes again. I wish I could work on everything all at once but I know that it would do my head in. Straddling different worlds, different genres, just isn’t a good idea.

I love writing. I love being a writer. I will love it more when I finally have a book, any book, finished. I love molding characters and gently coaxing them into situations. The hard part for me seems to be pulling everything together. So I’ve essentially blocked out the next few weeks and I will be working on getting Chapters 1-5 finished. It’s daunting y’know? But I’ll push through.

I was having an issue with blogging back then and I really didn’t share anything about our trip, including the masses of photos that we took. But I thought I would begin to rectify that with a look at a little cemetery that was behind the first hotel we stayed in – The Bolton (as an aside I am never staying in a hotel that doesn’t have five stars – seriously. We stayed in two during our trip and wow, just wow).

The cemetery was the burial place for a lot of Wellington’s earliest settlers and I spent a good chunk of time going from headstone to headstone reading about their lives and their deaths. It was sad but fascinating.

So here we go. Here’s a look at the Bolton Street Memorial Park.

Beards, beards everywhere!

You can’t flail around on a busy street without hitting a hipster with a beard. Am I right? I’ve got to be honest with you, I’ve never really gotten the whole beard thing. I’ve just spent the last hour analysing why this might be and I keep arriving at the same conclusion. Here, let me share it with you.

You see, I was born in the 70’s and my formative years were in the 80’s. Child psychologists will tell you that you gather a lot of your ‘baggage’ during from this period because it’s when you are the most moldable. You experience things, they scare the shit out of you, and you ‘live’ (if you can call it that) for 37 years with a fear of ducks. And I should know.

Now the 70’s and 80’s were decades of serious facial hair worship championed, in my world, by men such as Peter (G’Day) Russell (G’Day) Clarke (see above photo), Bill Oddie and my math teacher, Mr Baker. All three were amply bearded and super scary so consequently beards, to this day, conjure memories of swearing and cheese, giant kittens prowling the streets of London and never, ever knowing what x is equal to.

Beards are not whimsical to me. They are not an accessory. They are not twee. They are serious business feller and you should be prepared for some cold hard facts before you start manicuring your follicles.

Here are five solid reasons not to have a beard

1. Beards are itchy. And they don’t just itch you; they itch your special friend too.
2. Beards look really hot. As in your face looks like it’s 25 degrees hotter than the rest of your body. Unless you’re in the Arctic. The Arctic is one of two regions were beards are acceptable. The Antarctic is the other.
3. Beards make you look older. Want to age a decade? Grow a beard. Is that your intention? OK then.
4. Beards attract all kinds of food remnants, which in turn attract vermin. When I leave food on my kitchen counter it attracts cockroaches. You don’t want cockroaches squatting in your beard do you? I didn’t think so.
5. Beards make you look dodgy. What are you trying to hide guy?

The end is nigh

The problem with beards is they have gone the way of visible thongs, faux hawks and Rickrolling – they’ve been embraced by the great unwashed. Once any social phenomenon has that kind of uptake you know it’s coolness currency is devalued.

I’m lucky. I know a trend is over when I hear the woman at the deli talking to a random customer about it. She’s my ugg boot wearing, frosted tip coiffing cultural thermometer. And she’s never, ever wrong.

  

#1 – My winner badge after completing NaNoWriMo
#2 – A stormy day 6th December 2011
#3 – Izzy at Myer in the city after deciding she wasn’t going to sit on Santa’s knee
#4 – White Square storm brooch
#5 – Lightning at 10pm on 12th December 2011
#6 – My first print byline
#7 – My obsession with fairy lights continues
#8 – Our 2011 Christmas tree

Here are some of my favourite Christmas posts from recent times.

Christmas 2010
Christmas 2009
Christmas 2008
Christmas 2005